At the height of the Great Depression, a crazy story had the city of Los Angeles abuzz. Three men with a digging permit, an odd invention, an old map, and an insane hypothesis effectively destroyed a historic hillside. They believed that beneath Los Angeles’s streets, there was a vast network of tunnels built by an advanced civilization of lizard people who’d been dwelling there in the depths for 5,000 years.
Background
Our story begins not in the City of Angels but rather in Middletown, Ohio. George Warren Shufelt grew up in a hard-working family of manual laborers. Choosing not to follow the same path, he chose a corporate job as a salesman in Indianapolis. But, though his career was stable, he yearned for more. He was passionate about inventions and had a keen interest in gold.
During the Great Depression, Los Angeles became a hotspot for those seeking fame and riches. Shufelt left for LA in 1933.
Shufelt and his radio X-ray. Photo: UCLA
A radio X-ray and a failed hunt
Shufelt’s obsession with gold prompted him to build a device that could supposedly detect gold and other minerals deep in the ground. He called it his “radio X-ray.” This machine was a metal radio attached to a long glass cylinder containing a copper wire. Shufelt claimed he could tune into the frequency of the mineral, and the wire acted like a dowsing rod that pointed the way.
Treasure hunters Ray Martinez and Rex Irving believed in his invention and invited Shufelt to join them. Shufelt accepted, and the trio set out to acquire funding and a digging permit.
Martinez and Irving possessed an old map of dubious origin that supposedly showed the location of a treasure hoard from the Mexican-American War that was buried somewhere on Fort Moore Hill. The trio offered the board of county supervisors a cut of the treasure if they found it. After obtaining their permit, they began to bore holes into the hill.
They created a 15-meter shaft, but the radio X-ray was a bust. Eventually, excavations stopped indefinitely. But Shufelt refused to give up.
A rebrand
Lizard catacomb map. Photo: UCLA
In 1934, he approached the county supervisors, attempting to rebrand his project. He claimed to have met a mysterious Native American chief named Little Chief Greenleaf (or L. Macklin) in Arizona. Supposedly, this chief told Shufelt the story of an advanced Native American civilization of lizard people who fled a devastating meteor strike and retreated underground. They built a subterranean city below modern-day Los Angeles. Shufelt claimed the lizard people used a chemical to carve out the tunnels and that their city held a thousand families, with hundreds of rooms laden with gold and precious stones.
Miraculously, this story convinced the board to give Shufelt another chance.
Journalist Jean Bosquet picked up the story, publishing an article titled Lizard People’s Catacomb City Hunted: Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants.
“Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present-day peoples,” Bosquet wrote.
Dead end
Shufelt returned to work and drilled to 75 meters. Soon, he claimed to have mapped the entire city, which looked like a big lizard, sprawling from Dodger Stadium to the Central Library. He also claimed to have detected massive golden tablets.
“All records were kept on gold tablets four feet long and fourteen inches wide,” Bosquet wrote. “On these tablets of gold…will be found the recorded history of the Mayans, and on one particular tablet, the southwest corner of which will be missing, is to be found the record of the origin of the human race.”
Lizard humanoids. Photo: Shutterstock AI
“[I have picked up] tunnels and rooms, which are subsurface voids, and of gold pictures with perfect corners…scientific proof of their existence,” Shufelt said.
Shufelt and his team kept digging until they encountered mud and boulders that prevented them from continuing. With their funds drying up, Shufelt gave up in disgrace and abandoned the project.
He died in 1957.
No such legend
There is no record of a Native American legend about lizard people or of a Little Chief Greenleaf or L. Macklin. But the idea of an underground city in Los Angeles isn’t completely crazy. Los Angeles is home to hundreds of tunnels. During prohibition in the 1920s, these were used to smuggle alcohol.
Lizards were important symbols in some Native American cultures, so the story could have referred to an ancient people who followed a religious cult whose symbol was the lizard. However, it is far more likely that the story was fabricated entirely as an excuse to continue digging for gold.
As for advanced civilizations in California, Mount Shasta has a similar story. According to local legends, Mount Shasta is home to the survivors of Atlantis or Mu (another legend of a lost continent). Some people believed that Mount Shasta was also home to lizard people. Could Shufelt have taken inspiration from this story?
Lizard people run the world?
This story led to a larger conspiracy theory: that lizard people secretly run the world. According to David Icke, a British conspiracy theorist, the world’s elite are shapeshifting reptilian-human creatures who control governments and economies. He believes figures like the British Royal Family, the Bushes, and the Rothschilds are reptiles. Many of Icke’s followers point to Shufelt’s story as evidence.
Conclusion
The legend of the LA Lizard City stems from Shufelt’s desire for fame and fortune. Caught up in the Great Depression, people went to extremes to survive. For Shufelt, this meant inventions and tall tales. We have to hand it to him: It’s quite the story.
