A Luxury Residence Hidden Inside a Natural Rock Cave

Deep within the Ozark rock formations of Arkansas, nature carved out a cave over thousands of years, one where the temperature holds steady year-round at around 13 degrees Celsius. In the 19th century the area was a tough, outlaw-ridden frontier, and during Prohibition the cave itself housed an illegal moonshine distillery, remnants of which were only discovered during later construction work. In 1983, a co-founder of the Celestial Seasonings tea brand bought the cave and the surrounding 256 acres directly from the local owner and turned it into an elaborate Cold War-era fallout shelter. A later buyer went even further, converting the underground bunker into an extravagant nightclub complete with a dance floor, light effects and a disco ball hanging straight from the rock ceiling, and even added a helicopter landing pad atop the mountain. Today, Beckham Creek Cave Lodge is a multimillion-dollar luxury estate with four bedrooms, a chef's kitchen, an indoor waterfall and a fireplace burning right against the living rock — a property that has appeared in Netflix productions. The whole history of this real estate, from moonshine still to five-star retreat, is a chain of deals struck directly between successive visionaries, with no traditional real estate agency ever involved.