DIY: A failed socialist utopia in the California desert (1914 to 1917)

[C C]

Llano del Rio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_del_Rio

PHOTOGRAPHS
https://www.lancastermoah.org/single-pos...ive-colony

SIDETRACK ADVENTURES
https://youtu.be/qysq7VHccUc

VIDEO INTRO: Just over a century ago, a group of idealists set out to build a brand new society in the Mojave Desert.

Led by former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Job Harriman, the Llano del Río Cooperative Colony was one of the most ambitious socialist experiments in American history. Hundreds of people came here hoping to create a community built on cooperation rather than competition. They constructed homes, schools, workshops, businesses, and even generated their own electricity.

But despite the optimism, the dream would last only a few short years.

In this video, we explore the fascinating history of Llano del Río, walk among the surviving ruins, and uncover what really caused the colony to fail. Was it politics? Poor planning? Or was the unforgiving Mojave Desert simply too much to overcome? Join me as we explore one of California's most unusual ghost towns...

Inside the ruins of a failed California utopia ... https://youtu.be/qysq7VHccUc

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qysq7VHccUc

[Yazata]

California has a bunch of lost utopias

Holy City was in the hills between San Jose and Santa Cruz. It's totally defunct today but was a thing in the 1930's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_City,_California

Halcyon California (near San Luis Obispo) was founded in 1903 as the headquarters of a Theosophical Society offshoot that still exists and still operates out of the Blue Star Temple shown below.

The Theosophical community at Halcyon indirectly helped give birth to silicon valley in that Russell and Sigurd Varian lived in the Halcyon community as children where their father was a leading Theosophist. The brothers went off to college (Russell Stanford and Sigurd Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and then went on to invent the klystron tube in 1937. The klystron made microwaves possible, and along with them everything from modern postwar radar, UHF TV, free electron lasers and particle accelerators. In 1952 they patented the first nuclear magnetic resonance machine. They started their company Varian Associates to manufacture Klystrons in 1948 within walking distance of the present location of my house! (Tesla's original address was very close by.) Varian Associates later moved to become the first tenant of the new Stanford Industrial Park. The radar connection and the defense money it attracted was arguably what first put the south bay area on the high-tech map, started attracting engineers and generated the close symbiosis with Stanford that was the very beginning of silicon valley.

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Bombay Beach on the edge of the beautifully horrible Salton Sea still has about 200 people and has achieved modest fame as a counter-cultural artist's colony

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombay_Beach,_California

Photos of Bombay Beach by Dicklyon

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