[Last updated 11/17/25 1:05 PM PT—Added new photos from the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles tour on November 16, 2025.]
It’s the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world, and yet most of us who aren’t a part of it are still mystified by its symbols, rituals, and clandestine operations.
But recently, Freemasonry seems to have piqued the interest of newer generations—and it’s shown signs of rebounding in the 21st century, with former lodges and temples getting reused for new purposes and introducing the uninitiated to the cryptic and enigmatic world of secret handshakes and ancient iconography.
The Al Malaikah Shriners are still headquartered in the same auditorium near Exposition Park that they've called home since 1926.
In the entire Inland Empire of Southern California, the California Theatre is the only movie palace of its kind that remains. (Especially now that the Fox Riverside has been given a major makeover, though it was never as "palatial" as the California.)
[Last updated 1/1/24 8:34 PM PT—The gift shop, which remained open through the end of 2023, is now permanently closed. The status of the property is still TBA.]
[Updated 8/23/22 9:14 PM PT—The last of the Dominican nuns have left the monastery and the Dominican Order has suppressed, or deactivated, it. A lawyer representing the monastery told the Los Angeles Times in June that there were no plans to sell and that the chapel and gift shop would stay open. But a recent Esotouric visit says otherwise.]
LA is the City of Angels—a detail that can be easy to forget sometimes.
But there’s a halo hooked onto the devil horns of this flawed, misunderstood, and sometimes bacchanalian metropolis.
LA, in fact, can be downright angelic.
circa 2015
A little off the beaten path—in the angelic realm, anyway—are the cloistered Dominican Contemplative Nuns of The Monastery of the Angels.
As part of their monastic life, the nuns have withdrawn from the world to devote their lives to praying, studying, and performing daily morning mass.
circa 2015
In 1934, the nuns moved from Downtown Los Angeles to Beachwood Canyon, Hollywood...
circa 2015
...and in 1948, moved into a monastery building designed by famed architect Wallace Neff in the Spanish Mediterranean style.
circa 2015
The nearly 3.8-acre parcel was once part of the now-demolished mansion estate of copper magnate Joseph Giroux.
circa 2015
It's tucked away on a quiet street just north of Franklin Avenue, spared from the throngs of tourists looking for the Hollywood Sign.
In its heyday, it provided a chic getaway for god-fearing stars and starlets to retreat from the Babylonian evils of Tinseltown and into prayer—including actress Jane Wyman, who donated a sculpture of Mother Mary that still stands in the courtyard today.
Since the 1950s, the nuns have gotten to indulge in one hobby—making treats such as peanut brittle, hand-dipped chocolates, and, since 1965, pumpkin bread.
circa 2015
The sale of these confections—made by the nuns’ own heavenly hands—helps keep the lights on at the monastery, so it feels good to load up on their goods when you visit the sliver of the monastery's sprawling campus that's open to the public.
In addition to the gift shop, there's a chapel open for quiet contemplation...
...and even more statuary sprinkled throughout the courtyard (including a depiction of St. Martin de Porres, a 16th-century illegitimate child of Spanish nobility and a Panamanian freed slave who's widely revered by the Dominican order.
In the walled garden, the Stations of the Cross provide the opportunity to trace the final path of Jesus prior to his crucifixion...
...alongside beautiful relief sculptures mounted on the curved stone wall.
With Lent starting next week and Easter just about seven weeks away, it's the perfect time to visit the Monastery of the Angels...
...even just to check out a historic site in LA that not too many people know about...
...and even fewer visit any time of the year besides Christmas...
...which is the most popular season for their famed pumpkin bread.
It's hard to imagine anyone accidentally stumbling on this palm oasis—a clear indication that there's water close to surface, though supplies may be limited.
Located 8 miles down the dirt Corn Springs Road, you'd have to know that Corn Spring is a waystation for desert wanderers and nomads on a mission.
Or, you could take the Chuckwalla Valley Road exit and turn off to the right the first chance you get, with the Chuckwalla Mountains in the distance as the Mojave Desert transitions into the Colorado Desert.
BLM-operated since 1968, Corn Spring Campground now offers some dry hook-ups and national park-stye pit toilets. But long before that, Native Americans (probably the Chemehuevi Tribe) traveled through Corn Spring along a well-worn East-West footpath, still visible today as a light-colored streak atop a stretch of "desert pavement."
That could've been as early as 1100 A.D., maybe even earlier. No one really knows.
It wasn't until 19th-century prospectors started showing up and relying on the springs that word spread among white settlers. The Corn Springs Mining District was established in 1897, amidst the California fan palms, palo verde, mesquite, and ironwood trees, and desert mistletoe.
Some of those native plants fed the Native Americans who passed through the area—and who used the nearby granite rocks as their own desert kitchen, slowing hollowing out metates as they ground up the multicolored corn they'd planted into flour and other seeds into mush.
The namesake spring at the oasis was flowing during the heyday of the Pacific Mining District, helping gold and silver prospectors survive the rugged landscape.
One such prospector was Gus Lederer—the self-proclaimed "Mayor of Corn Spring" from 1915-1932. A graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, he gave up the gold rush and settled permanently in one of the miners' cabins
There, he grew vegetables, maintained the site as its unofficial steward, and helped out travelers in need.
He famously loved the burros left behind to fend for themselves by the miners who abandoned their claims. Legend has it he'd cook pancakes for them every morning.
Sometime in the 1920s, the spring stopped flowing so freely. It probably hadn't dried up per se, but likely seismic activity shifted things around so the waters weren't quite as accessible above ground as they were before.
That didn't deter Gus Lederer. In fact, he survived out there in the backcountry until 1932—when a black widow spider bit him on the back of the neck and he couldn't be transported to get help in time to save him.
Some of those old cabins are still out there, past the Corn Spring Campground—but because a class on rock art had brought me there, I didn't know to look for them (and wouldn't have had time).
I'll have to go back.
I'd also like to visit the mayor's gravesite at Aztec Wells, where he was buried alongside a couple of fellow miners (including "Little" Tommy Jones, d. 1923).
There are probably at least 10 total significant rock art (specifically, petroglyph) sites at Corn Spring, though I've now seen two of the biggest ones.
After decades of studying them, scholars still don't know much about what the symbols scratched into the desert varnish mean.
After all, most of the etchings are abstract and not figurative...
...though it's our inclination to see faces and identify stick men, animals, and even boats out of collections that might actually just be lines and circles.
Considering the frivolity of lots of contemporary vandalism and graffiti, there may not be as much significance to the Native American rock art as we might think.
But as more and more time passes, the fuzzier the line between modern-era doodles and historically significant carvings become.
Enjoy this very good video from The Desert Way (an essential resource for desert research) at Corn Spring Campground and Aztec Wells, above.
In 1942, the U.S. government used the newly-passed Second War Powers Act to take over SoCal's largest Mexican land grant and create (at the time) the world's largest Marine base, Camp Pendleton USMC.
I'd driven past Camp Pendleton so many times on my way to and from San Diego—and since it's so expansive, I'd found myself in its vicinity even while in Orange County.
Besides my innate curiosity to find out "what goes on in there," there was also the promise of historic properties still on the base—structures that had little to do with military activities and more to do with Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores.
After all, Camp Pendleton is located squarely between Mission San Juan Capistrano and Mission San Luis Rey, right along El Camino Real. There's even a former asistencia—or "sub-mission"—on the base, created in 1823, now part of the national historic site known as Las Flores Adobe.
But more on that sometime in the future.
When I finally got into Camp Pendleton (thanks to the San Juan Capistrano Historical Society), it was to visit the "Ranch House"—what eventually became the former home of the base's commanding general—and its adjacent "Ranch Chapel."
Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores got its name from St. Margaret of Antioch, as the Portola Expedition passed through in 1769. By 1841, it lost its ties to the Franciscan friars—and Catholicism in general—thanks to the secularization of the missions and was granted to Pío and Andrés Pico (and was sometimes referred to as Rancho San Onofre y Santa Margarita).
In 1846, two of Andrés Pico's officers in the Mexican–American War—Captains Leonardo Cota and Jose Alipas/Alipaz—strategized their (ultimately successful) plan against American forces in the Battle of San Pasqual under a nearby sycamore tree.
Adjacent to the ranch house—stay tuned for a forthcoming photo essay—there's the structure that the Marines currently use as a chapel, topped by a bell relocated from the San Juan Capistrano train station.
Though it was intended to be non-denominational, "dedicated to the uplift of the human spirit" and "the enrichment of human character and personality" (according to a plaque inside)...
...it's now used for Lutheran worship on Sundays at 10 a.m.
But it didn't start out that way.
This adobe building, completed in 1827, originally functioned as a winery for Mission San Luis Rey's vineyards!
St. George
But before the Marines restored it into a chapel in the early 1940s (initially only for the USMC Women's Reserve, whose female reservists apparently helped keep Base admin "running smoothly"), it also served as temporary living quarters for the Pico family, living quarters for the onsite blacksmith, and a tool shed.
The Good Shepherd
The Picos left and sold the ranch in 1864 to an English seaman named John Forster (sometimes Forester), who de-anglicized his name to become Don Juan Forster. He passed the ranch onto his son, John F. Forster—a.k.a. Juan Fernando Forster, who married Josefa Del Valle, the daughter of the owner of Rancho Camulos in Ventura County (more on that ranch in the future, too.)
In 1882, cattle rancher James Flood partnered with Irish immigrant Richard O'Neill to take over the ranch ownership and operations. In turn, the ranch was passed down to Jerome O'Neill and Flood family members, including James Flood, Jr.
Santa Margarita
Together, Jerome and James Jr. formed the Rancho Santa Margarita (RSM) Corporation in 1923 and controlled it until their deaths (two days apart!) in 1926. After that, the heirs of the two families split up the land, some selling their shares to the Marines and others losing theirs to condemnation by the federal government in the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Joan of Arc, restored and rededicated 2018
For its new chapel, the Marines commissioned replicas of famous cathedral windows to be made of Canterbury glass by American Art Glass Company in Los Angeles in 1943.
King David
The windows were donated (at a cost of only $250 each) by the families of the former ranch, in memory of the various ancestors who'd worked—and protected—the land.
In 1993, the Santa Margarita River flooded and swept away the walls, windows, and nearly everything else inside the chapel away and down a nearby hillside. Nearly everything was recovered—except the stained glass window of St. George, which was replaced at a cost of $6000.
And when you think about it, there's no way this open space—or maybe even these historic sites—would've dodged commercialization and survived, if it weren't for the military operations that have kept the real estate developers and public at large at bay.
