The hook
Cecil B. DeMille built the largest movie set in history out here in 1923, then had the whole Egyptian city torn down and secretly buried in the dunes, where it still is.
01Why it's worth it
For his silent The Ten Commandments, DeMille raised a City of the Pharaoh on the highest coastal dunes on the West Coast: a hundred-and-twenty-foot temple, rows of sphinxes, a gate a hundred feet tall, a city wall stretching seven hundred and fifty feet, and a tent camp for twenty-five hundred people and three thousand animals. When filming wrapped, rather than let another production reuse it, he had it knocked flat and buried in the sand. It sat there, half legend, until 1983, when film buffs followed a clue in his memoir and found it. Archaeologists have been carefully digging pieces out ever since, a sphinx head at a time, and the best of what they've recovered sits in the little Dunes Center museum in Guadalupe. Around it spreads eighteen miles of some of the most biodiverse dune country anywhere. You can't see the buried city itself, but you can stand on the dunes that hold it and see the pieces that have surfaced.
02How to experience it
The Dunes Center is in the small town of Guadalupe, about four hours from the Bay, open Thursday through Sunday, and it's where the story and the artifacts are. From there it's a short drive to the dune preserve, where reaching the wildest stretches means a few miles of hiking through soft sand; the refuge beach closes from March into September for nesting snowy plovers. Start at the museum, then walk as far into the dunes as you have the legs for.