The Design of Pit Toilets

If you spend any amount of time hiking, biking or enjoying other outdoor activities, you’ll find one thing in common with most popular trailheads: a pit toilet. While pit toilets seem designed for humans, as I see it, the problem they aim to solve isn’t for us per se. But rather, they solve a problem we cause i.e. how might we prevent beautiful natural areas getting covered with human feces?

Regardless of the framing, I have been documenting and creating a typology of pit toilets. Below you’ll find this collection organized into a rough taxonomy. I’ll keep updating this over time.

Taxonomy

There are two major categories of pit toilet that I’ve noticed so far: custom made and modular or pre-fabricated. The one (only?) attribute they all have in common is the tell-tale ventilation chimney. I’ve further organized modular and prefab by toilet count (apparent by the number of ventilation chimneys). I do not have enough custom examples for further subcategorization.

Custom

These pit toilets can vary in design quite a bit. As an example, the exterior texture of the one below seems to be reminiscent of tree bark. Many of these examples look quite dated, which makes me wonder if they predate the modular and prefabricated pit toilets. Although, I suppose this could be endearing to some in a certain way. Perhaps the anti-modernism anti-Bauhaus anti-Brutalism anti-etc crowd will come out of the woodwork in defense of these?

At a rest stop near the Utah and Colorado state line.

Outside of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah.

At a trailhead near Mammoth Lakes in California. This example is one of the better custom trailhead toilets that I have seen. Although, I’m assuming it’s custom only because I haven’t seen any other twin toilets elsewhere.

Modular or pre-fabricated

These are the types that I see most often. I was informed that one company makes all or most of these. It would be interesting to study the potential design advantages of these as compared to custom toilets. Anecdotally, these seem to generally be cleaner, and more durable (this could be a side-effect to age as I suspect the custom ones may be older).

Single

Near Moab, Utah.

Antelope Island State Park in Utah.

At a trailhead outside of Vernal Utah.

Double

At a rest stop near the San Rafael Swell.

Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.

At a rest stop near the Utah and Nevada state line.

Guardsman Pass Overlook in Utah.

Mormon Flat Campground in Utah.

Quad

At a trailhead near Mammoth Lakes in California. Note the four (!!!!) ventilation chimneys on these examples. Quad pit toilets combined into a single structure.

At a trailhead near Convict Lake in California.

Other details

The sign

One of my favorite pieces of enduring designs can be found in most trailhead pit toilets. I love this sign.

The all caps PLEASE with a trailing ellipsis. The chaotic right rag of the text. The exuberance of sarcasm in THANK YOU which is preceded with an uncertain amount of indentation (not quite centered, surely not right aligned). In the sense that it communicates emotion and it’s memorable: I would argue that this is good design. Plus, it’s typeset in Helvetica (although there is some weird kerning e.g. xt). I would love to learn about the design origin and who created it[1].

PLEASE…
DO NOT put trash
in toilets,
it is extremely
difficult to remove.
   THANK YOU

Art

Occasionally there is art inside or outside of the pit toilets. This is more or less a placeholder. I hope to document more of these examples.

A mural of Timpanogos in a pit toilet at the Pine Hollow Trailhead near Mount Timpanogos.

Addendum

I submitted my favorite photos of pit toilets to the 2026 Hasselblad Masters photo competition. I was not picked as a winner.

[1]: This sign appears at both state and national parks, and I don’t recall seeing it in any custom pit toilets. These aspects lead me to wonder if it was created by the pit toilet fabricator. I’ll email them and ask.