Hearst
Castle embodies opulence
By Kari Schneider
Daily-Forty Niner
Six
hours away from Los Angeles on a hill overlooking
the Pacific Ocean, sits Hearst Castle.
 Excavation
began in 1922, but the grand castle was
not livable until 1927. With the Mediterranean
architectural style and William Randolph
Hearst’s art collection from Europe and
the Mediterranean, Hearst Castle in San
Simeon is in a class of its own.
Hearst inherited the 250,000 acres of ranchland
from his father in 1919. The land once used
for family camping trips, was turned into
an enchanted castle and private zoo. The
estate of 165 rooms and 127 acres of gardens,
terraces, pools and walkways was named “La
Cuesta Encantada,” which is Spanish for,
“The Enchanted Hill.”
Three tours allow visitors to see the lavishness
of Hearst’s home year-round. There are 56
bedrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 102 bathrooms
and 41 fireplaces for a total of 90,080
square feet.
From arched ceilings to rich tapestries,
Hearst Castle is the ideal of what money
can buy. It takes four tours to see the
whole thing and one tour is seasonal from
April to October. The two pools on the estate
are amazing. The Neptune Pool is of a Greco-Roman
style and the Roman Pool is lined with blue
Venetian glass and gold tiles.
The grand experience of the buildings was
not enough for Hearst, so he created the
largest private zoo in the world in 1923,
with more than 300 exotic animals. From
Bactrian (two-humped) and dromedary (one-humped)
camels, llamas, kangaroos and ostriches
to emus, Barbary sheep, Alaskan big-horned
sheep, musk oxen and yaks, a wide range
of exotic animals graze the hillsides.
The zoo began to break up in 1937 after
Hearst experienced great financial difficulty
and was forced to cut expenses at the ranch.
Many of the animals were donated to public
zoos or sold. When Hearst Castle was given
to the state, there were still Rocky Mountain
elk, tahr goats, llamas, white fallow deer,
zebras, Barbary sheep and sambar deer on
the ranch. Few of these animals have survived
over the years, but often zebra can be seen
grazing in the pastures along the highway.
William Randolph Hearst is well known for
his practice of “yellow journalism,” which
is the use of sensationalistic use of photos
and headlines, focusing on personality,
scandal and human-interest stories. At his
peak, his ownership spanned 28 major newspapers,
18 magazines, several radio stations and
movie companies.
In 1957, Hearst Castle was deeded to the
state of California and became a state historical
monument, run by the state park service.
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