Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Southwest Museum
were held November 16, 1912
atop "Museum Hill", a 38 acre site purchased in 1907
by the Southwest Society, parent organization of the museum.
The $50,000 needed to buy the hilltop had been raised by Henry W. O'Melveny, a distinguished Los Angeles attorney, and a few weathly people who were pursuaded to back the new venture.
The groundbreaking was preceded by years of enthusiastic endeavor by Charles Fletcher Lummis, who established the Southwest Society as the western branch of the Archaeological Society of America.
The society had grown rapidly under Lummis' direction. It assembled and transcribed 450 old folk songs of California and the southwest. It bought the Palmer-Campbell collection of California archeological material, and the Cabelleria collection of Spanish mission books and paintings.