Desert Ghost Towns: Antelope Valley
Llano del Rio
Llano del Rio (Plain of the River) was established on May 1st 1914 in the SE Antelope Valley, just below the northern slopes of the San Gabriels. It was a socialist cooperative colony designed to be a self-sustaining community based on cooperation rather than competition.
The main founder of the colony was Job Harriman, a Los Angeles attorney and Socialist. He was Eugene V. Debs' running mate in 1900 and a candidate for Mayor of LA in 1911. After his political career had effectively come to an end he decided to go the practical route and demonstrate a different economic system in action. His theory was that people would back a different system if they could see it in operation. lacountylibrary.org
In 1913 Harriman and his associates arranged to take over the property of the Mescal Water and Land Company. The property included the improvements of an earlier settlement. The new colony opened the following spring and attracted members through advertisements in the socialist papers and via The Western Comrade which promoted the colony and reported on its progress.
Llano del Rio was a corporation. Members bought shares and worked on the farms, in the shops and in the various services. They were paid in credits rather than in cash wages. The credits were to be used to meet their living expenses and to pay down their shares. The colony was never able to deliver on its promise of compensation. www.pbssocal.org
Early inhabitants lived in tents as they worked to establish farms and build more permanent dwellings. Irrigation ditches were used to water the fields and orchards. The colony had a dairy, a bakery, a cannery, a laundry, a printing operation and a machine shop. There was a hotel and various other community buildings. By 1916/17 the population had reached about 1000. www.pbssocal.org
Residents set up schools, dances, musicals, clubs and sports. May Day was the occasion on which the colony was officially founded and was a major event. It was all part of the process of the families establishing a community around their common work. The promise of equality was of course somewhat limited as the recruitment policy was in fact racist and excluded applicants of colour. www.pbssocal.org
Water became a major impediment to further growth. The farms were all irrigation dependent and the water supply simply wasn't there in any reliable way to support the burgeoning population and the agricultural ambitions of the settlement. Water rights issues, the difficulty of getting the produce to market and disputes over management all contributed to the demise of the settlement. It was all over with as a result of these pressures. scvhistory.com
In 1917 some 200 colonists went to Stables (a former lumber town in western Louisiana) and founded New Llano there. The rest of the colonists left the California colony individually and the colony itself closed in 1918. The Louisiana colony continued into the late 1930s. library.lacounty.gov
Stone walls, foundations and ruins remain alongside State Route 138. The site was designated a California Historical Landmark No. 933 on May 13, 1980. The remains are a testament to a brief attempt to establish a cooperative community in the Mojave Desert.
References:
- California Office of Historic Preservation. "Site of Llano del Rio Cooperative Colony." California Historical Landmark No. 933.- Los Angeles County Library. "Antelope Valley Local History."
- The Huntington Library. Llano del Rio Colony Records, 1896-1967, bulk 1930s. Collection description and historical background, Online Archive of California.
- Stringfellow, Kim. "Llano del Rio: Experiments in Desert Utopic Living." Artbound, December 5, 2014.
- Greenstein, Paul. "Llano del Rio: From Utopia to Ghost Town." Lost LA, November 1, 2018.
- Lewis, Beverly, and Rick Blackwood. "New Llano Cooperative Colony." 64 Parishes, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
A Trip to Devil's Punchbowl in 1917
