A House On Top Of A Volcano

It's not every day you run into a UFO, no matter what you can live in, and certainly never one's mind firmly dropped on a volcano-er, volcanic cinder cone, to be precise. However, lo 'and behold this curious desert located between Las Vegas and Los Angeles in Newberry Springs, California, originally commissioned by aircraft mechanical genius Vard Wallace a personal retreat, the house was designed by the prolific and versatile south California architect Harold Bissner, Jr. and was completed in 1968. The inspiration? San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, a nuclear plant in north San Diego County.

The property is now owned by local semi-celebrity Huell Howser, who has hosted gold in California, a travel program on television station KCET in Los Angeles in the last 20 years. Howser list of the property in September 2009, at which the curb was described as a "secret hideout where they see their dastardly plans are displayed on flat screens and cluck your servants."

Still present in the market for their initial ask of $750K, a two bedroom, two bathrooms main house with a dome formed by concrete beams and bowed to the ground and glass walls, inside, a well keeps things in conversation around a fireplace. There is also a guest house with one room, a lake, 60 acres of land without blemish, a three-car garage, a viewing terrace on the top of the dome (360-degree views degree views of the desert) and, of course, the best part: broker babble that references a "stark, strong almost lunar landscape." Fun times! Anyway, although it's had zero luck selling—with nary a price chops, either—over the last two years, Howser's clearly holding out for that one special architecture geek who wants a serious story to tell. Alternatively, perhaps just some rich kid who wants to live in a spaceship.