For nearly 140 years national park lands have been established for the public ... and, providing more than just a place to stay, grand lodges and hotels enticed us with top-class amenities amidst spectacular surroundings--and the public came!
Perched on the edge of gaping canyons, tucked into lush forests, and mirrored in glacier-fed mountain lakes, America's historic national park lodges are works of art set in some of the world's most beautiful surroundings.
Setting aside areas from development began in 1864 when Congress donated Yosemite Valley to California for preservation as a state park. In 1872 Yellowstone became the first national-park, closely followed by Sequoia, Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake, Glacier, and the redesignating of Yosemite. During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed 18 national monuments, including Arizona's Grand Canyon.
With the designating of these precious areas as public land, the public yearned to visit. This meant, for those not taken with the idea of camping, there needed to be accommodations. Trains offered the most convenient method of travel in the early part of the 20th century, so many of the great old lodges were financed by railroad companies, with the trains running almost up to the door of the hotel.
The Grand Canyon's El Tovar Hotel was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1902. Built by the Fred Harvey Company, to the tune of $250,000, it was once described as "the most expensively constructed and appointed log house in America."
It's architectural style has been described as a cross between a Swiss chalet and a Norwegian villa. Among its state-of-the-art features when it opened were a coal-fired generator; a green-house for growing fresh fruits, flowers, and vegetables; a chicken house for supplying fresh eggs; and a dairy herd that produced fresh milk for hotel guests. In 1998 an extensive renovation of the grand old hotel was completed.
Closely following on El Tovar's heels was the Old Faithful Inn in Wyoming's Yellowstone. Constructed in the winter of 1903-1904, it has been called the largest log cabin in the world. Among the lodge's unique features are 85-foot-tall lobby, huge stone fireplace, overhanging balconies, and railings made of gnarled logs.
Those socking a quieter and more rustic Yellowstone experience might consider staying at the Roosevelt Lodge Cabins. Built in 1916, the cabins are tucked in the trees in the Tower Fall area. They come with and without private baths, and lodge has a family-style restaurant and a porch with plenty of rocking chairs.
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Cabins was added to Yellowstone's family of hotels in the 1930s. One of its unique features is a Map Room that contains a large, historical wooden map of the United States made of 15 different woods from nine countries. It is also the only in-park accommodation accessible by car in the winter.
Soon after Glacier was designated a national park in 1910, James J. Hill, the founder of the Great Northern Railway, began making plans for housing tourists in this northern Montana preserve. The first lodge to be built was the Glacier Park Lodge, which sits just outside the park's eastern gateway. The lodge, which opened in 1913, is famous for its 200-foot-long, 100-foot-wide lobby. The sixty 40-foot-high pillars made from Douglas fir prompted the Blackfeet to call the hotel "Big Tree Lodge."
Two years later Many Glacier Hotel was built inside the park on the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake. Since it was located in an area some call the "Switzerland of North America," it seems appropriate that it be built like a series of chalets. Despite the Swiss chalet architecture, however, Many Glacier Hotel is primarily built of material native to the area. The grand total for building a hotel that boasted steam heat, electric lights, hot and cold water, an indoor plunge pool, and over 20 fireplaces was a staggering $500,000.
Glacier's Lake McDonald Lodge was built by John Lewis, a Montana businessman and fur trader. Guests arrived by train at the Belton station and took a lake ferry to the 65-room hotel, which opened in 1914 and cost $48,000. The hotel's exterior follows the Swiss theme evidenced in Many Glacier Lodge, but the exterior has more of a Wild West feel. Concrete floors are scored to look like flagstone, with incised phrases in Blackfeet, Chippewa, and Cree. A huge hearth is framed by Indian designs scored and painted around the opening.
The last of Glacier's historic hotels didn't open until 1927 and is actually located in Alberta, Canada's Waterton Lakes National Park, which butts up to Glacier. James Hill's son Louis masterminded the Prince of Wales Hotel's design, following in the Swiss chalet footsteps of the original Glacier Park lodges. Perched on a hill overlooking Waterton Lakes, the seven-story hotel may look chalet-like from the outside, but the interior is rustic-Tudor, in keeping with the architecture of other Canadian park lodges. The overall impression is of a fairy-tale structure in a stunning setting.
Though Oregon's Crater Lake was declared a national park in 1902, it took until 1915 for Crater Lake Lodge to be built. Far less grand than other park lodges, it had rooms with cardboard-thin walls and no private bathrooms.
The building was saved from demolition when in 1989 a $15-million rehabilitation and reconstruction program was started. The 150 guest rooms were turned into 71 rooms, all with private baths, and an elevator was installed. New furnishings in the Craftsman or Mission style were purchased to match the rustic period interior of the 13-foot-high great wall with its two huge stone fireplaces. In 1995 the lodge reopened, far surpassing the original in comfort.
At 5,400 feet, Paradise Inn was built to serve visitors to the higher elevations of Washington's Mount Rainier National Park. Completed in 1916 and built of Alaskan cedar, the lodge followed the national park lodges' tradition of cavernous great halls with massive fireplaces. Hans Fraehnke, a German carpenter, designed the decorative woodwork, including cedar chairs and tables (one weighing more than 1,500 pounds), a piano, and a grandfather clock.
Like Crater Lake Lodge, the Paradise Inn was saved from demolition in 1979 when the original building was restored. The changes were mostly structural, with the public areas, furnishings, and ambiance reflecting the style of the 1920s.
Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota is a wild and beautiful place and home to one of the nation's most remote and historically colorful hotels. The only way to get to the 1913 Kettle Falls Hotel is by boat. Some stories claim the hotel originally was to provide a "stopping place" for loggers, but rub the surface and tales of bootlegging, smuggling, and paid-for female companionship emerge. An extensive restoration was completed in 1988, making it a restful haven in the wilderness. The bar, however, with its pictures of long-ago vamps and calendar girls and sloping floor, conjures up visions of the hotel's former clientele, who once splintered the bar by dancing on it in their hobnail boots.
Yosemite's Wawona Hotel is the oldest resort hotel in California. Located four miles from the park entrance and a lengthy distance from its main attractions, the hotel is a lovely example of late 19th century California Victorian architecture. Most of its rooms are small, only about half with private baths.
The Ahwahnee Hotel, on the other hand, is not only one of the grandest of the national park hotels, but a world-class hostelry in any category. Built in 1927 for an impressive $1.5 million, the redwood-hued concrete and granite boulder exterior blends graciously into the surroundings. Recently renovated, the guest rooms are furnished in Native American motif, as are the oversized public areas with their thick-beamed high ceilings, walk-in fireplaces, and opulent chandeliers. The guest list, from Queen Elizabeth to Greta Garbo, reads like an international who's who.
Death Valley wasn't designated as a national park until 1994, but its most upscale hotel, the Furnace Creek Inn, opened in 1927. The hottest and lowest spot in the Western hemisphere was an unlikely place for a luxury hotel, but it welcomed over 2,000 guests in its first year of service.
Designed in the Mission style, using adobe bricks handmade by Paiute and Shoshone laborers, the hotel is set into a low ridge overlooking Furnace Creek Wash. The grounds include gardens, a date palm grove, and a warm, spring-fed swimming pool. The hotel, which has been restored to recapture the looks of its 1930s heyday, continues to be a luxurious outpost among some of the nation's most starkly dramatic scenery.
Modern national park accommodations tend more toward the motel-type, but plenty of visitors prefer to step back in time to the days when sitting on a rocking chair on a sweeping veranda overlooking magnificent scenery was the ideal vacation.
LANDMARK LODGES
