February 25, 2011 (Part two)

Friday 25~~~~Boyce Luther Gulley, his wife and daughter, Mary Lou lived in Seattle, Washington, spending time at the beach building sand castles. How Mary Lou would cry when the tide washed them away. "Please, Daddy build me a big and strong castle someday, that I can live in. Maybe you ought to build it in the desert where there is no water." The reality of dying was thrust upon him in his prime. Choosing not to live a life of quiet desperation awaiting the end, he ran away from home and his family and friends. He was diagnosed with tuberculous and he didn't want his Mary Lou and wife to suffer with the pain of his illness and dying. He migrated to Arizona, where he gradually regained his health and he built her a native stone castle: eighteen rooms with thirteen fireplaces, parapets and many charming nooks and crannies, furnishing it with southeastern antiques. Boyce Gulley lived longer than he thought he would, he spent 15 years building his dream house. (castle) He built it near the north side of South Mountain, near the site what was then the town dump. Gulley used salvaged materials, auto parts, junk and other artifacts he found in the Southwest and Mexico in the building of the house. There are actual petroglyphs in the walls that he cut out of the rocks. The King died in 1945, before he could send for his wife and his daughter. After his death, Gulleys wife and daughter were contacted by an attorney in Phoenix and they were told about the house. They moved to Phoenix to live in it, the little girl was now a middle- aged "princess" who dwells in her "sand" castle and is living the last fairytale. The house was very large and it was costly to live in it, so Mrs. Gulley wrote to the editors of "Life" magazine, and they wrote a feature story about the castle ; they received so much attention from the article that she and her daughter Mary Lou gave tours and they made a good living doing it. Mrs. Gulley died in 1970 and Mary Lou continued conducting tours and living in her castle until her death November 10, 2010. Mystery Castle is on the Phoenix Property Register insuring that it will be preserved and maintained. The family who does the tours worked for Mary Lou when he was 20 years ago and his daughter was a baby, she grew up around Mary Lou and the castle that her father worked in. They really tell great stories about the castle and its history, so if you are in Phoenix, be sure and take a tour, it is only $5.00 and you can spend hours there and not see everything. The pictures of the glass walls are old refrigerator dishes and their lids from the dump, the round window is the wheel from a Stutz Bear cat car. Most of the bricks were from the dump because they were not perfect in shape and he used a lot of rail road ties also. The brick oval frame outside is his picture view of Phoenix.