• Podcast
  • Home
  • Better News
  • Contact Us

It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Home
  • Better News
  • Contact Us

418. California City: Secrets of a desert town revealed

1July 16, 2020 by Amber Healy

Emily Guerin was curious about the boldly named California City, a small town 100 miles north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. Something about California City seemed odd from the start. 

Emily Guerin is host of the California City podcast, a co-production of public radio station KPCC and LAist Studios.

“At first, it was a simple story about water. Why is this town in the desert wasting so much?” Guerin says. “The answer was this guy had a vision. He built all these water lines and no one came and now they’re breaking.” 

Developer Nat Mendelsohn had a vision, all right. He designed a city in the desert, named roads and built them and gave them names like Cadillac Drive and Gold Rush Avenue. He also installed water lines for the city he dreamed would pop up, despite being isolated and in the middle of a desert. 

“He sold land to thousands of people, but very few ever came,” Guerin says. “You could tell it wasn’t supposed to be desolate. … The reason it was wasting so much water is that the water lines the developer had laid were unused and rusting and breaking. They were having these crazy pipe ruptures. From the beginning, it intrigued me as an environmental story, the folly of man and this effort to develop the desert that resulted in catastrophic waste.”

Guerin’s interest in this desert town and its unusual history led her to create California City, a new podcast from public radio station KPCC and LAist Studios,

As she started investigating California City and its water waste, driving out and conducting interviews, Guerin started hearing other stories too: Real estate agents were again trying to convince people to buy into this would-be boomtown, selling the promise that this might turn into another Las Vegas. 

She interviewed half a dozen people who all told similar stories: Silver Saddle Ranch and Club, California City’s new developer, was targeting people who were Latino, Filipino or Chinese-American. Prospective investors would meet with an agent who “look like you and spoke your language.” They’d show off the vistas and drive up to Galileo Hill and tell the client to imagine sparkling lights and a prosperous city as far as the eye can see, mentioning how they knew someone who bought property in Las Vegas when it was still just a desert, and now that property is the Bellagio or another resort. 

“A lot of people I talked to said the company was preying on specific types of people for whom English might be a second language or who just moved to the U.S. recently,” Guerin says. “They were using these high-pressure sales tactics to invest in something they barely understood. I heard this story from half a dozen people and thought, this is bizarre, there has to be something here. Turns out there was.” 

Emily Guerin is the creator of California City, a new investigative podcast from LAist Studios and public radio station KPCC. She tells It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell how a promised boomtown in the middle of desert turned into a real estate scam and environmental headache.

#360 New true-crime podcast tackles ‘An American Nightmare’
Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post


Can’t find women who know sports? Try harder

Next Post

Fiona Morgan talks about audience engagement.
419. Now is the time to focus on audience engagement

1 Comment (click here to leave a comment)

  1. Diane Sumarnkant

    October 17, 2020 at 1:19 am

    Can you do a piece on Silver Saddle/Galileo litigation? There are 3,000 owner/investors who put in approximately $10,000 each, who are on the brink of losing the bulk of their investment. A large majority of this group are minority or seniors. Thomas Maney agreed to turn over the property to us, but the court refused such action. The court said we basically have no say in the matter, even though altogether, 54 million was collected from us. Our group actually found an investor who would partner with us, and who bid more than the buyer whose bid the receiver accepted. The receiver actually turned down the higher bid of the investor who was willing to work with our group, no reason given. This would have benefited the city also, due to the jobs it would have created, and the taxes collected.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • Erica Perel and Chrissy BeckBetter News: Nonprofit newsrooms turn rivalry into revenue stream
  • #96 – Politics, funding collide in making of Citizen Koch documentary
  • Victoria Baranetsky#353 Reveal sues ICE for not responding to FOIA request
  • Andrew Beaujon is senior editor at Washingtonian. (Photo by Evy Mages)#270 — ‘Brutal’ times ahead for alt press

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Design

With an emphasis on typography, white space, and mobile-optimized design, your website will look absolutely breathtaking.

Learn more about design.

[footer_backtotop]

© 2022 Copyright by AllJournalismPod LLC 2012-2021 All rights reserved.·Pintercast Child Theme · Genesis Framework by StudioPress · WordPress · Log in