In 2012, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center excavated a piece of Hollywood history from underneath the dunes sand that was the location for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 production of The Ten Commandments. Two rows of sphinx statues lined the approach to a 700-foot-tall façade of an Egyptian temple, all of which was buried after shooting was completed.
After retrieving, restoring, and showing the head of one of these plaster sphinx statues, the Dunes Center mobilized to raise funds and get back out there to retrieve more.
The group received $80,000 from the county’s Coastal Resource Enhancement Fund, but the Dunes Center still needed to raise an additional $40,000 to cover the cost of employing Applied Earthworks Inc. to excavate. Many partners—including the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Dunes Collaborative, and individual donors—met the challenge of raising the money.
“It was one of those moments I really appreciated the community we live in because people are interested in the project,” said Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen.
Applied Earthworks has been working laboriously to excavate and preserve the entire body of a sphinx statue, which will just barely fit in the Dunes Center, Jenzen explained. Now that the center is climate controlled, it’s assured that the plaster statue—once properly restored—will rest safely out of the elements.
The plaster statues were built more than 90 years ago with only a single movie production in mind. Since then, the pieces have remained preserved by the dune sand—but once uncovered, they can dissolve quickly. The fragile and transient nature of the historical sculptures was discovered in the initial uncovering in 2012 and was the impetus to go out and get more before it was too late.
“The statues are kind of like a chocolate Easter rabbit: They are hollow and very thin” Jenzen explained. “What we learned was that this plaster statuary deteriorates rapidly when exposed.”
Since the excavation in 2012, the wind has done its job in shifting the dunes and exposing more of the set pieces. When buffeted by morning fog and afternoon winds, the sculptures erode at a fair pace.
An archaeologist with Applied Earthworks has been painstakingly preserving the full sphinx statue by applying an epoxy, Jenzen explained, but can only do so while uncovering the statue inch by inch. Once uncovered and preserved, the statue will be further preserved in an off-sight location.
“The last experience was a fantastic learning opportunity,” Jenzen said. “The plaster has to dry out really slowly, otherwise it cracks and fragments.”
The Santa Barbara County Park land where The Ten Commandments was filmed is protected habitat of the Western snowy plover, so the excavation couldn’t begin until plover season was over. Even then, most of the work has had to be done in a specific window of time to minimize the amount of exposure to the bare plaster: after the morning fog burns off, but before the afternoon winds kick up massive amounts of sand.
The Dunes Center only has enough room to house one sphinx statue and the funds to excavate the same. Still, there are massive set pieces—including that 700-foot tall façade—that are slowly deteriorating as they peek out of their longtime resting places. Bit by bit, the elements are taking the historic set apart and strewing the pieces farther across the Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes complex.
“This sight is significant because there isn’t anything else like it on Earth,” Jenzen said. “Typically, movie sets were dismantled or used in other movies, but this one wasn’t because it was all used for this one movie and never moved.”
The Dunes Center hopes to have the fully restored sphinx statue within its doors by next year for the public to view. The previously excavated sphinx head is a favorite exhibit on display.
“It’s kind of the quintessential California story,” Jenzen said. “You have the beach, the movie industry, and the movie set is surrounded by a bunch of unique ecological resources, so this sight is very representative of the California story.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is almost in over his head. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 16-23, 2014.