Tiny Buildings, Huge Places (8 Photos)

Eight tiny buildings in very big places

A hut on a Matterhorn ledge, a lodge on an island of puffins, a lighthouse at the end of a Faroese ridge. In each photo, the landscape dwarfs the building. Most were built for one hard job: shelter for climbers, a wartime base, a light for ships, a claim on desert land.

More: Buildings in Impossible Places (8 Photos)

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🏠 Lagangarbh — Glen Coe, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Find the tiny white house at the foot of Buachaille Etive Mòr. It started as a crofter’s home, and the few trees beside it were planted to shelter it from the wind.

💡 Climber Fact: The National Trust for Scotland has owned the glen since 1935, and the Scottish Mountaineering Club took over the upkeep of the cottage in 1946. It sleeps 20.

📷 Photo: Colin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🐧 Port Lockroy — Goudier Island, Antarctica 🇦🇶

The black boathouse of the old British base, surrounded by gentoo penguins on Goudier Island. Britain set up a base here in 1944, in the middle of the Second World War, during Operation Tabarin. Today half the island is open to visitors, and the other half is left to the penguins.

💡 Mail Fact: The base now holds the most southerly operational post office in the world. During the five-month cruise season, a staff of four handle about 70,000 pieces of mail sent by some 18,000 visitors.

📷 Photo: Liam Quinn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🗼 Kallur Lighthouse — Kalsoy, Faroe Islands 🇫🇴

A small lighthouse on a grass ridge at Kallur, the northern tip of Kalsoy. The hikers standing next to it show how small it is. This ridge stood in for the villain’s island in the 2021 James Bond film No Time to Die, and in 2022 locals set up a James Bond gravestone at the lighthouse.

💡 Tunnel Fact: The road north along Kalsoy runs through four unlit tunnels. The last one, to Trøllanes, is narrow, damp and more than 2 km long.

📷 Photo: Ekrem Canli / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🌵 Jackrabbit Homestead — Wonder Valley, California, USA 🇺🇸

Only the wooden frame is left of this homestead cabin, standing on the flat desert of Wonder Valley, east of Twentynine Palms. Thousands of cabins like it went up here in the 1950s and ’60s. Many were later abandoned, and a cleanup in the early 2000s tore down hundreds of them.

💡 Five-Acre Fact: Under the Small Tract Act of 1938, people could lease up to five acres of desert for $5 a year. To keep the land, they had to build a cabin; from 1955 it had to be at least 400 square feet.

📷 Photo: Ann Aldrich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🏔️ Solvay Hut — Matterhorn, Switzerland 🇨🇭

This wooden hut sits on the Hörnli Ridge at 4,003 meters (13,133 feet), on the Matterhorn. It has 10 beds, and the Swiss Alpine Club says climbers may only use it in an emergency. It is named after Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay, who gave 20,000 francs toward it; the hut was finished in 1917.

💡 Cable Fact: Its building materials were hauled up by cable from the Hörnli Hut, 700 meters (2,300 feet) lower down the same ridge.

📷 Photo: Orion666 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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⛺ Corrour Bothy — Cairngorms, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A small stone bothy with an open fire in the Lairig Ghru, a long mountain pass through the Cairngorms. Today it is an open bothy for walkers and climbers, and some still pitch a tent outside.

💡 Watcher Fact: It was built in 1877 as a deer watcher’s hut. The last watcher, Frank Scott, left in 1920, and the Mountain Bothies Association has looked after it since 1967.

📷 Photo: Steve Cadman / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🐦 Elliðaey Lodge — Westman Islands, Iceland 🇮🇸

The white speck on the green is a lodge on Elliðaey, an island of about 110 acres with no permanent population. The Elliðaey Hunting Association built it in 1953 for hunting on an island full of puffins.

💡 Myth Fact: Online, it is often called the “world’s loneliest house” and said to belong to Björk. She never lived here; the Björk story belongs to a different island with the same name.

📷 Photo: H0rdur.kristleifsson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🪨 Abbot Pass Hut — Banff National Park, Canada 🇨🇦

Swiss guides built this stone hut in 1922 in the pass between Mount Victoria and Mount Lefroy, 2,925 meters (9,596 feet) up. It slept 24 climbers on its upper floor and was the second-highest permanently habitable structure in Canada.

💡 Name Fact: The pass is named after Philip Stanley Abbot, who died trying to make the first ascent of Mount Lefroy in 1896. The hut closed in 2018 after melting glacier ice eroded the ground beside it, and it was demolished in June 2022.

📷 Photo: andrew.jk / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)