Staff Housing (site)

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Staff housing area for U.S. government employers assigned to Manzanar.

During the postwar years, discharged veterans (as well as Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees) continued to live in the "Manzanar Housing Project," here in the former WRA appointed civilian personnel housing area. As of August 1948, 126 persons were reportedly living in the project.
In 1951, the housing project at Manzanar was terminated and the buildings ownership reverted back to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The department's records indicate that the vacant buildings were subjected to looting late in 1951. Accordingly, on 15 March 1952 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power held a public auction on the site for the sale and removal of the 26 buildings that had constituted the Manzanar Housing Project. The terms of the sale stated that the buildings were to be reduced "to parts not greater than flat panels" before removal from the site unless exceptions were authorized. Regardless of the terms of sale, some structures were obviously not reduced to "flat panels," because some are still in use throughout the Owens Valley today as dwellings and businesses, such as the Willow Motel in Lone Pine.