It was the find — a dumping ground on the site of a long-defunct Southern California art tile factory — and the glorious tile, hundreds and perhaps thousands of them still buried there, that are the point of this man's story. And of his life.

The tile collector, who withholds his name not because he was trespassing but because he wants to keep the location of his dig a secret, is one of a group of collectors whose casual purchase of a single vintage tile soon can become a collection, turn into a passion, then become an obsession.

They hunt through salvage yards and haunt antique stores. They keep track of demolition permits and meet with contractors and homeowners to stage tile interventions. The truest believers, actress Diane Keaton among them, protect tile-rich homes by buying and restoring them to keep their treasures safe.

It's a pursuit that brings joy and despair because, for every tile installation they save, hundreds more are destroyed. Today, thanks to a remodeling boom fueled by TV home makeover shows — Love it! Let's gut it! — these historic treasures, many hidden in private homes and apartments, are vanishing into landfills.

Awareness is growing, but at a snail's pace. Tile lovers fear that by the time vintage California ceramic tile finally achieves the do-not-remodel status that helped preserve the California Craftsman, much of this region's tile will be irretrievably lost.

"It's one of the great catastrophes, that these extraordinary, beautiful homes that reflect an original California style are being replaced by architecture that has nothing to do with California and is, instead, all about grandeur," said Bill Stern, executive director of the Museum of California Design. "It's a crime against culture."

Not just culture, but California culture. The very term contradicts the enduring myth that California, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, have no culture of their own. Yet Stern's book, "California Pottery: From Missions to Modernism," a photo-rich history of ceramic tile and pottery in the region, proves otherwise.

The California-ization of design began with the Panama-California Exhibition, held in San Diego in 1915. Visitors fell madly in love with the Spanish-Moorish style of architecture created specifically for the exhibition. Hidden courtyards with tiled fountains, arched doorways with tiled stairs, tiles on floors and baseboards, in bathrooms and along fireplaces, all with saturated colors and intricate designs bespoke the sunny climate and exuberant spirit of California.

"This style of building was a completely new invention, an original California creation that focused attention on California as a leader of design and innovation," Stern said.

Demand for tile was instant and constant. Between 1915 and the early 1930s, more than 100 tile factories, including major players such as Malibu Potteries, Taylor Tilery, Catalina Pottery, Batchelder, California Clay Products Co. (CalCo) and Gladding, McBean, sprang up to meet the demand. They mined local clay deposits, trained hundreds of workers and artisans, built enormous factories and turned out miles of tiles to satisfy the needs and tastes of the California building boom.

"Between 1920 and 1930, the population of Hollywood went from 23,000 to 230,000," Stern said. "All of those people needed homes and apartments and they wanted California tile."

In fact, they went tile crazy. From the textured nuance of Ernest Batchelder's matte glazes and monochromatic hues to the brilliance and balance of Malibu Potteries' Moorish-inspired designs, California tile took the world — or at least the nation — by storm. Tile factories shipped their wares throughout the U.S., and for a decade California tile went into bathrooms, kitchens, fireplaces, staircases, floors and even walls and ceilings.

And then, in 1929, the tile bubble burst. "The Great Depression hit and the tile era was over," said Brian Kaiser, a tile expert who lives in South Gate.

One by one, tile producers filed for bankruptcy protection or simply closed shop. Companies that survived the Depression went under after World War II, when a glut of mass-produced Japanese imports swamped the market. A shift in taste from highly decorated spaces to the spare lines of Modernism was the final blow. "By the time people started building again, they wanted modern lines, white walls," Kaiser said. "Tile was not something people understood any more. They still don't."

For Kaiser, who has turned the preservation of vintage California tile into his life's passion, this is agony. While house hunting in 1988, he viewed a Spanish-style home for sale in South Gate. Only later did he learn it was the former residence of Rufus Keeler, the genius behind the saturated colors and brilliant designs of California Clay Products, the company Keeler founded. Later, he was hired away by Malibu Potteries.

"I knew absolutely nothing about tile or about Rufus Keeler, and then I went into this house and saw this enormous Mayan fireplace, and that was it," Kaiser said.

Inside he also found intricate, tiled floors, brilliant wall fountains, tiled bathrooms and baseboards lined with wisteria tiles.

"You had to be an idiot to stand in that house and not be agog," Kaiser said. "I was so astonished and blown away, I bought the house the same day." He also became a tile activist. As tiled homes all around him were gutted, Kaiser meticulously restored the Keeler home. He spent a week lying on his side, using dental tools to scrape paint from a 6-foot section of tiled baseboard. From beneath layers of white paint, an intricate wisteria mural emerged.