The Gilded Age Mansion Built on a Water Monopoly: Filoli's Truth

Four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. That's what William Bourn spent building Filoli Mansion in 1917—roughly $10 million today. But behind those limestone walls sits a darker number: 24 cents per thousand gallons. That's what San Francisco residents paid for water controlled by Bourn's private monopoly—more than double what Los Angeles paid for the same resource.

This is the untold story of how California's most beautiful country estate was built on water monopoly profits, constructed by anonymous immigrant workers, and eventually given away because one woman believed beauty this profound was too extraordinary to remain private.
WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER:
How Spring Valley Water Company charged San Franciscans 24¢ per 1,000 gallons while LA paid 10¢
Why William Bourn was pilloried as "a thief and scoundrel" despite his civic contributions
The anonymous immigrant workers who built Filoli in dangerous conditions for poverty wages
How 35 staff maintained luxury for 2 people through 14-hour workdays
Why Bourn's 1921 stroke trapped him in the paradise he'd created
How the Hetch Hetchy project finally broke Spring Valley's monopoly
Why Lurline Roth gave away millions to make Filoli public
The water politics that still shape California today
This isn't the sanitized tourist version. This is the financial hemorrhaging, worker exploitation, monopoly controversy, and generational reckoning that determined whether beauty endured or crumbled.