0:03

It arrived as a vision. It

0:08

reached to the heavens and

0:11

it disappeared in flames.

0:23

For 14 years, the world's biggest

0:25

tree house stood in central Tennessee.

0:28

It was 97 feet tall, as

0:30

tall as a nine-story building.

0:32

It attracted visitors from around

0:34

the world, but nobody ever

0:36

made a dime off of it. One

0:38

man built it all by

0:40

himself because God told

0:43

him to. But

0:45

he never had a chance to say goodbye

0:48

to his towering tree house temple.

0:56

I'm Dylan Thurris, and this is Atlas

0:58

Obscura, a celebration

1:00

of the world's strange, incredible,

1:03

and wondrous places. Today

1:05

we're remembering the minister's tree house

1:08

in Crossville, Tennessee. We'll

1:10

talk to the pastor Horace Burgess, the

1:13

minister himself, about his

1:15

creation, and we'll hear from several

1:17

people who visited this lost wonder, including

1:20

me. One

1:22

more, after this. If

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your lifetime membership now. That's rosettastone.com backslash

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pod 50 or 50% off. Horace

2:52

Burgess built his very first tree house

2:55

back in the 1980s. It was in nine trees.

2:58

It was five stories high. And

3:01

I lived in it for three years. The

3:03

tree house was on his family's farmland

3:05

in a town called Crossville. It's about

3:08

two hours east of Nashville, Tennessee. And

3:11

Horace was struggling with addiction at the

3:13

time. So before long, he

3:15

says the tree house became a bad place

3:17

for him. He was just evil. I

3:19

mean, I was no good about it. It was,

3:22

you know, just drugs and party

3:24

all the time. And I realized

3:27

that I was wasting my life and I was trying

3:29

to change it. And people wouldn't

3:32

let me. But then he

3:34

says he got a message from God.

3:37

And it was simple. Destroy

3:39

the tree house. The

3:42

only way that I could end that part

3:44

of my life was to get

3:46

rid of my past. So I

3:50

set my house up. I

3:52

said, you went crazy. I said, no, that's

3:54

probably the most sane moment in my life.

3:57

But after he burned it down, he got sober.

4:00

Turned his life around he turned even

4:02

closer to religion looking for a light to

4:04

guide him out of the darkness And

4:07

then perhaps inevitably the voice came again

4:11

Horace says he was praying Praying

4:13

for everything but a treehouse and

4:15

that's when the Lord told me

4:17

if I'd built him one He'd never let me run out

4:20

of material. So I'd be it praying

4:22

for everything but a treehouse

4:25

Because Horace knew that the old one had done

4:27

him no good but

4:30

the Lord works in mysterious ways

4:32

and Horace

4:34

quickly got down to work He

4:39

went around town warning neighbors that the world's biggest

4:41

treehouse was about to be built and one day

4:44

they'd have to be careful backing out of their

4:46

driveways because of the crowds God

4:48

promised that he would never run out of materials

4:50

and He didn't he

4:52

started doing odd jobs tearing down barns and

4:54

sheds and instead of money Horace

4:56

Burgess started taking his pay in

4:58

wood and nails He

5:02

started with a simple staircase winding higher and

5:04

higher with no clear

5:07

destination Then came the

5:09

amenities a basketball hoop statues of the

5:11

12 Apostles a chapel it

5:14

quickly became more than a house something

5:16

almost like a Campus a

5:18

little universe onto itself floating

5:21

above Crossville 12

5:24

years later, I put the roof on 12

5:28

years he toiled alone like

5:30

a book of the Bible and Then

5:32

it was there 97

5:35

feet tall held together by

5:37

a quarter of a million nails As

5:40

Horace predicted the visitors did start to

5:42

flock to this incredible treehouse in Crossville

5:45

Including Pete Nelson. Well

5:47

as a as a builder. I was just really

5:51

intrigued by how he Managed

5:54

to take what were clearly just

5:56

leftovers wraps

5:59

and and turn them into this edifice.

6:03

Fellow treehouse nerds, do

6:05

you recognize that voice? Pete

6:08

Nelson is a professional treehouse architect

6:10

who's built hundreds of them and

6:13

who hosts treehouse masters on Animal Planet.

6:16

In all seriousness, Pete is kind of

6:18

the Mick Jagger of treehouses. So

6:20

when he went to film an episode of his show

6:22

in Crossville with Horace, it was the

6:24

ultimate endorsement. And when I looked

6:27

at it, that first impression was like, wow,

6:29

this guy is the real deal.

6:33

He walks and walks and he doesn't talk the

6:35

dog. He does it. The

6:40

reputation of Horace's treehouse grew and

6:43

grew. People came from

6:45

all over, first from Tennessee, then

6:48

Florida, from England, from France, from

6:50

Guatemala. Soon, people started asking if

6:52

they could get married there. Horace,

6:54

who's the pastor, officiated

6:56

23 weddings in

6:59

the treehouse. But

7:03

in 2012, an engineer

7:05

visited the treehouse. Any notice, structural

7:07

issues that he thought were concerning.

7:10

So he contacted the local fire department. The

7:12

state glossed it down and wanted me to

7:15

hire three engineers to make it safe. And

7:18

I think no way that you could make a

7:20

97-foot treehouse safe. Not

7:26

long after the treehouse closed in 2012, Horace sold the property.

7:30

The treehouse stayed standing, but technically

7:32

no one was allowed to visit. But

7:35

that didn't stop me from hopping the fence back in 2016

7:38

to take a look. I

7:41

can tell you, this treehouse was

7:43

an absolute marvel.

7:47

I have never been anywhere like

7:49

it before or since. People

7:52

always talk about how many floors it had, but

7:55

you couldn't really tell one floor

7:57

from the other. It just kind of

7:59

spiraled up. past room after room,

8:01

past the basketball court, yes, the

8:03

basketball court, until you were at

8:05

the very tippy top of the

8:07

tower, staring out across Tennessee. Somehow,

8:10

the place felt both organic,

8:13

like climbing an actual tree,

8:16

and incredibly artistic, some

8:18

kind of strange, otherworldly

8:22

masterpiece. Like elves

8:24

came out of the woods to

8:26

make this incredible structure. But

8:29

don't just take it from me. I

8:32

wasn't the only one who hopped the fence. We got

8:34

in touch with a few others who went to see this tree house.

8:36

This is Lily Hyatt, a musician. I've

8:39

been in a lot of different kinds of

8:41

churches and stuff, and I've never quite felt

8:43

that way that I felt in the tree

8:45

house. It felt very loving.

8:49

And another really

8:52

crazy thing about it was just, it was

8:54

kind of, there were all

8:56

these twists and turns and little

8:58

staircases you could go around. It

9:01

seemed like never-ending. And

9:04

this is Lindsey Turner. She's a graphic

9:06

designer. Oh, yeah, it was massive.

9:09

I didn't really, pictures

9:12

cannot do it justice in

9:15

the sense that, like, you cannot

9:17

understand until

9:20

you did it what it was like to

9:22

be up on an

9:24

upper level and, like, look down

9:26

and see the other levels below

9:29

you through the wide cracks between

9:31

the floorboards. And

9:34

it was just sort of surreal thinking,

9:36

like, this doesn't seem safe. But

9:39

it also felt, at the

9:41

same time, surprisingly, like,

9:44

stable. I

9:46

don't know. I felt very comforted by

9:48

the inspiration of it all.

9:50

That's why I didn't feel too guilty about

9:52

the trespassing, because I was just like, you

9:54

know, we built this because we wanted people

9:56

to see it and feel inspired

9:58

by it. They were like,

10:00

what if we live in a tree house?

10:03

That's kind of my dream. But

10:07

then, just like that, the

10:10

tree house was gone. No

10:13

one knows what happened. October 22nd, 2019 was a

10:15

clear night in Crossville. There

10:19

was no electricity running in the tree house, and

10:22

yet fire consumed it

10:24

anyway. The

10:27

Lord giveth, the

10:29

Lord taketh away. Horace

10:33

wasn't actually that upset when he heard.

10:36

I mean, heck, this wasn't the first time one of his

10:38

tree houses had been burned to the ground. Plus,

10:41

he'd sold the property years earlier.

10:44

He says he never missed the house itself, and

10:46

all of the responsibilities that came along with it.

10:49

But he misses something else about it. The

10:52

people who came. Well, you

10:54

know, you

10:56

don't know how anything touches

10:58

another person as

11:01

you meet them in life

11:04

until something tragic happens or

11:08

reality sets in

11:10

or something. But it's

11:12

just story after story of

11:16

how people were blessed when they visited the

11:18

tree house and that kind of thing. And

11:21

how it affected their life, you know,

11:23

for the better. Millie

11:26

Hyatt never met Horace, but

11:28

she proves this point. The coolest part

11:30

of the tree house is just realizing

11:34

how compelled like humans

11:36

can be by a higher calling

11:38

is pretty like awe

11:41

inspiring to me. So that was one of

11:43

my favorite parts. Like the tree house is

11:45

incredible. But then just thinking of

11:47

like Horace's journey

11:50

and experience creating that is

11:53

really special. will

12:00

never totally be gone. There will

12:02

always be a shadow over Crossville,

12:04

not of a giant treehouse exactly, but

12:06

of what someone can do simply

12:09

because they've been touched with a

12:11

bit of divine inspiration.

12:16

It's a huge loss. It's such a strange place

12:19

that, you know, will now be

12:21

the stuff of legends. This

12:27

story was reported and the interviews were conducted

12:30

by the masterful Matt Talb. Thank

12:32

you to Horace Burgess, Pete Nelson, Lindsey

12:34

Turner, and Lily Hyatt for talking with

12:37

us today. This podcast is

12:39

a co-production of Alice Obscura and

12:41

Witness Docs. Our production team includes

12:43

Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Camille Stanley,

12:45

me, Dylan Thuris, Sarah Wyman, John

12:47

DeLore, and Peter Clowney. Our theme

12:49

and end credit music is by

12:52

Sam Tindall. This episode was mixed

12:54

by Luce Fleming. I'm

12:56

Dylan Thuris, wishing you all the wonder

12:58

in the world. Witness

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us. Regardless of whether we're

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looking at science or not science, we

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bring a rigorous curiosity to get you

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the answers. And hopefully make it. You

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