8/3/2023 0 Comments Mystery house phoenix![]() It expanded incrementally into an 18-room, 8,000-square-foot dwelling with hallways, doors and trapdoors of varying sizes, multiple stairways, conversation pits, and 13 fireplaces. ![]() His “sand castle in the desert” sprung from a mountainside some 450 feet above the valley floor. While trying to recover his health, Gulley began building this eccentric architectural fantasy. He established ownership of the land on which he was squatting by making improvements to the property and supposedly “working” the mine. Since territorial times, Arizona’s warm, dry climate had drawn tuberculosis sufferers, as well as prospectors, so Gulley’s decision to relocate was not wholly illogical. He turned up two years later at the base of South Mountain, seven miles south of downtown Phoenix, living in an abandoned boxcar on an old mining claim. In 1927, shortly after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a frequently fatal disease at that time, Gulley vanished. Built of natural materials gathered from the surrounding area and a variety of found objects, from telephone poles to automobile parts, the castle remains a beloved tourist attraction and a notable monument of vernacular architecture.īoyce Luther Gulley, a Seattle businessman with some training in architectural engineering, was fond of sculpting elaborate sand castles for his young daughter, Mary Lou. This idiosyncratic building came to national attention when a Life magazine article in the late 1940s dubbed it the Mystery Castle and detailed the murky circumstances surrounding its construction. ![]()
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