This map is an essential ingredient of a story that has ‘Indiana Jones’ written all over it: secret caves, a lost civilisation and above all, a treasure trove of gold in unimaginable quantities. And all this in the ground below the present-day metropolis of Los Angeles.

Below are two extracts from the LA Times of 29 January 1934, in the first of which reporter Jean Bosquet details the incredible story of G. Warren Shufelt, a mining engineer, who had been told of the underground city and its treasures by a wise old Indian, had consequently located it via ‘radio X-ray’ and was currently sinking shafts into the ground to reach it.

The second extract explains the whereabouts of the putative underground city on the map, and provides the legends for a few photos showing Shufelt hard at work.

Needless to say, no such city has ever been found. Whether fully intentional or not, the hoax did leave us with this strange map of the supposed underground city, its tunnels vaguely laid out in the shape of a lizard.

Interestingly, this article on Skeptoid, a website providing critical analysis of pop phenomena, raises the possibility that Mr Bosquet’s story may be the original source for the later conspiracy theories about humanoid reptilians controlling the world. Indiana Jones has turned into David Icke…

Many thanks to Manuel for sending in this map, found here on Flickr.　

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LIZARD PEOPLE’S CATACOMB CITY HUNTED

Engineer Sinks Shaft Under Fort Moore Hill to Find Maze of Tunnels and Priceless Treasures of Legendary Inhabitants

(LA Times, 29 Jan 1934)

By Jean Bosquet

Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present day peoples, in the belief of G. Warren Shufelt, geophysical engineer now engaged in an attempt to wrest from the lost city deep in the earth below Fort Moore Hill the secrets of the Lizard People of legendary fame in the medicine lodges of the American Indian.

So firmly does Shufelt and a little staff of assistants believe that a maze of catacombs and priceless golden tablets are to be found beneath downtown Los Angeles that the engineer and his aides have already driven a shaft 250 feet into the ground, the mouth of the shaft being on the old Banning property on North Hill street overlooking Sunset Boulevard, Spring street and North Broadway.

LEGEND SUPPLIES CLEW (sic)

Shufelt learned of the legend of the Lizard People after his radio X-ray had led him hither and yon, over an area extending from the Public Library on West Fifth street to the Southwest Museum, on Museum Drive, at the foot of Mt. Washington.

“I knew I was over a pattern of tunnels,” the engineer explained yesterday, “and I had mapped out the course of the tunnels, the position of large rooms scattered along the tunnel route, as well as the position of deposits of gold, but I couldn’t understand the meaning of it.”

FIRE DESTROYS ALL