While growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina, Seth Bolt dreamed of building a treehouse with his father, as many country children do. The family had limited means, however, and Bolt grew up without a backyard getaway.
By his 30s, Bolt was traveling the world as a member of the rock band NEEDTOBREATHE. Adults tend to leave their youthful reveries behind long before they reach this age, but not Bolt. As he played bass to packed venues and harmonized with his bandmates as they opened for Taylor Swift in 2011, the vision was still there.
So, in 2015, Bolt convinced his father to help him build his long-imagined treehouse in Walhalla, South Carolina, about 15 miles northwest of Clemson University.
By this time, Bolt was engaged to a broadcast news reporter he’d met while NEEDTOBREATHE was in Houston to perform. They began dating soon after she interviewed the group and were planning to marry and honeymoon in the fabled treehouse.
Bearing this in mind, Bolt elevated his youthful vision of a scrappy hideaway to one worthy of his bride-to-be.
“A treehouse can be anything from a backyard fort to a palace,” says Bolt’s wife, Tori Bolt. “Seth wanted to make his nice enough for our wedding and honeymoon, which raised the bar for the level of luxury and romance.”
Seth declined to show Tori the treehouse until the day of their wedding. When she finally saw it after six months of construction, her heart melted, she says. Featuring a hand-painted king-size bed, antique furnishings and a wall of windows that invited the surrounding woods inside, it was “magical.”
“Treehouses are ageless,” she adds. “They release your inner child.”
These days, Seth and Tori are imparting this sense of innocent wonder to guests at Bolt Farm Treehouse, their mountaintop refuge in Whitwell. Poised along the edge of a mile of rock face and overlooking a grand stretch of the Sequatchie Valley, Bolt Farm consists of eight geodesic domes, five mirror cabins and two treehouses, all of which are pointed at what Tori refers to as “the view.” Prices range from $469 to $1,069 per night.
As she gazes at Bolt Farm’s money shot, which contains enough sky to fill a morning with cloud gazing and enough valley to fill an afternoon with daydreams, she remembers the first time she and Seth visited the property.
“We’d seen pictures and wondered if the view was actually this expansive or if the owner had photographed the one good spot. But as we stood here, I thought, ‘This is our place.’ It was as though someone had made it for our business.”
In the distance, Lookout and Signal mountains look like bunny hills, while the valley all but swallows Nickajack Lake, which reflects the afternoon sun from the far edge of the lush expanse.
Tori ballparks the distance to the mountains at 30 miles and says honeymooning in the original treehouse placed her and Seth on the road that carried them to Whitwell Mountain.
Free of distractions, they rested in nature’s embrace and dreamed and prayed about their future. As their honeymoon came to an end, they decided to make the treehouse available to guests on Airbnb.
“Staying in the treehouse helped us to reconnect with nature and ourselves, and we realized other people needed the same experience,” Tori explains. “We didn’t know if they’d come but we hoped they would.”
Marshalling the kind of faith that compelled Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams” to build a baseball field on a farm, Tori began gathering a following on social media from scratch.
She laughs as she recalls becoming excited when their number of followers reached 150. (They now have over 400,000.) As word about their forest retreat spread, reservations filled their calendar and, eventually, the treehouse was booked solid for six months.
The destination attracted the attention of more than guests. BuzzFeed named the treehouse the No. 1 Airbnb in South Carolina, while Netflix featured it in an episode of “World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals.”
“Seth and I couldn’t even get in,” Tori says. “So, I quit my job and started to focus on our treehouse business full time. We also began to look for more land. We were a one-bedroom hotel and we needed to grow.”
Despite the widespread celebrity of their treehouse venture, Seth and Tori decided to grow within their means. Instead of seeking investors, they elected to build only what they could afford and manage and chose to continue to operate as a family business.
Their grassroots approach informed the aesthetic of the accommodations at Bolt Farm. From ornate beds that face the view, to French presses guests can use to grind coffee beans, to hand-hammered copper tubs, the domes and treehouses offer guests a blend of farmhouse simplicity and Victorian charm. (The mirror cabins are closer to hotel rooms in design.)
As part of their effort to invest as much sweat equity into their undertaking as possible, Tori and Seth decorated the domes, cabins and treehouses themselves. Not only are they both “creative souls,” Tori says, but Seth stays in a range of accommodations while on tour and has learned what does and does not work.
Her enthusiasm for interior decorating is on display as she points out the many knickknacks that populate one of the Luxe domes, which sleeps two and is reserved for adults.
She says she and her husband scoured Southeast Tennessee for antiques and brought back car load after car load of novelties, including about a dozen weathered doors from The Refindery in Chattanooga. Their objective was to encourage their guests to slow down and enjoy simple pleasures.
“You won’t find a Keurig in here,” Tori says.
That said, guests can see the flagship treehouse on Netflix, courtesy of a projector connected to a Roku device and a large pull-down screen located at the foot of their bed.
They can also listen to a NEEDTOBREATH LP on a portable record player, adjust the HVAC to their comfort and – if they insist – plug their personal Keurig into an outlet in the kitchen.
“We want people to disconnect, but we also have a gig of Wi-Fi,” Tori smiles.
Outside, the sprawling bluff allowed Seth and Tori to provide every dome and treehouse with as much outdoor space as interior space. Each accommodation is anchored to a private terrace that contains a hot tub, an outdoor shower (with a heater, as Bolt Farm is open year-round), a grill, a pizza oven, a dining area and more.
Beyond the terrace, guests can lounge by a firepit, where they can make s’mores using the firewood included with each rental and ingredients provided in the deluxe package.
From there, visitors can wander the property, which hides tiny waterfalls and a rock canyon among its trees, offers up an old dirt road as a trail and bumps up against 5,000 acres of undeveloped land, Tori says.
The idea, she adds, is to help people reconnect to nature and themselves.
“For many people, being in nature is spiritual, and this environment sets the table for that inward work.”
Seth and Tori purchased their property in May 2020 after a nine-month search. Although a few locations came close to matching their vision, Tori says nothing met their standards until they set foot on Whitwell Mountain.
“Some of the locations were long and narrow, which meant only one accommodation would have had a view. Others would have been too difficult to develop. But when we saw this place, it was an immediate yes. This valley – this part of Tennessee – is special.”
In the weeks that followed their acquisition of the property, Seth and Tori camped on its grounds, enjoying the unpolluted blanket of stars above them at night and plotting the locations of the domes and treehouses with a tape measure during the day.
As they imprinted their vision on the land, they endeavored to be good stewards of the environment, Tori notes. They left trees that inched into the view intact, turned the top pf a massive boulder that’s buried near the cliff into the front yard of one of the domes and solved the septic challenge of building on the mountain by installing an EcoJohn system, which will use an environmentally friendly process to incinerate waste.
“It’s not easy being a pioneer,” Tori jokes.
After building the first 10 domes – including the XL versions that can sleep a family of four – they opened in June 2021.
One might imagine the Bolts have spent the two years since then simply attending to the day-to-day matters of running a hospitality business, but as incurable planners they have ideas to hatch. Some of them are small, Tori says. They just purchased new outdoor furniture and are installing screen doors to keep bugs out when people want to let air in. They’re also upgrading their HVACs and will eventually purchase golf carts for guests to use, she adds.
Other plans have more heft. Construction is underway on four new treehouses, for instance, and Tori and Seth are considering their options for making fresh food and a wellness center available on-site.
“Our motto is we become 1% better each day,” Tori says.
The couple are also continuing to build connections to the community of Whitwell, a former coal mining town that’s struggled economically since its mines closed in the ‘80s. As guests drive through the town, they pass a large number of shuttered businesses but also residents with fresh hope, Tori says.
“When we arrived, the locals told us they didn’t think this would work,” she confesses. “But now we’re booked a month in advance and we’re hosting 10,000 guests a year. Our hope is to be the start of a revival in Whitwell.”
Tori says several local businesses are already benefiting Bolt Farm by offering horseback rides, ATV tours, paragliding and more, giving guests who want recreation a nearby outlet.
She says she’d love for that list of activities to someday include coffee shops, breakfast spots and ice cream parlors. “We want to inspire other entrepreneurs to open business because our guests are eager to experience Whitwell,” she adds.
While people often ask Seth and Tori if they plan to expand to other locations, Tori says their hearts and heads are on Whitwell Mountain, where they now own 55 acres and could spend their lives developing.
Besides, they’re about to embark on their next great adventure – parenthood. As Tori trudges back to the main office, where Bolt Farm’s staff is checking in new guests, she reveals she’s pregnant with her and Seth’s first child.
She says she’s looking forward to watching her son or daughter grow up at Bolt Farm.
“We want to raise our kids in the country and learn how to serve others. Now our first one is on the way and will grow up here.”
One can imagine if the child someday expresses a desire to build a treehouse, dad will smile and reach for the nearest hammer.