Scotty's Castle

We are now in Pahrump, Nevada at Terribles Lakeside RV Resort. We left Florence Sunday morning, spent Sunday night in Henderson, NV and arrived here about noon on Monday the 30th. Monday afternoon we got together with our friends Don & Carol Dingman who were already here in Pahrump at the Winery RV Park. We then made plans for the following day to visit the famous "Scotty's Castle" located in Death Valley National Park. It was about a three hour drive to get there so we left here early Tuesday morning at 8 am.Arriving at 11 am we were greeted with this view of the building and grounds.


Admission to the "castle" is only available via a conducted 40 minute tour and our tour guide shown here sure looked the part. We entered through the door in the circular tower...




...into this inner courtyard.
Note the clarion clock tower in the background











From there a door on the left led to this sitting room on the lower floor of the living quarters.







We then were led through several rooms in succession with stops in each where the guide described what we were seeing.

We toured Scottie's bedroom (not shown) and this lower level music room with this large Don Quixote tapestry on the wall. This room also housed this player piano.

On the left, note the small keyboard for the clarion.









This hallway then led to the dining room and kitchen in succession.










Dinnerware in dining room.












Kitchen stove.









At this point in the tour we were led up a staircase to the second floor which contained several bedrooms, a bathroom and ...a glorious upper level music room complete with a Welte-Mignon theater organ with more than 1,000 pipes.
Chandelier in upper music room.


And now for the rest of the story!
It turns out that Scotty's Castle is essentially a big sham. Walter Scott aka Scotty, was a flimflam man that managed to talk a rich Chicago insurance magnate named Albert Johnson into investing large sums of money in a non existent gold mine in the desert. Mr. Johnson on discovering that he had been flimflammed decided that he liked the area so much that he undertook to build this magnificent Spanish themed manor house here in the desert as a vacation retreat for he and his wife, Bessie. He also became so enamored with the Scotty character that he entered into a quasi partnership with him using Scotty as a front man.