![]() castle with 18 rooms and 13 fireplaces (although no running water or electricity). Upon his death, Mary Lou, now 22 years old, received word that Bryce had left her an 8000 sq. Instead, year after year he continued to expand the castle until he passed away of cancer in 1945. It seems the heat of Arizona healed him of his tuberculosis, but still he did not go home or contact his family. ![]() Inside, he filled the rooms with all sorts of oddities and souvenirs from his travels and scavanging excursions. Making bricks out of local sand, cement and goats milk and using found and disposed objects such as windshields and hubcaps of old cars, wagon wheels, refridgerator panels, pyrex dishes, coloured glass and tiles, he began to build a castle. This is what he set out to do, armed only with 2 years of architectural training and much ingenuity, resourcefulness and determination. Saddened as her sand castles were washed away by tides at the beach, she used to ask her father to build her a real castle. After travelling a bit, he ended up in Phoenix where he decided to use his last days fulfilling a childhood dream of his 7 year old daughter Mary Lou. Stricken by the news and not wanting to infect his family with the extremely contagious disease, he simply left his job, family and life without a word to anyone and went away to wait to die. One afternoon in the early 1930s, Boyce Gulley went to a doctor's appointment and found out that he had tuberculosis and probably only months to live. The story behind the Mystery Castle in Phoenix, Arizona is so fantastical and fairy tale-like that its hard to believe it's real.
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