The “Moon Temple” on campus wasn’t always called a Moon Temple.

The Moon Temple was first mentioned in the form of letters mailed in the month and year of April 1918. The official construction followed in between the years of 1918 and 1922 as a part of John Deering’s Winter Estate Expansion Phase. When fully constructed Charles Deering gave his newly built temple the name: The Casbah given his demand for solitude and a quiet place for thinking which does in fact relate with the fact that the name and word originate from the North African Arabic word Casbah, which means “Fortress” or “Citadel” what

The overall construction and aesthetic was made to look exotic and ancient covered by mangroves and a garden. When billionare: Charles Deering died, his relatives decided to sell his land.

This land later ended up in the hands of The Archdiocese Of Miami to later follow the construction of Immaculata-La Salle High-School.

The Archdiocese Of Miami had no idea that they had this structure on their land due to poorly cut land division. By this point no one had known and completely forgot about there even being a temple, until the 1960’s when a freshmen at La Salle, as the school was then known because there were two schools on campus–the all boys La Salle and the all girls Immaculata Academy, this student who arrived via Operation Pedro Pan, the largest influx of unaccompanied minors into the U.S., he had trouble adjusting, ran away, and hid in this forest. His caretakers, he had been sent to live in Miami far away from his parents in Cuba so he could avoid being indoctrinated into Communism and atheism, he had a fascination with the literary character Tarzan and thus, escaped to the jungle with only a bow and arrow.

A small group of La Salle seniors were tasked with finding the runaway, which they fortunately did, finding him unharmed. In their search they inadvertently discovered what today is referred to on campus as the Moon Temple.