A 100-year-old city lost under the sand

Remnants of one of the silent film era's most epic productions lay buried along the Central California coast – until a small group of curious adventure-seekers decided to start digging.

As I looked at the rolling, empty sand dunes sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the quiet town of Guadalupe, California, it was hard to imagine that for a few short weeks in 1923 this area was teeming with thousands of actors, crew members and animals participating in one of the silent film era's most epic productions. That said, it was neither the movie's filming, nor even the film itself that brought this town of just 1.3 sq miles in Santa Barbara County its notoriety. That has more to do with what has remained just below the surface here for the last 100 years.

It's not unreasonable to think this relatively isolated spot along the Central California coast could resemble ancient Egypt, or at least, generalised Western perceptions of it. Although it is often cold and foggy here, I could almost imagine Guadalupe as Giza on a hot, sunny day with caravans of tassel-covered camels making their way across the expanse, their long shadows stretching across the sands where ochre-coloured pyramids dotted the horizon.

It was a comparison not lost on legendary director Cecil B DeMille, who used the area, officially known as the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as the filming site for his 1923 silent epic, The Ten Commandments. Although he would go on to make another, better-known, talking version of the story more than 30 years later, it is the remnants of this first iteration that have come to captivate the imaginations of archaeologists, film buffs and the just plain curious.

Falling into the third category, I drove north from Los Angeles to Guadalupe to the Dunes Center, a tiny but fascinating museum that tells the story of the movie's filming and aftermath. Here, I learned that the celebrated filmmaker, who was known for his over-the-top productions, originally planned to film the biblical tale on location in Egypt. But when studio heads nixed the costly idea, DeMille decided to re-create the country on this small slice of coastline. Owned at the time by the Union Sugar company, the land was rented to DeMille for $10 with the stipulation that he would leave the dunes exactly as he had found them once production was complete.

To celebrate the centennial of the filming of The Ten Commandments, the Dunes Center is planning a celebratory weekend on 6-8 October 2023. Tentative plans include a black-tie dinner, chariot races and a sphinx-naming contest.

With the location settled, DeMille started building a set considered extraordinary for its time, enlisting the talents of Frenchman Paul Iribe, an illustrator and designer known as a master of the Art Deco style. Iribe's main set piece was an enormous Egyptian temple that took a few historical liberties by melding Egyptian motifs with a sleek 1920s aesthetic. Roughly 120ft high and 720ft wide, the structure was flanked by 21 plaster sphinxes thought to weigh a few hundred pounds each. At the time, the "City of the Pharaoh", as the set was known, was the largest movie set ever constructed.

In addition to the set, DeMille also created "Camp DeMille", a tent city for the cast and crew. "The camp was pretty amazing," remarked Dunes Center museum guide Carole Schroeder. "He set it up with street signs and a 24-hour canteen." As filming took place during prohibition, some of the 3,500 actors and crew members occasionally "borrowed" some of the film's 200 camels to hop a ride into town where they frequented the local speakeasies.

BBC