Photos -- The Minister's Tree House

See what happens when I promise to post later in the day:  I vanish for a week.  Oh well, here's the post as promised.

The Minister's Tree House is a roadside attraction/church/oddity located Crossville, Tennessee. In 1993, Minister Horace Burgess supposedly received divine inspiration to build the gigantic tree house. Over the years the tree house has grown and grown using reclaimed material. At ~90 feet high and containing nearly 100 rooms, it is one of the largest (if not the largest) tree houses in the world.

The Minister's Tree House

The tree house has several stories, each with a large wrap-around deck. A fully functional chapel with pulpit, cross, pews, and a choir loft makes up the center of the structure. The rest of the building is a twisting maze of rooms, hallways, ladders, and dead ends. If you manage to climb all the way to the top point of the structure (a bell tower) you are rewarded with a great view of the surrounding countryside and a large JESUS spelled out in the bushes below.

Cross in the center chapel.

These shots are from my visit to the Minister's Tree House in July 2011. I went with several other students from East Tennessee State University during the one weekend off we got during field school. We had a blast climbing through the building, taking photos, and meeting the other people who had ventured out to see the giant structure. Since then, the property has been closed to the public and declared a fire hazard. You can contact the state fire marshal at (615) 741-2981 to file a complaint (you know you want to).

The photos from this set can be found on Picasa or Flickr.