Antelope - The Town that Survived a Religious Invasion

24 June 2023

Antelope is a small Central Oregon town that began life as a stage coach stop.

I visited on a sunny June morning, easily spotting the former schoolhouse (now community center) on the way in from Shaniko. That was my first stop before checking out a couple of the older buildings around town.

While quiet today, the town gained national attention in the 1980s for a very strange reason.

In the 1980s, hundreds of members of the Rajneesh movement, a religious sect formed around Indian philosopher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, arrived and overwhelmed the small town.

By 1984, the Rajneeshees were able to propose and dominate the outcome of a vote that would change the name of Antelope to Rajneesh. This, however, came to an abrupt end when criminal behavior on the part of several Rajneesh movement leaders was discovered. Some Rajneeshees had initiated a mass food poisoning attack that involved contaminating restaurants with Salmonella in an attempt to incapacitate the voting population of nearby The Dalles.

The town residents, including some remaining Rajneeshees, voted to change the town’s name back to Antelope, which it remains to this day.