HOW THE RUNNING FENCE SUBVERSIVELY CHANGED SONOMA COUNTY
Fences have long symbolized division. So it came as little surprise that when two artists arrived in Petaluma in early 1974 proposing an installation called Running Fence, they faced immediate resistance.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude claimed their project—an 18-foot-high nylon fence stretching 24.5 miles over the countryside from Cotati to the coast near Bodega Bay—would foster “togetherness” by offering people a new way of seeing the local landscape.
Instead, their proposal became a lightning rod in a turf war over land use, pitting outside developers against environmentalists. From their headquarters at the Petaluma Inn, Bulgarian-born Christo and Moroccan-born Jeanne-Claude played that division to their advantage.
That included more than two years of navigating 18 public hearings, three Superior Court sessions, and a 465-page environmental impact report. As the proceedings dragged on, Christo made it clear their true work of art was not the physical installation, but the process of bringing it into being.
“You are all part of our work,” he explained in his thick Bulgarian accent.
Yet despite their pledge of fostering unity, Christo and Jeanne-Claude strategically aligned themselves with one side of the local divide—a loose coalition of developers, anti-tax activists, and ranchers united by their common desire to loosen land-use restrictions.
That included restrictions on absurd art installations like Running Fence, which few members of the coalition pretended to understand. Most viewed it as a useful proxy.
A major hurdle Christo and Jeanne-Claude faced was convincing ranchers to allow the fence to extend across their properties. At first, their foreign accents, New York avant-garde airs, and hippie appearances clashed with the conservative, no-nonsense ranching community. It wasn’t until Valley Ford sheep rancher Lester Bruhn realized there was a financial payoff for cash-strapped ranchers that doors began to open.
With Bruhn’s help, Christo and Jeanne-Claude secured leases from 59 ranchers, backed by a team of lawyers who negotiated lease fees. Modest ranches were offered $200 (about $1,200 in today’s currency), while a large ranch received $5,500 (roughly $32,000 today). Ranchers were also promised the fence’s nylon curtains, metal posts, and cables after the installation came down.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude took a similar approach with the conservative Sonoma County Taxpayers Association. “They came to us hat in hand, money in pocket,” said association president Jim Groom. “We like that.”
The one constituency the couple made little effort to court was the art community. “Local artists,” Jeanne-Claude said, “saw us as an invasion of their turf.”
Many, in fact, condemned Running Fence as a gimmick. Others criticized it as “fascist art” for dominating, rather than complementing, the landscape. Ironically, their opposition helped by shifting media attention away from the tedious debates about land-use policy to a more theatrical—but pointless—debate over what constitutes public art.
For, while Christo described Running Fence as “public art,” there was actually little public about it. Built by paid crews on private land, its $3 million price tag (about $17 million today) was privately financed through the sale of Christo’s artwork. Despite his claims that everyone was part of the process, it was not subjected to reviews by public art commissions.
Like a visiting carnival, Running Fence’s only formal review was the county’s land-use permitting process. That placed it squarely in the headlights of a legal battle drawing national attention: Petaluma’s effort to limit growth.
By the early 1970s, a post-war, suburban housing boom had quadrupled Petaluma’s population. With the city’s infrastructure overwhelmed, the city council capped new residential construction at 500 houses per year. Developers sued. In February 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower-court ruling upholding the cap, making Petaluma the darling of slow-growth advocates across the country.
Savvy developers, however, had already shifted their focus to the largely unregulated countryside. A flashpoint was the proposed 994-unit housing subdivision on the Watson Ranch, a 1,000-acre dairy north of Petaluma at Stony Point and Pepper roads, near where Christo was planning to begin Running Fence.
The ranch was operated by John Keegan Watson, a second-generation dairyman. Squeezed by rising property taxes, in 1970 he sold a controlling interest in the property to Palo Alto developers. It wasn’t his only option. Under the Williamson Act of 1965, he could have reduced his tax burden by restricting his land to agriculture use or open space.
But those tax benefits weren’t enough for struggling dairymen like Watson in the increasingly unstable dairy industry. State-imposed pricing caps, declining demand due to cholesterol dietary concerns, and a punishing two-year drought were all taking their toll.
The clincher was California’s new, environmental waste-treatment rules, which required dairies to make costly upgrades by 1977. For a number of ranchers, the only viable option was to sell, either to a larger dairy or to developers.
Opposition to local suburban sprawl meanwhile was gaining momentum. One of the leading opponents was Dr. Bill Kortum, a Petaluma rancher and large-animal veterinarian. Elected in 1974 to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, he proposed establishing greenbelts between incorporated cities to prevent wall-to-wall subdivisions. His proposal was incorporated into a draft of the county’s new general plan.
As the three-year planning process unfolded, Kortum and fellow board member Chuck Hinkle pushed for a moratorium on new lot splits. Developers responded with a recall campaign. As their attack dog, they enlisted fellow developer and president of the Sonoma County Taxpayers Association, Jim Groom.
Publicly, Groom positioned the recall as a protest against the supervisors’ support for a recent property tax increase. Privately, he warned ranchers that greenbelts would depress land values and eliminate their rainy-day option of selling to developers.
In the midst of the recall campaign, Christo appeared before the Board of Supervisors seeking final approval for Running Fence. Kortum cast the lone dissenting vote, concerned the installation would open the door to further exceptions—billboards, concert venues, carnivals, motorcycle tracks— on protected farmland.
Pro-growth supervisors brushed aside his concern. One observed that a fence—running or not—was, by definition, “agricultural.”
In April 1976, Christo and Jeanne-Claude broke ground on Lester Bruhn’s Valley Ford ranch. A month later, Kortum and Hinkle were recalled in a special election. Developers of the Watson Ranch subdivision, seeing an opening, submitted their plans to the Sonoma County Planning Commission.
On September 8, 1976, Running Fence’s two-week exhibit opened in dramatic defiance of government regulators. Months earlier, the California Coastal Commission had rescinded approval of running the fence’s final 1,000 yards across protected coastal land. Christo’s lawyers appealed, and a new hearing was set for September 23rd—the day after the exhibit was scheduled to come down.
To the delight of his supporters, Christo ordered his workers to extend the fence across the protected land into the sea. A San Francisco art critic called the “illegal leap” a violation of both the law and the spirit of the artwork. Christo disagreed.
“Illegality is essential to the American system, don’t you see?” he told The New Yorker. “I completely work within the American system by being illegal, like everyone else—if there is no illegal part, the project is less reflective of the system. It’s the subversive character of the system that makes it so exciting to live here.”
The day after Running Fence’s opening, about 700 developers, anti-tax activists, and regional Republican leaders gathered in Santa Rosa to honor Groom as citizen of the year for his role in recalling Kortum and Hinkle. A congratulatory telegram from President Gerald Ford was read aloud.
Over the next two weeks, Running Fence transformed the Sonoma and Marin dairylands into an open-air museum, its billowing white nylon panels rippling across the hills and valleys. Christo called it “a ribbon of light.” An estimated two million people came to view it. Many found the sight far more beautiful than expected.
Despite the brief mark it made on the land, Running Fence helped to reshape the region’s political alignment. That became evident two months later, when voters reversed the political outcome of the recall, electing a growth-control majority to the Board of Supervisors. The board adopted a new general plan emphasizing concentrated city growth, limited rural development, and preservation of agricultural land.
“I’m convinced the fence was a major factor,” recalled Brian Kahn, one of the newly elected supervisors. “It made people think about the land and their relationship to it.”
Among the casualties was the Watson Ranch subdivision. The Sonoma County Land Trust purchased development rights to the property, helping to establish a permanent greenbelt between Petaluma and Cotati.
As for Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s supporting coalition of developers, anti-tax activists, and ranchers, Running Fence proved to be a Trojan horse—an enduring reminder that the power of art lies not only in its beauty, but in its subversive nature.
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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier May 22, 2026
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SOURCES:
Colby Chamberlain, “The Politics of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence,” Artforum, April 2017.
Coastwalk California: “Bill Kortum—His Story,” December, 2014, https://coastwalk.org/bill-kortum-his-story/
Los Angeles Times: “Petaluma is Doing ‘Just Fine’ After 17 Years of Controls,” April 11, 1988.
Eric Stanley, “Christo: Legacy Remembered,” Museum of Sonoma County, June 9, 2020. https://museumsc.org/christo-legacy-remembered/
New York Times: “Christo, Artist Known for Massive, Fleeting Displays, Dies,” May 31, 2020.
Calvin Tompkins, “Onward and Upward with the Arts: Running Fence,” The New Yorker, March 28, 1977.
Petaluma Argus-Courier: “John S. Watson—One of State’s Prime Movers,” January 12, 1963; “Dairying Isn’t the Quiet, Easy Life it Once Was,” July 28, 1973; “Ag Problems: Local Dairy May Move After 32 Years,” April 21, 1976; “Christo’s Fence Now Under Construction,” May 4, 1976; “Dairies Feeling the Water Pinch,” June 11, 1976; “Planners: House Report Had Holes,” August 25, 1976; “Late Housing Report Draws Criticism,” August 18, 1976; “Petaluma Farms Draws Criticism at Hearing,” September 3, 1976; “Fence Triggers Debate,” September 11, 1976; “Opposition Defeats Subdivision,” September 17, 1976; “Fence Artist is Gone,” September 30, 1976; “Fence in Demand for Souvenirs,” October 4, 1976; “Another Dairy Closes,” March 3, 1977; “Open Space, Park EDP Changes Studied,” July 13, 1978; “Obituary: John Keegan Watson,” May 29, 1979; “Watson Ranch Remains Open Land Under Trust,” December 10, 1979; “Environmental Icon’s Legacy Remembered,” December 25, 2014.
San Francisco Examiner: “Good for Business, But is it Art?” September 9, 1976.
San Rafael Daily Independent Journal: “Christo’s Fence Granted Sonoma Board’s Approval,” May 19, 1975.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “A ‘Running Fence,’” January 21, 1974; “Supervisors Clear Christo’s Fence,” March 19, 1975; “Christo’s Fence Clears Coast Committee,” April 25, 1975; “Groom, SCTA Supported,” September 17, 1975; “Kortum Vows to Defeat Recall,” December 17, 1975; “Second District,” May 26, 1976; “Kortum: An Opportunist’s Cop-out,” June 2, 1976; “Christo’s $2 Million Fence Almost Reader for Sept. 8 Hanging,” August 30, 1976; “Christo’s Fence Takes Illegal Dip,” September 8, 1976; Gaye LeBaron column, September 12, 1976; “Ford Praises Groom as Citizen of Year,” September 12, 1976; “Delong Bitter Blast at General Plan, Kahn,” January 11, 1978; “Jim Groom Still Packs a Mean Punch,” June 23, 1993; “Christo, Famed Environmental Artist Behind ‘Running Fence’ in Sonoma and Marin counties, Dies at 84,” (pickup from Washington Post), May 31, 2020.
Smithsonian Magazine: “Q&A: Christo and Jeanne-Claude,” December, 2008; “Christo’s California Dreamin’,” June 2010.
Sonoma Magazine: Glen Martin, “Christo’s Running Fence: Photos, Stories, and Memories,” June, 2020.
Sonoma West Times and News: “Running Fence Has its Problems,” July 26, 1976; “Artists Speak from Both Sides of the Fence,” July 26, 1976; “Recall Elections, New Faces Were Part of the County’s First General Plan Debates,” August 15, 2007.
Caitlin O’Hara, “The Journey to the Running Fence,” UC Press Blog, https://www.ucpress.edu/blog/9847/the-journey-to-running-fence/
Brian Doherty, et al, Remembering the Running Fence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
Anne Schuhart, “Keeping Dairy Waste Under Control,” Soil Conservation, Volume 43; Volumes 1977-1978 (Information Division, Soil Conservation Service, 1977), pp. 15-17.
Running Fence, film documentary by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin, 1977.
