Castle of Golden Dreams

I don't remember who first told me about the mystery castle.

I was living in Phoenix, AZ., still married, and playing poker at the American Legion with an occasional weekend trip to Las Vegas. Friends knew I was interested in off-beat stories and somebody mentioned that I should visit the Mystery Castle in South Phoenix. One day I decided to follow their suggestion.

I drove south on seventh street until I hit Baseline Road. Then after a few twisting turns toward South Mountain, I found myself on Mineral Road and there was the castle.

It was an imposing building constructed of rock, adobe and cement, rising three stories from the desert floor. Beautiful cacti, stunted Joshua trees and rock outcroppings surrounded it.

I walked up to the wide door, knocked and Mary Lou Gulley, a slim blond, opened it. She smiled and said, 'Welcome to my Mystery Castle.'

Over coffee, the princess of the castle told me her intriguing story.

She was born in Seattle, WA., where her father, Boyce Luther Gulley, would build her sand castles next to the ocean. When the ocean waves washed away the castles, Mary Lou would cry. Her father would reassure her that someday he would build her a real castle, one that would not be disintegrated by the sea waves.

One morning, her father vanished.

'He just up and disappeared,' Mary Lou said. 'I was four. Mama was devastated. She thought Daddy had left her for another woman.'

The truth of the matter was that Boyce Luther Gulley had discovered he had tuberculosis. Doctors had given him six months to live.

Not wanting his family to become infected by the disease and wishing to die in peace, he had left for Arizona, hoping the dry climate and sun would let him live his final days in relative comfort.

Gulley joined hundreds of other 'lungers,' as TB patients were called, living beneath the bridge over the generally dry Salt River. Then he moved into a railway car and began building the castle for his daughter.

He bought a mule and roamed around dumps and through the desert picking up things that he could use in the construction. Railroad ties. Dishes for the windows. Discarded blackboards from an old school house that he used for one floor.

It took Gulley 20 years to complete the castle.

He exchanged letters with his family. Mary Lou dreamed of the day she would be reunited with her father. And one day in 1945 a telegram arrived announcing that Gulley was dead and that the castle along with 40 acres of desert land had been willed to them.

Mary Lou and her mother, Frances, drove to Phoenix to claim their property. They stopped at the Westward Ho Hotel where, as Mary Lou described in her book, 'My Mystery Castle,' there were 'Hopis, hopheads, lost weekenders and cowboys in satin shirts who had never seen the back of a horse.'

That night they took a cab out to the site of the castle. Beneath a full Phoenix moon, they could see its outline against the perfect Arizona sky. Mary Lou cried, knowing the castle had been built for her.

In his will, Gulley stipulated that the property belonged to them. He held back only one reservation: the property would not be theirs until Jan. 1, 1948, when they unlocked a door to one of the castle's 18 rooms marked 'Purgatory' and discovered what was behind it.

Mary Lou and Frances agreed to the stipulation. Over the next three years, they discovered several treasures in the castle. They removed a loose rock and found hundreds of old coins behind it. In another location, they discovered gold nuggets, cash, necklaces and letters from Gulley.

Frances contacted Life Magazine and a camera crew was sent to the castle to record the opening of 'Purgatory.' Behind it was a nine-foot pit. At the bottom was gold, cash, letters from Gulley, a photo of him taken shortly before his death, and a valentine she had made for her father.

Mary Lou's mother passed away in 1970. After marrying a Phoenix artist who turned out to be gay, Mary Lou divorced him and lived in the castle for the rest of her life. She opened it up to the public and thousands of visitors paid a small fee to examine the castle of golden dreams.

Guided by Mary Lou, they visited the 18 rooms, the 13 bathrooms, and examined the turrets looking onto the desert floor. One of the visitors was movie producer Steven Spielberg, who had grown up in South Phoenix. He told Mary Lou that some day he would do a movie about the castle -- a promise that he to date has not kept.

Life Magazine published the story about the castle on Jan. 26, 1945 under the lengthy headline, 'Life visits a mystery castle: a young girl rules over the strange secrets of a fairy-tale dream house built on the Arizona desert.'

I have been in the Mystery Castle many times over the years. Mary Lou was always a warm, hospitable host. I once invited her to join me playing poker at one of the Phoenix casinos and she laughed away my offer.

'Can you imagine me winning a poker hand with my face?,' she said, smiling. 'I'd give away my hand.'

She died in 2010 and today the castle is operated by private owners who allow the public to visit the creation of Boyce Luther Gulley. Mary Lou Gulley's obituary identifies her as the 'resident princess and proprietress of the Mystery Castle.' The obituary also reminds the world that she 'left the doors to the castle open to the public so that all may explore the wonders that lie beyond its magical doors.'