In 1933 mining engineer George Warren Shufeld related stories told to him of Hopi legends describing a race of “Lizard People” (not reptilian, but so named for their reverence of the lizard) who 5,000 years ago built three great underground cities near the coast. of the Pacific, including one below Los Angeles.

Cities were said to have been built underground as protection against great cataclysmic fires on the surface. Shufeld took up the cause of locating the city below Los Angeles.

He reported that this underground city was designed in the shape of the revered lizard stretching from its head in northeast Los Angeles to its tail beneath the downtown Central Library.

Ancient builders supposedly more intellectually advanced than modern humans tunneled through rock using chemicals and built huge vaulted caverns housing a thousand families.

The underground city was further connected by a series of additional tunnels to the ocean where the ebb and flow of seawater forced air into the labyrinths. How their civilization came to an end seemed a little murky.

In 1934, Shufeld, who incidentally developed a device he called an “X-ray”, announced that he had located tunnels and a treasure room containing gold objects under Fort Moore Hill in downtown Los Angeles.

After acquiring funds to carry out excavations, Shufeld obtained permission from the authorities (by agreeing to share the value of his discoveries with the county) to drill a 350-foot shaft. However, work was halted by concerns of landslides, and in the spring it was stopped when it failed to gain funding and media attention.

A short time later Shufelt disappeared from public view. He died in 1957 and is buried in North Hollywood.

Shortly before Shufeld’s drilling in 1934, Pico Rivera resident and seer Edith Elden Robinson reported a vision of “a vast city … in gigantic tunnels stretching to the shore”.

Illustrations and map from the Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1934 – Chasing an ancient subterranean civilization.

Fonts:Lizard People’s Catacomb City Hunted by Jean Bosquet, Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1934, seen on ProQuest;Mysterious California by Mike Marinacci; Panpipes Press, 1988;The Underground Catacombs of LA’s Lizard People by Glen Creason, Los Angeles Magazine, January 22, 2014