Eureka Springs, Arkansas - Quigley's Castle

Beautiful gardens inside and outside of the house. The Grand Daughter of Elsie Quigley currently resides in the house and gives visitors the history of the house and family on your tour. The price has gone up to $6.50, but it's still worth every penny! It's only 4 miles south of town. [Krissy, 08/07/2009]

[RA: This is still the least castle-like of the castles on RoadsideAmerica.com, but continues to operate as a popular Eureka Springs tourist attraction. And it isn't just the appeal of those "beautiful gardens," is it? Must be the arrowhead and butterfly collections....]

Quigley's Castle was a home of Elise Quigley, and made basically by scratch out of rocks and minerals, shells, things collected since childhood. She started the house when her husband didn't make good on his promise to build her a house due to war rationing. So when he went to work one day, she demolished their old house so her husband would HAVE to build the house.

Indoors, there are live trees growing up through to the second story from spaces cut into the floor. It also houses her extensive butterfly and arrowhead collection.

There's also a neat garden surrounding the house with bottle trees and other "sculptures" and has the old outhouse in the front as well. [A. McDonald, 07/25/2007]

Quigley's Castle is called "The Ozarks' Strangest Dwelling" and it just may be. It was built in the 1940s by a lumberman and his wife. Besides her husband and five children, Mrs. Quigley had two loves -- gardening and rocks! She collected rocks her entire life and cemented them to everything in sight-- her house, gates, chairs, fences, tables, planters, bird houses, etc. She planted trees and other plants inside the house, reaching all the way to the second floor, which was designed so that she could "sleep with the birds." Today the property is owned by her granddaughter and the public is invited to tour the gardens and most of the house, except for the private living quarters, for a reasonable fee. [June Self, 11/29/2004]