Smith, who studied architecture at Montana State University and graduated with honors, loved to build, Larsen said.

House on the hill

In 1971, Smith began digging and excavating for the house. It took three men two years to dig it out.

For the foundation, Smith used a concrete mixer to pour five gallon buckets of concrete at a time. He built around large boulders in the floor when he grew weary of digging them up.

Larsen said that during the 1950s there were a lot of forest fires on Rattlesnake Mountain and the forest service allowed individuals to take timber from the mountain as long as they moved it themselves.

It was a full-day trip and exceedingly difficult. Smith took 300 logs off Rattlesnake Mountain with a half-ton pickup and sometimes used horses for the really large logs. He would get five or six at a time, depending on the size. With each new level of the house, the timber got bigger.

A hole goes all the way up through the house and every floor, so that Smith could retrieve lumber from lower floors.

“He loved building and had a mind for it,” Larsen said. “It wasn’t a job. It was fun and it challenged him.”