The Shack at San Simeon

I may be the last person on earth to have visited San Simeon, the home of the famous Hearst Castle, but in case you haven’t beaten me there, let me urge you to go. You have never seen anything like it before, I guarantee it.

I walked on a gold floor, saw more antiquities gathered in one place than in any museum I ever visited, and stood beside the biggest and the most luxurious pools I have ever seen. I walked through one of three guesthouses bigger than my own 4500 sq. ft. ex-house. I saw land half the size of Rhode Island, all owned by one family. And vistas so unbelievably beautiful in every direction, I don’t think I have absorbed them yet, some 24 hours later.

The Castle is built on a mountain overlooking the Pacific. We boarded a bus and drove for ten minutes, serpentining five miles up the hillside to get there. Our 45 minute tour took us through one guesthouse and the public rooms of the main house, including the indoor pool, billiards room, and theater, itself as big as most modern movie venues.

You can’t see it all in one trip. There are actually five different tours, including an evening tour which has to be wonderful, with everything lit up. As it was, we lucked out on our timing, because the place was decorated for Christmas and it was awesome. You couldn’t use your camera flash, but my pictures all came out anyway.

I wondered how Hearst had come by his fortune, and learned that his grandfather George was a prospector who discovered a vein of what he was pretty sure wasn’t lead, so he trekked 30 tons of the stuff over the mountains to the assayer, and was rewarded with the news that it was silver. His stake made him a rich man and he began buying land in California, which of course made him even richer.

William Randolph Hearst was born into this wealth, but he didn’t sit around on his money bags. He built an incredible media empire of newspapers, magazines and movies, which made him one of the richest men in the world. The castle was his dream, but he actually owned seven of them, and something like 30 houses in every part of the world. He deeded San Simeon to the State of California, and today it is a public trust.

I haven’t even mentioned the zoo, which housed lions, bears, giraffes, African sheep, buffalo, and all kinds of exotics, or the pergola that extended around the mountain and covered the horse trail. Or the guests: Chaplin, Gable, Carole Lombard, Marion Davies – his West Coast “wife” – Woodrow Wilson, politicians, public figures, celebrities. Every day was a party. He was a great host, who like to teach his guests to yodel and often got up from the dinner table to do a little hoofing for their enjoyment.

If I owned a house like this, I’d pirouette around the table too.

Betty