The ghosts of California’s most utopian experiments live in the remains of communes

If Los Angeles is a dream factory, then the High Desert is one of its abandoned backlots, where old props are warehoused, waiting to be reused. 933, and for a brief while, this was the location of the Llano del Rio colony, which styled itself as “the world’s greatest co-operative community.” It all began on May Day 1914, when a handful of romantics arrived to establish the colony. Many of the children born there would carry memories of the colony for the rest of their lives, and some would leave significant legacies behind: the dancer Bella Lewitzky was born in Llano, and if you’ve ever stumbled across a Modernist low-income housing unit somewhere in the city, it was probably modeled after ideas laid out by Gregory Ain, who spent his early years in Llano and later designed Avenel Homes in Silver Lake, among other projects. Huxley spent his time there adapting Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” for 20th Century Fox and meditating on the lessons of the Llano experiment. We may yet learn that it is more blessed to know that our neighbor is not suffering want, than to elaborate luxurious ‘cottages’ and ‘bungalows’ for ourselves.” Meanwhile, Job Harriman’s call to “build a city and make homes for many a homeless family” still rings urgently necessary, especially in Los Angeles, where poverty is compounded by the same environmental apartheid that murdered Allensworth’s dream.