Factions Joust Over Hearst Castle’s Riches

A tinny recording of 1930s music sets the mood for visitors loaded into buses for the five-mile ride up through golden hills to Hearst Castle.

Tour guides at the top let the crowds decide whether to hear about publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s love of fine art and elaborate ceilings, or the lavish parties he threw with actress Marion Davies, his longtime mistress.

Visitors can walk out on the veranda by the Casa del Sol guest house and look down on the Pacific Ocean, the wide reaches of Hearst Ranch and the park visitor’s center, overflowing in summer with cars and tour buses.

But although California’s most profitable state park bustles with more than 20,000 people on a busy day, business leaders here and in nearby Cambria, San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay say the castle isn’t nearly crowded enough.

Many motel owners and shopkeepers in San Luis Obispo County accuse the state of mismanaging the area’s largest single tourist attraction and are demanding a more aggressive marketing campaign for Hearst Castle.

About 750,000 people visit the castle each year, a dip from a decade ago when crowds routinely topped 1 million annually.

What’s bad for business, however, is good for travelers, who can often walk in on a castle tour even in summer. That’s a far cry from 10 years ago when visitors often had to buy tickets weeks in advance for July and August.

State park officials say that attendance tumbled partly because of events they could not control, such as heavy winter rains and an economic downturn along the Central Coast. But they are optimistic that California’s booming economy will bring back the tourists. And park officials emphasize that preservation--not commercialism--remains the primary goal of the state park system.

“Our first responsibility is the protection and interpretation of the historical monument,” said Kirk Sturm, interim superintendent after a recent shake-up of castle management. “But we’ve done nothing to hurt attendance. Heck, we’d love to see a million people.”

Some lower-level park employees worry about huge crowds. “This isn’t an amusement park where all we have to do is add a ride,” said one longtime tour guide. “This is a fine arts museum.”

State officials are listening to the complaints from the business community. State Parks and Recreation Director John “Rusty” Areias traveled to San Simeon on Friday to meet with local business and community leaders at Hearst Castle and work on smoothing relations. Hearst Castle is one of only two state parks that is profitable enough to send money back to Sacramento each year. (The other is the jointly managed Huntington and Bolsa Chica state beaches.)

The castle sits 40 miles north of San Luis Obispo, off California 1. Often called “the jewel of the state park system,” Hearst Castle is one of the last stopping points for tourists headed north to the Big Sur coast.

Constructed over a 28-year period starting in 1919, the castle houses 22,000 artifacts. For all its size and majesty, the castle’s full impact on the community only really was felt when the Hearst Corp. deeded the property to the state for a park in 1958. Motels, restaurants and whole towns developed to serve the crowds that flocked here.

Glenn Baldwin is one businessman who works literally in the shadow of Hearst Castle, at least in the morning before the sun has risen above the Lucia Mountains. Baldwin operates Sebastian’s General Store in old San Simeon. While there is a newer and flashier San Simeon full of chain motels and restaurants three miles south, old San Simeon is located across the highway from the castle’s visitor center and sports one well-known business--Sebastian’s.

It was first opened as a trading post by a whaling captain in 1852 and has operated continuously ever since. Baldwin works the cash register and fixes meals for guests at the small bed and breakfast in back.

“I took the store over in 1995, and attendance up there has been dropping ever since,” Baldwin said. While Hearst Castle may be important economically to the entire county, it’s all Baldwin has. “It’s not really what the state is doing to promote the castle. It’s more like what they’re doing to hurt it.”

He joins business leaders who criticize the state not only for poor marketing efforts but also for missing prime promotional possibilities. They say state officials routinely use a gift deed with the Hearst Corp. as an excuse to turn down opportunities such as a request last fall from ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” to broadcast from the castle. The gift deed gives the Hearst Corp. final say over all souvenirs, books and broadcast materials offered at the castle.

State officials also have cited the gift deed as a reason they have limited movies shown at the large-format National Geographic Theater in the Hearst Castle Visitor Center. “Mysteries of Egypt” is being shown because of a tie to Egyptian antiquities at the castle, but “Everest” was turned down.

That decision baffles Baldwin.

“You have to ask yourself: Why did they put such an expensive thing in and then limit it so much?” he said. “How can that theater even survive on such a small selection of movies?”

Dick Troy, Southern California division chief for the park system, said he was not involved in turning away “Good Morning America,” and other decisions that have provoked controversy.

He said the merchants have unfairly blamed the department for drops in attendance caused by events such as the periodic closings of California 1 in Big Sur because of landslides and wet weather.

“I look at the overall visitor experience, and I think we are doing a bang-up job,” Troy said. “If we have any problem, it is in community relations. We’re working on it.”

The Hearst Corp. is staying out of the fray, said Stephen T. Hearst, great-grandson of William Randolph Hearst and manager of the company’s real estate holdings.

He said the company didn’t prevent the showing of any movies at the visitor’s center, didn’t thwart ABC and is not heavy-handed in enforcing the gift deed.

“The term ‘proper and dignified’ is mentioned a number of times in the gift deed document,” Hearst said.

“It is a museum. It’s not a carnival. And we want to make sure it is preserved as a museum.”