While continuing his study of civil engineering, Thompson met a pretty, young freshman student named Bessie Penniman.

Her father, Hiram Penniman, was a prominent early citizen of Walnut Creek, California and the creator of Shadelands Ranch.

[2] Albert Johnson and Bessie were en route to Alaska when they decided to stop over in Puget Sound for a visit with Thompson's young family.

[1] Patience and Thompson eventually had six children together, and to support his growing family he took work in a variety of civil engineering capacities.

The lengthy separation between Thompson and his wife caused a great deal of strain on their marriage and may have engendered an estrangement between them.

Mat complied, and soon Johnson offered the job of overseeing construction at Death Valley Ranch to Thompson.

At the time, Thompson was living in Washington, D.C., and working as senior railroad appraiser with the Interstate Commerce Commission.

[4] Thompson took a one-year leave of absence from his government job and joined Bessie and Albert in Death Valley on November 6, 1925.

[4] Aside from some very specific technical advice and guidelines early on, Albert Johnson participated little in the construction process, and it was Bessie who worked closely with Thompson on the final design of what would become Scotty's Castle.

[2] Although Johnson liked the plain, box-like design, and felt it "Symbolized that everything he did was on the square",[5] Bessie thought it was ugly and was greatly pleased when Thompson presented her with a series of sketches that redesigned the stucco box as a Spanish revival-style hacienda, somewhat reminiscent of the style of the buildings the two of them had seen at Stanford.

Johnson paid him a monthly salary of $400, half of which was sent home to Tacoma to support Patience and his brood of children.

[6] Mere weeks later, construction at Death Valley Ranch ended due to Johnson's financial difficulties and a land ownership dispute.

Thompson had not been in Reno long when he entered into a relationship with an acquaintance of his, a Mrs. Ivah Thaxton, whom he had met while she was vacationing at Death Valley Ranch some time before with her husband, whom she had since divorced.

Thompson wrote to Albert Johnson several times requesting work at the Death Valley Ranch should construction resume in the near future, even sending in a completely redundant résumé at one point.

Many thought Bessie to be unfulfilled without the children she might otherwise have had, and in seeking to direct her energies elsewhere, therefore more inclined to dwell nostalgically on the relationships of her past.

Although generally a discreet man who kept his personal business to himself, the truth of the matter may have been too much for him to bear, and he confessed his feelings for Bessie in a letter to his then-wife Patience O'Hara.

She was a strictly religious woman and no doubt disapproved of [Thompson]'s divorce, but being human, probably quietly cherished the thought that she was his real love..."Certainly such a confession would be neither constructive nor welcome in most marriages, and though some claim that a long-standing estrangement between Patience and Thompson was what led to their eventual divorce in 1924, others attribute their separation in at least some part to meddling, either intentional or unintentional, by Bessie herself.

[12] Mat concluded: "...I am inclined to accept Mr. Earls' observations as essentially true...I asked him if he thought that Mrs. J. had put Dad up to getting the divorce (it came at her suddenly) he said he didn't know, that he wouldn't put it past her..."Still others felt that some of the most compelling evidence for a secret romance between Thompson and his Bessie was provided by Albert Johnson himself in his treatment of Thompson.

Young Mat and his sister Patience agreed that Johnson displayed at times hostile behavior towards their father.

[14] By the time the booklet was printed, however, his initials had been removed from all the images but one, which young Mat speculated may have been well-enough disguised as part of the design that they were overlooked.

[19] Although the education Thompson received during his time at both Rose Polytechnic and Stanford totaled to the equivalent of a full college degree, his family's financial situation after the Panic of 1893 and the subsequent necessity of his dropping out of school meant that Thompson never acquired some of the formal documents his fellow students did to attest to his skill.

However, as the name Mat was a late addition, it remained fairly superfluous throughout most of Thompson's early life, with his family and close friends continuing to refer to him simply as Roy.