Myth #1: The Meher Center has virgin forests.
Fact: The Center does not have any virgin forest, as this modern map of the Center wrongly suggests. The area was timbered in the 18th century. Not only that, but one of the areas depicted in the map as virgin prehistoric forest was decimated by a southern pine beetle epidemic in the 1970s, and is entirely new growth. The closest virgin forest is the Congaree National Park. The trees on the Center are second growth southern yellow pine (Pinus elliottii). See this article for what became of actual virgin yellow pine.
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| Detail of modern map wrongly depicting virgin forests |
Myth #2: The original Kings Highway that was ridden by George Washington in 1791 on his southern tour passes through the Center.
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| Map incorrectly depicting the Old Kings Highway running through the Center |
Fact: The original road George Washington took (Georgetown Road in that region at that time) ran just ocean-side of the current Highway 17. The portions that are thought to be "The Old King's Highway" are in fact pieces of old lumber roads. Washington did have to divert toward the Ocean to cross a swash about a mile north of the Center, where he traveled up what later became the Grand Strand on the beach.
Myth #3: There are the remnants of an inn on the Center.
Fact: The small rectangle of coquina bricks that can be easily found a few feet west of Laurel Oak trail on the Center is only six feet by five feet, and was likely the foundation for a tool shed for lumberers or turpentine industry. The wet sandy soil that often flooded required a simple foundation to separate the wood from the ground.
Myth #4: The Meher Center has arable land (i.e. suitable for growing crops).
Fact: The Center is built on ancient sand dunes, where the ocean once was several thousand years ago. It is simply sand. This is why people did not farm the area and why no large settlement was sustainable until the 20th century. The soil was not even sufficient for subsistence farming. There is no arable soil on the Meher Center.
Myth #5: Baba's house is built at the highest point of elevation on the Center.
Fact: Baba's house is far from the highest point of elevation on the Center. The compound is situated 63 feet above sea level. The highest point on the Center is 82.
Myth #6: There is a hollow "post office tree" on the Meher Center, where the stage coach would pick up the mail in colonial times.
Fact: The tree that is cited is an oak tree that was struck by lightning prior to the property being bought by Burroughs & Chapin at the turn of the century. The tree was hollowed by the strike. The actual mail for the area was picked up at the post office in Windy Hill in colonial times. The post office tree is one of the most fanciful myths about the Center.
Myth #7: The Meher Center has fresh water lakes.
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| Map of the Center trails naming Long Lake |
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| US Geological Survey designation is ponds |
Myth #8: There is an Indian mound on the Center.
Fact: In a sense this is true, but it was not a ceremonial Indian mound. The small mound near the Hermitage cabin on the Center is a shell mound created by prehistoric Indians discarding refuse from harvested shellfish when the sea was closer at the end of the last ice age. It is similar to thousands of such shell mounds all along the Atlantic seaboard.
Myth #9: The Meher Center was Meher Baba's idea.
Fact: A Center in the West was originally suggested to Baba by Darwin Shaw in 1935, and the idea was again broached to Baba by Elizabeth Patterson and Norina Matchabelli in 1938. On both occasions Meher Baba resisted the idea, but eventually consented to their request and gave the requirements. For more on this see my post The Meher Spritiual Center.
Myth #10: Meher Baba called the Center his "home in the West."
Fact: While for a long time this was attributed to Baba, a study by the Center was done to attempt to corroborate it. The only reference comes from co-founder Elizabeth Patterson's own words. What Baba actually did say was:
I have had many homes this time. I have laid my head on the ground in palaces and on concrete floors of humble homes. But of all the homes I have visited, this [Center] is the home that I love the best, because it was given to me and built for me with such love. (Lord Meher, original print edition, p. 3779)So Baba referred to it as a home among many that he visited. Baba also referred to the Center as an 'abode for one and all' and said he would like to see Baba lover homes built around it, which has in fact happened. Hence from all we have of his words Baba seems to have seen the Center as a home of his lovers. Thus the Center appears to be our home, and Baba visited and blessed it. And of course every heart is Baba's real home. The notion of Baba having a home in the West and a home in the East came from the colorful and well-meaning imagination of the Center's founder, Elizabeth Patterson, who saw a lifestyle that included more than one home as befitting someone of Baba's station. See this article on who Elizabeth's father was to understand how she could get that idea. Simeon B. Chapin. The Chapins, a banking family, had a home on Fifth Avenue facing Central Park, one in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and one in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Myth #11: There is a rumor among people in Myrtle Beach that the Meher Center is a nudist colony.
Fact: No such rumor exists in Myrtle Beach. The only rumor is the rumor among Baba lovers that such a rumor exists. No person who has lived their life in Myrtle Beach has heard anyone say the Center is a nudist colony. The rumor, that formed among Baba lovers in the 1960s, is typical in how it portrays people in the local community as stupid, closed minded, prudish, and backward.
Other legends and some truths:
When our family moved to Myrtle Beach in 1966, there were other myths that floated about. One was that ancient Atlanteans came ashore on the Center Beach after the deluge. This idea appears to have spawned from the theosophical imagination of Ilene Coates. See this post on Atlantis.
Another was talk of a "grandfather alligator" said to be 18 feet long. The legend was that it was spotted when it came ashore during the dredging of the lagoon in the 1940s. The size of this alligator is likely an exaggeration as the largest alligator every recorded was 15' 9".
There are some interesting truths about the history of the Center.
The construction of the Center was partly done by interred German prisoners of war during WWII used as day-workers. The nearby Myrtle Beach Prisoner of War Camp was one of 20 permanent South Carolina camps that housed more than 11,000 German prisoners in barracks in 1944.
George Washington really did pass along the inland side of the Center during his southern tour. Of course there is no seaboard place he didn't pass through from Maryland to Savannah, Georgia. However, it is interesting that he spent the night only one mile from the Center property.
Indian pottery has been found on the Center property. I should know. I dug it up in 1960s.
The Center really does have over a mile (1.2 miles) of unspoiled beachfront.
About 20% of the Center property is inaccessible wetland. It is because of this that Elizabeth's father Simeon Chapin gave her the property to do with as she wished, as it was unsuited to his beachfront resort designs. Incidentally her father the developer Simeon Chapin did meet Meher Baba in New York in 1932. He died in 1945 before the Meher Center was officially inaugurated.
Long Pond is spring fed, hence is in fact fresh water. In a pinch the immense amount of thick algae at the floor of the pond could be dredged to make portions of the Center property arable.
Baba personally planted a holly tree (also called Christ's thorn) on the Center in 1952 four days before his auto accident in Oklahoma that is still living, and quite healthy. This truth is one of the Center's best kept secrets. This was researched and proven by now deceased Massachusetts Baba lover Alexander Hamilton.
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| Standing next to the tree Baba planted on the Meher Center in 1952. Holly trees grow very slowly. This one is 65 years old. |
What I think of the Meher Center.
With Meher Baba's permission, my family leased a parcel of one half acre of land from the Meher Center in 1966, when I was 6. We broke ground for our house there on my 7th birthday, and we moved in a few months later. So I essentially grew up romping about the Meher Center property as my backyard until I moved away to college ten years later.
In my opinion the Center is a project initiated and carried out by Elizabeth Patterson, and everything about it was her idea. Born in Chicago and growing up in Manhattan in a wealthy family, Elizabeth knew very little about the south when she took the property. Seeing everything as auspicious, it was her nature to find 'magical' things about the Center. Perhaps it is magical in some way. But stories that came to life as a kind of legend were carried on obediently by subsequent generations of caretakers.
I think the Center is, as Baba said, an abode for one and all, and a gathering place for his lovers. It inspires them deeply. Personally, to me it is only a place on the Earth.
The notion of 'holy land' is abhorrent to me personally, and the notion (that is highly Biblical) has been the source of endless suffering for 2000 years. In my opinion the only thing that is hallowed is the heart. The earth is a rock, upon which life flourishes in a thin layer in its journey back to Itself. If anything on the Center is truly hallowed, it is the holly tree depicted above, that not only 'met' Baba, but was his own idea to bring into form. One day it too will perish. Its importance might be likened to the bodi tree, a branch of which was clipped and planted in Sri Lanka by the great Buddhist advocate Ashoka in the 3rd century BC.
Does the Center have moderate climate as Baba asked? I don't think so. I would call it tropical and inhospitable. Elizabeth Patterson passed up on an offer for land for the Center in Fairfax, California, believing it cold. The redwood forests of Fairfax have some of the most perfect climate in the world.
Does the Center have some historical significance? There is no sign of it. However, Baba did once say that ages ago he walked freely on the Center grounds. This seems to imply a previous birth among the native people of America. It also implies forests of a very different sort, true prehistoric virgin forests that provide a canopy over clear forest floor. When the second-growth forest was first entered by Elizabeth Patterson and Norina Matchabelli in the early 1940s, they had to bushwhack their way with snake boots and machetes to make it to the lake. No one could have 'walked freely' in a forest like that. So Baba seems to be referring to a more prehistoric time.
Baba did visit many special places in India, Iran, and Europe. The Saint Mark's Cathedral, Happy Valley come to mind. However, Baba seemed more interested in traveling to contact advanced souls, and meet people with good hearts, than seeking out exotic places.
Elizabeth Patterson's father gave her much more land then is now designated as the Center property. Much of it she sold off before she died. Is that property any less spiritual? The thinking of lines around the divine seems like more than an absurdity, but a kind of perversion. What people feel on one piece of property they can feel on another. In reference to 'cathedrals in the mind,' Baba said to my mother, "When the cathedrals fall, my work is done."
As Baba said to Darwin Shaw in 1932 when Darwin first brought up the idea of a retreat center in America:
Whether that retreat on earth is established or not, I do really appreciate the spirit of love and brotherhood that has been awakened and consider it as a spiritual retreat already established within, which is much more substantial and real than any earthly home or structure. (Lord Meher, 1986 print edition, p. 1969)Perhaps the Center will have some wonderful use some day. In the meantime, people seem to love to visit it, and it reminds them of Baba. So all in all it's a fine thing.
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