A House with Origins in Redlands
At the close of the 19th century, Redlands was a citrus town struggling to establish itself as permanent.
Wealthy settlers were building large houses among the groves, each one a statement that this little patch of Southern California could rival the cultivated communities back East.
Cornelia A. Hill, a widow from New York, joined them with uncommon ambition. In 1897, she built a three-story château on Prospect Hill, overlooking the valley below.
Designed by Los Angeles architects Oliver Perry Dennis and Lyman Farwell, the house featured creamy walls, a turret, and arched windows that appeared to have been carried straight from the Loire Valley.
It had more than 7,000 square feet of space and an almost theatrical presence.
In a town of wood-frame houses and bungalow porches, the château announced itself as something different, something meant to last.
The Kimberlys Arrive
Eight years later, John Alfred Kimberly and his wife, Helen Cheney Kimberly, stepped into that story.
John had spent his life in Wisconsin, where, in 1872, he and three partners founded a modest paper mill firm.
Each man invested $7,500, and under John's leadership, it grew into Kimberly-Clark, the company that would one day produce Kleenex and other household staples.
By the turn of the century, John was wealthy, and he and Helen were restless with Wisconsin's long winters.
When they bought Cornelia Hill's château in 1905, they christened it Kimberly Crest.
For them, it was both a retreat and a new chapter.
They traded the frigid streets of Neenah for Redlands' warm air, citrus blossoms, and a home that looked like a European fantasy perched above orange groves.
Helen's Vision of Gardens
The house on Prospect Hill was elegant but stood alone, exposed against a barren slope. Helen Kimberly wanted something more.
She believed a home should reach into its surroundings, and she imagined gardens that would make the château feel complete.
With the help of her son-in-law, architect George Edwin Bergstrom, she began carving terraces into the hillside.
Pergolas provided shaded walks, stairways linked one level to the next, and ponds filled with lilies gave space for koi to drift.
By 1909, roses spilled from terracotta pots and hedges framed statues along the paths.
The scrub had been replaced with a landscape that felt measured yet alive. For visitors, the gardens were a story told in stages.
For Helen, they were proof that beauty could be shared, not just kept behind walls.
A Family Life in Redlands
In their later years, the Kimberlys made Kimberly Crest their world.
John remained closely tied to the company he had founded, serving as president of Kimberly-Clark until nearly ninety.
He died at the house in 1928. Helen followed two years later, after more than sixty years of marriage. Their daughter Mary inherited the estate.
She opened the gardens to teas and fundraisers, inviting neighbors into spaces her mother had designed.
The house became a civic landmark as much as a private home. In Redlands, the family was remembered not only for their fortune but for the welcome they extended to the town.
A Gift to the People
By the 1960s, Mary was thinking about Kimberly Crest's future. She was nearing the end of her life and wanted to make sure the estate would outlast her.
She issued a challenge: if Redlands could raise money to purchase 39 acres of adjacent land as a public park, she would bequeath Kimberly Crest to the people.
The town rallied, and Prospect Park was created. True to her word, Mary arranged for her six-acre estate to pass into public trust.
When she died in 1979 at the age of 98, the house and gardens did not vanish into private hands.
Instead, they became part of Redlands itself, entrusted to the Kimberly-Shirk Association to maintain and open to the community.
From Film Set to Landmark
Kimberly Crest entered a new kind of spotlight in the decades after Mary's gift.
In 1981, it appeared in the horror movie Hell Night, which imagined sinister tunnels under the house that never existed.
Later, Fleetwood Mac used the gardens as the backdrop for their music video Big Love.
Yet the château's most enduring role was not on screen but in civic life. In 1981, the property opened as a museum.
Visitors could walk the stained glass-lit halls and see Victorian wallpapers preserved as if the Kimberlys still lived there. Recognition followed.
Kimberly Crest became a California Historical Landmark in 1995 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the next year.
What had started as a personal estate had become an officially recognized piece of California history.
Kimberly Crest Today
Today, Kimberly Crest is not only a living museum, but it is also more than that.
It is a garden where koi still drift under lily pads and seasonal flowers bloom as they did when Helen arranged them.
It is a house where woodwork, wallpaper, and stained glass still speak of a time when industry was new and fortunes were young.
Public tours run several days a week. Weddings and concerts bring life to the terraces.
Thousands of visitors each year step into a place that could have been lost but was instead given away. Kimberly Crest is not just a mansion.
It is a reminder of how wealth can be turned into legacy, how personal vision can become community memory, and how a single house can hold a century's worth of stories.