Let's talk about being Inspired. Young Jim Bishop in 1959 at the ripe old age of 15 paid four hundred and fifty dollars for a two and a half acre parcel of land enclosed on three sides by the majestic San Isabel National Forest in southern Colorado. It was money saved from mowing lawns, throwing newspapers, and working with his father Willard in the family ornamental iron works. Jim had dropped out of high school that year over an argument from his English teacher who yelled at him "You'll never amount to anything Jim Bishop!" Ever since he was a boy, Jim was powerfully drawn up towards the mountains visable to the west from Pueblo, and having found a small 2-1/2 acre parcel one weekend on a bicycle journey with some friends, convinced his parents to buy it for him with his money. So Willard and ma Polly signed for the land deal which Jim wasn't even old enough to do himself, and the family now had a heavily forested two and a half acres at 9000 feet. Jim and his dad spent the next ten summers camping out on the land and doing the groundwork for a family cabin on the site. Setting the stage for what was to come, Jim soon learned that he really enjoyed swinging an axe and weilding a shovel or pick in building their clearing with a drive up to it, which is now the court-yard between the family cabin and the castle itself with it's driveway. It was in 1967 that Jim and Pheobe got married, a union they still enjoy to this day, and in 1969 at the age of twenty-five, Jim decided it was time to start building a cabin in the mountians they so loved. Since rocks were plentiful, everywhere, and free, he chose to start building a one room stone cottage...
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