Wyntoon

The earliest known inhabitants of the area of Wyntoon were the Winnemem Wintu tribe of Native Americans, a subgroup of the Wintun people. In the 1880s, outdoorsman, guide, hunter and trapper Justin Hinckley Sisson came to the area and established a hotel, restaurant and tavern at the foot of Mount Shasta. He advocated for a railroad line to be extended northward from Redding to his location, and was successful. Construction of the Central Pacific Railroad through the Siskiyou Trail began in the mid-1880s, and Sisson bought in its path. The railroad was completed in 1887 and brought miners, hunters, fishermen, loggers, naturalists and tourists. With his wife, the former Miss Lydia Field, Sisson operated the inn, and he led various groups of hunters, geologists and mountain climbers. With profits from his successful business, Sisson acquired large parcels of land including the tract which would become Wyntoon. He established the town of Sisson surrounding his inn, and he built a fishing resort a half-day's ride away on the McCloud River, at an elevation between , some distant. Popular with hunters and fishermen, it became known as "Sisson's-on-the-McCloud". Justin Sisson died in 1893. In 1924, the town of Sisson was renamed Mount Shasta, California. == Charles S. Wheeler's hunting lodge ==

's 1899 structure "The Bend" was torn down in 1934 and rebuilt by Julia Morgan. In 1899, Sisson's widow sold the McCloud River fishing resort site to Charles Stetson Wheeler, a wealthy attorney from San Francisco. This parcel lay in the Cascade Range of mountains, south by southeast of Mount Shasta. Wheeler called this holding the Wheeler Ranch, and he built a hunting lodge on the river at Horseshoe Bend—its cornerstone was laid in 1899. The multi-wing lodge, dramatic with its stone walls and slate roof, was designed by San Francisco architect Willis Polk, and included an 800-book library with room for hundreds of Native American baskets. Wheeler directed Polk to give the lodge a "fish tower"—a high study with a view, and two windows which were aquariums containing local trout. A Latin inscription over the entrance indicated this room was a temple to fishing: piscatoribus sacrum. Polk's design was pictured in July 1899 in The American Architect and Building News which described it as a "California Mountain Home". Sir Banister Fletcher included the building in a list of Shingle Style architecture. The layout of the structure, a "rambling group of masses", snaked through the trees, curving to follow the bend in the river, the curve creating a courtyard with a circular drive and a central fountain. The dining room enjoyed a three-sided view of the river, and diners could take the air on a wraparound porch. The porch opened to the river in a flight of wooden steps leading down to an octagonal gazebo pierced and supported by a large tree, overhanging the tumbling waters. who called it Wyntoon for the local Wintu tribe. William Randolph Hearst bought Wyntoon outright from its 99-year lease in 1929, and in 1934 bought all of Wheeler Ranch and The Bend, a combined total of . == Phoebe Hearst's castle ==

's Wyntoon project seen in 1906. It burned down in 1929. Phoebe Hearst, upon signing the 99-year lease, decided to build a very grand residence. She hired Bernard Maybeck to design one in the Gothic style of a Rhine River castle. The structure was mainly complete in 1902, and cost Hearst $100,000. The castle's layout was fitted to the slope of the site, and to a semicircle of six tall conifers. Its footprint was ; an underground cellar was wide, high, and ran the length of the building, containing stores and a central heating furnace supplying steam throughout the building. The central tower made of stone reached to a height of . A plumbed room entered from the outside allowed fishermen and hunters to clean their catch and themselves. Maybeck designed a dining hall much like the living room, with Gothic stone walls and high peaked roof, and two opposing fireplaces, but its Gothic tables were unusually placed against the walls leaving the center area open. Benches were provided for diners to sit. The kitchen wing, , adjoined the dining room, connected through a wide butler's hall. Staff were provided rooms in the kitchen wing. Its foundation of cut stone reached to the top of the ground floor; the second story's wall was of rubble stone. The roof was topped by light gray slate. Initial critical reactions to the kitchen wing's exterior appearance led Hearst to surround it with shrubbery. It was featured in American Homes and Gardens in 1906, a three-page spread; the same space given the house in Architectural Review in 1904. The writer in Architectural Review criticized the quaint wooden carvings which gave the impression of "pastry and perfume", Hearst occasionally entertained her society friends and acquaintances at Wyntoon, bringing selected guests up north from the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915. At her death in 1919, she willed Wyntoon to her niece Anne Apperson Flint, along with a Cadillac car and $250,000. Flint moved in with her husband, Joseph Marshall Flint, M.D, a former Yale professor of surgery. During this time, architect Julia Morgan designed four structures which were built at Wyntoon: a superintendent's residence and a separate servant's quarters in 1924, and in 1925, a stables building holding a caretaker's house erected near a "Swiss Chalet" which was built for higher-status domestic staff. == William Randolph Hearst's projects ==

From his mother's will, William Randolph Hearst received the bulk of the family inheritance, including the ranch in San Simeon, the Babicora Ranch in Mexico, a fruit orchard in Butte County, and various mining and industrial stocks, the whole worth around 5–10 million dollars. Wyntoon, however, was given to his cousin Anne Apperson Flint in his mother's will, and Hearst was angered over this. but he remained forever embittered toward his cousin. In early 1930, Hearst contracted to have Morgan design an even larger castle as replacement. Morgan was already working for Hearst on Hearst Castle in San Simeon and nearly finished with The Hacienda near King City. Morgan collaborated with her early mentor and teacher Maybeck on plans for an eight-story Bavarian Gothic-style castle with two great towers and more minor turrets, some 61 bedrooms proposed for Wyntoon's largest building project. The monastery was taken apart and removed illegally, but the Spanish government was changing hands and was not effective in stopping Hearst's hired men. Some 10,000 stones were shipped to a warehouse in San Francisco at a total cost of about $1 million. Another old structure removed from Europe was proposed for Wyntoon: the great tithe barn of Bradenstoke Priory in England. Most of the priory had been used by Hearst to refurbish St Donat's Castle in Wales in the late 1920s, but the tithe barn had been crated and shipped to San Simeon for possible use there. Hearst proposed that the unused Bradenstoke barn be incorporated into his great castle, and had Morgan study the possibilities. In the spring of 1931, Morgan offered several designs for Hearst's consideration, all of them using the stones of the Spanish monastery on the ground floor, reinforced by steel girders to take the weight of the upper floors. Portions of the monastery were considered as a library, an "armory", and a living room. The final proposal from Morgan included an indoor swimming pool constructed from the monastery's old church. The long swimming pool featured changing rooms and lounges in the old side chapels, shallow water for wading in the apse, deep water in the central plunge, and a diving board where the altar had been. In July 1931, as a steam shovel was making ready to level enough land to accommodate the great castle, Hearst put a stop to all his construction plans. These three-story structures with steeply gabled roofs were completed in 1933. Swiss artisan Jules Suppo and his assistants carved much of the German Gothic decorations. Day painted fine inscriptions and exterior decorative patterns. Hungarian illustrator Willy Pogany painted exterior murals depicting Russian and Germanic fairy tales such as those from the Brothers Grimm, but Pogany's versions were bright, humorous and cheerful, not dark and grim. In 1934, Hearst bought all of Wheeler Ranch. Polk's structure "The Bend" was torn down except for one wing containing the master bedroom. This wing held the cornerstone engraved "The Bend – 1899". The rest of the building was redesigned by Morgan in Gothic Revival style and rebuilt from 1935 to 1941 using many of its original stones. Headed by New York Judge Clarence J. Shearn, the trustees slashed Hearst's costs and halted the smaller side projects at San Simeon and Wyntoon which had kept so many contractors busy. Wyntoon was maintained only by a skeleton staff paid for by the Hearst Corporation. Hearst never hosted more than 14 guests at Wyntoon after the bankruptcy. Davies' cherished dachshund named Gandhi, 15 years old, fell gravely ill during this time; a veterinarian was called and the animal put down by injection. Distraught, Davies raged through Bear House, later writing: "I broke everything I could lay my hands on." Hearst's favorite dog Helen died in his arms at Wyntoon; he buried her on a hillside covered with flowers, the spot marked by a stone inscribed, "Here lies dearest Helen – my devoted friend." During the Wyntoon residency of Hearst and Davies, they received fewer visitors than they had at San Simeon, because it was more remote. They spent much time together, and Davies picked up sewing again after years of no practice. She sewed silk fabric into ties for Hearst. Over the 1943–1944 winter, with snow and ice transforming the outdoor scenery, Wyntoon hosted actor Clark Gable, film directors Louis B. Mayer and Raoul Walsh, columnist Louella Parsons, cartoonist Jimmy Swinnerton and his wife, aviator Charles Lindbergh and his family, the former president's daughter Anna Roosevelt and her husband John Boettiger (who worked for Hearst), and millionaire industrialist Joe Kennedy who brought his 26-year-old son "Jack", the future president. Jack surprised Hearst by swimming in the freezing McCloud. == Today ==

Hearst's trustees reorganized the Hearst Corporation in 1943, installing Richard E. Berlin as president. Under Berlin, Wyntoon was made to turn a profit—the old 50,000-acre Wheeler Ranch holding and adjoining parcels adding up to were logged and replanted with more tree seedlings, the operation generating about $2 million annually by 1959. In the late 1980s, architects Blunk Demattei Associates (BDA) began working with the Hearst Corporation to complete the interior of "Angel House" whose construction had been halted in the late 1930s. BDA next began to remodel the one original bedroom wing of Polk's "The Bend". There, the second and main bedroom wing (finished in the 1950s in Tudor style) burned down on December 30, 1992, and BDA was contracted to rebuild it. Today, the estate is owned by the Hearst Corporation, and is not open to the public. The estate is grandfathered in the law as a "senior rights holder" to use an unlimited amount of water from the adjoining McCloud River. == References ==