Photograph : Children playing in a treehouse, Riverhead, NY, August 1967 Arthur Schatz, Life Magazine Not knowing the origins of the tree house, I turned to the web and J. B. Jackson. Several online dictionaries define tree house as "a playhouse built in the branches of a tree" or more generally, "a structure built among the limbs of a tree, usually for recreation." Wikipedia did not provide any information on the origin of the tree house but did provide a link to The Treehouse Guide , a building and reference website. Unfortunately this website does not offer an origins story. I don't own The Treehouse Book by Peter Nelson, Judy Nelson, David Larkin, Paul Rocheleau and it is not available at my local library. On to J. B. Jackson, landscape geographer and historian particularly of the vernacular or everyday American landscape. Jackson's 1994 tree essay is titled "In Favor of Trees." Although he does not mention the tree house, what he does men