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Interesting Places

Long-form stories about the world's most fascinating places — tiny towns, impossible locations, and history hiding in plain sight. Every article links back to the full Terralocate place page.

Vestfjorddalen valley · Telemark

Rjukan, Norway: The Town That Built Giant Mirrors to See the Sun

Cut off from direct sunlight for almost six months a year, Rjukan finally solved its century-old problem in 2013 — with three computer-controlled mirrors mounted 450 metres up a mountainside.

Prince William Sound · Alaska

Whittier, Alaska: The Town Where (Almost) Everyone Lives in One Building

Whittier is reached through a single one-lane tunnel — and nearly all 270 residents live in one 14-story building that also contains the school, post office, grocery store, and church.

Boyd County · Nebraska

Monowi, Nebraska: The Incorporated Town With a Population of One

Monowi is the only incorporated municipality in the United States with just one resident. She is the mayor, treasurer, librarian, and bartender — and every year she grants herself a liquor license.

South Australia · the opal capital of the world

Coober Pedy: The Australian Town Where More Than Half the Population Lives Underground

Surface temperatures in Coober Pedy regularly hit 45 °C. So more than half its residents live in cool, climate-stable houses — and even a church and a hotel — carved straight into the sandstone hills.

Lazio · the dying town

Civita di Bagnoregio: The Italian Village Slowly Falling Off Its Own Cliff

An Etruscan village perched on a tower of crumbling tuff, reached only by a long footbridge. Locals have called it 'la città che muore' — the dying town — for nearly five hundred years.

Istria · medieval Glagolitic walls

Hum, Croatia: The 'Smallest Town in the World' (Population 27)

Hum has a town charter from 1102, a population of roughly 27, and is consistently described as the smallest town in the world. Every year an all-male assembly walks into the loggia and elects a mayor.

Drôme · the Diois

Rochefourchat: A French Commune That Has Been Empty for Most of 50 Years

Rochefourchat is a commune in southern France whose recorded population has, since the 1970s, been zero, one, or two — usually exactly one. By law, that single resident is also the mayor.

Pierce County · North Dakota

Rugby, North Dakota: The Town That Claims to Be the Center of North America

For nearly a century, Rugby has claimed — with a stone obelisk and a 1931 US Geological Survey letter — to be the geographic center of North America. A nearby bar has spent the last decade trying to steal the title.

Roane County · West Virginia

Looneyville, West Virginia: A Town Named After a Real Person

Looneyville has had its name — and its post office — since 1870. It is named after Robert Looney, a pioneer settler, and the local Looney family is still there.

Micronesia · Pacific Ocean

Nauru: How the Richest Country Per Capita Mined Itself Into Poverty

In the 1970s Nauru was, briefly, the richest country on Earth per capita — entirely from mining phosphate rock. Today, with the phosphate gone, it is one of the poorest.