By Donna Reiner
The Mystery Castle was constructed by Boyce Luther Gulley between the early 1930s and 1945 on a desert hillside site overlooking the Salt River Valley, home of Phoenix, Arizona. Beyond this simple statement of fact, many of the details of how the Castle came to be are shrouded in lore and myth. In part because the property was operated for over sixty years as a tourist attraction and house museum, and because so many of the Castle’s quirky features demand explanation, myriad stories about its creation have been recorded that are difficult to confirm or deny. The factual history of the Castle remains, in many aspects, mysterious.
Boyce Luther Gulley
Boyce Luther Gulley was born in Melbourne, Arkansas in 1883 to a rather prominent family. Little is known about his childhood. By 1910, he was still residing in Arkansas and had some business. During the 1910s he spent a year or two in Oklahoma, which is where he met his future wife, Frances Bradford. They married and moved to Wenatchee, Washington, where they settled with Gulley operating a shoe company for their support.
By 1920, the Gulleys had moved to Seattle, Washington. Gulley worked as the manager of a shoe store, and later as a traveling shoe salesman. Documents indicate that he worked for the Buster Brown Shoe Company, which later became the Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company.
The Gulleys’ daughter, Mary Louise, was born in 1923 in Seattle. Years later, Mary Lou told the story that as a child, she and her father talked about fairy tales and made sand castles. He promised that one day he would build her a permanent one since the sand ones always disappeared. According to Mary Lou, her father left when she was three years old, which would be around 1926, but it is unclear where her father Boyce was between that year and the divorce decree in December, 1930.
It’s assumed that Boyce Gulley came to Arizona either in the late 1920s or early 1930s, based on the stories Mary Lou Gulley related. The 1930 US Census showed him as the head of household in Seattle. However, there was an acrimonious divorce at the end of 1930, when his former wife Frances won custody of Mary Lou, so he may not have still been living in Seattle then.
After his death in 1945, it was discovered that Gulley had tuberculosis. It seems reasonable to conclude that is why he came to Arizona, as did many others who had TB or other respiratory diseases. The damp Seattle climate must have been detrimental to his health. In Arizona, TB sufferers hoped that the dry air would help them recover, and for what Gulley managed to accomplish in the next 15 years, the Arizona air was extremely helpful.
How Gulley decided on the site he chose on the northern side of South Mountain is also not known, but he received a land patent under the Homestead Act for the 7.01 acres in April, 1940 after putting in the required improvements.
The Castle's Creation
The details of how the Mystery Castle was built and where many of the items came from stem from the stories that Mary Lou Gulley told in her tours. It has been reported that she may have embellished things in the telling. As she had no contact with her father prior to inheriting the Mystery Castle, she may have relied on the information of the caretaker, Charlie, who passed along numerous tales as to where items originated.
Boyce Gulley had no apparent training in designing or constructing a building. It appears that he read engineering books and probably asked others questions. Based on the finished results, Gulley’s design was a very basic organic architectural style. The building harmonizes with its natural surroundings not only in shape, but also in materials used. South Mountain had been said to be the place that people merely dumped items they no longer wanted or were no longer usable. Gulley quickly figured out how to incorporate cast offs as much as possible. According to Mary Lou, once people in the area heard about the building, they brought stuff to Gulley.
Throughout the castle, one can find old telegraph poles used as beams; reused and new brick as pillars; old windows from buildings being torn down; slate chalkboards in the floor; and glass refrigerator dishes (the base and lid) being used as window panes. It truly is amazing how Gulley managed to find a use for so many things in the construction process.
According to the information provided in the tours, the first section of the castle built was the living room. Mary Lou explained in her book, which came out in 1952, that “the floor [main lounge] was in the design of an enormous wagon wheel. The ‘Hub’ was a large stone fireplace in the center of the room. The heat from the fireplace warmed the rocks on the other side and gave a radiant heating system to the other rooms.” A rather ingenious idea as it could be quite cold on the mountain in the winter months. The second section built was the kitchen (north of the first), according to Mary Lou.
The floors throughout the castle are “decorated” in various stones and designs. There is some thought that some of the more special stone on the interior as well as the exterior came from Gulley’s mining claims.
Many of the accoutrements and furnishings came from Mexico, according to Mary Lou’s tour information. How many trips Gulley may have made across the border is not known. The border crossings were not recorded or accessible and no passport was found.
The exterior has many unique spots. On the “main” patio are what appear to be two “urns.” On closer examination, they resemble classical fluted columns although they are clearly in the shape of a saguaro cactus, native to the Sonoran Desert where the castle is situated.
Mary Lou’s book “My Mystery Castle” claimed that there was a Mexican Aztec calendar stone cemented in the grey stucco wall below the main parapets. She also mentioned that her father had purchased an old mission bell in Mexico City which hung in the highest turret. Unfortunately, that was stolen in the early days of her occupancy in the castle (prior to 1952).
That same book describes very little about specific sections of the house or when they were built. It spends more time describing the adventures she and her mother had when they first took over the property, which had been left to Mary Lou as the sole heir to Boyce Gulley’s estate.
Newspaper articles provide numerous descriptions: “a tower resembling the turret of a medieval castle overlooks one wing of the building, while another wing features a Spanish-type balcony. Stones representative of Arizona such as turquoise and onyx are set in the walls…along with …a sundial from the Mexico castle of Empress Carlotta.”
The Name: Mystery Castle
Mary Lou and her mother arrived in Arizona in 1946 after receiving notification of her father’s death in 1945. Nearly 23 years of age, Mary Lou was about to receive a shock and become integral part of maintaining the symbol of her father’s love. Gulley required that Mary Lou live in Arizona for two years before the Castle would officially become hers.
A particular tale that has been made the crux of the Castle’s appeal involves the circumstances of his bequest to Mary Lou, as featured in a Life magazine feature in 1948. Just inside the entry door at the base of the Castle, a wooden hatch was constructed to conceal a recessed compartment in the floor. The hatch was secured with a large lock and Gulley asked that the hatch not be opened until New Years’ Day, 1948. The magazine correspondent and photographer were on hand for the opening of the treasure chest (or a reenactment of it). Inside were found letters from Mary Lou’s father, his portrait photo, a valentine from Mary Lou to her father from when she was 7 years old, some gold ore, and a billfold with $500. The letters were to become the genesis of much of the backstory for Gulley’s creation of the castle.
Having no occupation, Mary Lou needed to find some way to support herself and her mother. And she was aware that people were curious about that strange building on the side of South Mountain that she now called home.
Originally Mary Lou Gulley “billed” the castle as El Casalina. While the Spanish name might have conveyed a certain exoticness, labeling the structure as The Mystery Castle seemed to provide a greater sense of something different.
The Mystery Castle name came about when Mary Lou decided to give tours in order to raise money. Once the January 26, 1948 Life Magazine issue reached the newsstands, the tour business began to take off. Since there is no air conditioning in the castle, the tours were limited to the cooler months, which were generally October through May. Mary Lou’s book, “My Mystery Castle,” which came out in late 1952, received great coverage in the press and won the Mark Twain Medal awarded by the International Mark Twain Society in early 1953. This also increased the public’s awareness and interest in the Mystery Castle.
Operation as a House Museum
Ever the entrepreneur, Mary Lou offered the Chapel portion of the castle as a site for small weddings, although one article credits her mother for this idea. The first such event took place in February, 1952 and was quite the affair.
Because of its distance from downtown Phoenix and it not being within the city limits until the 1950s, the isolated castle did not have electricity until 1968. No mention was made as to when water came to the property, but it was probably around this time as well, as the nearby municipal water storage tanks were installed some years after 1953. In the early years, water was hauled to the castle.
In 1969, the castle became the center piece of an episode of “Then Came Bronson” TV series. Interior and exterior scenes are recognizable.
When comparing the Mystery Castle to other made-by-hand edifices, Gulley’s creation may be the most unusual. Perhaps not knowing where various components came from nor did Gulley do all of the construction by himself increases the aura of mystery. To this day, visits to Mystery Castle still conjure up questions about how it could be done by one person.
Mary Lou Gulley became an artist in her own right, and is credited with many of the painted decorations, furnishings and sculptures that were added to the Castle. She continued to operate the Castle as a house museum seasonally until her death in 2010.
Prior to her death, Mary Lou set up a private charitable foundation to own and operate the Castle into the future. The Mystery Castle Historical Foundation became owner in 2010.
Why is the Mystery Castle Important?
by Bob Graham
Mystery Castle is unquestionably a unique and special place. The Castle property is primarily important for its architectural and artistic design qualities. While the Castle has been recognized as historic by the city of Phoenix with an HP zoning overlay, it has no formal recognition at the state or federal level. In my opinion, it 's likely that the property would be considered to be of national importance and may qualify as a National Historic Landmark.
From the perspective of the National Register of Historic Places, the property would be considered significant under National Register Criterion C, Design and Construction: properties “that embody distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction; that represent the work of a master, that possess high artistic value; or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction.” Those familiar with the Castle will immediately grasp how well it satisfies this criterion.
The Castle is difficult to classify architecturally, as it does not cleanly fall into typical academic stylistic categories. Architectural critic Charles Jencks saw buildings like this as “Handmades,” and pointed to their relationship to the Folk Art movement in America. There are a number of similar sites sprinkled around the Country, but few in any one place. They were generally built by those seen as eccentrics in their time and were on the fringes of society where they were built. Most were houses constructed by their owners for themselves, including the Burns House, Belfast, ME; the Pullem House, North Carolina; Thunder Mountain Monument, NV; and the House of Mirrors in Woodstock, NY. It also includes, most prominently, Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in Los Angeles, CA.
This sort of handmade building signifies an important national theme of Folk Art employed architecturally. It should be noted that Mystery Castle compares favorably with Watts Towers in this regard. Watts Towers is a listed National Historic Landmark.
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