Photo Essay: The Doomed Domes, Casa Grande's Other Ruins (Updated for 2023—Demolished)

[Last updated 1/23/23 8:47 PM PT—The Casa Grande "Domes" were demolished earlier this month.]

I went on the Rental Car Rally because I wanted it to take me to places I'd never been—or even places I'd never heard of before.

That would really be something.

Fortunately for me, this year's Rally took us into Arizona, where I haven't had any opportunity to explore since moving out West over five years ago.

And after the pleasant surprise of meeting a nudist bookstore owner, our next challenge brought us to an abandoned, other-worldly locale so typical of the desert.



Appropriately, it's called "The Domes."



At first it looks like some off-the-grid community of earth architecture...



...but actually these domes were built to be something of an office park.



California-based computer company Interconn Technology had chosen this Arizona desert spot for its new location in 1982...



...where its electronics would be assembled within this community of Thermoshell domes.



Thermoshell is a type of polyurethane foam insulation—and it, along with the domed shape and the concrete poured over a steel frame, would keep the buildings cool in the desert heat.



However, the plant never opened. No circuit board ever came off the plating line.



Because when Interconn defaulted on a loan, the bank took possession of the property...



...which then became an illegal and heavily contaminated dump site...



...and an attraction for vandals and other ne'er do wells.



You can see what attracted them here—particularly inside the domes, where the crazy acoustics of the concrete domes create baffling echoes.



And while plenty of people have left their mark in spray paint...



...the more infamous visitors to the Domes are the shadowy figures that people tend to spot lurking around corners.



Of course, in our case, they were probably just members of the other Rental Car Rally teams.



The steel frame used in the construction of the domes is long gone—and without rebar reinforcements or any kind of beams or buttresses, lots of holes have been punched through the walls...



...allowing sunlight to spill in...



...and echoes to spill out.



The foam domes are reminiscent of Tatooine... or at least Tataouine...



...and while they feel other-worldly (thanks in part to one of the structures, which is shaped like a UFO)...



...they also feel incredibly organic.



Some domes are connected to others, like insect segments or globules...



...some empty shells left over from an aborted session of cell division...



...each dome not having been fully cleaved from its neighbor.



Of course, this five-acre site was meant to be just the beginning.



These four structures were built as a kind of preview showcase for the manufacturing compound that was to be built...



...but never was.



And the foundations are still there, waiting for something to be built on top of them, wondering why so many people seem to come here—but nothing ever seems to happen here.

The town of Casa Grande, Arizona is also known for its ruins of the Ancient Sonoran Desert People, whose 650-year-old "Great House" is now a national monument.

And the Domes, which are just over 30 years old?

They're available for film and photo shoots—for a fee, of course. Update 1/23/23—This is no longer true, as the domes were demolished in early January 2023.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Under a Desert Dome
Photo Essay: The High Desert's Crystal Cave
Photo Essay: A Fairy Tale World of Sculpture, Tile and Glass

Photo Essay: A Desert Oasis for Readers, and One Naked Guy (Updated for 2022—R.I.P. Sweet Pie)

[Update 2/21/22 7:53 PM PT—I was telling friends who were planning to revisit Quartzite about Readers Oasis Books, so I looked up to see how it was doing and found out that Paul Winer a.k.a. Sweet Pie had died after a battle with cancer in 2019. R.I.P.]

I would've never thought that going to a bookstore would've been one of the highlights of our Arizona adventure on the Rental Car Rally.



But then again, I didn't know I would get to meet a man who goes by the name "Sweet Pie," owns the store, and also happens to be a nudist.

A Mission, Aborted

When I signed up for the Rental Car Rally, I was blinded by my desire to charter new territory.

I kind of forgot that I don't play well with others.

I forgot that I'd rather brave the desert alone, despite the perils I might face.

But I liked the idea of forging a trail with a team of three other like-minded adventurers, which would take me into Arizona for the first time—specifically, Tombstone, AZ, one of my "Bucket List" places.

All I'd have to do is split the cost of the registration fee, car rental, and gas four ways and go halfsies on a hotel room for one night. (I'd also have to go sleepless for the first night.)

I offered to share the driving duties. I left my cat for two nights.

I didn't really think I needed anything more than my already innate sense of adventure, quick-wittedness, and moxie.

But Rental Car Rally turns out to be so much more than that—although, if you ask me, that's not necessarily a good thing.

First there are the "themed" teams and accompanying costumes and decorated rental cars (or "chariots," or whatever). I was inclined to take a more incognito approach and not waste my time or mental bandwidth on dressing up in something that was more likely to hinder my adventure than help it.

Then there are the "pranks," as they call them. I'm all for sabotaging the opposing teams, but squirting them with ketchup and pelting them with raw (and, eventually, rotten) eggs for no other reason than just 'cause seemed like a distraction.

It was a complete waste of time for me to be watching my back the whole time, and then worrying about cleaning the car. I had little interest in retaliating when we did get hit, and even less interest in initiating any battles.

Because I was there to, you know, see stuff.



But even seeing stuff was a problem, because the organizers (mostly, a guy who goes by the name of "Pants") intentionally sent us on a scavenger hunt in the middle of the night to places that are locked and very much not abandoned. And after the break of day, we crossed the border into Arizona, where accomplishing the challenges we were given would've qualified as second degree criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor but technically punishable with jail time.



That being said, when our instructions sent us to the Phoenix Trotting Park in Goodyear, AZ, we did walk through the already-compromised chainlink gate. We hadn't been warned by the event organizers to not break the law, only to not get caught. But since my intentions were pure—to take nothing but photographs and not destroy any property—I ventured forth out of curiosity despite any reservations I may have had. Sometimes you get shooed away, but sometimes you get invited in.



And once I saw it, I couldn't resist this futuristic piece of modernist architecture from 1964. I knew that it had been open as a harness racing track (that is, horses) for just about two years before closing for good in 1966. I knew that it hadn't been used since, except for as a location for a movie or two. I knew that somebody still owned it—making it technically private property—but I also knew that they hadn't done a thing with it in years.

What I didn't know was if anyone would even care that I was there.

But the problem was that it wasn't just me. There were all those other ralliers—and Lord only knows what the ones who'd arrived before me had already done. So by the time I was walking towards the great beast of a grandstand (which locals consider an "eyesore"), my presence wasn't about to be tolerated when I got discovered.

"You're trespassing!" a man gruffly shouted from behind the wheel of a silver car that approach us as we were advancing toward the building.

"I just wanted to take some pictures," I told him. "See? All I've got is this camera."

But that wasn't entirely true, because I also had two of my other teammates in tow—and although our camouflage outfits were relatively tame compared to the freaky-deakies who'd pulled up to the gate after us, they were still a dead giveaway.

"Well, you've got to take your pictures from the other side of the fence," he said.

And I complied. I apologized. I thanked him. What else was I to do?

He probably had been chasing people out all morning. He couldn't have known that I lacked the mischievous spirit of the other teams—and of the event as a whole—because I actually care about these places.

And, as he said to me in a brief moment of softening up, he's got to deal with this stuff every day.

I hadn't known about Trotting Park until I signed up for Rental Car Rally, so for that, I'm grateful. But including it on our itinerary was kind of a cruel tease. I barely got to see it at all, and we had to consider that a failed task on our list.

And for now, I'll have to be satisfied with the vicarious thrill through other explorers' photos and videos.

And for the future, maybe I'll just stick to my own rules and not sign up for anything that would force me to play by somebody else's.

I'm best when I can march to the beat of my own drum.



Related Posts:
Photo Essay: Santa Anita Park & Racetrack
An Unexpected Boldness
Photo Essay: Crystal Cove Cottages, Frozen in Time
Photo Essay: Ventura Oil Refinery, Abandoned - Part 1

Photo Essay: Lighting the World, One Window at a Time

It was Sunday, and I just had to go to church.



Not my church, of course—and not even a church of the particular type of religion I was raised with.



And it wasn't just any church, either. In fact, I wasn't really even there for the church itself.

I was there for the stained glass windows by artist Roger Darricarrere...



...and as soon as I saw his signature on the reverse side of the giant art glass panel that faced the parking lot, I knew I was in the right place.



St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Granada Hills—the "North Valley" region of the greater LA metropolitan area—is home to a giant stained glass window by Darricarrere, measuring 42 feet wide by 10.5 feet high.



It was first installed here in 1966, after having been shipped in pieces from New York—where it had been on display in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park for the 1964/65 World's Fair.



Subsequently, Darricarrere also contributed additional "wedge"-shaped windows on each side of the sanctuary. They don't look like much from the outside, so you've got to go inside to really see them.



But because it was Sunday, I wasn't alone there. Despite it being late afternoon, members of the congregation were still spilling out and lingering around the sanctuary.



The main attraction here at St. Stephen's is the "Christ, Light of the World" window, which tells the story of (from left to right) Creation, the Fall of Man, the Nativity, the Resurrection, and Revelations in an abstract design using over 14,000 pieces of glass and (literally) a ton of lead.



The monumental window was originally made to be installed in the Protestant and Orthodox Center's reception area at the World's Fair. Already world famous, Darricarrere had won a contest sponsored by the Stained Glass Association of America—and, luckily for him, he was friends with an architect who secured him a sponsor. Robert Inslee of Orr, Strange, Inslee & Senefeld convinced the building committee of St. Stephen's to fund the project in exchange for ownership of the window once the World's Fair was over.



Darricarrere studied the Bible for six months in preparation, and took a full year to make the window. His sketches of it—and accompanying explanation—were used in World's Fair promotional materials and are still being used in the church's pamphlets and website.



Otherwise, it would be pretty hard for the average person to know what they're looking at—from the first signs of light in orange and yellow on the left, the sun, moon, and stars rising above it...



...to the serpent in the garden of Eden and the birth of baby Jesus, the symbolism isn't exactly obvious.



Then again, it's not supposed to be.



Unlike many other examples of dalle-de-verre stained glass, the "chunks" here are used as accents—to represent wheat, the stars, water, and other elements of New Testament ministry...



...alongside more traditional, flat and smooth pieces of colored glass.



To the farthest right, the fire and brimstone give way to Jesus rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven, the arrival of the Holy Spirit...



...and, in the top right corner, the Second Coming (which appears to be surrounded by angel wings).



Both the window itself and Lutheranism in general are all about bringing in the light—and dispelling the darkness.



So, while at certain times of day, the "Christ, Light of the World" window casts colorful beams from the back of the sanctuary to as far as the altar on the opposite side...



...the church partnered with Darricarrere again to create the windows on each side of the sanctuary...



...this time creating colorful mosaics made entirely out of glass slabs (the "dalles").



It's a comforting light—softening the severity of the sun outside and the heavens above. It's no wonder that people didn't want to leave.

And they let me stay, too. When I walked in, a greeter said, "God bless you"—and then no one uttered another word to me the whole time. They just let me wander up and down stairs, angling my camera way up high and way down low until I'd gotten all the shots I needed.

We each have our own light—and we each can lighten or darken the world in our own, unique way. My light is vibrant and colorful, but a little rough around the edges. You can see where I've been hammered. You can feel my pointy corners.

But it's not a mistake. It's just how I'm supposed to be.

Related Posts:
Photo Essay: The Monastic Life at St. Andrew's Abbey
Photo Essay: The Lighted Windows of La Cañada Congregational Church
Falling In Queens