Amazing Explorations, Inc.

Amazing Explorations, Inc., also referred to as Amazing Discoveries, Inc., was an apparent California-based non-profit corporation that was stated to have been founded by F. Bruce Russell and several partners, including Daniel Snyder Bovee (1900-1983), a Los Angeles dentist, which was formed to finance expeditions to rediscover a cave system south of St. George, Washington Co., Utah, spanning a range that stretched into the Colorado Desert, and which had, according to the company, been inhabited by advanced peoples some 80,000 years ago, variously described as Atlantean or Mu in press accounts. The first public statements about this company and its plans were made by Howard E. Hill, a publicist, in 1947 at engagements before Los Angeles speaking clubs, including the La Brea Optimists in late June and the Los Angeles Transportation Club in early August, where he related Russell's story about having discovered the cave system in 1931, including a ritual hall with elements reminiscent of Masonic traditions, unknown hieroglyphs carved in polished granite, and trophy niches displaying the preserved remains of "dinosauria, saber-toothed tigers, imperial elephants and other beasts," in addition to "the perfectly preserved bodies of 112" individuals, each measuring seven to eight feet in height, sporting Dutch bob haircuts and zoot suits made of "unknown animal" hair (with a texture similar to "gray dyed sheepskin"). Hill further related that Russell believed that there was evidence at the site of an "atomic chain reaction" that had presumably destroyed the civilisation.

There seems to be no record of the corporation ever being registered in California, and received only limited press attention after initial press interest had subsided. There was one further story, in late August 1947, regarding an expedition in which Ben Allen was said to have discovered a 22 inch (55.8 cm) long, 8 inch (20.3 cm) wide footprint on a gypsum flat at Arizona-California-Nevada borderland region where the caves were supposed to be; the caves, however, were not reported to have been found at that time. For his part, Russell briefly drew renewed attention two years later, in 1949, making the same claims but this time under the aegis of his American Society of Anthropology, which was reported to be the sponsor of a new expedition to find the caves that would include C. L. Burdick, a mining engineer, and Lawrence Decker, college student, among others. This later attempt seems to have likewise amounted to little.