The hook
In a canyon above the Palisades are the graffiti-covered ruins of a compound built in the 1930s by Americans who expected the Nazis to win.
01Why it's worth it
A group of American Nazi sympathizers, flush with mysterious money, bought this canyon in the 1930s and built a self-sufficient compound, power plant, water tanks, gardens, meant to ride out the collapse of the United States and wait for a fascist victory they were sure was coming. The FBI raided it after Pearl Harbor. What's left, after decades of abandonment and a lot of city-ordered demolition, is fragments: a long concrete staircase running up the canyon wall, a few graffitied concrete shells, foundations disappearing into the brush. You reach it on a loop hike through Rustic Canyon, and the strange, ugly history is what makes the walk stick with you. It's less a monument than a scar the city keeps meaning to erase.
02How to experience it
It's in Rustic Canyon above Pacific Palisades, about six hours from the Bay, on a roughly four-mile loop from Casale Road down to the ruins and up the Sullivan Ridge fire road. Much of the compound is gone and what remains is covered in graffiti, so come for the hike and the history rather than intact buildings. Wear real shoes for the long staircase.