Hearst Castle reopens with new tour focused on its architect, Julia Morgan

As of May 11, tourist-packed motor coaches are once again making the dizzying ascent up to La Cuesta Encantada – “The Enchanted Hill,” the Central Coast of California’s most magnetizing and majestic tourist attraction-slash-architectural landmark (sorry, Madonna Inn) and the best-known work of Julia Morgan, the trailblazing Bay Area architect and reinforced concrete pioneer who, in 1904, became the first woman to obtain an architecture license in California.

Better known as Hearst Castle, the historic San Luis Obispo County estate—built between 1920 and 1947 for publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, it opened to the public in 1958 as part of the California State Parks-operated Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument—suspended public tours in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic; even as pandemic restrictions eventually lifted across California and beyond, the fabled estate remained off-limits to the public following a historic rainstorm in January 2021 that led to culvert failures along the upper portion of site’s main access road. Now, the 2.5-mile-long stretch of storm-impacted roadway has now been reconstructed and reengineered and California State Parks has reopened Hearst Castle to visitors following its more than two-year closure.

“Hearst Castle is a state treasure and we are thrilled to reopen this wonder to the public to enjoy in a safe and responsible manner,” said California State Parks Director Armando Quintero in a statement announcing Hearst Castle’s highly anticipated reopening. “We are confident that these once-in-a-lifetime repairs and improvements to the road facility will serve countless generations to come.”

As detailed by California Parks, roughly 22,000 annual tour bus trips were made along the main access road prior to the pandemic. Stretching five miles through rugged, hilly terrain rising more than 1,500 feet above the Pacific Ocean and Highway 1, the final stretch of roadway “navigates rocky outcroppings and steep canyons by splitting into separate, narrower, one-directional sections for uphill and downhill traffic.” The estimated $13.7 million access road reconstruction project involved building new concrete retaining walls and restoring some of historic existing stone walls; replacing the road’s storm-damaged, 1920s-era clay pipe culverts with modern counterparts able to withstand future deluges; and tearing up the old asphalt roadway and recycling it into a “thicker, stronger” new roadway as part of a full-depth reclamation process.

In addition to a new and resilient access road, Hearst Castle’s reopening comes with a long-overdue emphasis on Morgan, who has been historically taken a backseat to Hearst (and the estate’s many notable Hollywood habitués during the Roaring Twenties) in the house-museum’s public-facing programming. Morgan is now the subject of a new namesake tour that focuses “on rarely seen areas of Hearst Castle that highlight her gift for design, and photographic displays of architectural drawings, family photos, and personal items.” The timing of the Julia Morgan Tour’s launch at Hearst Castle is opportune as it follows the March release of Victoria Kastner’s in-depth biography Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect from Chronicle Books.

As noted by the San Luis Obispo Tribune, the new tour was initially set to launch in 2020 as part of a series of centennial celebrations commemorating the start of construction at the palatial Spanish Colonial Revival compound but was pushed back for obvious reasons. While Hearst Castle is Morgan’s most well-known and largest completed work (the sprawling hilltop estate, including its iconic main residence La Casa Grande, encompasses four buildings spread across 80,000 square feet and includes 58 bedrooms, 60 bathrooms, and one Lady Gaga-famous swimming pool), she designed over 700 buildings across California over a prolific but largely low-key career, including many projects, both before and after Hearst Castle, as William Randolph Hearst’s principal architect. In addition to her work with the Hearst family, Morgan’s other major projects include a long and fruitful collaboration with the YWCA and at Mills College in Oakland. Morgan died in 1957 at the age of 85 in her hometown of San Francisco; in 2014 she was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the first woman architect to receive the prestigious honor. In addition to becoming the first licensed female architect in California, Morgan was also the first woman to study architecture at the School of Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In addition to a new access road and new tour celebrating Morgan’s legacy, the reopening of Hearst Castle, which is both a U.S. National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark, will help to resuscitate the tourism-dependent economy of San Simeon, the small coastal town where the estate is located. With its main attraction closed to visitors over the last two years, local businesses hope that the reopening will provide the town with the economic shot in the arm that it so desperately needs.

Ticketing and tour information for Hearst Castle, which is reopening with admission fees $3 lower than before the pandemic, can be found here. For those whose summer travel plans include the superlatively scenic stretch of California coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco with a pit-stop in San Simeon, advanced reservations are highly recommended.