Hearst Castle

William Randolph Hearst never called it a castle. To him it was the ranch. Julia Morgan spent twenty-eight years building it, and it was never finished.

My husband sold Hearst about fifteen hundred acres of our coast land in 1922 or 1923, so our family's history and his are folded together more than either side intended. He was invited up to the castle for it, and he would not go. I am just a farmer, he said, and I have no business up there with all those famous people.

Some of the family were not of that mind. They knew people who worked on the hill, and our granddaughters Susan and Linda, and I think their cousin Betty, were invited more than once to swim in that pool. They went, and it was a wonderful time.

The house is up the hill and you reach it only on the tour coach. If you have not booked, the view from here is what you get. If you do want to go up, it is worth the trouble.

The tours leave from the visitor center by the highway, and there are several: the Grand Rooms for a first visit, the Upstairs Suites for the private rooms, the Cottages and Kitchen for how the place actually ran, and one about Julia Morgan herself, the first woman licensed as an architect in California. You will see the Neptune Pool under the sky and the Roman Pool under gold tile, and the dining hall where the guests sat beneath banners at a table set with paper napkins and ketchup bottles, because Hearst liked it that way. Book ahead, especially in summer, and give it half a day.

And keep an eye on the pastures going north. The zebras are not a trick of the light. They are the descendants of Hearst's private zoo, and they have run loose on the ranch since it closed.