Dispute arises over Hemingway's Idaho home

KETCHUM, Idaho, March 26 (UPI) -- Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter is leading a fight to restore the famous writer's Idaho mountain home amid protests from local residents.

Actress Mariel Hemingway, who formed the Idaho Hemingway House Foundation last year to restore the Ketchum, Idaho, house, where the author lived from 1959 until he committed suicide there in 1961, would like to open the home for the first time for public tours, writers' workshops and literary events, Friday's USA Today reported.

Hemingway said she got the idea to open the house after visiting her grandfather's Cuban home, the Finca Vigia, where the writer lived from 1939 to 1959.

"They have memorialized my grandfather, his house and his lifestyle there, and it struck me that it needed to be done in the country of his birth," Mariel Hemingway said. "It needed to be done in Idaho."

Local residents have opposed the changes, saying public tours would disrupt the privacy of their neighborhood.

Hemingway's home is located near the high-dollar ski resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho.