#vikingsholm history
"The mansion was owned by Lora Josephine Knight. She was born on 1864. She was in a family of 5 children. Her father was a municipal judge and that area had a law practice. And at the age of 18, she ended up marrying one of the lawyers (James Moore) from his law practice. Now the Moores made all their wealth through the Stock Market. They had 1 son during their marriage. Unfortunately he passed at a young age. And he was a newly wed. He had married Helen Fargo from the Wells Fargo family. When the Moores lost their only son, they decided to have a change of scenery so they came out west - Santa Barbara. They had a beautiful estate down there. Mr. Moore passed in 1916 and they have been married 34 wonderful years. She did marry for her 2nd time to a friend of their family, Mr. Harry French Knight. He was out of St. Louis, a stock broker there. Unfortunately that marriage did not go so well. And a few years into it Laura Knight ended getting into a divorce. But right after that divorce she ended up discovering Emerald Bay. Now she met the 2 women that owned this property at the time. It was a mother and daughter who had a fishing resort going on down here. They had it for almost 40 years and she came over to visit with them. And right away fell in love with the property. She started offering to buy it from them and at first they did not want to sell. But she kep at it and they finally agreed yes "we are going to sell to you." Lora Knight ended up with 239 acres and she paid $250,000 for it, which was quite a bit of money in 1928. And she ended up taking control of this end of the Bay. She got all the shoreline out to the island on both sides, she got that island and she also got all the property behind us up to the highway
Now this was a summer home for Lora Knight. She wanted this to be a special place for her family and friends to spend their summers together - about mid June to mid September. And she really wanted to make sure that this house was in harmony with the environment here. That was important to her. So she had a Swedish architect, Lennart Palme, designed the build for her. And she settled on Scandinavian design because the area here reminded her of all her travels to Scandinavia. She was not Scandinavian, she was actually English descent. So that's why you see a Scandinavian style home...
... Now in the summer of 1929, they brought in 200 men to work on the project here. Lora Knight told the men to work around the all the big trees you see, which are now estimated to be between 300 to 500 years old. So thank you Lora Knight for saving all these big trees for us. Those men worked around the clock and were able to build the house within 5 months...
Lora Knight had the property for 15 years.
On 1945, she came here on her 15th summer and about a week after she got here she did pass away in the home. She was 82 years old. She was one of the richest woman in the nation at that time. She was a very kind and very generous woman.
The Vikingsholm was completed on October 1929, around the time when the Stock Market crashed. It was completed a week before "Black Tuesday" hit. Lora Knight was one of the fortunate few, who managed to hold on to the majority of her wealth. She did loose some in the Stock Market, but she managed to hold on. And she ended up building a community center in Santa Barbara to help anyone in need during that Depression -food, clothing, medical costs, she made sure to take care of them. She also supported alot of youth groups. And then she took on a big mission in her life - putting young women through college. Not much of that was going on during that time and she opened that door wide for a lot of young woman to go to college. And Lora Knight was the one who signed the check that funded Charles Lindbergh flight across the Atlantic to Paris. So she had a pretty interesting life. When she passed away, Vikingsholm got offered up to her family, but no one wanted to take it on. So it was sold to a rancher in Nevada. He only had it for 1 year and ended up selling it to Harvey West, who bought it as a vacation home for his family. When he got the home, all of Lora Knight's furniture, cars, boats everything was included, Harvey west kept it all original. So when you go inside we have 80% of Lora Knight's furnishings in here. But he only owned the property for about 5 years before it became too much for him. So he ended up working with the state of California and came to an agreement in 1953. He gave everything to them and they paid him $125,000 for all of it and that was considered a donation by Mr. West. He thought that this area should stay in the public so that everyone can come and enjoy this beautiful area. Once the state had this piece of the Bay, they were already starting to acquire the rest, which created Emerald Bay State Park. So we thank Harvey West everyday for saving this beautiful property for us."
-Vikingsholm Tour Guide.