BOISE — A foundation that formed four years ago to help preserve the central Idaho house where Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway killed himself has disbanded, saying it has achieved its goals.
The Hemingway House Foundation recently made a final donation of $26,200 to The Nature Conservancy, which owns the house in Ketchum and the 12 acres of land around it.
The foundation previously donated $17,500 for restoration work at the home, which included fixing furniture coverings, repairing windows and finishing wood. It disbanded last month.
The conservancy is also researching and archiving all items in the house, identifying those with cultural significance. A caretaker has been living there since November 2005.
"We are very pleased with the ongoing restoration," Pete Smith, a foundation board member, said in a statement. "It is gratifying to see the conservancy carrying forward our original vision."
For a time the house was used as an office by the conservancy, whose stated mission to preserve natural ecosystems includes nothing about the upkeep of historic homes.
Jan Peppler, director of philanthropy for the Nature Conservancy in Idaho, said the foundation convinced the group that Hemingway's continued popularity as a writer and his reputation as an outdoorsman could be combined with his former home to further the conservancy's goals.
"This home truly is a legacy and a wonderful connection to the land and introduces people to what we do," said Peppler. "Not Hemingway the literary giant, but Hemingway who loved Idaho, who spent all these years off and on in Idaho, and his great love of the land.
"That reaches another audience that we as a conservation organization don't normally reach."
She said prospective conservancy donors are brought into the home for tours and that small cocktail parties are sometimes held there.
The house was built in the early 1950s. Hemingway bought it in 1959. Facing health issues and fearing he had lost his ability to write, according to biographers, he committed suicide there on July 2, 1961, at age 61. He is buried in the Ketchum Cemetery.
His fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, bequeathed the house to The Nature Conservancy. She died in 1986.
The Hemingway House Foundation formed in 2003 to raise money and give the conservancy direction in preserving the home.
"This group was a tremendous help to The Nature Conservancy in helping us chart a course for how to deal with a historic property," said Matt Miller, spokesman for the organization in Idaho.
Miller said it costs about $50,000 annually to maintain the house. A plan to open the house to public tours collapsed in 2005 after neighbors complained about possible traffic.
About $16,000 was raised last fall during the Hemingway festival, where guests paid $1,000 each to have dinner in the house.
Miller said the conservancy receives money from other individuals and organizations to preserve and maintain the home, which he said is an unusual piece of property for the conservancy.
"Owning the Hemingway house is unique in just the tremendous cultural interest that remains in Hemingway worldwide," said Miller. "I receive calls from people interested in the house from all over the world."
Ketchum, less than a mile from the resort area of Sun Valley, contains some of the most expensive land in the state. Miller said the property the house sits on is the largest piece of undeveloped land in the mountain town, and draws a variety of wildlife. He didn't have an exact estimate of the land's value, but said it's likely in the millions of dollars.
"It was bequeathed to us as a nature preserve," said Miller. "We are obviously not going to sell it."