Let’s take a look back at the early days of Bidwell Mansion, when it was still taking shape and already capturing the attention of curious visitors. Even as construction neared completion, the home’s distinctive architecture and sweeping views were drawing praise from near and far. And everyone was curious about what it cost.

In April of 1868, while John Bidwell was in Washington, D.C., marrying Annie Ellicott Kennedy, a Marysville reporter for the Marysville Daily Appeal came north to take a look at Chico and found it to be “located on a most beautiful site” and “quite a business place,” with twelve to fifteen stores, several hotels, and various shops and livery stables. But mainly, the reporter came to see “the newly erected mansion of General Bidwell.”

Marysville was a much larger town, but it could not boast anything to equal the Bidwell Mansion. The reporter was escorted through the house, from basement to tower, by “P.M. Craig, of San Francisco, foreman of the carpenters’ work,” who amply supplied him with statistics: “The first story is 14 feet, the second, 12 and attic 11 in height, containing in aggregate 54 rooms, including closets and bathrooms. There is in surface about 17,000 feet of flooring,” and so on. It was built in the style of an Italian villa, with double brick walls, “2 feet thick with a 6-inch opening in the center; neatly stuccoed on the outside with the best hard white finish on the inside.”

The reporter was particularly impressed with the 65-foot-high tower, often referred to as an observatory, “from which is presented the most beautiful of California landscape views.” He could see the Sierras, the Coast Range mountains, “the serpentine courses of the Sacramento and Feather rivers,” and “to the south the famous Sutter Buttes—the Sphinx of California.” Nearer to view was the great ranch of “the Chico farmer.”

He concluded by stating that “the cost of this magnificent residence is estimated to be between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars.” The reporter’s estimate is not far off. John R. Kennedy, Annie Bidwell’s brother, who was present at the time, told the Chico Enterprise that it cost $56,000. According to the website Measuring Worth, this amount spent on a construction project in 1868 would be equivalent to $22 million today.