The internet is filled with things. Here is one of them.
Sacred Stones2024 Nov 6
There is apparently, a little north of Chico, California, a Trappist Monastery. It's in a town called Vina, on land once claimed by Peter Lassen and later purchased by Leland Stanford who used it to create the largest vineyard. Their abbey built in a classic Cistercian style, with stones illegally imported from an abandoned 800-year old Spanish Cistercian monastery. William Randolph Hearst boonswaggled the stones out of Spain 99 years ago in order to build a swimming pool and bowling alley at his Wyntoon mansion. His plans were canceled however by the Great Depression, and in a deal to abate taxes he surrendered the stones to the City of San Francisco. The city held them in Golden Gate Park until the monks in 1995 negotiated with the city to use them to build their chapel, on the condition that the chapel be open the public. Securing funding only in 2004, with the help of Sierra Nevada Brewing, they used 1,300 stones (of the original 10,000) in the construction. Finally completed in 2018, the chapel is now, as they agreed, open to visitors.
There is apparently, a little north of Chico, California, a Trappist Monastery. It's in a town called Vina, on land once claimed by Peter Lassen and later purchased by Leland Stanford who used it to create the largest vineyard. Their abbey built in a classic Cistercian style, with stones illegally imported from an abandoned 800-year old Spanish Cistercian monastery. William Randolph Hearst boonswaggled the stones out of Spain 99 years ago in order to build a swimming pool and bowling alley at his Wyntoon mansion. His plans were canceled however by the Great Depression, and in a deal to abate taxes he surrendered the stones to the City of San Francisco. The city held them in Golden Gate Park until the monks in 1995 negotiated with the city to use them to build their chapel, on the condition that the chapel be open the public. Securing funding only in 2004, with the help of Sierra Nevada Brewing, they used 1,300 stones (of the original 10,000) in the construction. Finally completed in 2018, the chapel is now, as they agreed, open to visitors.