According to the legend and the radio surveys, the underground city was laid out in the shape of a lizard, with its tail under the Main Library at Fifth and Hope.
In the summer and fall of 1933, a Los Angeles mining engineer named G. Warren Shufelt was surveying the L.A. area for deposits of oil, gold, and other valuable materials, using a new device that he had invented. Shufelt had designed and built a radio-directed apparatus which he claimed was able to locate gold and other precious resources at great depths. He believed that the radio device worked on a newly discovered principle involving electrical similarities of matter which had the same chemical, physical and vibrational character.
His device appeared to consist of a large pendulum suspended in a cylindrical glass case which was housed in a black box with compasses on it. The pendulum would trace a line directly from a piece of ore broken from a vein to the vein it was originally taken from. Hair taken from a test subject would lead investigators to the person who had donated the hair sample. It was said to have worked even at a distance of many miles.
Although he would not tell exactly what was in the box, Shufelt believed that by tuning into the individual frequency of a particular material, he could locate a similar matter. He believed that the emanations and gravitational factors of matter influenced the pendulum and that, in principle, no two separate things were exactly alike. Shufelt was extremely puzzled when one day, while taking readings near downtown Los Angeles, his instruments showed him what seemed to be a pattern of tunnels which led from what is now the Public Library in the heart of L.A. to the top of Mount Washington and the Southwest Museum to the north in Pasadena.
He proceeded to draw a map and had it copyrighted. What he discovered appeared to be a well planned underground labyrinth with large rooms located at various points, and deposits of apparent man-made gold in the chambers and passageways.
Some of the tunnels ran west for 20 miles under the Santa Monica Bay, which he believed were only used for ventilation. Unfortunately, Shufelt had no idea that they were connected to the older ruins of an even greater city which was covered by the Pacific Ocean thousands of years ago during a tremendous earthquake and subsequent flood.
The subterranean complex he had discovered was used for emergencies and was only designed to accommodate 5,000 people or less. Food supplies of imperishable herbs were stored in sufficient quantities which would enable the survivors to live underground until it was safe to come back to the surface. Valuable personal belongings and utensils were also brought into the complex along with historical records and gold treasures.
During his research, he met a Hopi Indian named Chief Little Green Leaf, who told him about the legend of an ancient race of “Lizard People”. The legends said that about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, an enormous meteor shower fell on the western coast covering an area hundreds of miles wide. Winslow crater in northern Arizona is only one of the pieces that fell from the sky at that time.
Thousands of people were killed, their crops wiped out, dwellings destroyed, and the forests set on fire. The surviving members of the medicine lodge, which had remained on the west coast, met to make plans for constructing safe areas. The sentinels of the sky gave their warning that it was time to enter the shelters and seal the shafts behind themselves. They were forced to go underground to save them selves from a gigantic meteor shower which devastated most of the west coast of the US.
The “Lizard People” of Los Angeles survived the meteor shower, but were killed by natural gas leaking into their bunkers. Shufelt believed that they had built 13 such underground facilities in different areas for such a purpose. One was located in the eastern section of Arizona in a small town called Springerville and was only discovered recently. Another was located under a hill that was surrounded by a curving ridge of mountains like the middle of a horse’s hoof. This is exactly the type of terrain seen in downtown L.A. in the area that is now the Board of Education, which is built over the ruins of the old Willis Estate on top of Fort Moore hill. Shufelt and his partner Chief Little Green Leaf were both convinced that the ancient legends and the readings from Shufelt’s mystery machine were true.
They decided to obtain a permit to sink a shaft down into the ruins of the subterranean city. They located a vacant lot at 518 North Hill Street, directly above one of the largest rooms. On 21st February 1933, the County Board of Supervisors approved a contract with Rex McCreary, Warren Shufelt and Ray Martin to search for buried treasure there. The permittees were to bear all expenses, to leave the property in its original condition, and to share 50% of all discoveries and treasure with the city of L.A.
The county originally only allowed them to dig up to depths of 50 feet for fear of cave-ins. On 27th March 1933 they requested additional time and depths on their permit, believing that the labyrinth of tunnels was at least 1,900 feet in length, with rooms containing 9,000 square feet which contained valuable gold treasure in at least 16 places.
On 10th April 1933 the contract was renewed. By the end of November in 1933, the main shaft was at a depth of 200 feet. Shufelt was determined to drill to a depth of 1,000 feet if necessary. On 29th January 1934, the first stories regarding the legend of the “Lost Land of the Lizard People” made the L.A. newspapers. By this time, one of the five shafts was already 250 feet deep.
According to the legend and the radio surveys, the underground city was laid out in the shape of a lizard, with its tail under the Main Library at Fifth and Hope, and the body extending Northeast, with the head being at Lookout and Marda near North Broadway. The key room to the city was located under Second and South Broadway. The legends state that the key room is the directory to the rest of the city, and to the historical gold record tablets. These gold tablets were slabs of gold, 4 feet long and 14 inches wide.
The tablets were believed to contain the records of the origins of the human race, and the history of modern man in the Americas, including details regarding the history of the mysterious Mayan people. Shufelt’s radio-wave machine mapped the rooms and tunnels as subsurface voids, with the gold slabs as dark areas, showing perfect geometric angles.
The rooms, seven of which occurred within an area of six square city blocks, varied in size from 23′ x 23′ to 34′ x 42′. The room below the first shaft was 31′ x 42′, and the key room was the smallest. Water had seeped into some of the tunnels, and several of the rooms including the largest were flooded. Shufelt was prepared to use divers to explore the submerged areas when they finally broke into the subterranean city. Chief Little Green Leaf claimed that the “Lizard People” had been able to predict earthquakes and that he had also been able to do so.
He had accurately predicted the destruction of the Long Beach quake on 10th March 1933, a month in advance. He believed that it was easy for anyone to tell 96 hours in advance when an earthquake was coming, because the needle on a compass would become demagnetized and refuse to point north. By the beginning of February 1934, the first shaft had reached a depth greater than 250 feet and was still being dug, despite difficulty caused by the water encountered in its path.
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everal newspaper articles featured updates on the project. Shortly after all the media attention was focused on this search for the lost city under L.A., the project was suddenly stopped and abandoned. On 5th March 1934, the shafts had been filled in and the contract with the city was canceled. Neither gold nor any other treasure was ever turned over to the County of Los Angeles.
Mr. Arche Dunning of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce stated in December of 1947 that, “It is quite possible, of course, that the supposed labyrinth really exists. But in view of the fact that the over-laying area is the immediate Civic Center area where an important building program is to be carried out, including federal, state, county and city building, there is little probability of any further excavations.”
This is really not a true statement because it is necessary to excavate many hundreds of feet into the ground before a high-rise building can be constructed. Also, one should consider that sewage systems are all underground. And let’s not forget the new Metro Rail System, which rises up from many feet below the Civic Center before it speeds commuters on their way. Long ago even the Chinese dug tunnels around the area which is now the train yard.
These red brick subsurface tunnels were used for their safe passage, from one end of Old Chinatown to the other and are now a historic landmark found preserved at Alvera Street.It is quite possible that there is another city below theL.A. Civic Center which only a small number of people have access to. The question is, who?