World's smallest island - Just Room Enough Island - is size of a tennis court

The world's smallest inhabited island is aptly named Just Room Enough Island for a good reason. Photo / Wikimedia Commons

The world's smallest inhabited island is aptly named Just Room Enough Island for a good reason.

That's because the tiny speck of land off Alexandria Bay in New York state has just enough room for a house and a tree – and that's it.

The island is one of 1,864 islands located on the St. Lawrence River, which separates New York from Ontario, the Daily Mail reports.

According to Conde Nast Traveler, the island is part of the Thousand Islands archipelago.

Once known as Hub Island, it was purchased in 1950 by a family known as the Sizelands.

The family planted a tree and built a cottage that took up nearly every square inch of available dry land.

The Sizelands renamed the property Just Room Enough Island.

The family had intended for the island to be a small, weekend getaway, but the attention they received from curious tourists ruined those plans.

The island measures approximately 3,300 square feet (306sq m) – or one-thirteenth of an acre. It is big enough to fit a tennis court.

That means it is about half the size of Bishop Rock, which Guinness Book of World Records said was once the world's smallest inhabited island.

But in 1982, the lighthouse on Bishop Rock, which lies just off the English Isles of Scilly, became automated, so there was no need for humans to man it.

That means it lost its status as an inhabited island.