The Coos Bay Coast, Oregon

With a seemingly endless flow of money at his disposal, an obsessive penchant for pretty flowers blooming in manicured gardens, and not one, but two, ostentatious mansions to brag about, lumber baron Louis Simpson assembled and cultivated one of the grandest estates on the American West Coast between the 1920s and 1942. Perched on a sprawling bluff high above the raging Pacific, Simpson's masterpiece, known to the 21st century as Shore Acres, commanded stunning views of rugged headlands, teeming rookeries, offshore islands and sea stacks, and an enormous reef awash with thousands of feathered fowl and vast herds of marine mammals – seals and lions. Living in pinniped heaven, these blubbery beasts of the deep blue sea haul out now as they did back then, and lounge about on rocky ledges and in isolated coves under temperamental gray skies that are heavy, long and wide, but which mercifully turn blue during summer and fall.

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