Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. An old summer camp. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A. 1530 Muralia Road, in or near Miami-Dade County. Q. When did we see it on the show? A. In Episode 12, of Season 5, "The Big One". This is the summer camp owned by motivational speaker and serial killer Jordan Chase, the place where (as an overweight teen) he organized the gang rape of his first victim, Emily Birch, and where he subsequently imprisoned and raped a dozen women. At lot takes place here, in the season finale. It's the deserted camp where Chase takes Lumen after abducting her from Emily's house. Dexter, desperate to find her, phones the Office of County Records, and asks if there is any proptery listed under Chase's former name, Eugene Greer. He learns that Chase owns the River Jordan Camp for Boys & Girls, which went bankrupt 20 years ago. Dexter steals a car and speeds to the camp to rescue her. But he winds up running into a parked bulldozer, (which Chase apparently positioned in the road as a trap) and overturning his car , at which time, he is taken prisoner (at gunpoint) by Chase. Later, however, while Chase is preparing to kill Dexter & Lumen, Dexter produces a concealed knife and stabs Chase through the foot, pinning him to the floor - and then subdues him. Chase wakes up strapped to a table, where Lumen kills him with a knife to the heart. Meanwhile, Debra has followed a lead (the fruit vendor) that points her to the camp. She arrives in time to see Chase dead on the table, and the shadows of the killers (Dexter & Lumen) behind a plastic sheet. Debra is conflicted, but she winds up letting her sympathy for victim #13 overcome her duty as a police officer, and she lets them go. Q. What is it actually in real life? A. A summer camp.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This is actually Camp Max Straus, a summer camp for disadvantaged city kids, which is run by Jewish Big Brothers & Sisters.

The address is 1041 Shirlyjean Street, Glendale, CA.

But that address is a bit deceptive. The location is actually far north of downtown Glendale, on the other side of the hills, just south of the Foothill (210) Freeway.

It's less than two miles west of the well-known Descanso Gardens (which is in neighboring La Cañada Flintridge).

Camp Max Straus is located on 112 wooded acres in the Verdugo Mountains. It was founded in 1938, and offers urban kids a green refuge from their usual city surroundings.





Here is a map of the camp grounds & buildings:


Click here for a larger view of the map's details.




Note the Sydney Rosenberg Conference Center, near the center of the map.
That's the same building seen behind Chase & Lumen in the screencaps below:






Here is an aerial photo of the camp. Here is a map link.


And here's a Google StreetView of the camp's entrance road.




Here are two matching photos of the camp, sent to me by Mike from MovieshotsLA.com:
(I rotated the top one to match the angle in the screencap above.).





You can see more of Mike's photos of the camp on my True Blood page.


( Thanks, Mike! )




The camp has its own websites at jbbbsla.org & foundationcms.org.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  I had previously discovered Camp Max Straus when it appeared as a key location on the show True Blood.  On that show, it was an anti-vampire church camp called "Light of Day", and I did a location page about it, at the time.

The camp has been used before in filming various productions, so when a summer camp showed up on Dexter, this was automatically a prime suspect for me to check out. And a little comparison of the screencaps from Dexter and the screencaps from True Blood confirmed that it was indeed Camp Max Straus.