Murphy Ranch

Backstory: In the 1930's Nazi sympathizers built a compound in the Pacific Palisades behind Brentwood (a super rich Hollywood community). It's a 55 acre property originally owned by Herr Schmidt and his wife Winona; they started the compound to train & act as a holdout for the Third Reich in WWII. Their whole idea was that they would train & prepare for America to fall to the Nazis, then once fallen they would help to prepare new areas to be taken over. The CIA was keeping tabs on them, but the morning the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and we entered the war- they raided the whole place. Everyone was arrested and the whole property gutted out. 

In the 60's-70's it was taken over by an artists colony, aka: hippies. Sadly there was a fire that swept through the canyon in 1978 so most of them abandoned the area and never came back.

Today it's all abandoned and graffiti covered. It actually lies smack dab in the middle of two parks: Sullivan Ridge National Forest and Will Rodgers State Park. The current owners are trying to get one of the two parks to adopt the land, but neither one wants to because they want the buildings razed before they incorporate the land. The current owners want to keep the buildings or have them fixed up because even though it's a bit of a darker history, it's still part of the area and they want to keep it how it is. So for now the whole area is in limbo and open to anyone.

This is the front gate entrance.

Liza climbing a water tank we found.

What's left of the road leading down to the compound.

The main building that's left, the rest were destroyed in the fire.

Main house, even for graffiti it's pretty symmetrical haha. 

Inside, someone left their cypher code which was kind of cool. It's composed of runes, and there are messages all over the property.

Inside the house

Kind of a weird layout too I thought, I don't get why all the multiple holes leading into the basement? We didn't go down, but it was fairly far and super creepy.

Catwalk upstairs

I didn't notice until I saw this tonight, but check out that crazy squid in the lower right hand corner near the stairs!

I thought the flowers were pretty =)

Dilapidated barn

Flowers can make it pretty! It's cool to see all the nature growing over everything bit by bit.

On top of the barn

The never.. ending.. staircase.

Seriously, it just kept going. All the curves and bends were pretty though.

Found this about half way hah

Finally the end of the stairs! The compound was down in the greener area below!

325 ft. elevation gain in 512 steps. I guess, we didn't count and just trusted the tree.

Is it crazy that these beautiful homes are so close to where those crazy Nazi people built their compound. This is the neighborhood we parked in before getting to the trail head. It really was absolutely beautiful. The houses are all so different, I saw southern, north east, and even pacific northwest style houses. The uniqueness was the coolest part!

Driving out we saw a car on fire, which was scary! We saw some guy running and he put it out with an extinguisher. It was so weird to see though.

This made Liza happy, it's the American Horror Story House from that creepy show on tv everyone obsesses over. It was so empty and even the street so we just drove & walked right up.

Okay! So while we did our hike this morning, your mom and Dad did the psoriasis walk for your mom's work. They took Lilly and your Dad said this cute little girl obsessed over her ALL DAY and played with her and tried to carry her even. Lilly was almost her weight though so she struggled a bit your Dad said haha. Apparently she was SUPER cute and they have lots of stories they'll tell you I bet!

We ended up in Sea Port for dinner

We ate here.

I'll leave you with this awkwardness at the end hahaha. 

I love you lots! Miss you too!