HIGHER THAN TRUTH
[S1E7] MURPHY RANCH — A LIFETIME OF STUDY
DID NAZI OCCULTISTS BUILD A MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR DOOMSDAY MANSION IN LOS ANGELES DURING WWII?
Note: Higher Than Truth is an ongoing series taking deep dives into strange mysteries, conspiracies, and forgotten history. Please refer to the table of contents for all articles in their chronological order.
“The inquiry will arise whether, in spite of all that can be done, cataclysms and disasters can be diverted. Naturally not, for cataclysms, in some part or other of the planet, have always been with us. Disasters have never been absent. Great wars come and go, and have done so throughout the ages. Famine and pestilence have unceasingly played their part in the great evolutionary process. Forms have always been destroyed, and often in wholesale fashion, in order that spiritual energy may be liberated and greater enlightenment follow.”
—Alice A. Bailey, 1931
On January 22, 1931—a year and a half after Jiddu Krishnamurti renounced his role as The World Teacher—Norman Stevens officially resigned from the Theosophical Society and set out on his own path. Two months later, Winona Stevens sought to liquidate her trust, valued at nearly $60M in today’s currency. A year and a half after that, on August 28, 1933, Norman and Winona purchased the remote parcel of land in Santa Monica that would be known as Murphy Ranch.
Was the timing a coincidence? Were these actions connected in any meaningful way, or were they simply individual events scattered across a four year period? Was the property just “a beautiful ranch,” as Norman’s daughter, Toni, put it? Is there any evidence it might have been something more? And if there is—with the Theosophical Society and Krishnamurti out of the picture—who or what might have motivated the Stevens to build it?
While on a family vacation in the summer of 2021, I woke up at 5am to abandon my family for the day, packed my bag and my dog into the car, promptly tore off my side mirror pulling out of the too-narrow garage of an Oceanside condo rental, and drove the two hours to Los Angeles to see Murphy Ranch for myself.
To reach it you must first park on the street of a wealthy neighborhood in the Pacific Palisades, then walk past the armies of gardeners and house keepers arriving for work until you reach a gate where the street turns into a rough paved fire road winding up the hillside of Rustic Canyon.
After another twenty minutes of walking you will reach the steel fence, topped with barbed wire, that encloses Murphy Ranch’s 41-acre estate. You will pass the first of what were once six gated entry points to the property, behind which is the graffiti’d remains of a 65,000 gallon concrete water tank partially obscured by the trees.
A few more minutes of walking will bring you to the main entrance. The neo-classical wrought iron gate is now gone, but in older photos it can be seen with an arched niche in the stone column where previously,
When a visitor taps the bell…microphones and speakers permit the visitor to identify himself to persons in the [administration] building. And only when someone in the administration building presses a control button do the electrically operated gates yawn open.
Beyond the gate, a private mile-long asphalt driveway—carved into the hillside specifically for Murphy Ranch—loops around the grass covered hill where the property’s 400,000 gallon primary water reservoir was once located, and gently descends from the picturesque views of the distant Pacific Ocean to a narrow, densely forested stretch of land at the canyon floor.
Had you entered through the steel gate, you could have avoided the driveway and instead taken one of several concrete paths that drop 200 feet over less than a tenth of a mile downhill. The main one, comprised of 512 individual stairs, is the longest concrete staircase in the state of California.
At the bottom of the canyon, the driveway and stairs converge at a squat, concrete structure that housed dual 75-horsepower diesel generators that provided the property with light and power, and made possible an elaborate “estate phone system” linking buildings across its remote acreage.
Older photos of the building show access to a subterranean level, where there was once located a pre-Cold War bomb shelter.
Next to the power station is a grassy clearing where rows of long concrete blocks—presumed to have once been a greenhouse for vegetables “fed by an extensive system of irrigation pipes”— now sit filled with weeds. In fact, the entire property was, it seems, intended to provide its inhabitants with enough food to last longer than a holiday weekend. As Murphy Ranch was being sold to the Huntington Hartford Foundation in 1949, the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News noted:
In the area are over 5000 trees—many rare—planted by Mrs. Winona B. Stevens, the estate owner, and her husband since the acreage was acquired in 1933. There are over 125 varieties of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs alone.
The road ends a short distance past the greenhouse at a now-empty field in which the steel garage where John Vincent claims he found Norman and Winona living in 1948 used to stand. Based on the same newspaper article, it appears that this was the “administration building” from which visitors were buzzed through the gates. And though Vincent called it a garage, it wasn’t lacking in amenities:
The…steel and concrete structure includes four bedrooms, three baths, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, porches, and a four car garage.
While the Murphy Ranch legend often states that the name of the architect has been ripped out of the blueprints—and this is true for some of them—it should be noted that the name of renowned architect Paul R. Williams is clearly visible on these drawings. Willliams’ name also appears on 1941 plans for a 22-bedroom mansion that was never built. Randy Young, the local historian who popularized the story of Murphy Ranch, remarked on the implied contradiction of this hiring decision by supposed Nazis:
“I think it’s rather ironic they went to a black architect,” Young said.
Nazi rumors aside, the decision might not be as ironic as it seems on its surface. Williams had by this point designed dozens of homes for Hollywood’s rich and famous, and in 1939 won the American Institute of Architects (AIA) award of merit for the MCA building in Beverly Hills. In 1932, Williams was hired to design the Founder’s Church of Religious Science by Dr. Ernest Holmes, an influential metaphysical figure in Los Angeles who was described as “an intimate associate” by Norman Stevens. And Winona herself may have known Williams since childhood, as he also attended Polytechnic High School, where he would have been a freshman during her senior year.
“Williams later reported that he was the only African American child in his elementary school, and at Polytechnic High School he was part of an ethnic mélange. However, in high school he experienced the first hint of adversity when a teacher advised him against pursuing a career in architecture, because he would have difficulty attracting clients from the majority white community and the smaller black community could not provide enough work.”
But Williams, who became the AIA’s first African-American member in 1923, found a work around: he drew upside down.
Sadly, and impressively, Williams developed a style of drawing his design sketches in an inverted fashion, because it allowed him to sit across from his white clients, knowing they’d prefer to not sit next to him.
The Stevens, then, had every reason to hire Williams for their “beautiful ranch” project in Rustic Canyon. Similarly, the contractors they hired were award winning pioneers in engineering:
At the time the Stevens brought on Palmer Steel Building, Inc.—whose name appears somewhat mysteriously on drawings not for a Jessie M. Murphy, but a J.M. May—the company had only two years earlier won a gold medal in the Better Homes in America Competition for construction of Beard House, an experimental project by modernist architect Richard Neutra. The advantages of steel construction would have been obvious to an engineer like Norman:
The outstanding structural feature of the Palmer steel house is a load bearing wall of cellular steel construction embedded in a dovetail grouting groove in a concrete slab used as a floor or foundation…
The strength of the steel walls locked in this manner render the building highly shock resisting while the inherent properties of steel are also proof against fire and deterioration…
Though the mansion itself never came to fruition, even a project as seemingly minor as the “garage” was clearly given time, money, and attention. It wasn’t only designed by one of the most highly sought after architects in Los Angeles, it was built using groundbreaking materials and methods meant to endure.
Beyond the administration building, a dirt path takes you to a dilapidated barn now surrounded by chainlink fence. It was once part of a complex that housed:
Dairy and hay barns, horse stalls, a chicken house, a milk handling room, a slaughter room, a blacksmith shop, pens, runs, and a big incinerator…
Also there [was]…an underground, concrete storage cellar cooled artificially to a constant 40 degrees, a 10,000-gallon gasoline storage tank, other underground storage tanks, a small house, and several smaller utility structures.
Running along the entire canyon floor is a shallow stream whose banks are lined with stone walls ranging from three to six feet high. Regularly spaced concrete slabs jut out perpendicular to the walls, appearing to be locks meant to control the flow of water. Should you follow the stream south, you will find yourself first at the Will Rogers estate and then at a secluded property once owned by an exclusive men’s club, known as The Uplifters. According to Randy Young:
[His] research lead him to Will Rogers’ archives, where he found a letter written by Roger’s attorney. The lawyer, Oscar Lawler, demanded that the [Stevens] stop building a series of dams and culverts to divert the creek. No other letters on the topic appear in the files.
The long walk back to your car gives you a chance to think about the enormity of what you’ve just seen. Miles of road, steel fence, stone walls, piping, irrigation, power, and food production—all built with the best that money could buy. You want to give the Stevens the benefit of the doubt, but it seems impossible that a project of this magnitude, constructed in the midst of the Great Depression no less, was nothing more than a pretty weekend retreat for a small family. It’s too big, too solid, too planned, and—on a property that offers mountains, sunshine, and ocean views—too tucked away, too hidden from the world.
So the question remains: what motivated the construction of Murphy Ranch?
In 1975, decades after oral history says the owners of Murphy Ranch disappeared into the sunset, never to be heard from again, Norman Stevens self-published a book that may offer a clue:
We are telepathic communicators…who prefer to work behind the scenes and acknowledge our position only when it serves the purposes of the Planetary Hierarchy during this time of transition.
…It is our intention to present the results of a lifetime of study and experiments to accomplish certain needed changes in the vehicles of the aspirant-disciple, which are required before the disciple can transmit or ground the energies of Externalization which are preliminary to the Return of the Christ.
…We are at a time in these “latter” days when events in the immediate future may make it impossible for us to print and distribute another book…At this time assistance from Hierarchy can be counted on.
…The cyclic crisis coming at the end of the 2,500 and 25,000 year cycle, based on all current data, may be offset by the efforts of Hierarchy itself which was the case in the 30’s, or by an unexpected response by humanity as in 1942. The postponement of the crisis called Armageddon has been of inestimable value as generations become mature and make the Externalization possible.
…The energies available and the stress of the Changeover from Pisces to Aquarius may make it possible to accelerate gains faster than what we have so far been able to do.
Was Murphy Ranch, then, built to not just survive the apocalypse, but to enable its arrival? Find out next, on:
