Rubel Castle, Folk art castle in Glendora, California, US.

Rubel Castle is a complex of towers, walkways and rooms in Glendora built without architectural plans from cement, salvaged river rock, steel, telephone poles and wine bottles. Its tallest tower rises 74 feet and carries a restored 1911 Seth Thomas clock and brass bells. A 1940s Santa Fe caboose, old trucks and tractors stand in the middle of the 1.7-acre grounds.

Michael Rubel bought a 1.7-acre plot with an old reservoir and citrus packing house in 1959, when he was 19. He began building in 1968, starting with a bottle house inside the 145,000-gallon concrete reservoir, and work continued until 1986. In 2005 he donated the castle to the Glendora Historical Society, which runs it; it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

The citrus packing house on the site became "The Tin Palace," where Dorothy Deuel Rubel, a former Broadway actress and Greenwich Village Follies dancer, hosted weekly parties for hundreds of guests in the 1960s. Visitors included Dwight Eisenhower, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Alfred Hitchcock. Chickens and other animals still roam the grounds.

Visitors must book tours in advance and should be prepared for multiple staircases and steep pathways throughout the grounds. The experience requires physical activity over roughly 90 minutes, so plan accordingly.

A restored 1911 Seth Thomas clock still runs the brass bells atop the 74-foot tower. Elsewhere on the grounds stand a 1940s Santa Fe caboose and a cemetery filled with rejected marble tombstones but no graves.