About a dozen cellar holes dot the hillside of Ragged Mountain, some clearly marked by foundations made of stone quarried from nearby bedrock, with quarry marks still visible on some stones. The houses in this community were small and plain, and some observers compared them to “wigwams,” the typical native house structure in New England, often in disparaging terms. In 1854 a newspaper reporter from the Mountain Country Herald described the typical Lighthouse home as “built after a style of architecture about half-way between a wood-pile and a log fence.” Despite such characterizations, the houses built by the residents allowed them to survive more than a century of New England’s harsh winters.