Mount San Antonio 1944 is inspired by a text written by Dale F. Stewart on June 27, 1944, in a notebook found at the peak of Mt. San Antonio (AKA Mt. Baldy). Stewart was at Caltech that year, and Caltech was heavily involved in the USA’s war efforts in both Europe and the Pacific. US troops had landed at Normandy only three weeks prior, and the US military would detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki about one year later (several key Manhattan Project personnel were from Caltech). Meanwhile, JPL co-founder Jack Parsons would soon leave the institution – due in part to his devotion to occultist (and mountaineer) Aleister Crowley and budding friendship with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. All of this is to say that there was probably a lot on Dale F. Stewart’s mind as he surveyed the vistas from Mount San Antonio.