Part I

The Woman Who Found the Axis of the Earth

She arrived with over a hundred followers, a typewriter she believed spoke directly to God, and an absolute certainty that this particular stretch of sagebrush along what would become Highway 211 in San Juan County, Utah, was the spiritual center of the universe.

Her name was Marie Ogden. She was not a fringe eccentric. She was a well-educated widow from Newark, New Jersey — a former president of the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, a substantial civic figure by any measure — and she had been in profound grief since her husband died in 1929. She turned inward: toward metaphysics, toward spiritualism, toward a deepening conviction that she had a direct line to the divine. She received its transmissions through her typewriter. She lectured across the country. She gathered the faithful. And then she led them here.

The colony was organized in three groups, proceeding west from State Highway 191: the Outer Portal, the Middle Portal (where ‘Home of Truth’ house sits today), and the Inner Portal — where Marie lived in what was called Photograph Gap, with views across the canyon country that are still, ninety years later, difficult to stand in front of without feeling something shift. This was, according to colony members, the true axis of the earth.

At its peak in the mid-1930s, the Home of Truth counted close to 100 members. It was a communal life: all property surrendered, alcohol and tobacco abstained from, a semi-vegetarian diet observed. The group drew water from a windmill pump. They grew what they could in soil that didn’t want to cooperate. Members believed in Marie’s revelations — received via her typewriter and from walks to the top of a nearby hill — including doctrines of reincarnation, resurrection, and a rich spiritual cosmology involving vibrations, soul language, and conversations with the dead.

They were, by most accounts, peaceful. Marie purchased the local newspaper, the San Juan Record, and used it to share her views. Their relationship with neighboring Mormon communities was notably amicable — Wallace Stegner, in Mormon Country, noted that the two groups found more common ground than might be expected. The Home of Truth was strange, but it was genuinely sincere.

“She apparently convinced a number of citizens to accompany her, but exactly how, when, and why she settled on this remote corner of Utah is not known.“

— Canyon Country Zephyr, 2000

The Incident

What finally drew national attention to the Home of Truth was an attempt, beginning in 1935, to bring a recently deceased colony member back to life.

The woman’s name was Edith Peshak. She had died of cancer, surrounded by her community in the desert, and Marie believed that the cord connecting life to the hereafter had not been severed — that Peshak was not truly dead, but in a liminal state, capable of returning if her body was preserved. The corpse was washed in salt solution and, according to some accounts, given milk twice daily for over a year.

The San Juan County sheriff eventually checked in. He declared that the naturally mummified body posed no health hazard — noting, matter-of-factly, that many county residents kept old Indian mummies from the area’s dry caves — and left Marie to her vigil. The story spread nationally. Pressure from authorities mounted. The body was eventually cremated. The colony, its reputation now firmly in the category of cult, began to slowly dissolve.

Most members drifted away. A few remained. Marie Ogden stayed — working as a piano teacher in the area — until her death in 1977. Her possessions were auctioned at Photograph Gap in September of that year. The land passed into private hands.

The Middle Portal Today

The building you are staying in — or considering staying in — is the restored Middle Portal. The bones are original: the same structure where Marie’s followers gathered, built by their own hands in the early 1930s. It has been refurbished into a clean, functional, and characterful home. Some things have changed. The desert has not.

Part II

The Land

Bears Ears, Indian Creek, and the landscape that has drawn seekers for thousands of years.

Bears Ears

Long before Marie Ogden arrived, this land was understood to be sacred. The twin buttes of Bears Ears have served as a navigational and spiritual landmark for the Navajo Nation, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Ute Indian Tribe peoples for thousands of years. The surrounding landscape holds thousands of archaeological sites — cliff dwellings, granaries, rock art panels, and ceremonial spaces — left by the ancestral Puebloan peoples who lived here from roughly 1500 BCE until the 13th century CE.

Indian Creek

Twenty minutes down Highway 211, Indian Creek is one of the most celebrated crack climbing destinations in the world. The parallel sandstone splitter cracks that cut through Wingate and Kayenta formations here are unlike anything else in North America — demanding, beautiful, and infinitely varied. Climbers come from every continent. The grades range from 5.7 to 5.13+. Whether you’re projecting your first hand crack or pursuing a lifetime tick list, the Creek is why serious climbers make pilgrimages to this corner of Utah.

What’s Nearby

Further Reading

The history of the Home of Truth has been documented by historians, journalists, and researchers over the decades. The following sources informed this account and offer deeper reading for the curious.

Canyon Country Zephyr — The Home of Truth: For the followers of Marie Ogden, the vortex of the universe was at Photograph Gap (Lloyd Pierson, 2000)

Utah Stories — Through God’s Typewriter (Lewi Lewis, 2017)

Atlas Obscura — Places: Home of Truth

Utah Humanities Beehive Archive — The Ogdenites, Home of Truth episode

BYU ScholarsArchive, thesis — The Home of Truth: The Metaphysical World of Marie Ogden

Deseret News — Ghost Town with No Name Was Home to Religious Cult

Southwest Contemporary — Living at the Home of Truth: Marie Ogden

Business Insider — The Home of Truth Ghost Town