Bonny Doon, California

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Bonny Doon, California is an unincorporated community on Ben Lomond Mountain, northwest of Santa Cruz, California. It was founded in the 1850s as a logging camp. John Burns, a Scotsman living in Santa Cruz, named Bonny Doon after a line in Robert Burns' (no relation) song The Banks O' Doon. ("Ye banks and braes o'bonnie Doon.."). Bonny Doon is located in Santa Cruz County. Bonny Doon has no "city center" or shops, but features several wineries and an airport. A nude beach of the same name is nearby.

The area is on a slope with higher elevations in Redwood forest and lower elevations descending toward the coastal zone, which is occupied by grasslands. There are ocean views from parts of the town on days when fog is not present. The University of California, Santa Cruz is a short drive down Empire Grade, and Bonny Doon is popular with residents both who work there and those who work from home and telecommute in various genres of computing. Even though it's an outlying area, DSL service is available.

Although Bonny Doon is about 300 miles north, some southern California residents have compared Bonny Doon with the Topanga area, a community in the hills near Malibu. Robert A. Heinlein, noted science fiction author, along with his wife Virginia, was a resident from 1965 until just before his death in 1988, in a house he designed and built himself.