You ride a bus of the hill about 1600 feet above the Pacific Ocean from the visitor center. We are off the bus and begin the climb up the steps to the Castle.

When Hearst inherited the family's 250,000-acre ranch in 1919 following his mother's death, he wrote Morgan complaining of the rustic conditions at "Camp Hill:" "Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something."

What Hearst originally had in mind was a "Jappo-Swiss" bungalow, Kastner said, then popular in Southern California. But as he and Morgan started work on "La Cuesta Encantada," or, the Enchanted Hill, as the 127-acre estate came to be called, their vision evolved to encompass something far more grandiose.

That architect is Julia Morgan, California's first licensed female architect. Over the course of her 47-year career, Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in California alone, including several YWCA buildings, the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, and the former St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, now the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts.