History
The house and gardens were built in 1897 for Mrs. Cornelia A. Hill, one of the pioneers of Redlands. In 1905, John Alfred Kimberly, a co-founder of Kimberly-Clark paper company, purchased the home to escape the Wisconsin winters, giving the family name to the property. The family celebrated the holidays at the property with a 90-foot (27 m) Magnolia tree adorned with 6000 watts of light. The Kimberly family continued to live in the home until the death in 1979 of Mary Kimberly Shirk, the widowed daughter of John Alfred Kimberly.
Before her death, Mrs. Shirk challenged the city of Redlands to raise the funds to purchase the property around the home and turn it into a 39 acres (0.06 sq mi; 0.16 km2) botanical park. If the funds were raised, she promised to bequeath the mansion and its 6.25 acres (0.01 sq mi; 0.03 km2) estate to the city. The city raised the funds, and the surrounding grounds became known as Prospect Park. At her death, Mrs. Shirk left the home to "the people of Redlands" and used the proceeds from the sale of Prospect Park to establish the Kimberly-Shirk Association which continues to care for the home today.
Prior to the conversion to museum, the mansion served as one of the filming locations for the 1981 movie Hell Night, starring Linda Blair. In the film, underground tunnels were depicted, but the house and the estate have no such feature. Later, grounds served as the setting of Fleetwood Mac's Big Love video. Shots depicting the inside of the home were filmed on a sound stage.
Read more about this topic: Kimberly Crest
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)