Original subtitles

[narrator] Abandoned structures hold the secrets of America's past.

A Southern farmstead of unparalleled cruelty.

Lot of bad things happened here.

And here we are today in the 21st century,

still finding out about its hidden history.

[narrator] A project to tame nature, built by the enemy's hands.

My father, obviously, took a lot of pride in his work,

and I think all the people out here took a lot of pride

in the work that they were doing,

because they understood why they were doing it.

[narrator] And a factory, which helped to build a new world.

[Matt Anderson] This was the heart of all that happened

in American industry and mass production.

[narrator] Scattered across the United States,

are abandoned structures and those who know their stories.

These forgotten ruins reveal the past of this land, and its people.

These are the secrets of Hidden America.

On Georgia's coast, lies a ramshackled site

harboring one of America's darkest secrets.

The Sea Islands are a really beautiful area just off the coast of Georgia.

On one of these islands there's miles of empty fields,

and what looks like irrigation ditches in this strange settlement.

It's probably what a lot of people picture, when they picture

an old Southern house.

It looks like a farmhouse. It's made of clapboard. It's weathered.

[narrator] While nature has reclaimed much of the site,

some buildings remain intact.

What's curious is there appear to be structures from different eras here.

So, you have an old, brick chimney in front of a more modern construction.

[Dr. Michele Mitchell] This place is huge. Nearly 1500 acres in total.

There look like there were fields where people worked.

And you have to wonder, what stories could they tell?

Today in the 21st century, I stand here as a descendant.

Here the spirits are alive and well,

through those individuals that used to live here.

[narrator] The interior of the main house gives some clues,

to what might have happened here.

[Michele] Inside the house seems to be beautifully appointed and richly timbered.

Someone wealthy must have lived here.

But how did it fall into such a state of disrepair?

[Dr. Sascha Auerbach] This is a place where one of the darkest

chapters in American history unfolded.

But it's also a locale, where the actions of one individual of conscience,

made a significant change in the lives of millions of African Americans.

[narrator] Local mayor Griffin Lotson's family worked these fields.

And he still feels the history in his bones.

This darker than seven nights gets something ghostly of the past.

In our culture, it is called the ancestors.

Perhaps they still walk these grounds.

The original owner is a man named Major Pierce Butler.

And Major Pierce Butler was a major figure

in early American history.

He was one of the Founding Fathers.

And he's a, kind of, enigmatic figure.

After the War of Independence, he acquired this site,

and he began to grow a crop that was perfect for the wet, hot conditions here.

And that would be rice.

[narrator] The oldest surviving building here is a rice mill.

But it was not operated by willing workers.

Now, who actually built this structure

is very important to history.

It was an enslaved plantation.

So every brick, every block you see here, was built by those that were enslaved.

[Prof. Sarah Churchwell] Major Butler ended up a major enslaver.

He enslaved a great many people across a number

of farms and plantations.

[Griffin] The Founding Fathers,

they had wealth, they had power,

and they owned slaves.

[narrator] Major Pierce Butler

named this place after himself.

And it would remain in his family's hands for generations.

This is the Butler Island Plantation.

Butler Island was inherited by Major Butler's grandson,

Pierce Mease Butler, who inherited a huge fortune,

and a great many enslaved people.

But he was not cut out of the same cloth as his grandfather.

He was no businessman.

He was a drinker and a gambler.

[narrator] Although. there were many cruel slave owners across the South,

Pierce Mease Butler was worse than most.

On this plantation, as on most plantations,

the enslaved men and women were treated abominably.

No one was spared the whip.

Including pregnant women, who had to work in the fields

right up until the moment of birth.

[narrator] Pierce Mease Butler lived in Philadelphia,

and was a reluctant traveler to Butler Island.

But when he did come, he was not alone.

Pierce Mease Butler fell in love with an English actress,

named Fanny Kemble, who was the most famous actress of her day.

[narrator] Despite his opposition,

Fanny Kemble persuaded her husband to take her to Butler Island.

So when Fanny Kemble came to Butler Island, she was disgusted

by what she saw.

And Fanny Kemble kept a journal while she lived there,

of the brutality and the violations, the violence, that she saw.

[Griffin] And she witnessed it firsthand,

and it helped change America's history.

[narrator] Fanny Kemble, shocked at how her husband

treated his enslaved workers,

broke their marriage.

And Butler's debts would push his cruelty even further.

Pierce Mease Butler squandered and gambled away his family fortune.

And he ended up in debt of about $700,000.

In modern terms, that would be $25 million.

That was a deep hole.

[Griffin] So, he had to make a decision, and his obvious decision was,

"I will sell some of my enslaved individuals

to see if I can get out of debt."

And that's what he did.

He sold the lives of human beings.

[narrator] All of the enslaved individuals who belonged to Pierce Mease Butler,

were put on boats and taken up the coast.

In March of 1859, on the eve of the Civil War,

the largest sale of human beings

in American history happened on a racetrack in Savannah, Georgia.

[Griffin] Those ancestors of mine,

that were sold at what we now call "the weeping time."

[narrator] In total, almost 450 men, women and children were sold.

Although at first this seemed like an escape

from the cruelty and torture of Butler Island,

it only added to their misery.

[Griffin] A lot of their family members

would never see each other again.

And they felt it.

So, it was a lot of heartache.

Lot of crying.

The two-day sale netted Pierce Mease Butler over $300,000.

He decided to celebrate, so he went off on a grand tour of Europe.

[narrator] But Pierce Mease Butler's now ex-wife,

Fanny Kemble, would have her revenge.

[narrator] Pierce Mease Butler,

owner of the Butler Island Plantation in Georgia,

sold almost 450 of his enslaved workers to pay off his gambling debts.

His ex-wife, English actress Fanny Kemble, would get payback.

[Churchwell] Fanny Kemble made the really radical decision in some ways,

to publish her journals of living on Butler Island.

She published them in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War.

And she was actually inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation.

The journal carefully documented all the atrocities

she'd witnessed on Butler Island.

And so it has this national impact in terms of really making people

learn something about slavery.

It really is a, sort of, table turning moment.

This young lady just wrote freely.

So, I like the pureness of what she wrote,

and how it helped change America,

and now, the world.

[narrator] Much of Butler Island

was burned during the Civil War.

And the plantation fell into ruins.

But in the 20th century, this place would get a second chance,

from a member of the sporting elite.

The Butler family held on to the land for a few more generations,

but then it was decided to sell it.

The buyer was a man named T.L. Houston,

who decided to convert the property into a dairy farm.

[narrator] Lieutenant Colonel T.L. Houston,

built this house when he moved to Butler Island.

[Griffin] This particular room here, on the Butler Plantation,

we call it the Colonel Houston Room.

because this is where he conducted all of his business.

[narrator] As co-owner of the New York Yankees,

Houston's business was baseball.

Houston made the audacious decision in 1919 to purchase Babe Ruth.

The most famous slugger in the history of the game

from the Yankees' rivals, the Boston Red Sox.

Babe Ruth, he would travel down here

because he was an avid hunter,

and he loved to hunt ducks.

[narrator] Rumor has it, that Butler Island also played a part

in one of America's greatest works of fiction.

The famous novel, Gone with the Wind, about the old South,

is set in Georgia.

And many places in the state claim to have been part of Margaret Mitchell's vision.

Butler Island is no exception.

[Griffin] With Margaret coming down to this area, most people

don't know that writers have their writer's retreat.

And it doesn't get much more secluded than these barrier islands here.

[narrator] Just to the north of Butler Island lies the smaller,

Rhetts Island,

possibly providing the inspiration

for Gone with the Wind's protagonist's name, Rhett Butler.

Gone with the Wind is one of the most popular movies ever released.

And still, adjusted for inflation, shockingly,

it is the highest grossing movie in history.

[narrator] Even though Butler Island is closely tied to so much history,

today, it lies derelict.

Over 160 years after the end of slavery, the future of Butler Island is uncertain.

Unfortunately, the state of Georgia voted

almost 100% to sell the property.

Sell it for a dollar to a distillery.

So, a lot of courageous people got involved.

Myself and many other volunteers from a lot of other distant groups,

and said, "We need to save it."

History is history.

You cannot change it. It is what it is.

So, let's embrace it.

Let's tell the stories for generations to come.

Some we need to repeat.

And some we need to never do again.

[narrator] In the Deep South,

there's a reminder of America's engineering might.

Born out of a world war, it's where man fought the Mississippi.

[Thomas Leggett] I was about two and a half years old when we moved here.

We played all over the whole reservation,

primarily around where the camp was.

And it was a wonderful place.

[narrator] Just outside of Jackson, there's a relic of an industrial past.

I've never seen anywhere like this.

There's all sorts of abandoned structures here.

There's a... What looks like and old water tower.

A bunch of pumphouses,

and loads of rusting equipment just dotting the whole site.

[Rob Bell] And they're all huge, which makes you think,

that this place must be owned by the government or some large corporation.

[narrator] Amongst the battered buildings and corroded pipework,

one feature stands out.

As you look past all the vines and the trees

that are growing through things, you see

this massive amount of concrete.

What strikes me is that it doesn't look like

a building, it doesn't look like a parking lot,

It just looks weird.

[Linda Rodriguez McRobbie] Looking at the contours on these concrete slabs,

it almost looks like a giant map.

This is the US, really scrunched down and walkable.

You can walk from Baton Rouge to Louisville in a matter of hours.

[narrator] Despite being built by the enemy,

this site once saved the lives of thousands of Americans.

People that worked here referred to this

as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

[narrator] On the outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi,

there is an engineering marvel.

Today, it's hidden amongst a forest of pine trees.

But Tom Leggett, who first came here in 1947, remembers it a different way.

The happiest memories that I have,

was just to have such a large expanse,

just to roam around.

My father worked here, and we lived here when I was a small child.

I don't think I really comprehended what it all meant.

But everybody that worked here, took a lot of pride in what they did.

[narrator] This structure was born out of an event that shook America.

In 1927, the Mississippi saw one of its worst ever floods,

caused by eight months of solid rain.

[narrator] As the great river burst its banks,

it flooded a 27,000 square-mile area

almost the size of West Virginia.

It was nothing short of catastrophic.

In some places the river grew as wide as 50 miles.

People's homes, entire towns were swallowed up by the floodwaters.

[narrator] Once the waters receded, the estimated cost

of the damages in today's money,

was $1 trillion.

Congress vowed it could never happen again.

[McEwen] In response to that 1927 flood,

Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928.

This turned to the Army to tame the Mississippi and prevent

that kind of disaster in the future.

[narrator] The Army's solution was hundreds of miles of tiny channels

replicating the great river.

This is the Mississippi River Basin model.

The model out here is like a giant, 200-acre puzzle.

It was put together to replicate the entire Mississippi River basin.

[narrator] Stretching from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico,

the basin covers over a million square miles.

Operated by dozens of engineers,

this model was America's attempt to tame it.

The purpose of this place was to try and accurately model the floods

of the Mississippi River,

predicting disasters before they struck.

[McEwen] The accuracy that they got is pretty incredible.

When they were running historic storms,

they were able to be within a tenth of a foot of recorded gauge data.

They had things in the model, uh, such as wire,

and things like that to simulate vegetation and snags

in the river channel and the floodplain also.

[narrator] But construction of the model didn't begin for well over a decade.

With the Mississippi flowing through ten states,

there were disagreements about how to fund it.

And when the model was finally greenlit,

America was at war.

[explosion]

[guns firing]

[McEwen] It was 1942, World War II is ongoing.

So, a lot of the... what would have been the labor force, was no longer in the area.

[narrator] To fight this battle against Ol' Man River,

an unusual army was recruited.

America and its allies had just defeated

the Nazis in North Africa.

Now during this campaign, they captured thousands of German POWs.

Now they all needed to be held somewhere

and ideally put to work.

This was the perfect project for the prisoners

because the Geneva Convention said you couldn't use

prisoners to build military equipment

that would aid in the war.

But here was, sort of, the next best thing.

It was aiding in, sort of, a civilian war against the weather.

[narrator] A plan was hatched to move thousands of POWs to Mississippi.

So, a prison camp was built just two miles north of the model.

Camp Clinton housed just over 3,000 POWs.

Many of them had been handpicked to work on this model

because of their backgrounds in construction and engineering.

My father told me that, "They were extremely industrious and innovative."

They were doing very technical things and in fact,

a lot of the heavy equipment was turned over to the Germans outright.

Normally, you wouldn't have prisoners operating

bulldozers and draglines but they did here. [chuckles]

[narrator] Thousands of concrete slabs were meticulously placed

representing 41% of the continental United States.

The slabs were constructed

in a large hangar type facility that was located here.

And then the slabs were brought out

and set in place with a dragline.

And they used screw jacks to level the slabs up,

and then grouted them in.

[narrator] But before the model could be completed, disaster struck.

In 1952, a part of the Mississippi River system threatened

to burst its banks in Nebraska

causing catastrophic floods.

Fortunately, this was a part of the model

that had already been constructed.

So 24-hour tests were kicked into gear.

[narrator] Data, such as flood heights

and where the levees could fail,

was collected.

The Nebraska floods proved

the Mississippi River Basin Model was a huge success.

It's predicted that during these floods alone,

the model prevented $65 million worth of damage.

[narrator] Fourteen years later,

the entire Mississippi River Basin Model was completed.

One day's worth of real-world information

could be collected in just five minutes.

[McEwen] What we're seeing over here, in what looks like a bridge,

actually it would have had a cylinder on top,

and a probe underneath that would read the water elevation.

[narrator] In total, 79 full-scale simulations are run.

Saving countless lives

and millions of dollars in damages.

But soon, the model would play

a leading role in its own downfall.

In the 1960s,

the Mississippi River Basin Model

was proving to be a huge success.

[Rob] The completed model was only operational

for less than a decade.

In 1971, operations came to an abrupt halt

when the model was given what would be...

its final job.

[Greg] Computer and mathematical models

were being devised.

But we didn't know if they actually matched what happened.

So those models were tested against this place

and when they matched up, it was decided that

the concrete could be put to bed.

[narrator] With the rise of the computer age,

the model fell into disrepair.

Today, after decades of deterioration,

the model is entering a new chapter.

Having been rediscovered by local engineer,

Sarah McEwen.

I grew up the child of two engineers,

I kinda didn't have a choice but to become an engineer.

And when I came out here, my initial thought was,

"Man, this could be such a cool site

for school children, here locally, to visit."

[narrator] In 2016, Sarah and a group of colleagues

set up an organization called

The Friends of the Mississippi River Basin Model.

This organization is trying to raise money

to restore the site, turn it into a park,

and an education center.

[narrator] But until funds are raised,

they're left doing all they can

to maintain the model in its current state.

[McEwen] We hold monthly clean-up days.

It's important to keep this alive

because this is the largest scale model in the world.

The Mississippi River is really the life blood of the US.

And how this river

grows and flows and connects us all

is a really important story to tell.

[narrator] Hidden away in suburban Michigan,

on the edge of the Great Lakes,

this forgotten building shaped America into

an industrial powerhouse.

Certainly, there's no one in this area that doesn't know the history

of the company that used to be in this building.

But they may not realize the importance or significance

or the role that it played in larger American,

or even global history.

[narrator] The inside of the building

holds some clues to its use.

When you're inside, it's this huge, open space.

What did they need all of this space for?

I mean, it looks to me like it was once a factory.

An enormous factory that would have accommodated a lot of people.

But the question is...

what were they making here?

[Matt Anderson] This was a state-of-the-art factory

built with a eye toward the 20th century.

[narrator] This building's location gives a big hint

to what it was used for.

[Rob] We're in Detroit, Michigan,

and if we're talking Detroit factories,

then we're talking about cars.

[narrator] A unique process implemented here

would transform manufacturing across the world.

But it would come at a cost.

It may not look like it, uh, right now,

but we are standing in what was the single-most

important industrial complex of the 20th century.

[narrator] This was Henry Ford's most revolutionary factory,

the Ford Highland Park Plant.

Matt Anderson, curator at the Henry Ford Museum,

knows plenty about Ford and his motors,

but has never stepped foot inside this factory.

We're now a century removed from the glory days

of this plant, if you will, but still,

walking through here you get a sense

of something immense, something important

having happened inside this structure.

[narrator] None of this would have been possible

without one engineering prodigy.

Almost from birth, certainly, from a very young age,

Henry Ford was captivated and fascinated by machinery.

[narrator] Ford left his family farm at the age of 16

to move to Detroit and become an engineer.

[Linda] The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903.

And in 1908 they produced

their game-changing vehicle, the Model T.

[narrator] And it was here at Highland Park

where this vehicle would roll out onto the road.

[Dr. Corina Kwami] Henry Ford wanted to create a car for the masses.

So it needed to be durable, safe,

but also cheap.

Ford realized if a quality car could be built

and priced affordably enough

he could tap middle class Americans

and working class Americans.

[narrator] But Henry Ford wanted a new style of factory.

And so, in 1909,

plans were drawn up for the Highland Park Plant.

Highland Park gave Henry Ford a chance

to design the plant from the ground up

with the space that he needed.

[narrator] This factory opened in 1910

and started churning out Model Ts straight away.

The larger space meant that Ford could bring more of

the manufacturing process in-house, increasing efficiency.

But Ford knew that he could do more.

If we could turn back the clock

and come here 100 years ago,

we can imagine what we might've seen,

uh... rails on the ground

guiding chassis from Model T automobiles

as they moved through the plant.

[narrator] Ford was influenced

by the meat-packing facilities in Chicago.

They had been using moving conveyors

to move an animal carcass through the plant.

[narrator] Henry Ford is credited as being the first

to implement this revolutionary process,

the moving assembly line.

But his concept would almost cause

a revolt among his workers.

Some workers described this as a form of hell

with workers, essentially, being tuned into robots.

The worker day lasted about nine hours

and the pay daily was only about $2.34,

which even at that time was quite challenging.

From the moment the assembly line started

workers were leaving the factory in droves.

Within a year of the line starting,

the company had to replace 90% of its workforce.

[narrator] To counter the resignations,

Ford made a potentially disastrous decision.

To plug the massive holes in its workforce,

the company employed vast swathes of recent immigrants.

Hoping that their precarious positions

would make them easier to exploit.

But this only led to more problems.

The language barrier hindered communications across the line.

[Linda] But even more than that,

people coming from Europe were also bringing with them

their socialist ideals, and Ford did not want that.

[narrator] The awful working conditions

across the auto industry in Detroit

created a perfect atmosphere for revolt.

[Rob] Unions were beginning to move in

and organize strike action at other factories.

Something had to change

and change fast.

[narrator] The Highland Park Plant saw Henry Ford

perfect construction of his unique vehicle, the Model T.

But his workers were walking out just as quickly.

Ford realized that you could actually incentivize people

more with carrot, rather than a stick.

So what he did was reduce the working hours

for a day, from nine to eight.

And also, he increased the daily rate from

$2.34 to about $5.00.

[Matt] Workers were now willing to stay for the job,

put up with the tedium, and frankly,

the drudgery of some of those tasks.

[narrator] With Ford having his pick of the best workers,

he went full throttle at the factory.

[Linda] The introduction of and the efficiency of the assembly line

led to the Model T dropping in price,

from $850 to $260.

Now, in today's money, that would be drop from

$25,000 to $8,000.

[narrator] And Ford wasn't the only one who benefited.

By increasing his workers' wages,

Ford was effectively elevating people

from working class to middle class.

And with their disposable income

they were spending their money in Detroit,

boosting the local economy.

[Linda] Detroit became a boom town.

16 years after Ford increased his wages,

the population of the city had tripled

to more than one million people.

[narrator] But all too soon it would be time

for the Model T to move on down the road.

The last Model T was built in May of 1927.

And it was a tremendous run, 19 years of production,

15 million cars built.

[narrator] However, the Model T wouldn't be

the last iconic vehicle to come out of Highland Park.

Once production of the Model T ended at the factory,

Ford went back to his farming roots.

And he started to use the same principle of the assembly line

to manufacture Fordson tractors.

Highland Park continued to manufacture tractors for decades.

Until Ford sold the site in 1981,

ending 70 years of auto industry history.

[narrator] The Highland Park Plant has been sitting dormant

for over 40 years,

with buildings being raised bit by bit.

[Matt] I think one of the great strengths

of Highland Park, 100 years ago,

is one of its great weaknesses today.

This is essentially a giant machine,

a machine that is fine-tuned and designed to do nothing

but build Ford Model T automobiles.

[Linda] The Model T did what could really only be done once.

This was the vehicle that turned cars

from a plaything for the rich,

into the tool that we use every day.

In a sense, in every car

that's on the American road today,

uh, it owes a little bit of its existence

to what happened here in this factory.

[narrator] On the outskirts of Glendale, in Greater Los Angeles,

lies a collection of buildings which sustain the spirits

of some of show business' leading ladies.

We're in the Crescenta Valley.

A place where Hollywood stars

and all sorts of fascinating characters have made their home.

[narrator] Amongst the suburban houses,

one group of buildings stands out.

There's a whole block of what looks like these

Spanish-inspired, Colonial cottages.

[Dr. Kenya Davis-Hayes] Some of the red tiles have fallen.

In some place the roof itself is falling in.

But it does seem that someone is making an effort

to care for this place.

[Joanna Linkchorst] A lot of people are amazed at how beautiful that it is.

My first time inside these gates, on this property,

I absolutely lost my heart to it.

The history, the trees,

the feel of this place is so amazing.

[narrator] This place was set up to counter

a terrible trend.

[Katherine Alcock] It was often much cheaper and easier

to throw your wife into a sanitarium

than to go through the process of divorce.

[narrator] Yet, it was connected to one of the most

famous movie stars of all time.

The most infamous resident

was a woman by the name of Gladys Pearl Eley

and her daughter paid for her care.

[narrator] The first stone of this compound

was laid a century ago,

at a time when this valley was booming.

This place is currently cared for

by Joanna Linkchorst.

[Joanna] I was born and grew up in the Crescenta Valley.

There was actually an advertisement at one time

from the Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce

that we had the most healthful air in the world.

[narrator] This valley would inspire one pioneering doctor.

[Katherine] In 1881, Dr. Benjamin Briggs launched

a worldwide search for the perfect place

to create a series of sanitariums.

Places where people with respiratory illnesses,

particularly, diseases of the lung,

could come and live a more healthier life.

Settling on the Crescenta Valley,

Briggs chose this place because it was dry,

it was clean, really good drinking water.

[narrator] The demand for physical and mental health facilities

in California was high.

But the focus was not always on patient welfare.

Unfortunately, there was a dark side

to this movement in the early 20th century.

Woman were more at risk at being

thrown in to some of these institutions.

[Joanna] It was as simple as going to a pharmacist

to say, "Hey, my wife needs to be put away in an asylum,"

to get them put away.

[narrator] This place would fight against oppression,

but would face challenges from one infamous resident.

[narrator] In the rarefied air

of California's Crescenta Valley,

lies a forgotten compound of cottages.

There are lots of little signs and notices throughout the complex,

but one which appears bigger and more important than the others

bears the word "Rockhaven."

[narrator] This is Rockhaven,

also known as the Screen Actors' Sanitarium.

Rockhaven was to be a sanitarium

to be run by woman for women only.

To give them safe, dignified treatment

in a home-like setting.

[narrator] Founded in 1923 by Agnes Richards,

this site has been without residents

for almost 20 years.

Agnes Richards was a very powerful, strong woman,

and strong women attract strong women.

So as a result, she ended up treating

a lot of the most famous Hollywood icons.

[narrator] During the 1920s,

Rockhaven cared for the mental health

of a number of Hollywood's leading ladies.

Including Gwen Lee,

Billie Burke, and Peggy Fears.

But no one was prepared

for Rockhaven's most troublesome inmate.

The most infamous resident in Rockhaven

was Gladys Baker Eley.

One of the reasons was that...

she felt the need to escape.

Gladys had been in and out of mental institutions.

And she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia,

as well as delusions of persecution.

So this is one of the rooms that

Gladys was cared for in.

And on one particular occasion,

she tied bed sheets together and she went out...

of that window.

[narrator] Like many of Rockhaven's residents,

Gladys' care was paid for by her daughter.

[Katherine] Gladys particularly wanted to escape

because she believed that her daughter

could look after her better.

Her daughter was rich and famous

and her name was Marilyn Monroe.

[narrator] However,

Marilyn never visited her mother at Rockhaven.

Privately, Marilyn Monroe was terrified

to go down the same path as her mother.

And publicly, Marilyn Monroe's PR team

told her to deny any existence of her mother at all.

So from what we know about Marilyn Monroe's early life

is that she was only sporadically cared for by her birth mother,

had spent time in orphanages,

and just didn't have the stability that would've

served her as she moved into adulthood.

[narrator] As Gladys recovered in Rockhaven,

Marilyn's star was rising.

But the spotlight would take its toll.

She was briefly admitted

to a padded cell in 1961

where she was struggling with insomnia,

as well as extreme exhaustion.

So Marilyn Monroe, of course, was trying to self-medicate,

but then she was also heavily medicated

by various different doctors.

[narrator] In 1962,

Marilyn Monroe died from a drug overdose.

Even though Marilyn never visited her mother

and even though her mother was a huge absence for much of her life,

she still provided for her in her will.

Leaving a large chunk of her fortune

to ensure her mother was well looked after.

Rockhaven allowed her mother to stay there for free

until her $100,000 trust fund

kicked in to pay for the services.

[narrator] But as Gladys recovered

and moved out of Rockhaven in the late '60s,

the sanitarium's whole purpose changed.

Rockhaven decided to start pivoting

and make it more about elder care

and Alzheimer's and dementia issues.

And converted the dorms into a the little hospital.

[Katherine] Rockhaven was run,

essentially as a retirement home until 2001,

when rising costs forced it to close.

[narrator] Rockhaven has been empty and decaying

for almost two decades.

Today, the future for Rockhaven is still unclear.

The City of Glendale stepped in and purchased Rockhaven

to prevent the buildings from being demolished.

With the hope of turning it into some sort of

community park or attraction.

Unfortunately, however, with rising costs

and different priorities,

they've not been able to make good on that intention.

[narrator] The City of Glendale declared Rockhaven

as surplus property in a state of arrested decay.

This is not just what they were calling surplus property.

This is our history.

And it should be open to everybody.

Businesses can come in that, I think,

should have to do with wellness,

that have to do with women's businesses, that have to do with

benefitting the community.