Members are in limbo as Lupin Lodge is on the market after nearly 90 years – with next buyer likely to require clothes. After nearly 90 years as a historic nudist resort, California’s Lupin Lodge is up for sale – and its next owners are likely to require guests to wear clothes.
![[Lois Beckett]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2024/04/01/Lois_Beckett,_L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The 112-acre Silicon Valley property became a retreat for members of the “naturist” movement in 1935. Today, its hundreds of members enjoy the resort’s clothing-optional hiking trails, pickleball court and its nude-only community pool. (Yes: the members really do hike naked.).
![[grey wishbone statue on grass in front of trees]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/140ee4d92cd25f7cf785d5147c2a8106419538bf/0_0_2160_1440/master/2160.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
But the family-owned Los Gatos resort is now on sale for nearly $30m – and any buyers of the northern California property are likely to abandon its nudist roots. When Pauline Martin Moore, 83, heard the property was going up for sale, “I was absolutely aghast,” she said.
![[four nude people stand behind wooden, orange and yellow sign]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7b9d35ffc2552f3e626f1e0d05cf57ff028e7ba3/0_0_427_640/master/427.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Moore, who was born in London and has been part of the California club for decades, prizes it as a democratic social space, where typical markers of class and status drop away. “You don’t judge them by what they’re wearing, because you can’t, so you get to know people as they are,” she said.
![[people sit together in hot tub]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/23cf1964a8b05d7a7b35906e8e763aee1f269764/0_0_607_480/master/607.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
At the same time, Moore said, she was not entirely surprised at the news of the sale: the upkeep of the resort is no easy job, and its owner and CEO, Lori Kay Stout, has been managing it on her own since her husband died in 2015. Stout said her own health concerns and her desire to return to her work as an artist had prompted her to put the property up for sale last year. Over the decades, she said, the club had brought together “hundreds of people that met and married, or had long-term relationships”, including herself and her late husband.
![[person wearing no top stands behind black car]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/02f2fe4ab24fde58a3727d9fcceba458d22caa37/0_0_3202_2924/master/3202.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
