The Ghost of the Lost City of DeMille

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​In November 2017, a sphinx head standing six feet tall and weighing over three hundred pounds was unearthed by six archaeologists. It's not thousands years of old, it's not even 100 years old. It was left behind in 1923 when Cecil B. DeMille filmed the silent movie The Ten Commandments on the sand dunes on the central California coastline. 

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A scene from The Ten Commandments c.1923

DeMille had scouted out the area since January 1923 when he took a 6-week yachting trip to Tiburon Island to map out locations in Lower California. He decided the Guadalupe-Napomo Dunes would make an ideal backdrop to represent ancient Egypt. The dunes stretched across 22,000 acres without roads or other signs of modern civilization. It lay approximately 150 miles north of Los Angeles.

The set was designed by Paul Iribe, a founder of the French Art Deco movement. A few months later DeMille used over 3,000 workers to build his "City of Pharaohs", whose completion coincided with the discovery of King Tut's tomb in Egypt. DeMille also hired 100 dressmakers who worked on the top floor of the old Lasky laboratory in preparing the thousands of costumes required for the movie. Animals and extras that numbered in the thousands were used during those summer months.  The set towered 110 feet over the dunes and encompassed 800 feet. The statue of Ramses II alone weighed 40 tons.

During production a tent city known as "Camp DeMille" was erected which housed the workers, actors along with a hospital, several restaurants including a kosher one and a private police force to make sure bad publicity did not leak out during the filming due to hijinks from the thousands of personnel working there. With over 5,000 people running around there was bound to be trouble in some form or other.

Others took advantage of the 200 camels on the set to ride into town where they visited the local speakeasies.

Preproduction expenses were in the range of $700,000 which in those days was a fortune. The amount would eventually surpass $1.4 million.

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Workers on the set of The Ten Commandments c.1923

The production started in May and was completed by September, 1923.

DeMille not wanting any other directors to use his dune set and replicate the setting of his blockbuster, ordered his crew to cover the entire set in sand. Dynamite and bulldozers pushed what was left of the city into large trenches. 

Covered were twenty-one plaster sphinxes each weighing 5 tons, the backdrops, the massive pharaoh's gate, the palace and the pyramids. The effects of wind, rain and sand through the years obscured their location for the next 60 years and they lay buried in the scenic coastal dunes, becoming known as the Lost City of DeMille. 
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Others believed his decision to destroy the set was also due to economics, since he was under contract to leave the land as he found it. The production was over budget and this was the cheapest way to honor the agreement. 

DeMille did not return to the large set in 1956 when he directed the newer version starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner. He died 3 years later.

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DeMille on the set of The Ten Commandments

Director Peter Brosnan set out to find the ruins in the 1980s, though excavation didn’t begin until several years later. The dunes stretched nearly 30 miles, across two counties, and not until he spoke to an old ranch hand who herded cattle through the dunes for years did he catch a break on finding the lost city. The man took him to what the locals named "the dune that never moves". A statue poked through the sand. It turned out to be a portion of the horse design from the temple's edifice.

By then wind erosion had uncovered part of it, and along with liquor bottles and tobacco tins, excavators unearthed several sphinxes out of the 21 that were built for the set.

Brosnan had to negotiate with the local bureaucracy and getting permission to excavate from the local council and 13 ranchers who owned the property. 

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Guadalupe-Napomo Dunes where it meets the Pacific Ocean

By 1989, the land had been sold to a nature conservatory, and he had to start again in regards to gaining access to the land.

The head of a sphinx was discovered in 2012, then the team returned to unearth the body in 2017. They found another one instead, which took eight days to remove.

Everyday things were also found like bottles of cough syrup, which were probably used to hold alcohol since these were the years of Prohibition.

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Movie poster of The Ten Commandments c.1923

Brosnan’s 2017 documentary The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille tells the story of the project, including interviews with residents who witnessed the filming in 1923. Some have seen Cecil B. DeMille's ghost at this old set. He often stated that his first Ten Commandments film was his favorite. Some feel this is the reason why he haunts these dunes.

​DeMille was a flamboyant character that always wore riding boots, khaki breeches and a broad brimmed hat while he directed his films. Witnesses state that they have seen his figure dressed in this attire standing in front of his old set, his feet firmly planted in the sand. His ghost is known to motion to witnesses to move. Some speculate he felt he was "directing" them. Other witnesses have stated that his ghost glared at them while they talked--it seems he is aware of the living.

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Sphinx statues taken from the movie set to Santa Maria Country Club c.1923

Present day the movie set is a registered archaeology site and wildlife refuge in the farm town of Guadalupe, eight miles northwest of Santa Maria. The Dunes Center works on excavating items unearthed from the massive set. The mineral composition of the sand in the dunes helped to preserve artifacts meant to endure for a few months only.

But not all the statues of the film set were destroyed. Two of the giant sphinxes were spared and transported to the Santa Maria County Club and placed at the entrance. There was a sign erected next to the statues which read "Santa Maria Valley. The Ten Commandments filmed here." The statues are no longer there, but the club is still at Waller Lane just off of what is now Broadway, which during the 1920s was part of the original Highway 101.

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'If 1,000 years from now archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe,' the director teased, 'I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization…extended all the way to the Pacific Coast.'
The autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille c.1959