Some say L.A. has no history. Yet the past is all around us in the (fading) grandeur of the city’s buildings, elegies of an earlier time. In 1913, an influential band of revelers known as the Uplifters Club bought part of Rustic Canyon in Pacific Palisades, christened it Uplifters Ranch and built secluded getaways around an elaborate clubhouse. The ranch is a lush, almost rural, residential sanctuary washed by spring fogs and cool ocean breezes. While the exclusive men’s club was dissolved long ago, its legacy is a dreamscape, an odd assortment of three dozen fanciful cottages and lodges tucked in a remote canyon near Will Rogers State Historic Park. Like sentinels of an earlier age, they are whimsical and mysterious. A few have huge ballrooms. Some are log cabins hauled in from the set of an early silent film. Others sport fanciful card parlors and Prohibition-era “basement bars.” Serene, almost magical, the ranch is said to be the last place in town where one can find a creek that hasn’t been filled, lined with concrete or funneled into drainage pipes. The ranch was meant to be a kind of utopia. Latimer and Haldeman roads--the principal streets--are narrow, shady lanes with no curbs and only a few street lights, much as they were during the Uplifter era.
Nearby, a World War II-era enigma serves as a fascinating historical ruin in a metropolis quick to demolish its past.
Steeped in folklore, the fabled Murphy Ranch was supposedly a pro-Hitler American fascist compound constructed by Nazi sympathizers during the 1930s. Wedged between Will Rogers and Topanga Canyon State Parks, this secluded 55-acre stretch of Rustic Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains was bought by the heiress Winona Stephens and her husband, Norman, while under the influence of a charismatic German—Herr Schmidt. He claimed a psychic vision told him America would lose the war and that once the dust settled over the ruins of Los Angeles he and his band of sympathizers would emerge from Rustic Canyon to help usher in the new fascist state in America. Murphy Ranch was intended to be a self-sufficient community—but that didn't mean sacrificing comforts and luxuries. By 1941 there were plans to build a four-story, 22-bedroom mansion with multiple dining rooms and libraries. Whatever the motives or apocalyptic expectations of the group, the fancy mansion never materialized. In December 1941, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI raided Murphy Ranch and took Herr Schmidt into custody. Norman and Winona sold the compound in 1948. Today, much of the Ranch has been demolished or covered in graffiti, but several structures still remain, including a 529-step concrete staircase down to the encampment. Eerily quiet, what’s left of the abandoned Nazi ruin lies hidden among the groves of ancient oaks, ponderosa pine and eucalyptus, a reminder of the futility of human endeavors. Mother Nature has definitely won the battle.