Micky Thornton's 500,000-Gallon Backyard Pool

In 1993, Micky Thornton of Covington, Tennessee started digging a hole in his backyard with nothing more than a dream and a shovel. Twenty-nine years later, he had built one of the largest homemade backyard pools in the world, a 500,000-gallon masterpiece spanning 95 feet across. The pool features a sandy shallow end built from 18 pickup loads of sand, a deep diving section, rock-lined waterfalls, and a custom-engineered gravity-fed filtration system he designed himself. Construction required 320 yards of gunite, 40,000 pounds of steel rebar, and three months of continuous pumping from his personal well to fill. The pool has hosted birthday parties, weddings, and over 400 baptisms.