The Grand Canyon is a cultural resource, people across the world come to this place because
it is so powerful. If you pulled somebody from 1905 out of history and had them come and visit
the Elto bar today they would immediately feel at home. Work and you sit in a dining room and
see what's here. You're right in the park, that's the beauty of Zion, you're right in the park.
Grand Canyon Lodge, it's beautiful, it's historical, it's built in the classic log and beam style of the
grand old lodges of the West. There's something about Bryce, people feel like it's easy to become
a part of this park. We're in the memory business and this lodge built in the 20s is full of memories.
Production of Great Lodges of the National Parks was brought to you in part by MJ Murdoch Charitable
Trust, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers
like you. Thank you. The Grand Canyon embodies the wild open spirit of the American West. Its
vastness and scale challenge human comprehension. Theodore Roosevelt called it the sight every
American should see. Forming part of the border between Northern Arizona and Southern Utah,
the canyon is located in one of America's most remote and hostile desert areas.
El Tavar, situated on the South Rim, is a fitting addition to the canyon. Completed by the Santa
Fe Railroad in 1905, this wood-framed time capsule from the Victorian age offers a warm
contrast to the hostile desert surroundings. The canyon is such a vast place, I mean when
you're coming from virtually anywhere you don't have any perspective of distance, you know,
because you've never seen anything this big. You look at these buildings and they provide sort of
that touch tone for our own culture because we're in an environment and landscape that is so totally
foreign to most of us. Even in an age of modern travel, the Grand Canyon is still an isolated
place. A hundred years ago this remoteness meant that very few Americans were able to get to it.
That changed as a burgeoning rail network was winding its way across the continent.
The railroads were very instrumental in developing the West, in many ways populated the West,
and it was very instrumental in getting national parks established that we have in the West,
particularly Grand Canyon National Park. Native cultures knew of the canyon for millennia,
but it was the explorations of John Wesley Powell beginning in 1869 that opened up the
area for European Americans. His cadre of artists, writers, and map makers gave the
American public its first glimpse of the canyon. When early mining efforts failed, tourism seemed a
more viable way for the railroads to exploit the canyon. The Santa Fe Railroad completed a
spur rail line to the South Rim in 1901, and when they reached there, there was nothing but tents,
log hotels, and these kinds of things. That's when they began to develop the South Rim of the
Grand Canyon, and in doing so they built over 600 structures. Santa Fe, the Union Pacific,
all of the railroads that were in the western United States, they were businesses, and to make
money they had to bring people to the West, and to bring people to the West they had to have
attractions. They would generate pamphlets, extensive brochures. Of course they were trying
to sell tickets, but these booklets brought people to the West. When the Santa Fe Railroad
opened El Tavar in 1905, nearly all visitors arrived by train.
Today, visitors can choose to arrive the same way. The Grand Canyon Railway travels 80 miles from
Williams, Arizona to the South Rim on the same track used by the Santa Fe. It provides a sense
of the turn-of-the-century arrival experience. Riding the rails today is a great experience.
Riding the rails today, 100 years after this railroad was built, is very similar to that time.
Very little has changed. They are a comfortable, peaceful way to travel. We can go to the South
Rim of the Grand Canyon in complete comfort, just sitting here and watching history go by
and enjoying a nice grain ride. The Grand Canyon Railway delivers passengers to the only standing
log train depot still in use in America. Once you're done, have a good time. Thank you, sir.
You betcha. Ain't a lot of pictures that big on the ground. Here, just as a century ago,
their eyes are drawn upward to the beautiful El Tavar. El Tavar was the vision of Illinois
architect Charles Whittlesey. He designed buildings throughout the West, but this is his
only structure in a national park. Built of Northwestern furs and local limestone,
El Tavar combines the styles of an enormous European villa and log cabin, more like a
hunting lodge than desert hotel. Its wood joinery, varied roofline, and protruding log beams might
look more at home in a mountain setting. If you read when the building opened, it gives
these references to Swiss and Norwegian architecture, and it's the craftsman, romantic
movement of Europe being brought to America, and the Americans trying to decide what is
the appropriate architecture and what would their customers be looking for in a natural setting in
what becomes a national park. It was certainly a very welcoming destination for folks who'd
travel for days to get to this very isolated place. You know, I mean, we're out in the middle of
nowhere. So the structure itself was very, very welcoming and very familiar to a lot of the
visitors who have been traveling west on the railroad. When I walk up to the lodge, I just
want to sit on the swings outside, and I pretend it's 1905, and I'm the only one there, and I'm
just sitting and swinging and enjoying the quiet and the solitude of the canyon, and it's just
wonderful. The lobby at El Tavar is a hunting lodge personified. Dark, stained paneling
complements the heavy beams and rafters, and a stone fireplace in the corner completes the
Americanized euro-chateau feeling. And rounding out the hunting motif, several animal heads
decorate the walls, although few represent wildlife found anywhere near the Grand Canyon.
The lobby has rustic elements, natural use of logs. You find other use of wood in other
stylistic ways that tend to look like a Swiss or Norway villa. The use of natural logs for posts
to hold up the roofs, and the use of slab log construction carrying the outside into the inside.
It's actually quite dark in the lobby. Above the far end of the lobby, the mezzanine lounge
sits behind the octagonal balcony with its decorative jigsaw balustrades. This was once
the ladies' lounge. Here, in the classical manner of the Victorian era, women would retire
after meals to chat. Today, it offers access to El Tavar's 78 guest rooms.
The lodge features two adjoining dining rooms. One, a converted porch, features massive picture
windows with views of the canyon. The main dining room is flanked by two stone fireplaces and is lit
by distinctive copper fixtures added in a 1979 remodeling. When the lodge opened, the dining room
was managed by the company which handled all matters epicurean for the Santa Fe Railroad,
the Fred Harvey Company. Aided by his famous Harvey Girl waitresses, Fred Harvey pioneered
the concept of quality food on the go. He was like the original person to design fast food.
He developed a system where people could go in, sit down, and eat a nice four or five-quart meal
in about 25 minutes at a train stop. There were 15 hotels and 47 restaurants that he managed for
the Santa Fe Railroad, and it was his service and the quality of the food and training of the staff
that made the Santa Fe popular. Perhaps Harvey's biggest contribution to the south rim of the
Grand Canyon is the fact that his company hired Mary Connery, the owner of the restaurant.
It's the fact that his company hired Mary Coulter. She was originally employed as a decorator,
but soon proved herself a most innovative and progressive architect. Interested in interpreting
the cultural heritage of the region rather than mimicking European styles, Coulter designed several
buildings along the south rim, including the Hopi House right across from El Tabar. Function,
structure, and beauty were the things most architects revolved their concepts and themes
around. Mary Coulter added a storyline. She said, what if Native Americans had a building on the
canyon? What if the Native Americans built a tower on the canyon? What if there was a place
where you looked out over the canyon at Lookout Studio? Mary Coulter was probably the most
remarkable woman that most people have never heard of from the early part of the century.
She was an architect at a time when women were not expected to be architects. Someone said that
she was almost an exact contemporary to Frank Lloyd Wright in that they were both born around
the same time and died around the same time and both were temperamental, short people who built
the exquisite buildings that leak. One of the things about Mary Elizabeth Jane Coulter was
her fascination with American Indians and archaeology and American Indian art. One of
Coulter's last buildings at Grand Canyon was the Desert Uwatch Tower. It was completed in 1932.
We have a building that basically, the foundations are a ruin and it comes out of the canyon itself.
We've got four levels in the tower, each one emerging into another level as you go up.
The second floor of the tower being the Hopi room essentially where Fred Kabody who is a Hopi
artist pretty much telling one of the creation stories for Hopi with his murals and his drawings
and everything authentic. Part of her genius in the construction of her buildings is that she liked
to employ materials that had been used before whether it be out at the watch tower where she
used the old timbers from the old Grandview Hotel which had been closed for a number of years or
here in the Hopi house. The beams upstairs and downstairs all are old western union telegraph
company poles. They were old when they were put in here some 95 years ago and you can still see
the marks that were made from the spikes on the workmen's shoes when they used to have to go up
and repair line or whatever. When you look at the El Tavar and right across the parking lot
is the Hopi house. They're very very different structures. It's hard to kind of figure out why
they're there together but it was for that different experience.
There you have it. You've got your comfortable hotel and then right across the way you can
experience Indian culture. You've got Hopis living there making pottery. You've got dances going on
so you're able to provide to your visitors both things right there.
Colter as an architect developed a style that would later become what I think is rustic
architecture. She isn't credited with it but again you'll see that sort of the genesis of
what became rustic architecture for the national parks was happened with Colter's earlier buildings.
She was just this force, this vision and her works at Grand Canyon are national historic
landmarks. You know they are a real testament to the work that she had done as a woman,
as an architect and as a designer.
Soaring high over these man-made landmarks along the rim, California condors are reminders of the
canyon's rich natural history. Though nearly extinct before a reintroduction program started
a few years ago, condors now fly over the canyon almost daily, a fitting adjunct to this world.
They love the canyon habitat. I think there's about 21 now that are in the wild, just circling
the area. They're very curious animals and they're very social animals so they just like to go hang
out and just kind of check out all the people on the rim and so you'll see them on any given day.
The condors reflect the wild and untamed nature of the canyon.
Their graceful flight, a contrast to the stoic solidarity of the rocky walls.
The buildings of two distinctly different architects provide a similar contrast along the rim.
The native inspired designs of Mary Colter and the European homage of Charles Whittlesey's
El Tavar reflect different approaches to taming this wild territory. They offer comfort and
familiarity in concert with the overpowering vistas of the canyon. You've got this backdrop
that's very unreal of the Grand Canyon, but then you've developed a very personal village
with walkways that connect the different parts of the canyon. It's a place where you can
have a lot of fun, but then you've developed a very personal village with walkways that connect
to the different buildings. So you've got everything connecting itself in a very much a landscape
design fashion. Grand Canyon is probably the best remaining example of any of that.
The 1924 Village Plan is pretty much still there.
There has to be places like this so that we remember what the West was. You know a lot of
folks come here and they take away something they weren't even looking for. The fact is they walk
and they didn't bargain for it. They recharged. They're really connected again to wide open spaces,
to wonder. Awesome is the word that means way too much. This is awesome. This is all inspiring.
Santa Fe's El Tavar would be the only railroad lodge in the western canyons for the next
20 years. But soon competition would come from the Union Pacific Railroad beginning in southern
Utah at Zion National Park and Zion Lodge. Located in the rocky center of Utah's canyon country
in the southern end of the Colorado Plateau, Zion National Park offers a glimpse at a unique
and seldom seen view of a canyon, the bottom. Grand Canyon is very grand and Zion is almost
the opposite of that. Rather than being at the top and looking down, you're in the bottom of it
and things are a real cozy around you. They're just totally different and I think the word
intimate is the one I would use for this place. Built in 1924, Zion Lodge is a simple rustic
building forming the centerpiece of a community of cabins. This arrangement of day lodge and
overnight cabins affords a more bucolic approach to staying in a national park,
a far cry from the elegant El Tavar. What the lodge does here is that it allows people to come
into the park, spend an evening here and get to experience the canyon in a way that the person
who simply drives through the park doesn't get that same experience. Work and you sit in a
dining room and see what's here. You're right in the park, that's the beauty of the lodge,
you're right in the park. You can sit on the patio and you can see the park, you can live the park
and it's a great experience to spend an overnight at the park. Zion Canyon was set aside as a
national monument in 1909 and incorporated into the National Park Service in 1919.
The newly formed federal service was under the guidance of Stephen Mather, its first director.
Mather did believe that for people to support the national park idea in these magnificent places,
they had to be accessible to people. Well the Union Pacific Railroad and others throughout the
west saw building lines and taking people to national parks as good business. So Mather
encouraged them to build spur lines to national parks and then ultimately lodges and restaurants
and places where people could stay once they arrived. This was the nature of the railroads
that were in the west. You just didn't create an east-west road, you had to reach all the areas
that were adjacent to it and so they began branching south into southern Utah and that line
ran through Cedar City, Utah and this was in close proximity to Bryce and Zion National Parks
and also not very far from the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Stephen Mather and the Union
Pacific Railroad were just the right people at the right time at the right place to develop
these national parks and to begin to get people to really appreciate the beauty and the ideal
of national parks. The Grand Canyon's more remote north rim and nearby Bryce Canyon were also being
developed into national parks. Eager to compete with the Santa Fe, the Union Pacific Railroad
came up with an innovative plan. Under its subsidiary, the Utah Parks Company, the railroad
would build lodges at all three parks and link them with motor coaches running from a train stop
at Cedar City, Utah, about 60 miles from Zion. The coaches would take visitors to each park in turn.
They called it the loop tour and all three lodges became known as loop tour lodges. They had 40 of
these 10 passenger buses that they ran to the various parks. The first night they would stay
in Zion or maybe two nights, then drive from here to Grand Canyon and there it was always a two night
deal, then from there to Bryce Canyon for one night's stay, then from Bryce back to Cedar City.
By 1928, each of the three parks had a lodge. Mather felt that these destinations needed a
different approach than a single grand hotel like El Tavar. Instead, he insisted that all three parks
be a community of rustic overnight log cabins with a day lodge as the centerpiece. To fulfill
this vision, Mather turned to a man whose name would become synonymous with rustic park service
architecture, Gilbert Stanley Underwood. There was this concept developing as to what should be the
architecture in our national parks and Underwood was there at the very beginning of this process
and the designs of Underwood in the parks in the west are certainly ones that bring a strong sense
of architectural design and this idea of park service rustic architecture. I think Underwood's
vision for all the cabins in the national parks or any of the buildings in the national park
were to make it look like it was a part of the landscape, to look like it was growing out of the
land. Judy Rosell's grandfather was the first superintendent of Zion National Park. She grew
up here with her two sisters. Today, she is the chief of concessions at the park. This is one of
our historic western cabins. There are 40 here that are left from when the original lodge was built
and this is one of the original rooms. The chair over here was built by the company that built the
original chairs for the lodge and it's an exact replica of the chairs that were here at that time.
The fireplace over here is all the original rockwork. We've done some restoration in the
last couple of years to try and bring this as close as possible to the historic authenticity
of the cabin. Though Underwood's vision lives on in the cabins, it has sadly been lost in the lodge.
The original Zion lodge was completely destroyed in a fire in the winter of 1966.
There's a little story about this old tree. I was born in 1925, about the same time that the lodge
was built. I have pictures of the early lodge and this tree isn't here. You know what, that makes me
older than that tree and that in itself is just a little bit scary. Carl Croft has spent the majority
of his life working in the loop tour parks. As the chief of maintenance at Zion, he witnessed the
disastrous fire. I was in the office in Cedar City one nice January day in 1966 and the caretaker
from down here called me up and he says, Carl, we've got a problem. The lodge is on fire and I think
we're going to lose the whole thing. That was a terrible disaster. During my time as manager,
that's the worst thing that had happened. It had got to the point where I know he's trying to do
anything with it, so they tore it all down and started all over again. From the day they decided
to build it till the day we were in it, it was 108 days. The railroad did the design work and it was
a hurry, hurry job. Here we are. Thank you very much. Though perhaps not as rustic or charming as
the original, the new lodge does maintain the historic purpose as the park's central meeting
place and dining facility. The stone pillars in front of the lodge reflect the natural feel of
Underwood's vision. They have been restored to match the original rock work that can still be
seen in the auditorium fireplace, the only surviving structure of the old lodge.
The lodge and cabins provide a convenient springboard to explore the park. A massive
canyon carved by a river, Zion offers some one-of-a-kind hiking experiences. The Virgin
River has been cutting down through the Navajo sandstone and it has finally reached the shale
layer and that eroded away more easily. From that spot downstream, the canyon is widening.
If you walk up to that spot and continue on, you'll find that the canyon is very narrow and
remains narrow and very vertical. So it's a change in what erosion has left behind for us to see.
One of the things that is unique about Zion is that it reminds us that we are very small in a
much bigger world, a natural environment that's very encompassing. These walls are very comforting
to a lot of people and the color of them and the sound of the wind and the sound of the river
moving through the canyon and we very much become part of the natural environment.
Here and it's easy to become part of it. I just think it's one of the most spectacular parks.
I know that it's often been called a Yosemite done in colors. It's just incredibly beautiful
and every day that I come up here, I see something different. I think it depends on what they are
looking for, what people will find in Zion. If they're looking for someone who's been here for
a long time, they might as well not come. But if they're looking for peace, if they're looking for
beauty, they will find it. Due to problems with traffic congestion, cars are not allowed to
into most of Zion Canyon. In a bit of a throwback to the original loop tours, a new shuttle system
now takes people through the park. We're going back to the old way of doing buses
and we're finding that people are enjoying it. It used to be the small number of parking spaces
in this narrow canyon that was the limiting factor for access. Now you can go back to the
park at any time of day and hike a trail. It's quiet. We've got a lot of micro habitats or
niches. Perfect spots for 900 types of plants. On a shuttle tour, 28 people can join a park ranger
going up canyon and have features of the park explained to them. The geology, the biology,
all of the plants, the animals that you'll see. It turns out to be very popular with many folks.
Perhaps Zion National Park is at its best in the evenings. The sun setting over the colorful
formations of the canyon creates a warm glow and the lawn in front of the lodge becomes a scene
of serenity and relaxation. We've been busy all day. We've been out in the sun. Let's just kind of
relax and take it easy. They sit on their verandas, their porches. Just relax. Sometimes in the year
you might see two or three deer coming, eating, feeding on the lawn. Some of us never did learn
to relax, but you sure can do it here. I believe national parks are one of the things that provide
the country with good mental health. Places you can go to escape everyday life, places where you
can go to enjoy nature, places where you can go and just totally relax and see what the world used
to be like. Being on the bottom of the canyon floor and looking up at these incredible canyon
walls and to see the light change in the canyon, to have the wildlife in close proximity, to me
that's what makes this lodge unique. Some parks don't have a great deal to offer like we have here
at Zion. You can see so much in Zion, lots to see. That is Zion. That lodge is just part of Zion.
It comes with the canyon. Zion Lodge was the first stop on the old loop tours. After a couple of days
there, people would crowd onto the old buses and move on to the next park. Today many people follow
the old loop tour route, visiting the parks and lodges in the same order. The next stop on the
loop tour was the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon Lodge. It was the middle stop
of the tour, located in a remote area of northern Arizona. It was once a drive of many hours until
the completion of the mile-long Mount Carmel tunnel, which cuts through some of the hazardous
mountain passages. The drive between the two lodges is a paradox of geological and natural
experience. The eroded landscapes of southern Utah give way to large stands of tall ponderosa pines
and it becomes hard to believe that one is headed for one of the world's largest canyons.
Like the other loop tour locations, the design of Grand Canyon Lodge was the inspiration of
Gilbert Stanley Underwood. His great genius at the north rim is that he manages to conceal
one of the biggest holes in the world. Underwood's vision was really to bring people up to the
lodge and have them leave their buses and come into the front entrance of the lodge into the lobby
without seeing the Grand Canyon and then they saw this light emanating out of a lower room and saw
huge windows there. So they went down the stairs and then they went out into this what we call the
sun room and all of a sudden boom there it was. What do you think? Look at that view.
That's a long way down isn't it? Early development was slow in coming to the north rim. Though only
eight miles across the canyon from El Tavar on the south rim, the two lodges are separated by
hundreds of miles of mountain roads. Even today it is much less developed than its sister to the
south. Envious of the Santa Fe's success with El Tavar, the Union Pacific Railroad was eager
to build accommodations in this virtually untouched region. The result was one of the
finest examples of rustic architecture ever built in a national park. The original lodge was like a
Spanish fort and it had a very high tower. Maybe Underwood absorbed some of the early history of
Southwest with the Spanish coming in here and then trying to find you know fabulous cities of gold
and maybe that some of that romance was in the building itself.
Underwood's use of local materials and the lodge's natural blending into the rock of the canyon
has prompted some to suggest that perhaps this legendary architect of the 20th century
may have been influenced by that overachieving decorator from the south rim, Mary Coulter.
I think that Underwood was influenced greatly by Mary Coulter's work on that south rim because she
integrated her structures that she built for the Santa Fe Railroad with the rim rock itself and
it's the same here on the north rim that the limestone cliffs that the lodge is built upon
are integrated into the building itself. Completed in 1928, the Grand Canyon Lodge was a triumph of
rustic architecture. It was however to be short-lived. In a repeat of a story heard far
too often in the history of these lodges, it was lost in the fall of 1932 in what is still the
largest structural fire in the Grand Canyon's history. Carl Croft was a small boy when it
happened and his father was the chief of maintenance. It's a sad irony of his life that he happened to
witness tragic fires that burned down two of the three loop tour lodges. Dad took me out the day
after the fire and I can still remember today it was still smoldering and all the wood was gone
and the only thing left were those tall stone columns just standing there and the smoke coming
out of the what was left of the fire and they just looked like ghosts real sad ghosts looking at the
fire it was it was everybody was a real so that was a really a beautiful building by far the best
building that the railroad built in the national parks. The lodge was a total loss. Two years later
rebuilding began and the new lodge opened in 1936. It shares much of the original's vision
but with some significant differences. The watch tower is gone and the original jagged roof lines
were replaced with a traditional pitched roof. The new lodge is completely different from the old
lodge in the exterior but the interior is almost exactly the same as the original lodge and that's
really an incredible fact that they were able to recreate the interior of the lodge just the same
way that Underwood had designed it. The only room that really has changed is this auditorium.
This room in the lodge is the one room that's an improvement over the original lodge
in this auditorium with the open beams because before in the original lodge the maids rooms
were above and it would have been a flat ceiling. With the open beams it's much more of a airy open
ceiling and the decorations on the beams are from a Navajo artist that worked with Mary Colder on
the south rim Fred Capote. Like its sisters along the loop tour the Grand Canyon Lodge is a central
day lodge surrounded by cabins. There are 80 in all in various configurations and all maintain the
legacy of Underwood's design lost with the original lodge. Only two cabins burned in the 1932 fire.
This is an example of one of our treasures in the lodge. This is one of our rim view cabins.
The room features two queen-size beds. We have a working gas fireplace here
and you have some spectacular views outside the window here of the canyon itself.
These are some of the original timbers that Gilbert Stanley Underwood used in the original
construction. With guest accommodations taken care of by the cabins the lodge is free to be
a recreational and dining area. My favorite room without a doubt is the dining room. The dining room
has spectacular views. There's about six windows. They're just about from floor to ceiling and every
table has just a magnificent view of the canyon itself. The ceiling rises to about 30 feet and
peaks surrounded impressively by these limestone walls. The timbers in the lodge structure
themselves are ponderosa pine. They were harvested in the 20s and 30s from an area just 70, 80 miles
north of here and that's what is used throughout the lodge. Also on these timbers you have some artwork.
Some of the accents or these motifs kind of mimic some of the native petroglyphs that are seen
throughout the canyon. Also too there are some very heavy brass accents that are structural and
decorative at the same time so I think you really get a feel of the architect and his dream of
blending into the canyon walls and at the same time providing guests, every guest in the dining
room, just spectacular views. In the sunroom, large picture windows frame the canyon like an enormous
piece of art. Its maces and formations seeming a continuous painting split into three murals on the
walls of the lodge. The sunroom is just this room with large windows that overlook the canyon and
provides an opportunity throughout to see what's going on in the canyon. The sunroom is a place
of opportunity throughout the day no matter what kind of weather to view the canyon and both your
sunsets and sunrises. People's reactions when they come into the lodge and they see the sunroom
isn't very verbal. I think it's more physical, it's more a body reaction that they get drawn
and single-mindedly go towards the view. The thing is that you can't take it all in
and you can't take it for very long and so they back off and even in my own experience is if you
can take your eyes off the canyon for a while and then gaze at it again, you start seeing detail
but if you take it all at once it's overwhelming. The Grand Canyon does look unreal and the reason
it looks unreal is because there isn't anything else on the planet that looks like it and when
your eye views it for the first time, you know you're looking at something very, very unusual.
We have two verandas, both an east and west veranda, a gathering place for our guests to
view the sunrise and the sunset and it gathers many, many of our guests.
The evening in the lodge is probably the best time of the day because people are more relaxed
and people are out on the patio and they're sipping cocktails. They have their feet propped
up on the wall and the families are out there and everybody's mellow. There's more contrast
and more color so it's a more appealing time for your senses to take in the Grand Canyon.
It's a very relaxed atmosphere. When we first got to the lodge, I think it was an overwhelming
experience. I mean it's just looking into the lodge and seeing the architecture and the beam
ceilings and the chandeliers and then coming into the sitting room and seeing the windows
and the vista, it just kind of takes your breath away.
As with the other canyon parks, the most popular activities at the North Rim are hiking,
and climbing. However, the excessive daytime temperatures in the canyon and the harsh desert
environment can make it a harrowing proposition. North Rim hiking, it's extreme. They do 400
search and rescues a year and when you look into the canyon here, you realize that it's unforgiving
and you can get lost and you can get dehydrated, you can get heat exposure. There's a million ways
that the canyon can really punish you. It's only natural that a place as wild and beautiful
as the Grand Canyon should be an inspiration to artists. In the nearly 30 years Bruce Aikens has
lived in the canyon, he's become a bit of an institution. The Grand Canyon provides probably
the most unique inspirational view that an artist can have. It can be inspiring, it can be humbling.
As far as I'm concerned, it's the most stimulating thing on the planet. I can tell you that running
out of images at the Grand Canyon is like, you know, saying you're going to run out of people
to look at in New York City. You know, I mean, it's just not going to happen, but you know,
it's just not going to happen. In many ways, it is artists that we have to thank for the Grand
Canyon National Park. When John Wesley Powell first began to explore and map this region,
it was the paintings by various artists who accompanied him that gave most people their
first awareness of the indescribable views found here. Among the best known of these was a man
named Thomas Moran. Thomas Moran came on the second expedition to the Grand Canyon and produced
paintings. And it's the paintings that Thomas Moran did during that trip that brought the image
of the Grand Canyon to the people of the world. He was, in my estimation, one of the most important
historical figures in the creation and formation of the national park system as we know it today.
As beautiful as the paintings are, there is nothing that compares to the experience of seeing the
canyon in person. The shifting patterns of light and shadow create an ever-changing spectacle that
cannot be reproduced. The canyon and lodge are intertwined, joined together by rock that is the
foundation of both. An upside-down mountain carved out of the earth by the Colorado River,
graced by a wood and rock monolith carved by the hand of man. This park, this land, represents one
of the treasures of the United States. The lodge itself is another treasure in the sense that it
not only is an architectural treasure, but it provides for every walk of life to enjoy this park.
Well, it gives the visitors a great experience. This lodge is a part of Grand Canyon National Park
that our visitors take away with them, and they remember this place. People never forget their
experience at Grand Canyon Lodge. It's just a great place to be.
After the Grand Canyon, the tour buses would once again enter southern Utah to take passengers to
the last stop on the loop tour, Bryce Canyon Lodge. A 56-square-mile splash of color, Bryce Canyon's
unusual formations stand in stark contrast to this arid, western-style landscape. It's a place that
you'll never forget. A 56-square-mile splash of color, Bryce Canyon's unusual formations stand in
stark contrast to this arid, western region. After the massive spectacle of the Grand Canyon,
this intimate little park was the perfect finale for the loop tour experience.
You go into Zion Canyon, which was the first stop, and there you had your salad or the starter,
and that started the meal. The North Rim was the main course, was the entree,
and then you came to Bryce Canyon, and there's where you had the dessert.
The geologies of these parks are as interconnected as the histories they share
as loop tour locations. All three are part of a geologic formation called the Grand Staircase,
gigantic steps of eroded cliffs whose varied bands of color highlight different formations
as they descend toward the Grand Canyon. Bryce Canyon, with its pink cliffs rock formation,
this represents the uppermost step in this sequence of geologic layers. Below the pink
cliffs is another step known as the gray cliffs. Below the gray cliffs are the white cliffs,
and those are found in Zion National Park. You work your way down to the vermilion cliffs,
and then the chocolate cliffs, which are down close to the Grand Canyon. So these three parks
are kind of tied together by forming a complete geologic sequence represented by their different
layers as gigantic steps. Bryce Canyon is something like a cave without a roof on it.
That's what a lot of people will say. Stellag tights they call the ones that hang from the
ceiling. Stellag mites, the ones that grow up towards the ceiling. Well, Bryce Canyon looks
like a bunch of stalag mites inside of a cave, these narrow, skinny structures of rock
protruding up from the ground. Cited about a quarter mile back from the unstable rim of Bryce
Canyon, the lodge reflects a northern European rustic design. The only loop tour lodge not
destroyed by fire and rebuilt, at Bryce the original Gilbert Stanley Underwood vision
can still be seen. The design of this lodge is different than any of the others. Of course,
all of his designs were unique. It's an open framework, which means you see the actual studs
on the outside of the lodge, and the only thing between the outside and the inside is just the
paneling. He was going for something that was very functional, but very simple. The Bryce Lodge is
kind of a keyed down version of the ones in Yellowstone and Yosemite. He always tried to
incorporate the area that it sat in. He tried to make it blend in, and so using the native logs,
I think he did a beautiful job of making it blend into Bryce. I think some of the most distinctive
features are the massive truss system that you see in the ceiling, the large timbers that were used
to support the roof, also the stonework, the foundation is made of native stone, and just
a unique style of the lighting fixtures. There are several interesting light fixtures in the lodge.
The log light chandeliers in the lobby have been historically reproduced and are now very similar
to the originals. The lobby has a beautiful hammered copper hood over the roughly quarried
stone fireplace and is filled with hickory furniture, adding to the requisite lodge feel.
This continues in the auditorium, which features six original cast iron chandeliers and a rough
stone fireplace similar to the one in the lobby. The massive scissor beams bound together by steel
plates, the hardwood floor and the exposed wood ceiling are stained dark brown, making the room
seem warm and woodsy. The auditorium was added in a series of expansions which began in 1927.
Designed by Underwood, these modifications included the stonework on the front portico
of the lodge and the gift shop. Not only did these alterations add much needed space,
they also created a charming center courtyard.
The large posts at the entrance, the shed dormer windows, and the stone foundation and rockwork
all show Underwood's genius for rustic architecture. One particularly interesting element of Brice
is its unusual shingled roof. These shingles are cut in irregular shapes, giving them a unique
wavy pattern. The shingles are actually trimmed in a wedge shape. The rows of shingles go up and down
on about a four-foot increment, every four foot being either a high or a low spot, and that's
what creates that wave pattern. There are several buildings in Brice Canyon that have that pattern
and to my knowledge it's unique to this park. There's no other buildings in the western United
States that have that same style of shingling. Like Zion and the Grand Canyon lodges, Brice is also
a community of cabins and structures with a day lodge. Of the original 67 cabins, 25 remain today
and all echo the wavy shingle pattern found on the lodge. Underwood designed two styles of cabins.
One they called the pioneer cabin, which was just a small efficiency cabin. The other style was what
they called the deluxe cabin, and the deluxe cabins were built of logs with the big massive
stone columns on the corners, the high sloping roofs, the interiors had fireplaces in them.
Brice I think is just so special and we hear this so much from our visitors. They say
Grand Canyon is so massive and so grand and Zion is beautiful, but there's something about Brice
that they just love because it's a relatively small park and they call it intimate. It's very easy
to get down on the trails, you can hike only a mile or two and you can be right among these
delicately carved formations and people feel like it's easy to become a part of this park.
Wall Street is a deep narrow slot canyon that is part of the Navajo loop trail and it's a very
popular stretch of trail. And what Wall Street is, is one of those deep vertical cracks which
geologists call joints that are throughout this clarion formation. Those cracks are the pathways
for water to get down in and erode away some of the rock and then widen the crack. The most
dominant feature at Brice are rock formations called hoodoos. Looking like the remnants of
ancient castles, these tall spires of stone are unique to this area. A hoodoo, that's the name
that we give all of these intricately carved unusual rock formations that Brice Canyon is so
famous for. The word hoodoo actually has two definitions. One is a pillar or odd shaped rock
and the other definition, which is a little more intriguing, would be of African origin and it
means to cast a spell or cause bad luck.
There's something light up over there, huh? We have extraordinary sunrises here at Brice Canyon.
One of the biggest questions we get is where's the best place to go for sunrise, but I think most
everybody agrees Brice Point is the best place. It's on a peninsula of rock that sticks out into
the main amphitheater and it almost is like being the focal point of a parabola, where the rising
sun strikes into the amphitheater, it reflects back to this point. And that's what Brice Canyon is
all about. It's a very intense visual experience. It's 45 minutes that people will stand completely
silent, 100 people deep watching the sunrise. It's a very spiritual experience.
This part of southern Utah is a very inaccessible place. In spite of this remoteness, or maybe
because of it, the local people have an unusually strong connection to these lodges.
It's really out in the sticks. In fact, this county in which Brice Canyon is located, Garfield
County, Utah, it's about 2,000 square miles in size. Not a single stoplight in this whole county.
The local people are pretty much the job market and that's one of the reasons that it means so
much to the local people. We have a lot of the jobs here. We consider it our park. A lot of us
have grown up close to this park and looking at it from our backyards and it was a place that
we considered our park. It's part of our heritage. I grew up in the valley of Brice Canyon. My family
were farmers and ranchers and at a young age I discovered, I realized, this was not what I
wanted to do for the rest of my life. And so I was looking for an out and the summer of 52,
I went to Brice Lodge and applied for a job. I was a pot-wisher and I've always looked back on
that time as being a very cherished position. In the days of the old loop tours, musical talent
was a requirement for working at the lodges. Employees would entertain the guests with nightly
musical numbers, variety shows and comedy routines. We had two main shows called State Show and
Employees Review and then the rest of the time we would do variety shows. The employees would also
sing to guests as they left the lodges. Called a sing-away, these parting musical numbers would
be a loop tour tradition for nearly 60 years, lasting until the Utah Parks Company turned the
lodges over to the Park Service in 1972. The bus would pull up in front and they just come and get
everybody out of all the departments and just have them all go out on the porch and line up and then
we'd start singing. It's a special song just for Brice that has stolen little bits from other songs.
Every few years, some of the old employees get together at Brice and share memories of working
at the park. Sometimes they even perform singaways just like they did in the past.
On some of these nostalgic occasions, the Park Service brings out an authentic old loop tour bus.
These people are former employees. They come back to find the magic again.
We're in the memory business and that's what the National Park Service is in and
this lodge built in the 20s is full of memories.
They create a great tradition for us. They give us a place of being. They give us a real purpose
and we came back to visit because we felt there was a magical part of our lives in the early years.
We were young and we came back to see the magic again and it's all here.
There is one last word. The memory will remain. Till you come back to Brice again.
We really are the repositories of the natural and cultural resources of this nation.
We are the greatest libraries that the nation has of what it means to be American, whether we're
talking about the natural resources that you can see looking off the rim or to talk about
the cultural resources, the history that's truly the fiber of America.
Explore the great lodges of the National Parks and download a screensaver at PBS online.
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Production of Great Lodges of the National Parks was brought to you in part by
M.J. Murdoch Charitable Trust, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation and by contributions
to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.