The first version of Skatopia was a ramp Brewce Martin built in his parents' basement in 1977 out of closet doors and particle board. He was a teenager. He built his first quarter pipe in 1979, and then a series of better ramps through the 1980s, even after moving to Florida for university in 1988. He turned pro in 1990 and toured the world skating before deciding, in 1995, to build a permanent home for what he was calling Skatopia. The first attempt was on leased land at Progress Ridge near Parkersburg, West Virginia, which lasted only weeks before he was forced to leave. In November 1995, he found 88 acres of cheap rural land in Meigs County, Ohio, collected donations from more than fifty friends, and moved the entire ramp complex across state lines.

What grew up on those 88 acres over the next decade was less a designed park than an accumulation of obsessions. The Lula Bowl is a deep concrete bowl named for Martin's daughter. The Epcot Bean is an irregular concrete pour shaped like its namesake. The Full Pipe, completed in 2002, is a continuous concrete cylinder you can carve all the way around. The Church of Skatin' is a small chapel structure, completed in 2003, that doubles as a venue for ceremonies and arguments. The King Dong ramp, since dismantled, was exactly what it sounds like. There is also a Skateboard Museum, an amphitheater, and several other ramps and bowls in various states of completion. Nothing is regulation. Everything was poured or framed or welded by Martin and the community of skaters who circulate through the park.

Twice a year, Skatopia becomes a festival. Bowl Bash in the summer and Backwoods Blowout in the fall draw hundreds of skaters and music fans to the property for weekends of contests, camping, and live music. The lineups have leaned heavily on the punk and skate-punk worlds: JFA, the Meat Puppets, Gwar, CJ Ramone, Greg Ginn of Black Flag, Agent Orange, Skatanic Rednecks, the Die Hunns. In 2000, Real TV ran an episode on the place; in 2004, Skatopia became the final level of the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2; in 2006, Fuel TV ranked it the number-one backyard scene in the United States. Bam Margera and Tony Hawk showed up for a 2004 episode of Viva La Bam. Rolling Stone profiled the place. The publicity kept the festivals growing.

Skatopia's self-described anarchism is more practical than ideological. There is no admission fee in the traditional sense - visitors are expected to contribute labor, materials, or time. Drugs and alcohol are present at festivals but managed by the participants rather than by security. Disputes are resolved by community consensus, sometimes loudly. Martin has been to jail more than once, including during the filming of the Skatopia documentary in 2006. The park's culture is not anarchist in the political-theoretical sense - it is more accurately a kind of intentional libertinism organized around shared love of skateboarding. Visitors who come expecting a regulated skatepark experience leave disappointed. Visitors who come expecting an immersive scene leave with stories.

From the air, Skatopia is a small clearing of concrete and outbuildings on a wooded ridge in eastern Meigs County, several miles outside Rutland and well off any state highway. The bowls and ramps catch the light in unexpected ways - the Full Pipe in particular, a pale cylinder lying on its side among the trees, is distinctive once you know what you are looking for. The surrounding country is classic Appalachian southeastern Ohio: forested ridges, hollows, a few small farms, gravel roads that disappear into the woodlots. The park's isolation is part of its character. The drive in is part of the pilgrimage.