Missouri’s “Castle” – Chateau Pensmore

Did you know that Missouri has its own castle? Well, in MY opinion, it is a castle.  Whatever your definition, Chateau Pensmore sits at the top of a hill just east of Highway 65 between Springfield and Branson.  I had no clue that the castle existed since I’m not from the Springfield area.

Several years ago, as we traveled from Kansas City to Bull Shoals Lake (northern Arkansas), I glanced up from my completely engrossing book and saw a castle sitting on a hill a mile east of Highway 65.  I had already turned back to my book before my brain registered what I had seen.  A castle.  In southern Missouri.  By the time I looked back, I couldn’t see it.  Did I really see a castle?

Curiosity

I didn’t mention anything about my sighting to my husband.  I really didn’t want to raise any questions about my sanity – after all, who would believe a castle in the Ozarks of Missouri?  As soon as we arrived at the cabin and unpacked the car, I turned on the computer, opened Google Earth, and looked for this strange apparition.  Sure enough, there it sat – a huge structure rising from the top of a hill on a secluded portion of land.  The map said it was Pensmore Mansion.  Castle?  Chateau?  Mansion?  That certainly aroused my curiosity.  I immediately started searching the internet for information about the building.  I had to know more.

Fifth Largest Home in the US

Chateau Pensmore looks like a fortress sitting on a hill.  One would almost expect a drawbridge and perhaps a forbidding moat to be part of this fortress.  The owner, designer and builder is Stephen T. Huff, astrophysicist and former CIA.  He started building the 72,000 square foot building in 2009 and named it Chateau Pensmore.  72,000 square feet.  I can’t even comprehend a “home” being that large.  It is the fifth largest home in the U.S., outsized only by the Biltmore Estate (135,280 sf), Oheka Castle (109,000 sf), Whitemarsh Hall (100,000 sf) and Arden House (97,188 sf).  On second thought, Chateau Pensmore sounds rather small compared to the top four, doesn’t it?  But it’s still larger than any home I could even imagine.

Why it was built

All of the walls – interior and exterior are built entirely of concrete strengthened with Helix – tiny, thin, twisted strands of high-tensile wire.  It was built to withstand an earthquake, bomb blast, and even an F-5 tornado.  The building is energy efficient, state-of-the-art, and seemingly disaster-proof.  Mr. Huff wanted Pensmore to serve as a model on how to build schools, hospitals and homes to be safe from disasters.

Chateau Pensmore sits on 600 acres between Springfield and Branson.  Mr. Huff built this huge chateau to be a home.  It has five floors, several elevators, 14 baths and 13 bedrooms, including five suites with kitchens. The main kitchen measures 40 by 60 feet (2,400 square feet — almost as big as the median new home sold in the U.S.)  The house has a music room, telescope observatory, several reading rooms, a hobby room and a museum.  The exterior walls are 12 inches thick and on top of the house are 4,000 square feet of solar panels.

A Strange History

The fourth largest home in America, Chateau Pensmore has had a strange history so far.  This building is energy efficient, state-of-the-art, disaster-proof and designed to withstand an earthquake, bomb blast, and even an F-5 tornado.  But, two years after they started building the massive home, it collapsed 800 feet into a sinkhole and was almost completely destroyed. The Ozark Mountains are known for a system of underground rivers and caves.

Mr. Huff, undeterred, began rebuilding.  But the history of Pensmore gets stranger.  Mr. Huff has said the grand chateau would stand for 2000 years.  But in 2016 he declared he wants to tear it down.  The home was finished in 2016, but that same year a whistle-blower came forward to say a contractor shorted the amount of steel being mixed into concrete used to build the home.  The Huffs filed a $63 million suit in Kansas City against the concrete company.  They reached settlement for an undisclosed amount in July of 2017 before the suit went to court.

And then it gets stranger

Probably because the house is so big, and there seems to be secrecy surrounding it, there are many rumors about the man and his house.  Word got around that Huff had served in Army intelligence, joined the CIA, developed software to analyze satellite imagery, become an inventor and sold a company for a lot of money.

Conspiracy theories abound, even today.  There are rumors about secret tunnels leading to Pensmore.  One tale had Pensmore being used as the new seat of government after a takeover by the Illuminati.  There’s a video on YouTube by a man who flew his drone around the mansion and “weird things” happened with his drone when it got too close to the building.  Apparently that confirmed his conspiracy theory.

Check out the history of this amazing place.  But . . . you will have to be satisfied with what you read.  There are no tours of the house/mansion/chateau/castle.  You can check out some of the pictures below that were taken when Donald Bradley from the Kansas City Star was allowed entrance to the house in 2015 for an article.  All the pictures are his.

What about you?  Have you seen this magnificent structure on your way to Branson?  It’s just south of Highlandville east of Hwy 65.  Wouldn’t you love to visit it???