The tiny wood shack was flipped on its head. The roof peaked toward the ground and the floor faced the sky. Inside, a fake upside-down cat stared at a fake upside-down mouse. The bed was neatly made and hung suspended from the ceiling, just like the rest of the furniture. Even the historical plaque on the outside of the house is upside down. To read it, I craned my neck to the side.

The upside-down house in Lee Vining, a small town at the doorstep of the Eastern Sierra, was built by one of its most famous residents, Nelly Bly O’Bryan. Named after the journalist Nellie Bly, she was an actress who starred in silent films with Charlie Chaplin. She eventually grew tired of Hollywood and, in the 1930s, she moved to the mountains to open a resort called Happy Landing in Lundy Canyon. O’Bryan was a determined woman who embraced life in the remote, rugged Eastern Sierra. She became the first woman to be a licensed guide in California, according to the Mono Basin Historical Society, and was known to snowshoe 11 miles in the middle of winter to pick up the mail and get supplies. 

On one of her forays into the mountains, she came across an old shack that had tipped over. It reminded her of a story of an upside-down land that captivated her as a young girl, said David Carle, president of the Mono Basin Historical Society. Inspired, she built her own upside-down house in the 1950s near Mono Lake, complete with a stove, table, chairs and a set of dishes. 

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The dirt road along the west shore of Mono Lake was paved in the 1930s and would become Highway 395.

A photo of Lee Vining’s upside-down house in March 2025. 

FILE: The Mono Basin History Museum on July 20, 2015, in Lee Vining, Calif.

It was a hit — people came from all over to see the famous upside-down house. Decades later, it is still a must-see Lee Vining oddity.

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Lee Vining is the eastern gateway town to Yosemite National Park. Today, thousands of tourists stream through Lee Vining all summer long. It’s located at the intersection of Highway 395 and Highway 120, at the foot of Tioga Pass, the highest roadway pass in the Sierra Nevada, cresting at 9,943 feet in elevation. On one side of the town, mountains tower above and cast a long shadow over Lee Vining’s homes and businesses. On the other, light reflects off Mono Lake and the horizon stretches toward the Great Basin. 

This summer, Lee Vining celebrated its centennial anniversary. A town fair at the end of August saw several hundred people gather on the lawn in front of the upside-down house and the Mono Basin History Museum. Local musicians performed and historians gave........

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