Let's start at the beginning shall we?

Originally shared by JC Christopher

Let's start at the beginning shall we?
A few years before Ingress I ran across Mount Mesa Sanitarium while out geocaching with my family.  There is a geocache hidden [REDACTED] of the ruins though it was described as a 'stone house'.  In the Geocache comments someone mentioned that this place was called Mount Mesa Sanitarium and that piqued my interest.  Why would you build such a place out here in the middle of nowhere miles from anything, the site lies on the northern end of LA County but is out in the desert far from the nearest town.   Internet searches turned up nothing more than coordinates and satellite photos, locals knew of the site but wouldn't talk about it, and a search through LA County records only showed that the place existed in name but had nothing more to show of it.

Growing up in a small town I can probably tell you every supposedly haunted place and ghost story from there.  I know very well how that works, a place gets abandoned, run down, etc and the stories start to spread.  Places like hospitals, sanitariums, etc have this happen much more quickly and soon its one of the favorite spots for locals who want to get their heart rate up and get a little scare at night but this was different.  There are no stories about Mount Mesa or at least none I could dig up, the closest I came was one person who just told me 'stay away from that place'.   Soon the dead ends became frustrating and I forgot about it.

Then I started playing Ingress, one of my favorite aspects of the game was submitting portals, especially remote ones.  I submitted Mount Mesa and a few other portals out that direction, played out there a few times, and told a few people the story (or lack thereof) of the place.  One of those people I would tell was Joe.  We often talked about going out there but every time one of us would bring it up the other was unavailable so it never happened.  In 2014 Joe contacted me and asked if I would be able to show 'a friend' around and get some pictures at the sanitarium for them.   That March I met with some friends who are more skilled at photography than I am (which isn't saying much really) and took Hank Johnson out into the desert.  The photos were loaded up onto a Google Drive folder where they sat quietly.  After a while I asked Joe if anything was planned for them, his reply was that if I didn't hear anything from within a year that I could go ahead and release them as I saw fit.

This mission follows their trail, it may not be 'official' nor 'canon' but it happened and is probably just another piece of the story that never got told.

Pictures from that trip can be found at:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByCtzWbSzlG4NjNWYkVMVHZzemc