J.H. (Harry) Widholm built himself a crystal castle by Crystal Lake in the foothills of the Laramie Mountains in the 1960s. It’s a fairy tale kind of home, built from 30,000 embalming fluid bottles.
It’s finally for sale. The owner, Vicki Launer Fisher, told Cowboy State Daily she’s selling the one-of-a-kind vacation cabin because she hasn’t been able to use it much since her husband died.
The 766-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bath home sits on 3.34 acres. The price for this cottage? It’s a modest $325,000, according to the listing with #1 Properties, and that includes the furnishings.
Those who tour the Crystal Castle may be more surprised by the inside of the home than the outside with its rounded lines built entirely of bottles, and its steeply pitched roofline. The inside is surprising because the embalming fluid bottles aren’t really visible while inside the home, other than just a few decorative ones placed in the foyer.
“They put off colors inside the cabin,” Launer said.
That was just for fun, though. The rest of the bottles have been hidden behind plaster walls, making this cozy cabin feel like any other home inside.
One thing the new owner of the castle might wonder is how good at insulating are embalming fluid bottles.
Turns out, they’re not bad, Launer said.
She doesn’t know what the R-value of the bottles are, but the cabin is always warmer in the winter than the ambient air, and in summer, it’s usually about 15 degrees cooler, before the air conditioning is turned on.
The home also has a fireplace in case more heat is needed. And it has all the other amenities one would expect in a modern-day cabin by the lake.
There’s a kitchen, dining table and living room area, as well as the bedroom and a bathroom. It’s small, but perfect for a vacation cabin that’s near Curt Gowdy State Park, a beautiful place with lots of outdoor adventures.
Inspired By Knott’s Berry Farm Bottle House
Widholm was a mechanic who became a little obsessed with bottle houses after seeing one in 1946 at Knott’s Berry Farm in California.
Many bottle houses were inspired by California’s Gold Rush days in the early 1900s. Building materials were scarce at that time, but bottles were plentiful, particularly for miners whose claims weren’t panning out.
Knott’s Berry Farm used 3,082 wine and whiskey bottles to build their little cabin in 1944, using for their pattern a bottle house built in 1905 in Rhyolite, Nevada.
Their work inspired a number of other bottle houses at the time, such as the Wimberley Bottle House built in the pioneer town of Kimberley, Texas, in 1960, among several others.
Widholm had kind of forgotten all about the bottle house in California until one day he noticed a newspaper ad offering to sell several cases of empty embalming fluid bottles.
Those bottles are not round, but square, Widholm thought, remembering the old bottle house he’d seen in California.
On a whim, he called the newspaper ad number and told the man who answered that he would buy all of the bottles. In fact, if the man knew of any other embalming fluid bottles, he would buy those, too.
Widholm knew he would need an awful lot of bottles to build an entire cabin. In fact, it would take 30,000 of them in all to build the cabin, which he designed to look a little like a castle, with short turrets at each end.
Once he had all the bottles he needed, he treated his bottles just like bricks — albeit fragile bricks that could break if mishandled.
He had to devise a special mortar for the task, one that would stick to the bottles. He took care to lay each bottle down facing inward, ensuring that wind would not whistle in the bottle, making the house sound haunted.
According to the book “The Bottle House” by John and Helen Harper, the total cost of the bottle house, including the bottles, cement and other supplies, totaled up to just $3,500. Median home values at the time were in the neighborhood of $12,000, so his project was not only novel and beautiful, it was affordable.
The front entrance of the glass-bottle house. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
When the sun catches the bottles just right, they sparkle a little bit, catching the eye. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
View of the living room from the kitchen area of the Crystal Castle. (Cheyenne MLS via #1 Properties) 
A fireplace adds warmth and a focal point in the Crystal Castle. (Cheyenne MLS via #1 Properties) 
The one bedroom in the Crystal Castle. (Cheyenne MLS via #1 Properties) 
The cottage has a small kitchen area. (Cheyenne MLS via #1 Properties) 
The backside of the cabin. Where the retaining wall has busted out there used to be a garage. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The Crystal Castle is about 2 miles from Crystal Lake Reservoir and 23 miles west of Cheyenne. It's private property, a vacation cabin built in the 1960s by Harry Widholm. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Even The Deer And Antelope Love The Crystal Castle
The Crystal Castle glitters from a distance like diamonds when the sun hits it just right, though it’s impossible to tell until one gets much closer to the building that it is made entirely of glass bottles. These run all the way up to the roofline.
Fisher first saw the unique castle by the lake as a little girl playing at her parents’ cabin, which was next door. She never got to play inside the castle as a girl, though she always wanted to.
She knew she was going to buy the castle someday. She kept an eye on it for years until the owner finally decided to sell. She didn’t hesitate to snap it up. After all, it’s not every day that one can own an honest-to-goodness crystal castle by a crystal lake.
Even though she’s now selling it, Launer feels it’s been a joy to own the Crystal Castle. People are always stopping by to see the unique cabin, which is like no other in Wyoming, and several media outlets have featured the home through the years, including HGTV.
Even the deer and antelope seem to love this fabulous little glass house — exactly as one might expect of a modern-day, fairy tale castle.
“I have pictures of deer laying up by the house,” Launer said. “They like laying up against the house.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
