Coronavirus closed Hearst Castle. Here’s what else has stopped tours at the monument
Closing iconic tourist attractions like Hearst Castle and Disneyland aren’t decisions that officials make lightly, easily or often, for obvious reasons.
The impact of such a closure can be huge to guests, area businesses who rely on income from those visitors and the attractions themselves.
To help reduce the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the Castle and its Visitor Center closed on March 15. Disneyland, its hotels and associated attractions closed the same weekend.
According to Indiewire.com, the entire Disneyland complex has been closed four times since the park opened 1955: For the day of mourning in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and now, during the coronavirus pandemic.
Likewise, during Hearst Castle’s six decades of operation as a California state historical monument open for public tours, the former mega estate of media magnate William Randolph Hearst has had few closures of more than a few days at a time.
Those shorter shut-downs were generally triggered by landslides that closed Highway 1 or by public-safety issues caused during high-wind storms.
Former museum director recalls past closures
Hoyt Fields is a former Castle museum director, a retired annuitant who’s now in his 51st year of working for the Hearst family or the state park.
According to Fields’ recollections on March 19, officials called a longer-term halt to tours on the hilltop compound, or issued closure orders for equally serious causes, fewer than 20 times since the Castle opened to the public in 1958.
Here are the previous closures:
• A week’s closure after a bomb exploded on the balcony of the estate’s Casa del Sol guest house in February 1976. The explosion narrowly missed a tour and caused about $1 million in damage to the building and its treasured contents. The case was never solved, but the blast was thought to be tied to the federal bank-robbery trial of kidnapped Hearst heir Patty Hearst.
• About a dozen subsequent bomb threats and sniper threats.
• A week’s closure near the end of May 1976 for an ill-timed but previously scheduled fumigation project.
• The Marble Cone Fire raged for about three weeks in August 1977. The lightning-caused conflagration burned 177,866 acres in the Santa Lucia mountain range (Ventana Wilderness area).
• The Castle closed briefly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, since the Castle was identified as a possible target.
• The monument closed for only a day and half following the Magnitude 6.6 San Simeon Earthquake in December 2003. Damage was minimal, even though the temblor’s epicenter was only a few miles from the monument.
The lack of damage from the temblor was acknowledged to be a testament to the skill of the estate’s architect, Julia Morgan, who specialized in earthquake-proofing her structures.
For instance, Sara Holmes Boutelle wrote of the Castle’s Neptune Pool in her book “Julia Morgan, Architect” saying, “On a site excavated from a steep hillside, the pool is hung by reinforced concrete beams from the concrete retaining wall in such a way that a seismic movement would let it sway but not break.”
Morgan’s influence on the Castle is being honored this year with a special Julia Morgan Tour that takes visitors into rarely seen areas of the monument and exhibit photographic displays of her architectural drawings, family photos and personal items. The honor coincides with the 100th anniversary of the start of construction at Hearst’s hilltop estate.
• The Chimney Fire torched 46,343 acres in 2017, destroying 49 homes and 21 other buildings, including some nonresidential structures on the Hearst Ranch. The blaze burned to within about 2 miles of the Castle, which was closed for eight days as firefighters staged their western-flank attack on Castle and Hearst Ranch grounds. The fire started near Lake Nacimiento.
