This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

It's hard to imagine building a city from scratch.

I just remember the difference between the first time I went

there when it was just a little mud hole, just didn't look like it had very much

potential at all. Turning a little mudhole into a full service city, it takes an

incredible amount of resources and people and moxie. That's reporter Chloe Prissinos.

And the other voice you just heard is Milt Ritter.

Okay, my name is Milt Ritter.

Ritter is a journalist.

He covered the story of Rajnish Purim, which was a city that popped up in Oregon in the 1980s.

I mean it was amazing, you know, it was slightly breathtaking driving down into the canyon

after a few years compared to what it was.

Rajnish Purim wasn't trying to be any American city.

They were trying to build a utopia guided by New Age religious principles, a place where people of like mind could abandon

the mainstream and live their own way.

And almost as quickly as this place went from mud hole to city, it went from utopia to

distopia. There's been a couple of big stories that I covered in my lifetime.

The eruption of Mount St Helens was one of them and the Rajnish prom was the other, you know?

It was crazy.

The story really begins with one man, an Indian guru named Bhagwan Sri Rajnish.

His name loosely translates to Sir God.

Baguan Sri Rajnish is a mystic from India and he's what we would refer to as an enlightened

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