Tama-Re, the Egypt of the West in Georgia

In 1993 Dwight York moved his followers from Brooklyn and the Catskills to 476 acres of farmland in Putnam County, Georgia, and built Tama-Re, the Egypt of the West: gilded pyramids, an avenue of sphinxes and obelisks, a gate guarded by statues of the gods, all rising improbably from red clay pasture. The compound gave the Nuwaubian Nation its most visible form and its most combustible politics. Disputes with the county over building permits and land use escalated into years of confrontation, with York's followers picketing the courthouse and casting the sheriff and commissioners as racist persecutors, while the group's festivals drew thousands of visitors from around the country. The end came through the criminal case against the founder.

Arrested in 2002 after child molestation allegations by children raised in the movement, York was convicted in federal court in 2004 on racketeering and child exploitation counts and sentenced to 135 years, one of the longest sentences ever imposed in such a case. The government seized Tama-Re under forfeiture, the remaining residents dispersed, and in 2005 the pyramids were bulldozed, the statuary sold or scattered. Fragments of the movement persist online and in small chapters that regard York as a political prisoner. The site itself returned to pasture, and scholars of Black new religious movements cite Tama-Re as the era's starkest example of a built sacred landscape erased along with its founder's authority.