Wawona Tree Tunnel

The Wawona Tree, also known as the Wawona Tunnel Tree, was a famous giant sequoia that stood in Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park. It had a height of 69 m and was 27 m in circumference. A tunnel was cut through the tree in 1881, enlarging an existing fire scar. Two men were paid $75 for the job. The tree had a slight lean, which increased when the tunnel was completed. The tree eventually became a popular tourist attraction. Often travellers would come to have their picture taken either driving through it or standing underneath the tree. Throughout its history thousands of pictures were taken of it by tourists; it was photographed accommodating everything from horse-drawn carriages in the late nineteenth century to automobiles in the 1960s. The Wawona Tree fell in 1969 under an estimated two-ton load of snow on its crown. The giant sequoia is estimated to have been 2,300 years old.

Swedish Granary (from Skansen)

When people from abroad that are interested in architecture comes and visit us, they usually asks if we can recommend any piece they should see while staying in Stockholm. Well, truthfully there are not so much yet, at least not any modern delights, but there is always Skansen; a collection of old typical houses from around Sweden that is located within a zoo with Swedish animals. Some of the sights include a Sami storage house that stands on wooden stilts with the roots still on the wood thus stabilizing the whole house on the ground. Quite spectacular.

Glaumbaer Houses

The Icelandic turf houses was the product of a difficult climate, offering superior insulation compared to buildings solely made of wood or stone, and the relative difficulty in obtaining other construction materials in sufficient quantities. Iceland was fully forested when it was settled (save the mountains and highlands), with forests of birch trees. Oak was the preferred timber for building Norse halls in Scandinavia, but native birch had to serve as the primary framing material on the remote island. However, Iceland did have a large amount of turf that was suitable for construction. Some structures in Norway had turf roofs, so the notion of using this as a building material wasn't alien to many settlers. Then in the late 18th century a new style started to gain momentum, the burstabær, with its wooden ends. This is the most commonly depicted version of the Icelandic turf houses and many such survived well into the 20th century. This style was then slowly replaced with the urban building style of wooden house clothed in corrugated iron It is too difficult to erect large structures of turf and sod. Therefore the Icelandic farm was a complex of small, separate buildings. The most used of those were united by a central corridor, but tool and storehouses could only be accessed from outside. The corridor at Glaumbaer is about 21m long and provides access to 9 of the 13 houses of the farm. Two intermediate doors along the corridor in addition to the front door kept cold from penetrating the living quarters.

Stump House

Westerlund, a Swedish immigrant, who back in Sweden had worked as a cabinet-maker, took on the task of hollowing out one particularly robust (22-foot-diameter) cedar-tree stump, and Gustav finished up by putting a roof, window, and door on the stump house. A stovepipe through that roof hints at the woodstove inside that kept the family warm for a few months until a conventional house was built nearby. Even after they moved into that new home, Westerlund maintained his quarters in the stump as he liked the independence and privacy it provided. A newspaper visited the house in 1901: "Inside it is one good-sized room, which is boarded up and neatly papered and made as comfortable as any apartment could possibly be made. The walls inside slant inward at the top, which gives one the impression rather that it is an upstairs room, otherwise it is not different from any other room."

The Fang Waterfall

Ice climbers flock to The Fang in Vail, Colorado. The enormous ice pillar forms from the cascading waterfall only on exceptionally cold winters, and when it does the column can measure up to 50 meters high and has been known to have a base measuring 8 meters wide.