In March 1957, Elvis Presley was in Los Angeles filming Loving You. While he was away, his parents went house-hunting.
Vernon and Gladys drove out to a property off Highway 51 South in Whitehaven, near the Tennessee-Mississippi border: nearly fourteen acres of wooded land around a brick mansion. The place was empty and needed a great deal of work. But it was private, it was quiet, and they thought it would make a perfect home for the family.
Elvis had not seen it. And the name of the estate already captured everything they liked about it. Graceland.
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The story of the day he finally laid eyes on it comes from George Klein, who had known Elvis since they were schoolboys at Humes High in Memphis and remained one of his closest friends for the rest of his life. Klein wrote about it in his book Elvis: My Best Man.
It happened just days before Klein set off traveling with Elvis. The two of them took an afternoon drive down Highway 51 so Elvis could see what his parents were so excited about.
Klein is honest about the state of the place: “Graceland wasn’t much more than a shell of a house when we first saw it.”
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But the reaction was immediate. “I can tell you that Elvis fell in love with the place right away.”
What Klein describes next explains why. There was no neighborhood around it then — no houses, no development, nothing. “Driving up the driveway to the house you had the feeling you were approaching some secluded, forgotten palace.”
Then the thing that sold it, which had nothing to do with the building at all. “What was really amazing, even on that first visit, was the feeling the grounds gave you. There was a peacefulness and a serenity there that made it more comfortable than any place I’d ever been. I know Elvis felt it, too.”
He was right. Within days, Elvis had worked out a purchase deal and started hiring designers and contractors.
He was 22 years old. He paid $102,500. And he lived there until the day he died.