“If 1,000 years from now, archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe, I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization, far from being confined to the valley of the Nile, extended all the way to the Pacific coast of North America.”  ~”The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille,” 1959

So why did DeMille choose to bulldoze his set, rather than truck it back to Los Angeles?
“I think there were two things were going on,” Brosnan said, starting with DeMille’s pledge to leave the site as he’d found it. “Hauling away all that statuary would have been very expensive … so I think he pulled a fast one and buried it.”
In addition, he said, “(DeMille) knew that if he left it standing … the very next day somebody would be there filming a quickie on his set and they’d be on the streets with it in a few weeks. He was protecting his patent by taking it down.”
FROM http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/santa-barbara/cecil-b-demill-ten-commandments-excavation-nipomo-dunes.html

~ California Historical Society: Stills from “The Ten Commandments” 1923
~ Cecil B. Demille’s biography
~ Special Extended Trailer, 1956, announcing the upcoming release of “The Ten Commandments”