Mat Roy Thompson
Encyclopedia
Mat Roy Thompson known also as Matt Roy Thompson, Matthew R. Thompson, Mathew R. Thompson, M. Roy Thompson, Roy Thompson, and Leroy Thompson, was a civil engineer and architect who worked on a great variety of construction and development projects across the United States
, most notably on Scotty's Castle
, the Death Valley
mansion of eccentric millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson
.
, in 1874, the son of George Washington Thompson, a real estate
broker
of comfortable, if moderate, means
, and his wife Susan Forrer. Mat Roy's father moved his real estate business to Tacoma, Washington while Mat Roy was still very young, and so it was in the state of Washington that Mat Roy grew up. In 1890, upon reaching the age of sixteen, Mat Roy graduated from high school
and promptly enrolled in the Rose Polytechnic Institute of Technology, an engineering
and technical school in Terre Haute
, Indiana
.
When Stanford University
opened its doors to students for the first time one year later in 1891, Mat Roy happily enrolled as a sophomore
, one of only eleven upper classmen of a total 559 students. While continuing his study of civil engineering
, Mat Roy met a pretty, young freshman student named Bessie Penniman
. The pair attended many collegiate
social events together, including the first football
game between Stanford and rival University of California, Berkeley
, during which Stanford's team was led to victory by fellow student and future American President
, Herbert Hoover
. It was not long before Mat Roy and Bessie were going steady
, and then engaged to be married.
Bessie Penniman's family was extremely wealthy. Her father, Hiram Penniman, was a prominent early citizen of Walnut Creek, California
and the creator of Shadelands Ranch
. Bessie was Hiram's youngest daughter, and was much doted upon. As such, Hiram did not look kindly on Bessie's engagement to a less wealthy man. When Mat Roy's father lost what moderate wealth he had in the Panic of 1893
, Bessie was forced to break off her engagement to Mat Roy and transfer from Stanford University
to Cornell University
on the opposite side of the United States
. Mat Roy himself was forced to drop out of school and join his brothers in the workforce
to help support his family.
Mat Roy obtained a job working in a sawmill
back home in Tacoma
. He and Bessie continued to correspond, but with decreasing frequency. At Cornell, Bessie met a new man, Albert Mussey Johnson
, another engineering student, and became enamored. Albert Johnson graduated from Cornell in 1895, and married Bessie one year later. Mat Roy Thompson also wed in 1896, to a woman he had met in Tacoma, named Patience O'Hara.
It was not until 1904 that Mat Roy and Bessie saw each other again. Mat Roy and Patience's first child, Philip, was born in 1896, and by 1904 Patience had borne two more children, including a son named Matthew Roy Thompson, called Mat, in 1900. Albert Johnson and Bessie were en route to Alaska
when they decided to stop over in Puget Sound
for a visit with Mat Roy's young family. Johnson had been in a disastrous train accident in 1899 which had rendered him incapable of having children, so for Bessie, meeting Mat Roy's children was a glimpse of a life she might have had, and the beginning of a complex and ambiguous relationship with Mat Roy's third son, Mat.
Patience and Mat Roy eventually had six children together, and to support his growing family he took work in a variety of civil engineering capacities. Unfortunately for Patience, Mat Roy's work increasingly took him away from home for extended periods of time. In the years preceding World War I
, Mat Roy signed on with a nationwide government program attempting to appraise the value of all the property owned by railroads as a prelude to the Interstate Commerce Commission
increasing their management of American
railroads. This job took him all across the country, and between the years 1919 and 1924 Mat Roy spent most of his time in Chicago
. The lengthy separation between Mat Roy and his wife caused a great deal of strain on their marriage and may have engendered an estrangement between them.
Bessie and Albert Johnson kept their main residence in Chicago, where Albert's main business interests lay, and Mat Roy visited them frequently.
By 1924, Mat Roy's work had taken him away from Chicago again, and he lost touch with the Johnsons. Bessie and Albert had begun the initial stages of construction of their vacation home at Death Valley Ranch in Death Valley
, California
, in 1922, and by late 1924 they had geared up for major construction and were looking for architects and engineers to help them materialize their dream.
In 1924, Mat Thompson, Mat Roy's eldest son, had taken a job as a Work Secretary for a YMCA Boys
in Portland
, Oregon
. In a fit of nostalgia, he decided to write and send a short Christmas greeting
to the Johnsons. Upon receiving Mat's card, Albert Johnson responded with a telegram asking to know the wheareabouts of Mat's father. Mat complied, and soon Johnson offered the job of overseeing construction at Death Valley Ranch to Mat Roy. At the time, Mat Roy was living in Washington, D.C.
, and working as senior railroad appraiser with the Interstate Commerce Commission
. Mat Roy took a one-year leave of absence
from his government job and joined Bessie and Albert in Death Valley
on November 6, 1925. After a quick assessment of the work to be done at Death Valley Ranch, Mat Roy realized a year would be insufficient, and uncertain of when the ranch would be completed, he quit his job in Washington, D.C. entirely.
Aside from some very specific technical advice and guidelines early on, Albert Johnson participated little in the construction process, and it was Bessie who worked closely with Mat Roy on the final design of what would become Scotty's Castle
. Johnson had already had a building installed on the property as the main house that was generally described as a plain, stucco box. Although Johnson liked the plain, box-like design, and felt it "Symbolized that everything he did was on the square", Bessie thought it was ugly and was greatly pleased when Mat Roy presented her with a series of sketches that redesigned the stucco box as a Spanish revival-style
hacienda
, somewhat reminiscent of the style of the buildings the two of them had seen at Stanford.
Over the next six years, Mat Roy oversaw the construction crews and the logistical requirements of the great construction undertaking at Death Valley Ranch and Johnson's nearby property at Lower Vine Ranch. Johnson paid him a monthly salary of $
400, half of which was sent home to Tacoma to support Patience and his brood of children. This money was no substitute for a husband, however, and in 1931 the long-estranged Patience O'Hara and Mat Roy divorced. Mere weeks later, construction at Death Valley Ranch ended due to Johnson's financial difficulties and a land ownership dispute.
, Nevada
. Mat Roy had not been in Reno long when he entered into a relationship with an acquaintance of his, a Mrs. Ivah Thaxton, whom he had met while she was vacationing at Death Valley Ranch some time before with her husband, whom she had since divorced. Mat Roy and Ivah Thaxton were soon married.
Mat Roy wrote to Albert Johnson several times requesting work at the Death Valley Ranch should construction resume in the near future, even sending in a completely redundant résumé
at one point. Johnson did later provide a few small jobs for Mat Roy at the castle, including recruiting him to complete some unattributed drawings in the Scotty's Castle guidebook Bessie had put together for tourists, and surveying a plot of land in Santa Maria, California
, to investigate its ownership status. In 1947, late in Johnson's life, he tried to call back Mat Roy to oversee the completion of the swimming pool, though nothing came of it.
In lieu of further steady employment at the castle, Mat Roy resumed his engineering contracts with the government, and in January 1933, Mat Roy and his new wife had moved to Los Angeles
to take up employment with the Metropolitan Water District and work on the new Los Angeles Colorado River Aqueduct
.
Thereafter, Mat Roy turned his engineering focus to military and defense contracts. He helped plan and lay out a number of military bases worldwide, including Kadena Air Force Base
in Okinawa, Japan
.
Mat Roy finally retired in 1954 at the age of eighty. He died of natural causes near his boyhood home in Tacoma, Washington, on June 8, 1962, at the age of eighty-eight.
acquired in a train accident in 1899, a few short years after his marriage to Bessie. Many thought Bessie to be unfulfilled without the children she might otherwise have had, and in seeking to direct her energies elsewhere, therefore more inclined to dwell nostalgically on the relationships of her past.
Certainly such a confession would be neither constructive nor welcome in most marriages, and though some claim that a long-standing estrangement between Patience and Mat Roy was what led to their eventual divorce in 1924, others attribute their separation in at least some part to meddling, either intentional or unintentional, by Bessie herself. While researching his father's involvement with Scotty's Castle for posterity in 1933, Mat Roy's son Mat discussed the issue with some of the castle's personnel, who would have had a better chance to observe Mat Roy and Bessie than Mat himself would have. Mat concluded:
Indeed, Mat Roy was commissioned in 1941 by Johnson to complete a series of drawings of portions of Scotty's Castle for inclusion in a tourist booklet written by Bessie for the castle's tourists. As is common practice for artists, Mat Roy unobtrusively included his initials in the design of each picture. By the time the booklet was printed, however, his initials had been removed from all the images but one, which young Mat speculated may have been well-enough disguised as part of the design that they were overlooked. Johnson is also credited with vehemently opposing Mat Roy's divorce from Patience O'Hara, appealing to both Mat Roy and Patience to reconsider, but to no avail. It is unclear whether his motives in opposing the divorce were religious or personal.
system around automobile
s, a contraption he envisioned as the most important means of transportation of the future. Between 1913 and 1914 Mat Roy toured the United States in a Model T to examine local road systems nationwide to get ideas about what kind of roads would be both most well-suited for automobiles and most well-suited for Pierce County itself. The roads he ended up settling on were nine feet wide and made of concrete. He felt these roads were an excellent compromise between traffic efficiency and budget, so as to enable the building of a maximum mileage of roads across Pierce County. When Mat Roy left his job with Pierce County in 1915 after the completion of his road building project, it was said that only one other county in the entire United States contained more miles of paved road than Pierce.
and the subsequent necessity of his dropping out of school meant that Mat Roy never acquired some of the formal documents his fellow students did to attest to his skill. Later in his career as such things were becoming more formalized, Mat Roy applied for a California Landscape Architect's
license. He was told he would need to pass an exam to be awarded the license, and he readily agreed. On the appointed day Mat Roy was handed the test, but after looking it over he protested that he would be unable to take it after all. It turned out that the exam was one that he himself had written some years earlier. Needless to say, he got his license.
would require the input of an engineer with Mat Roy's skill at landscape and drainage design, seventy-three year old Mat Roy requested to be sent to Okinawa to work on the project. Holmes & Narver initially rejected Mat Roy's request because of his age, but when their two younger landscape engineers failed the required physical examination, Mat Roy was selected by default.
that was the fashion of the time. A relative of Roy's, whom some sources say was his cousin and others say was his uncle, felt it would be more appropriate for young Roy to have the more fashionable three names. This relative, who was himself named Mat, proposed to Roy that he take on the name "Mat" in exchange for the gift of a pony, which he would receive upon reaching the age of 21. Young Roy happily complied and allowed his name to be changed to Mat Roy. However, as the name Mat was a late addition, it remained fairly superfluous throughout most of Mat Roy's early life, with his family and close friends continuing to refer to him simply as Roy.
Mat Roy began to embrace his full name once he became an adult, and began billing himself as M. Roy Thompson in professional settings. In the late 1930s, the fashion
for names shifted, and it became standard practice for men to refer to themselves in the formula of "First name, middle initial
, last name
" rather than the previous formula which placed the emphasis on the middle name. Mat Roy began to refer to himself as Mat R. Thompson, but to his dismay, he quickly discovered that this version of his name led to great confusion. Secretaries, bookkeepers, and acquaintances of his all assumed that his name "Mat" was a nickname
, and began referring to him both verbally and on written record as Matt R. Thompson, Matthew R. Thompson, and Mathew R. Thompson, all incorrect. To further complicate matters, when Mat Roy later attempted to turn his engineering skills to national defense work
, the birth certificate
he obtained for his background check
by the government listed him under his legal birth name, Leroy Thompson, a name which had no bearing whatsoever on the names he was now known by.
To clear things up once and for all, Mat Roy pursued the legal change of his name to Matthew Roy Thompson. This name was, however, also the name Mat Roy had given his third son upon his birth in 1900. Mat Roy and his son, Mat, liked to joke that in spite of Mat Roy being the elder of the two men, Mat was in fact "Matthew R. Thompson, Sr.
", and Mat Roy was "Matthew R. Thompson, Jr.
" because of the order in which they had been named.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, most notably on Scotty's Castle
Scotty's Castle
Scotty's Castle is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style villa located in the Grapevine Mountains of northern Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.. It is also known as Death Valley Ranch...
, the Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
mansion of eccentric millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson
Albert Mussey Johnson
Albert Mussey Johnson , was an eccentric millionaire who served as President for many years of the National Life Insurance Company, built Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, and was variously partner, friend, and dupe of infamous Wild West con man Death Valley Scotty, for whose outrageous antics he...
.
Early years
Mat Roy Thompson was born Leroy Thompson in Dunlap, IowaDunlap, Iowa
Dunlap is a city in Harrison County, Iowa, United States, along the Boyer River. The population was 1,139 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Dunlap is located at ....
, in 1874, the son of George Washington Thompson, a real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
broker
Real estate broker
A real estate broker, real estate agent or realtor is a party who acts as an intermediary between sellers and buyers of real estate/real property and attempts to find sellers who wish to sell and buyers who wish to buy...
of comfortable, if moderate, means
Wealth
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...
, and his wife Susan Forrer. Mat Roy's father moved his real estate business to Tacoma, Washington while Mat Roy was still very young, and so it was in the state of Washington that Mat Roy grew up. In 1890, upon reaching the age of sixteen, Mat Roy graduated from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
and promptly enrolled in the Rose Polytechnic Institute of Technology, an engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
and technical school in Terre Haute
Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute is a city and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943. The city is the county seat of Vigo County and...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
.
When Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
opened its doors to students for the first time one year later in 1891, Mat Roy happily enrolled as a sophomore
Sophomore
Sophomore is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the second year of study at high school or university.The word is also used as a synonym for "second", for the second album or EP released by a musician or group, the second movie of a director, or the second season of a...
, one of only eleven upper classmen of a total 559 students. While continuing his study of civil engineering
Civil engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings...
, Mat Roy met a pretty, young freshman student named Bessie Penniman
Bessilyn Johnson
Bessilyn Johnson , known also as Bessie Johnson and Mabel, was the wife of Chicago millionaire Albert Johnson, a man who was variously partner, friend, and dupe of famed Old West figure Death Valley Scotty...
. The pair attended many collegiate
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
social events together, including the first football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
game between Stanford and rival University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, during which Stanford's team was led to victory by fellow student and future American President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
. It was not long before Mat Roy and Bessie were going steady
Going Steady
Going Steady: Film Writings 1968-1969 is the third collection of film reviews by the critic Pauline Kael, comprising the years 1968-1969, when she first began her film-reviewing duties at The New Yorker and which covers, " a crucial period of social and aesthetic change at the end of the...
, and then engaged to be married.
Bessie Penniman's family was extremely wealthy. Her father, Hiram Penniman, was a prominent early citizen of Walnut Creek, California
Walnut Creek, California
Walnut Creek is an incorporated city located east of the city of Oakland. It lies in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. While not as large as neighboring Concord, Walnut Creek serves as the business and entertainment hub for the neighboring cities within central Contra Costa...
and the creator of Shadelands Ranch
Shadelands Ranch
Shadelands Ranch was established by Hiram Penniman, an early American settler of California in 1856 as one of the first and largest farms in California's Ygnacio Valley....
. Bessie was Hiram's youngest daughter, and was much doted upon. As such, Hiram did not look kindly on Bessie's engagement to a less wealthy man. When Mat Roy's father lost what moderate wealth he had in the Panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
, Bessie was forced to break off her engagement to Mat Roy and transfer from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
to Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
on the opposite side of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Mat Roy himself was forced to drop out of school and join his brothers in the workforce
Workforce
The workforce is the labour pool in employment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, country, state, etc. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and implies those involved in...
to help support his family.
Mat Roy obtained a job working in a sawmill
Sawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
back home in Tacoma
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
. He and Bessie continued to correspond, but with decreasing frequency. At Cornell, Bessie met a new man, Albert Mussey Johnson
Albert Mussey Johnson
Albert Mussey Johnson , was an eccentric millionaire who served as President for many years of the National Life Insurance Company, built Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, and was variously partner, friend, and dupe of infamous Wild West con man Death Valley Scotty, for whose outrageous antics he...
, another engineering student, and became enamored. Albert Johnson graduated from Cornell in 1895, and married Bessie one year later. Mat Roy Thompson also wed in 1896, to a woman he had met in Tacoma, named Patience O'Hara.
It was not until 1904 that Mat Roy and Bessie saw each other again. Mat Roy and Patience's first child, Philip, was born in 1896, and by 1904 Patience had borne two more children, including a son named Matthew Roy Thompson, called Mat, in 1900. Albert Johnson and Bessie were en route to Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
when they decided to stop over in Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
for a visit with Mat Roy's young family. Johnson had been in a disastrous train accident in 1899 which had rendered him incapable of having children, so for Bessie, meeting Mat Roy's children was a glimpse of a life she might have had, and the beginning of a complex and ambiguous relationship with Mat Roy's third son, Mat.
Patience and Mat Roy eventually had six children together, and to support his growing family he took work in a variety of civil engineering capacities. Unfortunately for Patience, Mat Roy's work increasingly took him away from home for extended periods of time. In the years preceding World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Mat Roy signed on with a nationwide government program attempting to appraise the value of all the property owned by railroads as a prelude to the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
increasing their management of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
railroads. This job took him all across the country, and between the years 1919 and 1924 Mat Roy spent most of his time in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. The lengthy separation between Mat Roy and his wife caused a great deal of strain on their marriage and may have engendered an estrangement between them.
Bessie and Albert Johnson kept their main residence in Chicago, where Albert's main business interests lay, and Mat Roy visited them frequently.
Scotty's Castle
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, in 1922, and by late 1924 they had geared up for major construction and were looking for architects and engineers to help them materialize their dream.
In 1924, Mat Thompson, Mat Roy's eldest son, had taken a job as a Work Secretary for a YMCA Boys
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
. In a fit of nostalgia, he decided to write and send a short Christmas greeting
Christmas card
A Christmas card is a greeting card sent as part of the traditional celebration of Christmas in order to convey between people a range of sentiments related to the Christmas and holiday season. Christmas cards are usually exchanged during the weeks preceding Christmas Day by many people in Western...
to the Johnsons. Upon receiving Mat's card, Albert Johnson responded with a telegram asking to know the wheareabouts of Mat's father. Mat complied, and soon Johnson offered the job of overseeing construction at Death Valley Ranch to Mat Roy. At the time, Mat Roy was living in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and working as senior railroad appraiser with the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
. Mat Roy took a one-year leave of absence
Leave of absence
Leave of absence is a term used to describe a period of time that one is to be away from his/her primary job, while maintaining the status of employee...
from his government job and joined Bessie and Albert in Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
on November 6, 1925. After a quick assessment of the work to be done at Death Valley Ranch, Mat Roy realized a year would be insufficient, and uncertain of when the ranch would be completed, he quit his job in Washington, D.C. entirely.
Aside from some very specific technical advice and guidelines early on, Albert Johnson participated little in the construction process, and it was Bessie who worked closely with Mat Roy on the final design of what would become Scotty's Castle
Scotty's Castle
Scotty's Castle is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style villa located in the Grapevine Mountains of northern Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.. It is also known as Death Valley Ranch...
. Johnson had already had a building installed on the property as the main house that was generally described as a plain, stucco box. Although Johnson liked the plain, box-like design, and felt it "Symbolized that everything he did was on the square", Bessie thought it was ugly and was greatly pleased when Mat Roy presented her with a series of sketches that redesigned the stucco box as a Spanish revival-style
Spanish Colonial Revival Style architecture
The Spanish Colonial Revival Style was a United States architectural stylistic movement that came about in the early 20th century, starting in California and Florida as a regional expression related to history, environment, and nostalgia...
hacienda
Hacienda
Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...
, somewhat reminiscent of the style of the buildings the two of them had seen at Stanford.
Over the next six years, Mat Roy oversaw the construction crews and the logistical requirements of the great construction undertaking at Death Valley Ranch and Johnson's nearby property at Lower Vine Ranch. Johnson paid him a monthly salary of $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
400, half of which was sent home to Tacoma to support Patience and his brood of children. This money was no substitute for a husband, however, and in 1931 the long-estranged Patience O'Hara and Mat Roy divorced. Mere weeks later, construction at Death Valley Ranch ended due to Johnson's financial difficulties and a land ownership dispute.
Later Years
Nearly broke and with no reason to return to Tacoma, Mat Roy moved the short distance to RenoReno
Reno is the fourth most populous city in Nevada, US.Reno may also refer to:-Places:Italy*The Reno River, in Northern ItalyCanada*Reno No...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
. Mat Roy had not been in Reno long when he entered into a relationship with an acquaintance of his, a Mrs. Ivah Thaxton, whom he had met while she was vacationing at Death Valley Ranch some time before with her husband, whom she had since divorced. Mat Roy and Ivah Thaxton were soon married.
Mat Roy wrote to Albert Johnson several times requesting work at the Death Valley Ranch should construction resume in the near future, even sending in a completely redundant résumé
Résumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
at one point. Johnson did later provide a few small jobs for Mat Roy at the castle, including recruiting him to complete some unattributed drawings in the Scotty's Castle guidebook Bessie had put together for tourists, and surveying a plot of land in Santa Maria, California
Santa Maria, California
Santa Maria is a city in Santa Barbara County, on the Central Coast of California. The 2010 census population was 100,062, putting it ahead of Santa Barbara for the first time and making it the largest city in the county...
, to investigate its ownership status. In 1947, late in Johnson's life, he tried to call back Mat Roy to oversee the completion of the swimming pool, though nothing came of it.
In lieu of further steady employment at the castle, Mat Roy resumed his engineering contracts with the government, and in January 1933, Mat Roy and his new wife had moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to take up employment with the Metropolitan Water District and work on the new Los Angeles Colorado River Aqueduct
Colorado River Aqueduct
The Colorado River Aqueduct, or CRA, is a water conveyance in Southern California in the United States, operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California . The aqueduct impounds water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border west across the Mojave...
.
Thereafter, Mat Roy turned his engineering focus to military and defense contracts. He helped plan and lay out a number of military bases worldwide, including Kadena Air Force Base
Kadena Air Base
, is a United States Air Force base in the towns of Kadena and Chatan and the city of Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Kadena Air Base is the hub of U.S. airpower in the Pacific, and home to the USAF's 18th Wing and a variety of associate units.-Units:The 18th Wing is the host unit at Kadena...
in Okinawa, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Mat Roy finally retired in 1954 at the age of eighty. He died of natural causes near his boyhood home in Tacoma, Washington, on June 8, 1962, at the age of eighty-eight.
Controversial Personal Life
Bessie and Mat Roy's Romance
Many people in Mat Roy's life, his children and first wife included, were of the opinion that Mat Roy never really got over his first love, Bessie Johnson, née Penniman. The extent and frequency of the correspondence between the pair caused many of their acquaintances to be suspicious of the nature of Mat Roy and Bessie's friendship, particularly in light of the life-long disabilities Albert JohnsonAlbert Mussey Johnson
Albert Mussey Johnson , was an eccentric millionaire who served as President for many years of the National Life Insurance Company, built Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, and was variously partner, friend, and dupe of infamous Wild West con man Death Valley Scotty, for whose outrageous antics he...
acquired in a train accident in 1899, a few short years after his marriage to Bessie. Many thought Bessie to be unfulfilled without the children she might otherwise have had, and in seeking to direct her energies elsewhere, therefore more inclined to dwell nostalgically on the relationships of her past.
The Confession
To some extent, Mat Roy seems to have confirmed a number of the commonly-held suspicions about himself and Bessie. Although generally a discreet man who kept his personal business to himself, the truth of the matter may have been too much for him to bear, and he confessed his feelings for Bessie in a letter to his then-wife Patience O'Hara. Patience describes the letter thus:Certainly such a confession would be neither constructive nor welcome in most marriages, and though some claim that a long-standing estrangement between Patience and Mat Roy was what led to their eventual divorce in 1924, others attribute their separation in at least some part to meddling, either intentional or unintentional, by Bessie herself. While researching his father's involvement with Scotty's Castle for posterity in 1933, Mat Roy's son Mat discussed the issue with some of the castle's personnel, who would have had a better chance to observe Mat Roy and Bessie than Mat himself would have. Mat concluded:
Johnson's Involvement
Still others felt that some of the most compelling evidence for a secret romance between Mat Roy and his Bessie was provided by Albert Johnson himself in his treatment of Mat Roy. Young Mat and his sister Patience agreed that Johnson displayed at times hostile behavior towards their father. In a joint interview they asserted:Indeed, Mat Roy was commissioned in 1941 by Johnson to complete a series of drawings of portions of Scotty's Castle for inclusion in a tourist booklet written by Bessie for the castle's tourists. As is common practice for artists, Mat Roy unobtrusively included his initials in the design of each picture. By the time the booklet was printed, however, his initials had been removed from all the images but one, which young Mat speculated may have been well-enough disguised as part of the design that they were overlooked. Johnson is also credited with vehemently opposing Mat Roy's divorce from Patience O'Hara, appealing to both Mat Roy and Patience to reconsider, but to no avail. It is unclear whether his motives in opposing the divorce were religious or personal.
Bessie and Young Mat
Mat Roy's Philandering
Mat Roy's Engineering Projects
- University Land Company (1897 – 1901)
- Assistant State Engineer, Washington (1901–1907)
- County Engineer, Pierce County, WashingtonPierce County, Washingtonright|thumb|[[Tacoma, Washington|Tacoma]] - Seat of Pierce CountyPierce County is the second most populous county in the U.S. state of Washington. Formed out of Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the legislature of Oregon Territory...
(1913 – 1915) - State Highway Superintendent, Washington (1915 – 1917)
- Major Edward Bowes & John H. Spring
- Layout of Regents Park, Tacoma, Washington
- Layout of Thousand Oaks, Berkeley, CaliforniaThousand Oaks, Berkeley, CaliforniaThousand Oaks is a neighborhood of Berkeley in Alameda County, California. Located at the base of the Berkeley Hills, it lies at an elevation of 239 feet .The principal shopping area is Solano Avenue, along the southern edge of the neighborhood...
.
- Interstate Commerce CommissionInterstate Commerce CommissionThe Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
, Appraisal Board, (1918–1925)- Railroad Appraisal Engineer
- Scotty's CastleScotty's CastleScotty's Castle is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style villa located in the Grapevine Mountains of northern Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.. It is also known as Death Valley Ranch...
construction engineer, Death ValleyDeath ValleyDeath Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
(1925–1931) - Metropolitan Water District appraisal engineer, Los AngelesLos ÁngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, (1931–1940)- Los Angeles Colorado River AqueductColorado River AqueductThe Colorado River Aqueduct, or CRA, is a water conveyance in Southern California in the United States, operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California . The aqueduct impounds water from the Colorado River at Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border west across the Mojave...
- Los Angeles Colorado River Aqueduct
- Kisner, Curtis, & Wright
- Mojave Air BaseEdwards Air Force BaseEdwards Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located on the border of Kern County, Los Angeles County, and San Bernardino County, California, in the Antelope Valley. It is southwest of the central business district of North Edwards, California and due east of Rosamond.It is named in...
layout (1942) - Roosevelt Base, Terminal IslandTerminal IslandTerminal Island is an island located in Los Angeles County, California between Los Angeles Harbor and Long Beach Harbor. Originally a mudflat known to the Spanish as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, and later called Rattlesnake Island, it has officially been Terminal Island since 1918...
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
- Mojave Air Base
- Holmes and Narver, Inc., Senior Civil Engineer (1943–1952)
- China Lake Naval Ordnance Test StationNaval Air Weapons Station China Lake- About : is part of under Commander, Navy Installation Command and is located in the Western Mojave Desert region of California, approximately north of Los Angeles. Occupying three counties – Kern, San Bernardino and Inyo – the installation’s closest neighbors are the cities of Ridgecrest,...
primary feasibility studies, InyokernInyokern, CaliforniaInyokern is a census-designated place in Kern County, California, United States. Inyokern is located west of Ridgecrest, at an elevation of 2434 feet . Located in the Indian Wells Valley. The population was 1,099 at the 2010 census, up from 984 at the 2000 census...
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area... - BikiniBikini AtollBikini Atoll is an atoll, listed as a World Heritage Site, in the Micronesian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, part of Republic of the Marshall Islands....
atomic testsNuclear testingNuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them... - Kadena Air Force BaseKadena Air Base, is a United States Air Force base in the towns of Kadena and Chatan and the city of Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Kadena Air Base is the hub of U.S. airpower in the Pacific, and home to the USAF's 18th Wing and a variety of associate units.-Units:The 18th Wing is the host unit at Kadena...
planning, Okinawa, JapanJapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
(1948) - Eniwetok Proving GroundPacific Proving GroundsThe Pacific Proving Grounds was the name used to describe a number of sites in the Marshall Islands and a few other sites in the Pacific Ocean, used by the United States to conduct nuclear testing at various times between 1946 and 1962...
atomic tests, Marshall IslandsMarshall IslandsThe Republic of the Marshall Islands , , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. As of July 2011 the population was 67,182...
(1952)
- China Lake Naval Ordnance Test Station
A Road Trip
Over the course of his successful career, Mat Roy was one of the most innovative pioneers of modern civil engineering. While working as county engineer of Pierce County, Washington, Mat Roy began experimenting with designing the county roadCounty highway
A county highway is a road in the United States and in the Canadian province of Ontario that is designated and/or maintained by the county highway department...
system around automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s, a contraption he envisioned as the most important means of transportation of the future. Between 1913 and 1914 Mat Roy toured the United States in a Model T to examine local road systems nationwide to get ideas about what kind of roads would be both most well-suited for automobiles and most well-suited for Pierce County itself. The roads he ended up settling on were nine feet wide and made of concrete. He felt these roads were an excellent compromise between traffic efficiency and budget, so as to enable the building of a maximum mileage of roads across Pierce County. When Mat Roy left his job with Pierce County in 1915 after the completion of his road building project, it was said that only one other county in the entire United States contained more miles of paved road than Pierce.
His Just Deserts
Although the education Mat Roy received during his time at both Rose Polytechnic and Stanford totaled to the equivalent of a full college degree, his family's financial situation after the Panic of 1893Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
and the subsequent necessity of his dropping out of school meant that Mat Roy never acquired some of the formal documents his fellow students did to attest to his skill. Later in his career as such things were becoming more formalized, Mat Roy applied for a California Landscape Architect's
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
license. He was told he would need to pass an exam to be awarded the license, and he readily agreed. On the appointed day Mat Roy was handed the test, but after looking it over he protested that he would be unable to take it after all. It turned out that the exam was one that he himself had written some years earlier. Needless to say, he got his license.
Age Before Beauty
In 1947, when Mat Roy's then-employer, Holmes & Narver, Inc., made clear that their contract to lay out the air force base at KadenaKadena Air Base
, is a United States Air Force base in the towns of Kadena and Chatan and the city of Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Kadena Air Base is the hub of U.S. airpower in the Pacific, and home to the USAF's 18th Wing and a variety of associate units.-Units:The 18th Wing is the host unit at Kadena...
would require the input of an engineer with Mat Roy's skill at landscape and drainage design, seventy-three year old Mat Roy requested to be sent to Okinawa to work on the project. Holmes & Narver initially rejected Mat Roy's request because of his age, but when their two younger landscape engineers failed the required physical examination, Mat Roy was selected by default.
Mat Roy's Name
There is a great deal of confusion surrounding Mat Roy Thompson's name. Mat Roy's birth name in 1874 was Leroy Thompson. The boy then known as Leroy, or often simply "Roy", lacked the middle nameMiddle name
People's names in several cultures include one or more additional names placed between the first given name and the surname. In Canada and the United States all such names are specifically referred to as middle name; in most European countries they would simply be regarded as second, third, etc....
that was the fashion of the time. A relative of Roy's, whom some sources say was his cousin and others say was his uncle, felt it would be more appropriate for young Roy to have the more fashionable three names. This relative, who was himself named Mat, proposed to Roy that he take on the name "Mat" in exchange for the gift of a pony, which he would receive upon reaching the age of 21. Young Roy happily complied and allowed his name to be changed to Mat Roy. However, as the name Mat was a late addition, it remained fairly superfluous throughout most of Mat Roy's early life, with his family and close friends continuing to refer to him simply as Roy.
Mat Roy began to embrace his full name once he became an adult, and began billing himself as M. Roy Thompson in professional settings. In the late 1930s, the fashion
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
for names shifted, and it became standard practice for men to refer to themselves in the formula of "First name, middle initial
Initial
In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a work, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is derived from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning...
, last name
Last Name
"Last Name" is the title of a song composed by country singer Carrie Underwood, Hillary Lindsey and Luke Laird. It is the third single from Underwood's second studio album, Carnival Ride. It was released in the United States on April 7, 2008, by which point the song had already charted...
" rather than the previous formula which placed the emphasis on the middle name. Mat Roy began to refer to himself as Mat R. Thompson, but to his dismay, he quickly discovered that this version of his name led to great confusion. Secretaries, bookkeepers, and acquaintances of his all assumed that his name "Mat" was a nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
, and began referring to him both verbally and on written record as Matt R. Thompson, Matthew R. Thompson, and Mathew R. Thompson, all incorrect. To further complicate matters, when Mat Roy later attempted to turn his engineering skills to national defense work
Defense contractor
A defense contractor is a business organization or individual that provides products or services to a military department of a government. Products typically include military aircraft, ships, vehicles, weaponry, and electronic systems...
, the birth certificate
Birth certificate
A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensuing registration of that birth...
he obtained for his background check
Background check
A background check or background investigation is the process of looking up and compiling criminal records, commercial records and financial records of an individual....
by the government listed him under his legal birth name, Leroy Thompson, a name which had no bearing whatsoever on the names he was now known by.
To clear things up once and for all, Mat Roy pursued the legal change of his name to Matthew Roy Thompson. This name was, however, also the name Mat Roy had given his third son upon his birth in 1900. Mat Roy and his son, Mat, liked to joke that in spite of Mat Roy being the elder of the two men, Mat was in fact "Matthew R. Thompson, Sr.
Suffix (name)
A name suffix, in the Western English-language naming tradition, follows a person's full name and provides additional information about the person. Post-nominal letters indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor.- Academic :Academic suffixes...
", and Mat Roy was "Matthew R. Thompson, Jr.
Suffix (name)
A name suffix, in the Western English-language naming tradition, follows a person's full name and provides additional information about the person. Post-nominal letters indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor.- Academic :Academic suffixes...
" because of the order in which they had been named.
See also
- Scotty's CastleScotty's CastleScotty's Castle is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style villa located in the Grapevine Mountains of northern Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.. It is also known as Death Valley Ranch...
- Bessilyn JohnsonBessilyn JohnsonBessilyn Johnson , known also as Bessie Johnson and Mabel, was the wife of Chicago millionaire Albert Johnson, a man who was variously partner, friend, and dupe of famed Old West figure Death Valley Scotty...
- Albert Mussey JohnsonAlbert Mussey JohnsonAlbert Mussey Johnson , was an eccentric millionaire who served as President for many years of the National Life Insurance Company, built Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, and was variously partner, friend, and dupe of infamous Wild West con man Death Valley Scotty, for whose outrageous antics he...
- Death Valley National ParkDeath Valley National ParkDeath Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the Sierra Nevada in the arid Great Basin of the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes,...
Sources
- Bessie Johnson vertical file, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Henderson, Randall. "He Built Scotty's Castle...", Desert Magazine, September, 1952; Pg 4-10.
- Historic Structure Report, Special Interpreter's Edition. Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Appendix A, Biographies of Significant Individuals Associated with Death Valley Ranch.
- Livingston, Dewey. Historic Resource Study: Death Valley Scotty Historic District, Draft Version, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Mat Roy Thompson vertical file, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Harding, Shirley. "Thompson Family Joint Interview." Mat Roy Thompson vertical file, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Thompson, Mat. "Letter to Ralph E. Thompson." Mat Roy Thompson vertical file, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Thompson, Mat. "Scotty's Castle was Bessie's Baby." Mat Roy Thompson vertical file, Scotty's Castle Resource Library, NPS: DEVA.
- Section: Divorce
- Section: Facts
- Section: Finale
- Section: Off Dead Center
- Section: The String Bass and the Etchings
- "Matt R. Thompson, Son of Veteran Who Fought in Battle of Gettysburg, and Builder of the Famous Death Valley Palace, is Visiting Here". The Gettysburg Times, July 27, 1956.
- Osness, Richard D. Of Lions and Dreams, of Men and Realities: An Illustrated History of Fircrest, Washington. Bicentennial Issue, 1976.