Basecamp
Arrive. Orient. Choose a trail.
The Ssussdriad Expedition · Hanford, California
Hanford is our home terrain.
We are building the place we could not find—a living Expedition in learning, food, story, and community.
Here, people become capable by helping build the world around them.
The Ssussdriad Expedition
is a Hanford-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
THE OLD PATTERN
WE WERE TAUGHT TO WAIT.
For distant systems to feed us, teach our children, tell our stories, solve our problems, and repair what breaks. Piece by piece, we handed away the skills, relationships, and responsibilities that make a place strong.
DEPENDENCE GREW.
CAPABILITY DIMINISHED.
THE BETTER PATTERN
THE WORK RETURNS TO OUR HANDS.
Ssussdriad is building the alternative here in Hanford. Not another institution to manage our lives, but a living expedition where we learn, grow, build, gather, and become useful to one another again.
We are rebuilding local capability through practice, shared responsibility, and work that leaves proof.
MAKE HANFORD HARDER TO BREAK.
Classroom & gardening: illustrative stock photography / Pexels.
THE PUBLIC TRAILS
FIND YOUR WAY IN.
A better pattern begins with something real. A child entrusted with meaningful work. A neighborhood taking responsibility for its own place. Food grown and shared closer to home. A story told by the people who lived it.
There are many ways into the Expedition. Each begins with a useful step.
EXPEDITIONARY EDUCATION
Young people learning to think, build, grow, and lead through work that matters.
FOOD + LAND
Rebuilding the relationship between soil, food, producers, and the community table.
NEIGHBORHOOD VILLAGES
Helping neighbors discover their shared strength and shape the places they live.
FINDING HANFORD
Recovering the people, stories, knowledge, and opportunities that make this place our own.
WORKSHOPS + GATHERINGS
Bringing people together to practice useful skills, exchange knowledge, and leave something better behind.
01 / EXPEDITIONARY EDUCATION
A place to begin.
Young people learning to think, build, grow, and lead through work that matters.
Illustrative stock · not the Ssussdriad Basecamp.
MANY TRAILS.
ONE EXPEDITION.
Trail photography is illustrative stock, not documentation of Ssussdriad activities.
The Expedition journey
a world you enter
Trail
Learn. Build. Grow. Contribute.
Campfire
Return with proof. Share the story.
Curiosity → Participation → Contribution → Stewardship
ONE EXPEDITION. TWO CAMPS.
One carries the work into public life. One protects the depth that lets it grow.
TSE
THE SSUSSDRIAD EXPEDITION
THE PUBLIC CAMP
Open programs, public benefit, and practical ways for people to become more capable together.
THE PUBLIC WORK
- Expeditionary Education
- Neighborhood Village Initiative
- Finding Hanford
- Public workshops + gatherings
- Local self-reliance projects
WHAT IT BUILDS
- Capable people
- Stronger local networks
- Public trust
- Visible proof
- Patterns others can carry
ENTER THE WORK. PRACTICE. CONTRIBUTE. CARRY IT FORWARD.
TGO
THE GATHERING OAK
THE PRIVATE CAMP
A private membership space for deeper inquiry, fellowship, hospitality, research, and long-term stewardship.
THE PRIVATE WORK
- Private dining + member services
- Member gatherings
- Confidential forums + think tanks
- Regenerative research
- Stewardship + prototype work
WHAT IT MAKES POSSIBLE
- Deeper trust
- Serious inquiry
- Protected experimentation
- Long-term stewardship
- Resources for work worth carrying forward
GATHER. STUDY. BUILD DEEPLY. STEWARD FOR THE LONG TERM.
WHERE THE CAMPS MEET
Some work should begin in the open. Some needs time, privacy, trust, and experimentation before it is ready to travel.
TGO protects that deeper work. TSE carries what proves useful outward—into education, public projects, shared knowledge, and stronger local capability.
One Expedition. Separate governance. Clear agreements. Fair exchange.
DOWNTOWN BASECAMP
THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN GATHERING HANFORD FOR NEARLY A CENTURY.
In 1929, people came through these doors for groceries, meat, and 45-cent coffee. The building was designed as a neighborhood market, with large openings facing Douty Street and a direct relationship to downtown life.
Later came toys. Then pizza. Then years of meals, conversation, music, and play.
The names changed, but the building kept doing something familiar: giving people a reason to come in from the street and share a place.
Then the doors closed.
Now, after more than a decade of quiet, the building is being prepared for its next life.
THE BUILDING'S STORY
1929
JUSTESEN'S MARKET
Built specifically as a neighborhood grocery and meat market, with coffee advertised at 45¢ a pound.
c. 1950s
MOE'S TOY STORE
301 N. Douty became the original home of Byron 'Moe' Washburn's toy store and a place generations of Hanford children remember.
1970s–1980s
POOR RICHARD'S PIZZA
The building entered another life as a pizza restaurant and downtown gathering place.
c. 1990s–2014
MAMA LEAL'S → THE OLD HANFORD CANTINA
It later became Mama Leal's second Hanford location. When having two Hanford locations proved confusing, this one became The Old Hanford Cantina.
2014–2016
THE DOORS CLOSE
The Cantina closed after its final years here. By 2016 the property was being marketed as a former restaurant.
TODAY
DOWNTOWN BASECAMP
The building enters another chapter as the public hearth of the Ssussdriad Expedition.
NOW
THE DOORS OPEN AGAIN AS BASECAMP.
This is not a recreation of what was here before. It is a continuation of what this place has long done best: bring people together around provision, food, play, work, story, hospitality, and local life.
Downtown Basecamp will become the public hearth of the Ssussdriad Expedition—a place to arrive, find the map, meet the people, learn something useful, share a meal, make something, tell a story, and leave with a trail to continue.
Moe's Toy Store advertisement
Inside Moe's Toy Store
Justesen's advertisement, c. 1929
Later years: food, gathering, and play
1929: PROVISIONS FOR A HOUSEHOLD. / TODAY: PROVISIONS FOR AN EXPEDITION.
FARM CAMPUS
A LIVING
CLASSROOM.
Our Farm Campus is part of Ssussdriad's education offerings—especially Homeschool Enrichment, After-School, and Daycare / Younger Learners.
Here, learning happens in living systems. Young people grow food, care for animals, build and repair, explore the land, and play with purpose. With time, freedom, and guidance, they choose meaningful work, follow their curiosity, and develop real skills and responsibility.
14TH & GRANGEVILLE
HANFORD, CA
Illustrative stock photograph · campus images to follow.
HOW LEARNING HAPPENS HERE
SELF-DIRECTION
Learners follow what is alive for them, choose meaningful work, and take initiative.
REAL RESPONSIBILITY
They care for living things, tools, spaces, projects, and one another—with work that matters.
MIXED-AGE PRACTICE
Younger and older learners work and play together, building community, confidence, and leadership.
If Basecamp is where the Expedition gathers,
the Farm Campus is where young people learn through living systems.
LIVING SYSTEMS
Soil, water, food, plants, animals, seasons, ecology, and stewardship.
MAKING + REPAIR
Woodwork, metalwork, auto / small engine, tools, building, repair, and practical problem-solving.
FREEDOM + PLAY
Play, movement, exploration, friendship, imagination, and self-direction.
CURIOSITY OPENS THE TRAIL.
Learners follow what is alive, choose meaningful work, and grow through play, practice, and real responsibility.
Self-direction is not an extra here—it is how learning begins.
CURIOSITY → TRAIL → PRACTICE → PROOF → RESPONSIBILITY
Three crafts move the Expedition.
Ssussdriad is a living expeditionary ecosystem for rebuilding local human capability in a time of fragility and centralization—and becoming a signal fire for the coming age.
The expedition depends on three crafts: one to set direction and gather participation, one to turn those principles into a world people can enter, and one to keep that world honest through consistent practice.
Firecraft
Choose where to act, how to differentiate, and what will move people to join. Turn proof into story, trust, and participation.
Worldcraft
Give the Expedition a form people can enter through place, language, roles, ritual, hospitality, and shared experience.
Fieldcraft
Keep the Expedition grounded through observation, practical work, testing, maintenance, repair, and dependable local skill.
Proof, not promises.
Proof becomes story. Story opens the next step.
Latest field notes
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The First Trail · November 14, 2026
Hanford, California
Secure the ground.
Open the first operating season.
The First Trail is our $100,000 effort to protect and activate Downtown Basecamp—the place where education, Finding Hanford, workshops, neighborhood work, local mapping, gatherings, and the Expedition Network begin to meet.
More than $100,000 has already been invested in the space, and the larger Expedition is taking shape. This first major public fundraising campaign is not meant to finish everything. It gives us the continuity and runway to put the first systems into motion.
- The First Trail
- Nov 14 The threshold
- Winter of Proof
- Next Trail Spring 2027
The first ~100 days
Winter of Proof
November 14 does not close the Expedition. It opens its first operating season.
Over the following roughly 100 days, campaign support will be turned into things people can see.
- Activate minimum viable Basecamp spaces
- Begin Finding Hanford production
- Begin education pilot activity
- Host public workshops, gatherings, and worktables
- Begin mapping the Expedition Network
- Begin Neighborhood Village organizing
- Publish field reports showing what support made possible
What proves itself over winter will shape the next trail in spring.
FROM BASECAMP
Receive the dispatch
Field notes, public events, new trails, and clear ways to take part.
Choose your trail.
Volunteer and partner actions currently lead to the dispatch integration point until approved destination URLs are supplied.
We build better together.