Believe it or not, Jack Palance: A house inside a tree

On the heels of a mid-February post, here's another postcard, plucked from someone's old scrapbook, of sequoioideae being used in a novel way by capitalist Homo sapiens.

The handwritten caption on the front of this postcard, which dates to 1930-1950, based on its style of EKC stamp box, states:

At Lilly Redwood Park
on the Redwood Highway

And the sign hanging in front of the attraction states:

WORLD
FAMOUS
TREE
HOUSE
"BELIEVE IT
OR NOT"
FRATERNAL MONARACH

Additional small signs state:

• "VISITORS WELCOME ENTRANCE ---->"
• "SEE THE INSIDE WELCOME - NO CHARGE"
• "Please Stay Outside of Fence"

Jennifer Bourn wrote a nice history of the attraction on the Inspired Imperfection blog in 2017. Here's an excerpt:

"Originally named The Fraternal Monarch and later the Quadruped Tree, the World Famous Treehouse was featured in Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not in 1933, claiming to be the tallest one-room house in the world.

"It is built inside a 4,000 year old redwood tree that has been hollowed out into a 21×27 foot room with a 500 foot tall ceiling. Even though this enormous redwood tree was struck by a lightning thousands of years ago and had the opening expanded to create a single room home inside it’s base, the tree is still alive."

Check out Bourn's blog for more information, some great photos and an explanation on why you should take some pennies if you make the trip.

More importantly, if you plan to check out this California destination, check in advance to make sure it's open. There have been some reports in recent years of the Tree House being closed for extended periods. RoadsideAmerica.com, which also has a nice writeup on the attraction, states: "On a road trip in the region in December 2017, we were advised by workers at three separate redwood attractions that the World Famous Tree House had been shut down, probably for years. However, we noticed on our return leg that the OPEN sign was once again lit." This only-in-America type of attraction won't be around for as long as the redwood itself, but it's sure going to try.