Last week my husband & I went camping for the first time since we got married. A friend invited us to Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge in south eastern Oregon. We are not really campers, we are glampers. We like to be comfortable and need a comfortable bed to sleep and good food to eat. I didn't think Chris would want to go but he was all excited and tricked out our truck for the camping trip. It was a long drive but it was well worth it for the things we saw were AMAZING. My friends & I went rockhounding and looking at saw some petroglyphs, but the coolest thing I saw was called the Glass House. The camp host told us about his house that was built in the 70's and later abandon in the 80's, now the property and the house is owned but the refuge. I was not able to find a lot of information about the place. One Facebook post from the Royal Order of Antelope said " The house was built by some eccentric California Winemaker who died in the house. The glass panels are actually thick pieces of plexi". I have yet to find a lot of information about the original person that built the house. It was bought by the Friends of Hart Mountain in 2009, I found this, which is all photos from 2012 but no real information and I found this which stated the original owners arrived by jeep and helicopter. When we were there it was obvious there has been a fire in the house and there was some burned wood outside the front door. The house is very high up overlooking Hart Lake. The house is built into the side of a plateau, the doors on the north and south side open so you can get a cross breeze going through if you open both doors. On the day we were there only the front (south) door was open, the back door was padlocked, so there was no breeze...it was HOT. Almost too hot, I was able to go inside for about 5 minutes before I had to go back outside to cool off. It looks like people have stayed in the house recently as there was clean bedding and some spices in the spice rack. The house had some interesting metal work and a simple but very functional layout inside. I'm not sure if the furniture if from the original owner but the bed in the place looked cool and so did the table in the main room. The house is hard to get to unless you have a jeep, that much is very true. It took us about 40 minutes to go 10 miles. You really do need a vehicle that has high clearance.
Hi Cupcake,
ReplyDeletehere's some info on the Glass House:
It was built in 1993 - 1994 by a California wine grape grower, Walt Benson, for his wife. He had one helper, a local man from Adel whose name I don't remember (I do remember his wife was working on a book about Adel's history). I worked for Walt on the house for about 3 months (commuting on 3 wheeler from The Nature Conservancy's ranch property on the east side of Crump Lake).
And yes, the Warner Basin and Hart Mtn are real Oregon gems.
and feel free to visit my blogspot - https://morningdonut.blogspot.com/
DeleteAllan, do you know if she ever finished her book on Adel?
DeleteI don't know if she did or not, my return trips to the area have only been for quick camping trips... but best source for area news, updates and gossip is the Adel store. They also make real milk shakes (or used to)
DeleteI was there recently. I hope the owner had some happy times there. I appreciate that the project is low impact in that it blends in with the valley, being low profile and partly set into the earth as it is.
ReplyDeleteNice write up!
There is an old boy at the store that told me about the house. The guy blew up part of the mountain 27th dynamite so he could have a glass house with 360° view. I wouldn't walk on the front porch as its only made out of 1/4 inch lol poor design on that. The shower part was amazing what they built in there. But then moved because it was herindinsiouly hot. Glass house desert don't match. Plus no water all those alkaline lake's dry up. There are very cool homesteads if you would of gone to the left instead of going up to the house. Before the refuge bought it we camped there a lot but the house itself was always padlocked because of vandals. Very cool place though!
ReplyDeleteI made a YouTube video on my glass house visit
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcyHEQ-bOI8&t=51s