A Childhood Thrill, Now Accessible To All

Playing in a tree house is one of the most iconic pleasures of childhood. “Just seeing the smile on kids’ faces being up in the trees is an amazing thing, and it’s great to be able to provide that thrill,” says James “B’fer” Roth, a partner in The Treehouse Guys, which builds wheelchair-accessible tree houses in public parks and at private camps for children. Since 2000 Roth and his business partner, Chris “Ka-V” Haake, have worked together on 32 tree houses in 18 states, many for nonprofit organizations that benefit children.

The idea was suggested by fundraisers for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, who realized that many children with disabilities miss out on the unique childhood experience of playing in a tree house. They approached Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, Vt., with the idea for an accessible tree house, and Roth, an instructor at the school, became involved with the project. He and Haake worked with all-volunteer labor and donated materials to build the first prototype in the fall of 2000. As the nonprofit Forever Young Treehouses, they completed a project a year for the next three years for camps for disabled children. In the third year they built a tree house for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang charity in rural Connecticut.

“You realize ordinary things such as being in a tree house are not always easy for people with mobility issues,” says Roth. “To create something to enable a person to have that experience is very satisfying and good for the soul.”

In addition to building the tree houses, the nonprofit has helped various charities with fundraising to complete the projects. Recently, Haake and Roth shifted their focus away from fundraising, which clients can do more effectively for themselves in their local communities, to focus on the building and design aspects. The resulting private company is The Treehouse Guys LLC.

The Treehouse Guys’ largest, most elaborate tree house is in Charles H. Wilson Park in Torrance, Calif. It is in effect two tree houses linked by a network of wheelchair ramps. “Often the ones in parks are open-air to allow parents to watch their children play, and the ones in private camps are more closed in for sleeping over,” says Roth. Another difference is the need for public tree houses to be strong enough to accommodate more children at a time. “In the public setting you could have a busload of children, so you have to engineer to a heavier load,” he notes.
“I love what the public park tree house does to bring the community together, both those with and those without disabilities,” says Roth.

Roth also enjoys the design challenges of tree houses. No two settings are the same, and choosing the trees and working among them is a challenge. “It keeps it fresh for me from a design perspective,” he says. Roth says his design goal is to make the tree house look as if a child built it. “It has to be up to snuff in its design and structural integrity, but from a visual standpoint, I like to make it look whimsical.”

Another challenge is to make the tree houses structurally sound while allowing the supporting trees to move as the wind blows. The tree houses attach to the trees with a 1 1/2-inch diameter hardened steel bolt, and a pipe slides over the bolt like a sleeve (allowing tree movement), with attached welded steel brackets that connect to the tree house beams. In effect, the structure “floats” among the trees.

The ramps are strong enough and wide enough to accommodate any and all wheelchairs, including heavy power wheelchairs. The ramp systems, which are built to code, typically rise 16 to 20 feet to a level area that has a 5-foot minimum turnaround radius, and then to a second ramp.

Haake oversees building, and Roth is the designer of the tree houses, and they enlist assorted craftsmen and contractors to complete the jobs. Architect Jeff Schoelkopf does the artistic renderings of tree house designs. When building tree houses in other states, they enlist local contractors and workers and buy materials locally.

Although he never had a tree house as a child, Roth said he made up for it in his 20s when he lived five summers in a tree house he built in Warren, Conn. The octagonal tree house was built around a center cluster of trees, with a 12-by-16-foot irregularly shaped main floor 20 feet off the ground and a bedroom loft 10 feet higher.

This fall, The Treehouse Guys will build another tree house at a camp affiliated with the Hole in the Wall Gang organization in Michigan, just north of Ann Arbor. “We want to get to the point that we have an accessible tree house in every state,” says Roth. “It’s just the greatest thing, giving a kid a chance to be a kid. It’s that simple.”