India, Oct. 27 -- Most people see the city dump as the place where broken things go to die. Art Beal saw a source of building materials. In 1928, he bought two and a half acres of pine-covered hillside in Cambria Pines, California, and began building a home from salvaged objects. According to the SPACES Archives profile of the site, the project continued for more than 50 years and eventually spread across a 250-foot-high ridge. The result, Nitt Witt Ridge, became one of California's unusual examples of folk art architecture.

Beal operated under a simple rule: pay for cement and salvage the rest. He gathered shells from the sea, wood from the hillsides, discarded household items, and other materials from the dump. As Cambria's garbage col...