World-Famous Tree House in Piercy, California
Opening the door, you enter a room 21' by 27' with a fifty-foot cavity ceiling.
Burned out completely hollow in a forest fire about 300 years ago, and still
living and perfectly healthy. You can still see the charcoal on the inside of the tree from the forest
fire, and it's burned out as high as a five-story building inside!
Ripley called the Tree House "the tallest one-room house in the world," but Ripley hyperbolized a lot. In fact,
no one ever "lived" in the tree house. It began as a tourist donut shop. The only whites who ever even slept in the tree house were a road construction crew who put cots in it and slept
there for about a week when they were building the road back in the '20s. Their picture is on the wall.
This tree is hollowed out "only" fifty feet up into the tree. Sometimes fires burn all the way through the top and
you can look up and see skylight through them. Then they are called "chimney trees." The natives had an interesting use for
chimney trees: They'd build their smoke signal fires in them so the smoke would stay confined to the intended pattern
while it rose up to the 400' forest canopy and could be seen by other Indians; if they built the fires outside the tree,
the smoke would dissipate by the time it reached the canopy.
The tree is estimated to be about 4,000 years old. Yes, you read that correctly. Four thousand years old. Amazing.
Confusion Hill in Piercy, California
Almost hidden among the trees on Hwy 101, this is one of the tackier roadside attractions. Things are sagging and need
painted, but the natives were friendly enough. Sort of like the Mystery Spot near Santa Cruz, the earth has some sort of magnetic
overload here. What happens as a result? Water runs up hill. You can't stand up straight in the house.
Gravity acts differently in the north-south direction than it does in the east-west direction. Your kid looks taller than you do.
I decided against the little train ride through the trees when they told me that
the big tree they used to ride through was destroyed in a storm. I bought a couple postcards, snapped a couple pix and was on
my way.
