The story
Llano del Rio was the boldest utopian experiment in California history: a socialist colony founded in 1914 by Job Harriman, the lawyer who had nearly been elected mayor of Los Angeles. At its 1917 peak, about 900 colonists ran collective farms, a hotel, industries, and one of the state's most progressive schools, all on cooperative principles in the high Mojave.
The colony's fate was written in water: its rights to Big Rock Creek proved inadequate and litigation-prone, the soil disappointed, and internal politics did the rest. In 1918 most colonists relocated to New Llano, Louisiana. The Antelope Valley kept the stone silo, hotel columns, and cobble walls — ruins that urban historians (famously Mike Davis) treat as LA's road not taken.
What remains today
Cobblestone-and-concrete ruins of the hotel, silo, and dairy along Pearblossom Highway (CA-138) — unfenced, fragile, and much photographed.
Questions from the field
- What was Llano del Rio?
- A socialist cooperative colony (1914–1918) founded by Job Harriman after his LA mayoral runs — briefly the largest secular utopian community in the West, undone chiefly by inadequate water rights.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Llano del Rio — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Llano del Rio's permanent record.
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Sources consulted
- — USGS GNIS feature 1989112 (Llano)
- — Llano del Rio Colony papers / Huntington Library
- — California Historical Landmark #933