Wayfarers Chapel began as a dream in the mind of Elizabeth Sewall Schellenberg, a member of the Swedenborgian Church who lived on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the late 1920s. The Peninsula was largely open farmland with a two-lane gravel road skirting the shoreline from San Pedro to Palos Verdes Estates. Mrs. Schellenberg dreamed of a small chapel of exquisite beauty and spiritual architecture on a hillside above the Pacific Ocean where wayfarers could stop to rest, meditate, and give thanks to God. Lucy Pyle Mercer Billingslea, a member of the Los Angeles Swedenborgian Church, approached her friend, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip, who was also a member of the Swedenborgian Church, about donating the 3.5 acres of land for the project.