Elvis Presley hardly ever saw the morning back then. He slept through the day and lived at night.
But one February morning in 1967, he was out early with a few friends, shopping for a horse for his father, Vernon. Just over the Mississippi state line, he spotted a cattle farm with rolling green pasture and a little lake.
He wanted it that day.
The whole thing had started with a simple gift. In 1966, Elvis bought a horse for Priscilla Beaulieu, the girl he’d soon marry, and another for the girlfriend of his pal Jerry Schilling, so the two women could ride together.
Then Elvis caught the bug himself. He drove from farm to farm asking for a golden palomino, and when he found one, he named it Rising Sun.
Before long, the barn behind Graceland, his Memphis mansion, was packed. “We ended up getting 20 or so horses,” Jerry later recalled.
So Elvis bought the farm. The owner, a man named Jack Adams, called it Twinkletown Farm, and Elvis paid $437,000 for the land, the house, the cattle and the equipment. He reportedly put Graceland itself up as collateral.
He wanted to call it the Circle G, with the G for Graceland. That name was already registered, so on paper it became the Flying Circle G. Everybody still called it Circle G.
And then the giving started.
Every friend got a horse, like it or not. Priscilla once joked about it: “It didn’t matter if you wanted one or not, you were getting a horse!”
Next came pickup trucks for the guys, El Caminos and Ford Rancheros, some with a Circle G logo. Then they needed somewhere to sleep, and mobile homes rolled onto the pasture for his friends and their wives. Tractors and other ranch gear came next.
You can see how happy he was out there in old home movies.
Elvis and Priscilla Riding Horses at Graceland and Circle G Ranch
Hollywood was waiting, though. His manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had a hard time dragging Elvis off the ranch to start his next movie, Clambake. Elvis reportedly showed up to a Nashville recording session that February in cowboy chaps.
The bills piled up fast. According to Jerry, Elvis spent nearly $1 million within a few weeks. “The spending started costing more than the ranch,” he said.
Elvis didn’t seem to mind. He married Priscilla in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967, and a few days later they were back on the ranch, living in the small farmhouse fans now call the honeymoon cottage.
Priscilla later wrote that she “loved playing house” there. She even did the laundry herself, which is a funny picture for the wife of the biggest star in the world.
It didn’t last. That November, part of the ranch equipment was reportedly auctioned off. In May 1969, Elvis sold the ranch for $440,000, and some of the horses went home to Graceland.
But the land is still there in Horn Lake, Mississippi. In 2021, fans paid for a state historical marker out front, and the investors who bought the property in 2012 have plans to restore it.
One explorer went inside to see what’s left of it.