Silver Legion of America aka Murphy Ranch Nazi Camp, Hartford Artists Colony (Site) (Los Angeles, California)

 hiking, place with historical importance, abandoned / shut down, interesting place, arts centre, cultural center / centre

Sullivan Fire Road
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

This was the headquarters for the Silver Legion of America, a fascist political organization.

Ranch of 55 acres purchased in 1933 by a (fictious?) "Jessie M. Murphy, widow," with that name appearing on no other public records. By 1938 it was clear that the real owners were Winona and Norman Stephens, a wealthy American couple with a marked affinity for National Socialism and Hitler's New Order in Germany. Winona, who was seriously into "the para-normal," come under the spell of a mysterious Rasputin-like Nazi known in local lore only as "Schmidt." The Stephens spent more than 4,000,000 dollars to develope the estate into a sealed off utopian Nazi hide-a-way which would include a huge mansion designed by Lloyd Wright. Schmidt, with his psychic powers, had determined that in the coming war with the axis, America would be destroyed by the German Master Race. One year after America's downfall, it would be safe to re-emerge into the waste land that had been Los Angeles, and establish an Aryan Civilization allied with Hitler and his Third Reich.

After the Japanese 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, local police occupied the "world headquarters" bunker compound and detained members of the 50-strong caretaker force.[see: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116684/Hitlers-Los-An...] The declaration of war on the United States by Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy led to the rapid decline of the Silver Legion.

In 1948 Huntington Hartford (his H.H. Foundation) bought the ranch (and adjacent land), hired landscape architect-architect Lloyd Wright, and built an "Artists' Colony". It operated from 1951 until Hartford stopped its funding in 1965.
The city of Los Angeles bought the property in 1973 for open space.
The 1978 Mandeville Canyon brushfire destroyed all burnable structures in 1978.

In 2012, plans to bulldoze the long-abandoned and graffiti-vandalized structures were underway.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Legion_of_America

Photos Link: www.flickr.com/photos/noisecollusion/sets/7205759409078...
www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/murphy-ranch-trai...


www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZekgb34XwI