Question of the Day - 18 August 2023

Lonnie Hammargren was, indeed, an amazing character, particularly if you’re into eccentricity.

Lonnie Lee Hammargren was born on Christmas Day 1937. In his career, he was a neurosurgeon, a NASA flight surgeon, an elected member of the Board of Regents for the Nevada System of Higher Education (1988-1994), the 31st lieutenant governor of Nevada (1995-1999, the Republican making a decidedly odd couple with Democrat Gov. Bob Miller), and confirmed longstanding eccentric and self-promoter.

He built his original property, Castillo del Sol, at 4318 Ridgecrest Drive (near Flamingo and Sandhill roads) in 1969 and began "collecting" Nevada memorabilia. Eventually, he acquired and annexed two neighboring properties to provide enough room for the estimated $10 million-$20 million worth of artifacts he and his wife Sandy (married in 1989) collected and put on display inside the house and out. The house effected a Mayan theme on the exterior, while the interior was once described as “an endless maze of historic and sometimes bizarre collectibles.”

A local realtor and historian called the locale “one of the best preserved ‘Leave it to Beaver’ 1960s' neighborhoods in the whole valley.” A local described the Hammargren compound as "Mayan Revivalist Modern that looks more like a temple to the God Quetzalcoatl than a mansion.” Another uncited description called it “an explosion of objects that are by turn incredible, funny, and alarming, all arranged in loose thematic groups that perhaps only Hammergren himself can truly understand.” 

“My tastes are unusual,” Hammargren said of himself in a remarkable understatement.

The property wasn't open to the public, though Hammargren welcome visitors (for an admission fee) every Nevada Day, October 31. In later years, he charged $15 a head and it was reported that upwards of 1,500 people toured the property that one day a year.

Hammargren lost the original house to foreclosure in 2016 when the value of his vast collection plummeted to $1 million. An auction of some of the house's contents brought the former politician five cents on the dollar. Perhaps someone took home the brontosaurus skeleton that Hammargren says was featured in the movie Bringing Up Baby, or the Popeye and Olive Oyl from the ill-fated MGM Grand amusement park, or a roller-coaster car from the Stratosphere, or the Showboat’s paddlewheel. 

Hammargren’s benign mania eventually exhausted the patience of his wife Sandy and earned him a clinical intervention, which was chronicled on a late-2016 episode of the TV show "Hoarders."

When the original house went into foreclosure, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Some things are just going to have to stay with the house. Liberace’s staircase can’t be removed. I don’t see any way to get the rotating bed out of here either.”

We wonder what happened to the planetarium; hand-painted Egyptian tomb; Liberace's rhinestone encrusted upright piano that sat by the front door; Lonnie's first collection, butterflies, from before he was 10; souvenirs from his time as honorary consul of Belize; and of course some of the musical instruments used in his 2007 "Awake Wake," a mock funeral service he held for himself, with a jazz funeral parade to his garage where he buried himself in an Egyptian sarcophagus for an hour. He also, reportedly, collected skulls of his former patients (in his career, he was sued several times for malpractice and finally had to retire as a surgeon when his insurance made practicing prohibitive).

Dr. Lonnie Hammargren died in June at age 85 from complications of cardiovascular disease and dementia.