"Conceive of a community, in which . . . the perfect personalities . . . meet . . . in some pleasant western settlement or town. I can conceive such a community organized in running order, powers judiciously delegated--- farming, building, trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended to; and then the rest of life, the main thing, freely branching and blossoming in each individual, and bearing golden fruit."

These words of Walt Whitman describe the mood of optimism that inspired the creation of a number of utopian communities in the western United States in the 1890s. One of these was the community of Theosophists that lived in Lomaland (the present site of Point Loma Nazarene University) until 1942.