When William Randolph Hearst was a young boy he often went camping on what would become Hearst Castle, a 40,000-acre site between San Francisco and Los Angeles that his father had acquired in 1865. Hearst inherited the site after his parents died and expanded it to about 250,000 acres. He wanted to build a property there and so he worked with architect Julia Morgan to conceive of Hearst Castle.
THE BIG HOUSE
The estate would include a mansion called Casa Grande, three guesthouses, two swimming pools, elaborate gardens, tennis courts, an airfield and the world’s biggest private zoo. Casa Grande alone had 115 rooms, including 38 bedrooms, 42 bathrooms, 14 sitting rooms, a movie theater, a library, a billiard room and a beauty salon! It is on a hill about five miles from the coast with magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean.
Famous guests
Hearst lived at the estate, which he named La Cuesta Encantada (Spanish for ‘the Enchanted Hill’) though he normally called it ‘the ranch.’ He often invited famous people to visit him there. The most famous included movie stars Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant and Joan Crawford, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Fun and formality
His guests were free to enjoy the estate in the daytime, swim in the pools, play tennis or watch movies, but in the evening they were obliged to attend a formal dinner with Hearst. Just imagine all those important people sitting around a table in formal clothes discussing the affairs of the time!
A tourist attraction
Hearst never finished working on the estate as health problems forced him to leave it in 1947. He died four years later and the Hearst Corporation donated the estate to the People of the State of California. Hearst Castle became a California State Park and was opened to the public in 1958. Today, it is a National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark, attracting millions of visitors every year. Members of Hearst’s family still come to the estate and stay in its original Victorian mansion that William Hearst’s father built in the late 1800s.
