Hearst's will locked his company in a trust until every relative alive in 1951 dies, and the company gave his castle to California

William Randolph Hearst inherited the San Simeon ranch from his mother Phoebe in 1919. The family holdings there grew to about 250,000 acres. With the architect Julia Morgan he built the castle from 1919 to 1947. In the late 1930s his company was deep in debt, and his companion, the actress Marion Davies, sold jewelry and securities and gave him $1 million^†. Ill, he left San Simeon in May 1947. He died on 14 August 1951. His will put the Hearst Corporation into a trust run by 13 trustees, five from the family and eight from outside. The trust dissolves only when every family member alive in August 1951 has died. A 1950 trust had given Davies 30,000 shares and, with the bequest, briefly a controlling vote^†. On 30 October 1951 she gave up that control for one dollar^†. The next day she married Horace Brown in Las Vegas. In 1957 the Hearst Corporation gave the castle, its contents and about 120 acres of gardens to California State Parks; it opened in June 1958. The family kept the surrounding ranch, about 80,000 acres. On 12 February 1976 a bomb damaged the Casa del Sol guesthouse after Patty Hearst testified at her trial. In 2005 the state paid $80 million in cash and $15 million in tax credits to retire development rights on the ranch^†. In 2026 the castle is a state park and the Hearst trust still owns the company and the ranch.