William Riker — who styled himself Father Riker or The Comforter — founded Holy City with about a dozen followers in 1919. He was a former palm reader once charged with bigamy in San Francisco who formulated an ideology called the Perfect Divine Christian Way.

Little is left of Holy City these days but legends and lore about the oddball cult whose members pumped gas, preached white supremacy and sold holy water to tourists in a hollow off Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains.