Clarence Schmidt attended high school in Astoria Queens, NY, before dropping out to work alongside his father as a mason and plasterer.
[citation needed] In 1920 Schmidt inherited five acres of land off Ohayo Mountain, near Woodstock NY; around 1928 he convinced his wife Grace to summer with him there.
It was here, that additional rooms, terraces, caves, gardens, grottos, a pool, shrines and further wings were stacked upon one another, advancing up the mountain's face, demanding continuous expansion, until a seven-story extension hung off the backside of Ohayo.
After the first fire which decimated his “Garden of Hope” he was quoted, in the Woodstock Week thus: “I’ve suffered Dante’s Inferno and every other thing...but I’ll get back up there sooner than you think...I’m doing a lot of writing now.
Amid legal disputes over property boundaries, alleged precarious mental health of his son, bickering with his estranged wife and neighbor, and ever-mounting fame Schmidt continued his work.
I was afraid of dying before I could get the house done.” In 1972 the treehouse also caught on fire, while he was sleeping in it, likely caused by the makeshift heating and lighting he implemented.
A true eccentric, Schmidt compared himself to Rip Van Winkle, Paul Bunyan, Robin Hood, and Baron Munchausen; "I became some greater part of this mountain up here.