Ernest and Mary Hemingway House

The Ernest and Mary Hemingway House, in Ketchum, Idaho, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. The National Register does not disclose its location but rather lists it as "Address restricted." The property is the last undeveloped property of its size within the city limits of Ketchum.

The house was built 71 years ago in 1953 for Henry J. "Bob" Topping Jr. It is a two-story, 2,500-square-foot (230 m²) home in Ketchum, west of the Big Wood River. Similar to the Sun Valley Lodge a few miles away, its exterior walls are concrete, poured into rough-sawn forms and then acid-stained to simulate wood. It was sold to Hemingway in 1959 for its asking price of $50,000, and the Hemingways occupied it in November 1959.

On the morning of Sunday, July 2, 1961, Hemingway died in the home of a self-inflicted head wound from a shotgun. After a brief funeral four days later, he was buried at the city cemetery.

The Nature Conservancy acquired ownership in 1986. In May 2017, ownership was transferred to The Community Library in Ketchum, a privately funded public library.

According to the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History, also owned by The Community Library, Ernest Hemingway's final home, and Mary Hemingway's home until 1986, is managed by The Community Library Association as a private residence for visiting writers, and the site of ongoing preservation efforts.

The Community Library became the custodian of the Hemingway House and Preserve in May 2017, following the 30-year ownership of the House by The Nature Conservancy. The change marked a new approach to the preservation and promotion of the iconic writer's legacy in the American West, and by a library whose own history is intertwined with Hemingway's.

The Community Library honors the House as a contemplative, non-commercial space, and they are prioritizing ongoing preservation efforts and a writer-in-residence program there. They ask the public to respect the privacy of the place. You can take a virtual tour of the House and learn more about Hemingway's time in Idaho through the Library's digital Hemingway library.

The Ketchum, Idaho, house, and its associated 13.9 acres of land alongside the Big Wood River, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its association with the great writer and because it is an exquisite example of mid-century architecture.

The house is incorporated into a larger historical and literary program that explores Hemingway's abiding connections to the remote and rugged region, a place he visited for two decades, and the place where he turned to make his final home after his departure from Cuba.

Artifacts from the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House and Preserve are being preserved by the Jeanne Rodger Lane Center for Regional History and will be made accessible to the public through periodic displays at the Library and the Wood River Museum of History and Culture, as well as through research requests.