Kingdom of pop

To get there, take the Cachuma Lake exit off the highway and turn into the golden foothills. Follow the winding road until it hits the country lane and keep going -- farther and farther into the narrow, oak-dotted valley -- until you've left reality behind.

Come away, boys and girls, to Neverland ranch, the dreamiest, possibly seamiest and no doubt oddest private estate created since . . . well, since William Randolph Hearst cleared a chunk of coastline near here and began building his epic San Simeon castle 86 years ago.

Here, not far from Ronald Reagan's Western White House and the settings of the movie "Sideways," monkeys do housecleaning and the kitschy clutter includes a knockoff of "The Last Supper" with the master of the house, Michael Jackson, standing in Jesus's place. The 2,700-acre spread is named Neverland in tribute to Peter Pan -- the boy who wouldn't grow up -- but the vibe is more Salvador Dali-meets-Richie Rich comic book.

Last week, the defense gave jurors in the pop star's molestation trial their longest look at Neverland, a 19-minute video tour, adding another layer of description to what's known about the place (that we weren't allowed inside), which Jackson calls home.

A brief tour: Over here is the main house, built in the style of a Danish farmhouse, albeit a Danish farmhouse with 33 rooms. The non-human inhabitants (at various times giraffes, lions, elephants, llamas, reptiles and orangutans) live in the private zoo out back. There are lush English gardens with bronze statues of boys and girls at play.

You'll notice the five-acre lake (man-made) with its waterfall and boats shaped like swans. The outbuildings house a movie theater, a dance studio and a game arcade. The house features an extensive library.

There are two trains -- one a child-size model that runs a loop around the main premises, the other a refurbished steam locomotive that shuttles up and down a track from its own depot. And, surely, no adolescent regression fantasy would be complete without a giant in-ground trampoline, a bumper-car ride and a Ferris wheel.

That sound you hear? Well, Mr. Jackson has hidden speakers under fake rocks throughout the premises to provide musical accompaniment to his landscaped grounds. As you stand at the nondescript main gate (not the so-called Golden Gates well inside the perimeter), you can hear the faint tinkling of music, borne by the wind from the estate beyond. Today it sounds like a carnival is in town.

The music plays even as Jackson departs each morning for his unhappy commute to Santa Maria, 35 miles away. There, in full makeup, his parents and a phalanx of bodyguards nearby, he sits silently in a courtroom, on trial for allegedly molesting a then-13-year-old boy, serving him alcohol and holding him and his family against their will at his ranch in 2003.

A starring role
As Jackson's trial plods along, Neverland has played a starring role. It figures in all the principal events alleged by Santa Barbara County prosecutors, who have tried to turn it into a kind of unindicted co-conspirator. They have all but called the place Jackson's boy farm, a pedophile's paradise designed to lure and seduce children.

Conversely, Jackson's defense team has tried to portray Neverland as a benign kingdom -- a fantastically elaborate playground that Jackson has shared over the years with hundreds of sick and underprivileged youngsters, including the former cancer patient who is Jackson's alleged victim and accuser.

Jackson's defenders, including frequent ranch guests and several current employees (he had as many as 100 people working on the property at one time, and spent $5 million on its upkeep in 2000, according to one prosecution witness), describe the ranch as orderly, secure and generally wholesome.

"I would have once said it was the happiest place on Earth," testified Joy Robson with a touch of wistfulness. Robson is the mother of a boy Jackson befriended on a trip to Australia in 1988 after meeting him at a Michael Jackson dance-alike contest. "Once you got there, you forgot all your problems. It seemed like it was serene, peaceful, beautiful, inspirational."

Azja Pryor, the mother of comedian Chris Tucker's son and a confidante of the accuser's mother, stifled a smile when asked if the woman ever told her she wanted to escape from Neverland: "Who would want to escape Neverland?"

According to former Neverland security chief Violet Silva, the estate's grounds are patrolled round the clock by at least four security guards (retired or moonlighting police officers). All of the guards are armed with pepper spray, Silva said, but they've never had to use it.

What's more, Neverland has its own emergency-medical technicians, its own staff of animal keepers, its own firehouse and fire truck. Jackson installed the firefighting equipment soon after a fire broke out in the giraffe barn (none of the three giraffes was injured) shortly after moving in, according to Jackson biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli. Jackson had been nervous about fire since his hair was accidentally set ablaze during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984, Taraborrelli wrote in "Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness," a 1991 unauthorized biography.

Rights and privileges
Defense witnesses have described Neverland as a kind of high-security playground in which the movements of guests are carefully but unobtrusively tracked. Incoming and outgoing phone calls are monitored, and all visitors are apparently required to check in and out at the small guardhouse just off the main public road.

Each guest is "cleared" by Jackson for a variety of activities and varying levels of access. A Neverland security document from June 2002, for example, showed that the accuser and his family were permitted to partake of the following: the pool and Jacuzzi, the dance studio, the waterfall, the all-terrain vehicles, golf carts, motor scooters, jet skis, horseback riding and the main house.

Karlee Barnes, the sister of another boy who shared a bed with Jackson at Neverland, fairly gushed when asked by prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss about her first reaction to the ranch.

"Amazement!" she cried. "I was so excited and thrilled to be there. It was like you were going into paradise. It was just wonderful. . . . It was like a theme park and a zoo all at once. And it's private. It's all yours!"

Auchincloss let this sink in for the jury, before responding with a raised eyebrow. "Not everyone has a Neverland, do they?" he said.

Neverland?
The name, of course, refers to Peter Pan's fictional island home. Jackson so plainly identifies with Peter that he placed a statue of him in the foyer of his house.

But you can read a lot into this choice of names. The fictional Neverland, after all, was a place without adult authority, where a tribe of Lost Boys lived by its own rules.

In striving to create a delightful and magical place, Jackson seems to have accepted Disney's and Broadway's conceptions of Neverland, rather than the dark and forbidding original created by Sir James M. Barrie.

For example, the Broadway musical -- which has starred Mary Martin, Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby over the decades -- features these descriptive lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green:

Barrie, who wrote the stage play (1904) and popular novel (1911) about Peter, Wendy and Tinker Bell, wouldn't recognize that place. The novel's Neverland (actually, Barrie referred to it as "the Neverland") is an island of fear and anxiety: The Lost Boys are trying to kill the "redskins," the redskins are trying to kill the pirates, the pirates are trying to kill the Lost Boys, and so on. The place is stalked by ravenous beasts, including the gigantic crocodile who chomped on Capt. Hook's arm after Peter cut it off. The fearsome Hook uses his famous implement to tear open the flesh of his rivals, including, at one point, one of his own men. Several of the major characters die violent deaths.

Yes, it's a children's story.

Where Barrie's imagined and Jackson's actual Neverland intersect, perhaps, is in their boy-centered sociology.

Both Jackson and Peter Pan seem to have had no use for conventional romantic relationships. Peter Pan was too young for such things. Jackson is twice divorced after two brief, and possibly sham, marriages and has rarely been romantically linked to anyone in his 46 years. Further, both Peter and Jackson seem to enjoy being the father figure to their flock, and prefer the company of boys above other relationships (Jackson has slept in the same bed with boys serially since at least the late 1980s).

Girls? Jackson has certainly invited them to Neverland. But in at least three cases, after sleeping in his bed for a night or two, the young sisters of Jackson's "special friends" -- including his accuser's sister -- were asked by Jackson to sleep elsewhere while Jackson continued to share his bed with their brothers.

Asked about this on the witness stand, Karlee Barnes, who briefly slept with Jackson years ago, simply shrugged. "He needed his privacy and so did I, I guess," she said.

She did not seem to find this the least bit odd.

Almost priceless
Long before Jackson's trial, Neverland was a source of fascination and legend. Jackson's good friend Liz Taylor married her eighth husband, truck driver Larry Fortensky, on the premises in 1991 in a ceremony interrupted by a gate-crashing skydiver. Fans trade information about it on the Internet and make pilgrimages to its front entrance, much like they do at Graceland, Elvis's home in Memphis.

Jackson bought the former oat farm and cattle ranch from developer William Bone in 1988, paying $17 million (supposedly a record price for a domestic residence at that time). According to Taraborrelli, Jackson had become enchanted by the ranch when he stayed there during the filming of the "Say, Say, Say" video with Paul McCartney. McCartney had leased the home for his and wife Linda's stay.

It's hard to say exactly what the property is worth now. John Duross O'Bryan, an accountant who examined some of Jackson's financial records, testified for the prosecution that Jackson had an appraisal of $50 million in 2000. Santa Barbara County real estate prices have almost doubled since then.

But Micah Brady, an agent with Sotheby's International Realty in Los Olivos (pop. 1,000), the nearest town to Neverland, said putting a price tag on the place is difficult. "It's so recognizable, like Graceland or Hearst Castle," he said. "The property is pretty phenomenal. The land, the beauty, the location. It's an A-plus."

On the other hand, he adds, there isn't much demand for bucolic ranch land with a bumper-car ride and Ferris wheel. "Anyone who could afford that kind of property would want to develop their own Neverland," he said. "Why would they want to take over what Michael Jackson has? What could happen is that someone with enough money would buy the property and demolish all the buildings on it."

Control questions
Despite all the testimony about Neverland's security, Santa Barbara County district attorneys have tried to show it as a place that was out of control.

The claim is subtle but critical, says Craig Smith, a former Santa Barbara County prosecutor, who is observing the trial: If the state can show a pattern of unruly behavior at Jackson's home, it would add a critical circumstantial element to the idea that Jackson might have abused children with impunity.

So: The prosecution brought on a former housekeeper who blamed Jackson for running a "Pinocchio's pleasure island" where young boys were allowed to do anything, including drinking alcohol.

So: Prosecutors have dwelled on the fact that keys were left in unlocked vehicles at the ranch and that Jackson's alleged victim was caught on several occasions driving them without permission, including Jackson's Lincoln Navigator. The prosecution introduced an "accident log" from June 2002, when security personnel recorded that Jackson's eventual accuser commandeered a golf cart (dressed up to look like Batman's car) and "crashed into theater fountain . . . reckless driving." He was warned to slow down or the Bat-cart would be taken away.

So: Much has been made by the prosecution of several unrelated security breaches in an effort to discredit the defense's characterization of Neverland as secure and smooth-running. In one incident, a German-speaking female fan climbed the fence and got into Jackson's house. She was found on the floor right above the rooms in which his children, Paris, Prince Michael and Prince Michael II, sleep.

Silva, the ex-security chief, said the woman had been on the property for "about 10 hours," but Jackson's spokeswoman, Raymone Bain, said after court recently that the woman was there "for a few days."

One of the most damning bits of testimony about Neverland came from Silva and other witnesses, who described the security system on Jackson's bedroom, the scene of many of his sleepovers with boys. All described a curious feature of Jackson's room: It locks from the inside with a deadbolt and an electronic keypad. Security personnel don't have the code. Moreover, a special chime outside the room signals occupants when someone is approaching.

"Were you concerned that your children were in a location you could not get to?" Sneddon asked Joy Robson.

She hesitated before answering.

"No," she said softly.

A place of pilgrimage
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cool coastal air is creeping over the Santa Ynez mountains, turning the perfect California evening ominously gloomy and damp. A biting wind starts to funnel through the valley, turning a day of T-shirts into a dusk that demands windbreakers and fleece.

Pam Goldfinch, a 19-year-old college student from Sussex, England, seems not to mind the gathering chill. Jackson is nowhere in sight -- his house and its amusements are set way back from the road, shielded by hills and oaks -- but that doesn't concern her, either. This is her pilgrimage.

"Just to know you're that close to Michael Jackson is really great," she says brightly. Her boyfriend won't give his name, but he agrees.

"Michael will be vindicated," Goldfinch declares. "We know he will be. We're looking forward to the day when this ordeal ends. "

When she stops talking, you can hear the music wafting down from Neverland again. It's supposed to sound happy, but somehow it just sounds haunting.

It's the sound of children singing.