Sam Hill's Folly

On a lonely hillside in the State of Washington, overlooking the gorge of the Columbia River, the late railroad builder Samuel Hill (no kin to James J. Hill, though he married James J.'s daughter) built himself a castle. Modeled after a German fortress, Sam Hill's castle was finished in 1914 in anticipation of a promised visit from his good friend, the King of the Belgians. Because of World War I. the King never got there. But 14 years ago

Sam Hill did succeed in entertaining royalty: Queen Marie of Rumania, who left several crates of royal presents, crowned the huge edifice with the words: "There is a dream built into these walls." Sam Hill's dream house, standing out among the surrounding sage brush as incongruously as a top hat in a jungle, became a famed landmark. Some said Sam Hill expected to establish a monarchy in the neighboring mountains. Others hinted that he expected his castle to serve as officers' quarters in a future war with invading Japanese forces. To most Washingtonians it was simply "Sam Hill's Folly." This week, nine years after Sam Hill died, Maryhill Castle (named after his wife Mary Hill) was opened as an art museum. Visitors who climbed the slopes to wander through its 40 rooms found a complete throne room decked with gold furniture from Marie's palace in Bucharest, Marie's crown, coronation robe, and clusters of her jewelry. Pictures had been lent by the Philadelphia and San Francisco Art Museums, Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Sam Hill himself had left a collection of Rodin's original drawings and casts, an assortment of Northwest Indian relics, gimcracks from the Mayflower, a 3,000-lb. dud artillery shell, said to be the first fired by the Germans in World War I, a complete reconstruction (in the surrounding grounds) of the Druidic monuments at Stonehenge, England.

Even more impressive than the art were the spectacular views from Maryhill's windows of eastern Oregon, the Columbia gorge, Mount Hood and the Cascade Mountains. One hundred miles from Portland, Ore., Roadbuilder Hill's castle can be approached only over the fine winding Northwestern highways he himself helped construct, is probably the world's most isolated art museum.

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