"Desert Kingdom"

By MOLLY BALL (attendee of our moustache party)
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Ex-Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren's 12,000-square-foot property is three adjoining buildings, with 10 bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

If you've ever driven past ex-Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren's compound in East Las Vegas, you've probably said it: "What's with that house?"

The Home & Garden Television cable network recently asked Hammargren, currently a candidate for his old job, that question on a show of the same name.


The retired neurosurgeon had plenty of opportunities to show off his trademark nonchalant quirkiness as he led the show's host on a tour of his "Desert Kingdom," which contains a shrine to Liberace, a building modeled after a Mayan ruin, a backyard full of cast-off casino signs, and knickknacks piled to the ceilings of numerous oddly shaped rooms.

"This is a model of Stonehenge, in England, which I'm building here out of aluminum," Hammargren explained to the cameras at one point, as if such a thing were perfectly logical.

The 12,000-square-foot property is actually three adjoining buildings, according to the show, with 10 bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Hammargren said he bought the property from Howard Hughes' pilot in 1972.

Hammargren said his wife lived in one house, no one lived in the middle house and he lived in the house on the other end. "I have a house for me, a house for her and a house for a referee in between," he said.

SOME MORE INFO:
Castillo del Sol, as it is now called, started out as a $45,000 house built in 1969 from a standard plan as a frame stucco, four bedroom house. the large addition built in 1975 was placed over the top and in front of the house to accommodate an observatory and planetarium. This was built to local code and without a variance, as it met the conditions for ranch estates that limit height to 35 feet. Several lawsuits have been dismissed after it was proven that the building met applicable codes and that the doctor was not a "Peeping Tom".

The doctor had long wanted to study astronomy, but never had the time, money, or the inclination to sit outside in the cold Minnesota nights to study the stars. His science interests are broad, ranging from biology to medicine to mathematics, anthropology and psychology. His special focus is the history of scientific thought. Most old structures such as the pyramids and Stonehenge were oriented to directions relevant to the positions and motions of the sun, moon and stars. The specific discipline that studies this combination of archaeology and astronomy is called archaeoastronomy. Lonnie fancies himself as an amateur archaeoastronomer.

Above the entrance is a stairway to the top of the Mayan pyramid. This is modeled after the Castillo pyramid in the Yucatan. It gives rise to the name of the house, Castillo Del Sol, the Castle of the Sun.