The tree in which the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse resides is called a Disneyodendron Exiums, which means: out of the ordinary Disney tree, so dubbed by the Imagineers who built her. It is classified as a building, so is subject to the same safety and building codes as all of the other structures in Disneyland. Also, the tree contains 300,000 fabricated leaves, which each cost $1 to produce! The tree has concrete roots that stick 42 feet into the ground, and a steel superstructure.
Statistics:
Opening Day: December, 1962 (ground breaking January 17,1962)
Number of Leaves: 300,000 (hand made vinyl)
Number of Blooms: 50,000
Number of Steps: 137 total - 68 going up, 69 going down
Tree Height: Approx. 70 feet
Tree Width: 80 feet (at its widest point)
Tree Weight: 150 tons
Root Depth: 40 feet
Amount of Water Circulated by Bamboo Buckets: Approx. 200 gallons per hour
Amount of Water Circulated in the Treehouse: 4,000 gallons per minute.
Stream Length: 160 feet
Hand painted sign in the Jungle Lookout: "In this compound we often pause to contemplate our small world. Here adventure beckons with every view & every sound, the jungle & its river call out their mystery invite us to new discovery"
Cost $254,000 (in 2021 dollars it would cost over $2.3 million) to build
Required a "C" ticket in 1964-1965
From WED Disneyland Dictionary 1968
Rises 70 feet above the jungle. The tree spreads more than 300,000 brilliant leaves and 50,000 blooms on its 40-foot branches. As guests climb steps rough-hewn by island castaways, they visit the primitive kitchen, salon and bedrooms to become a part of the fabled adventures of the shipwrecked family. Rare antique furnishings, a jungle water circulation system and a spectacular view of the "Magic Kingdom" are other features of the visit in the ingenious island home, devised and constructed by the world's most famous family of castaways --the Robinsons.
Required a "B" ticket in 1970's
From Steve Birnbaum brings you the best of Disneyland 1982:
The Disney studios' 1960 remake of the 1813 Johann David Wyss classic novel, The Swiss Family Robinson, provided the inspiration for what must be one of the two best treehouses on earth (the other being this same attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida). It's well fitted out with real antiques (muskets, an 18th-century barometer, a ship's wheel and gimbal lights, and a sewing basket), and with an organ, beds, tables, and bookshelves built by Disney arti- sans. It even has running water in all the rooms- thanks to a waterwheel at the base of the tree, a rushing brook, and a series of bamboo buckets on pulleys capable of bringing up about 200 gallons an hour. "Everything we need right at our fingertips," was how John Mills, who played the father in the film, described the prototype for this arboreal home, which he and two of his three sons had built after the wreck of the Titus on its way to America. It's such an ingenious construction that it's not hard to understand why, several adventures later when they got the chance to leave the island, all the family members except one son decided to stay on. Unofficially christened Disneyodendron semperflorens grandis (that is, "large everblooming Disney tree"), the tree itself is another intriguing bit of Disney artifice. The 62 roots, which reach 42 feet into the ground, are made of concrete; the limbs, which extend 80 feet across, are of steel; and the more than 300,000 leaves, shaped like those of a ban- yan tree and hand-grafted onto 1,000 manzanita branches ranging in length from 2 to 6 feet, are pure plastic. The whole assemblage weighs some 150 tons (6 tons of it steel); uses 110 cubic yards of concrete; and towers 70 feet in the air, high above the rest of Adventureland. Fluttering at the top-visible from almost everywhere in the park- is the Swiss national flag.
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