An outbreak of
shigellosis (bloody diarrhea) occurred at the 1987 gathering in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest in Graham County, North Carolina, in the remote southwestern NC Great Smoky Mountains. Hundreds of participants were sickened, overwhelming area hospitals and EMS agencies. Graham County had no hospital. As Graham County's small EMS and five ambulances were overwhelmed, dozens of ambulances from as far away as Jackson County and the
Eastern Band Cherokee reserve were dispatched. The outbreak was attributed to poor hygiene. The county sheriff requested outside law enforcement assistance. NC Governor Jim Martin ordered deployment of 50 NC state troopers, 25 state game wardens, and additional SBI agents. Dozens of deputies and police officers from surrounding jurisdictions, and over 75 US Forest Service law enforcement officers and agents responded from as far away as Alabama. State and federal criminal charges included hundreds of traffic and alcohol citations, with impoundment of dozens of vehicles. Hundreds of criminal charges included disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, DWI, alcohol violations, revoked licenses, stolen tags, stolen vehicles, drug charges, child neglect, weapons violations, assault, interfering with peace officers and at least one kidnapping. A prison department bus was called to handle the volume of arrestees. County jails in all of the southwestern NC counties were filled on July 4 weekend. Federal, state and local officers eventually charged a remaining group that refused to leave with trespassing on federal land, to bring the event to a close. A
parvovirus outbreak among the dogs at a 2006 Rainbow Gathering in Big Red Park required 200 doses of vaccine and cost the Routt County Humane Society $800. Although Rainbow Family spokespeople have stated that the group removes its trash after gatherings, the Forest Service has criticized their cleanup efforts as being only "cosmetic" and "not rehabilitation by any stretch of the imagination." In Montana in 2000, then-governor
Marc Racicot declared a "state of emergency" because of fears of the coming environmental destruction of the Rainbows on the National Forest. A year later, Dennis Havig, the District ranger from the nearby town of Wisdom, commented that "There were 23,000 people here and you can find virtually no trash. There's an aspect of diminished vegetation, but you'd have to look hard to see the damage. The untrained eye isn't going to see it." Summit County health officials also had a positive assessment of the site, said Bob Swensen, environmental director for the agency: "My opinion is, it looks as if no one had been there," Swensen concluded. "I'd have to give them an 'A' for their cleanup." At the California National Gathering in 2004, in Modoc County, after public health officials reported speaking with their counterparts in Utah, opted to take preventive measures apart from law enforcement, which the Utah individuals found to be the source of many of the problems encountered at their event. The Public Health Department reported that the Forest Service officers were observed being confrontational and antagonistic toward the Rainbows at the Gathering site, which "did not facilitate a cooperative response from the Rainbows," the report states. "The explanation that was given is that this was an illegal gathering because no permit had been signed. However, even after the permit had been signed, this attitude was unchanged." After the 2005 Rainbow Gathering in the National Forest near
Richwood, West Virginia, Mayor Bob Henry Baber stated: "I never saw one bit of any activity that required any Forest Service legal intervention." He calls the Incident Management Team "bizarre and unnecessary," and adds that he was not put off by the Rainbows or their behavior. In 1980, two young women were shot to death in late June while hitchhiking to the Rainbow Gathering at
Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, and members were questioned about possible involvement. There had been tension between local residents and the "hippies", and police concluded local men led by Greenbrier County resident Jacob Beard were responsible. Beard was convicted in 1999, but exonerated on appeal in 2000 and received a $2 million settlement for wrongful conviction.
White supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin confessed to the murders but later revealed he had just read about them. The killers remain at large and filmmaker Julia Huffman is working on a documentary,
The Rainbow Murders, hoping to bring more facts to light. There were three non-fatal stabbings at a gathering in Colorado in 2014. The same year, a woman was found dead at a Rainbow Gathering in Utah. In early 2015, there was a fatal shooting at a gathering in Florida. In 2015, a group of Native American academics and writers issued a statement against the Rainbow Family members who are "appropriating and practicing faux Native ceremonies and beliefs. These actions, although Rainbows may not realize, dehumanize us as an indigenous Nation because they imply our culture and humanity, like our land, is anyone's for the taking." The signatories specifically named this
misappropriation as "cultural exploitation." On July 4 of the same year, the
Winnemem Wintu issued a cease and desist letter, on behalf of itself and the
Pit River and
Modoc tribes, ordering the Rainbow Family off of sacred and sensitive lands in
Shasta–Trinity National Forest. == Confusion over Hopi legend ==