This 97-foot tall treehouse made from reclaimed and recycled wood gets an average of 400 visitors a week!

Image: flickr
In 1993 God told Horace Burgess, a landscape architect and ordained minister, to build a treehouse.  Horace accepted this divine intervention, and for seventeen years he worked on what he calls “The Minister’s Treehouse.”  This massive treehouse, which is located is Crossville, Tennessee, is 97-feet high, has 10 floors and covers between 8,000-10,000 square feet.  It’s built around an 80-foot-tall white oak tree and has six other trees that support it like natural pillars.  One could say that it’s the tallest and holiest treehouse of them all.
The coolest feature of the Minister’s Treehouse, which looks to me like something that Tarzan’s rich uncle would own, is that it’s built completely with salvaged lumber that Horace acquired from garages, sheds, barns and other structures.  It also includes recycled furniture, license plates and roofing material.  Inside the treehouse you’ll see a spiral staircase, a choir loft, a private sanctuary, and yes, even a basketball court!  Horace even built his wife her own personal belfry tower, which includes chimes made from oxygen acetylene bottles that weigh 5,700 pounds each.
Need to see it to believe it?  Here’s proof:

Images: odditycentral.com

Images: flickr
The Minister’s Treehouse gets about 400-500 visitors from around the country every week.  After taking a tour of the amazing treehouse and reaching the top, guests get to view the garden that Horace designed himself.  It includes flowers like daffodils, irises, narcissus, gladiolas and wild daisies, all of which spell out the word…J-E-S-U-S!  In an article in USA Today Horace said this about the garden: “The whole message of the thing is if you come to see the site and climb to the top, you’ll see Jesus in the garden, and the preacher didn’t have to say a word.”
According to Horace, the treehouse isn’t finished.  He’s going to keep building it up as long as he keeps getting recycled materials.  I hope that he does go bigger, because this is an amazing sight that everyone should get to see!