Grand Canyon Village is a census-designated place (CDP) located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County, Arizona, United States. Its population was 2,004 at the 2010 Census. Located in Grand Canyon National Park, it is wholly focused on accommodating tourists visiting the canyon. Its origins trace back to the railroad completed from Williams, to the canyon's South Rim by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1901. Many of the structures in use today date from that period. The village contains numerous landmark buildings, and its historic core is a National Historic Landmark District, designated for its outstanding implementation of town design.
The known human history of the Grand Canyon area stretches back 10,500 years, when the first evidence of human presence in the area is found. Native Americans have inhabited the Grand Canyon and the area now covered by Grand Canyon National Park for at least the last 4,000 of those years. Ancestral Pueblo peoples, first as the Basketmaker culture and later as the more familiar Pueblo people, developed from the Desert Culture as they became less nomadic and more dependent on agriculture. A similar culture, the Cochimi also lived in the canyon area. Drought in the late 13th century likely caused both groups to move on. Other people followed, including the Paiute, Cerbat, and the Navajo, only to be later forced onto reservations by the United States Government.
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter was an American architect and designer. She was one of the very few female American architects in her day. She was the designer of many landmark buildings and spaces for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park. Her work had enormous influence as she helped to create a style, blending Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival architecture with Native American motifs and Rustic elements, that became popular throughout the Southwest. Colter was a perfectionist, who spent a lifetime advocating and defending her aesthetic vision in a largely male-dominated field.
The Fred Harvey Company was the owner of the Harvey House chain of restaurants, hotels and other hospitality industry businesses alongside railroads in the Western United States. It was founded in 1876 by Fred Harvey to cater to the growing number of train passengers.
Phantom Ranch is a lodge inside Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. It sits at the bottom of Grand Canyon, on the east side of Bright Angel Creek, a little over half a mile north of the Creek's confluence with the Colorado River. Opened in 1922, Phantom Ranch is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Hermits Rest is a structure built in 1914 at the western end of Hermit Road at the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, United States. The Hermit Trail, a hiking trail that extends to the Colorado River, begins about ¼ mile beyond the shuttle bus stop at Hermits Rest. Hermits Rest also represents the western terminus of the Rim Trail. The location was named for Louis Boucher. Around 1891, Boucher – a Canadian-born prospector – staked claims below present-day Hermits Rest. With help, Boucher carved the aforementioned trail into the canyon, and for years lived alone at nearby Dripping Springs. The main structure currently standing at Hermits Rest was designed by architect Mary Colter. Hermits Rest is the westernmost point on the canyon's south rim that is accessible by paved road. It was built as a rest area for tourists on coaches operated by the Fred Harvey Company on the way to the now-vanished Hermit Camp. The building was designed to appear to be a natural stone formation, closely tied to the land. Colter selected furnishings that are included in the National Historic Landmark designation.
The El Tovar Hotel, also known simply as El Tovar, is a former Harvey House hotel situated directly on the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, United States.
Lookout Studio, known also as The Lookout, is a stone building located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, within Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. It is part of the Grand Canyon Village Historic District, and is part of the Mary Jane Colter Buildings National Historic Landmark. It currently operates as a gift shop and observation station for visitors, with telescopes on its outdoor terrace. Lookout Studio was constructed by the Santa Fe Railway in 1914 and was established as a photography studio to compete with Kolb Studio. It is one of six buildings at the Grand Canyon that were designed by architect Mary Colter, along with Bright Angel Lodge, Hermit's Rest, Hopi House, Phantom Ranch, and Desert View Watchtower. Lookout Studio employs her signature rustic style of using jagged native rocks to imitate indigenous structures of the region and to blend in with the environment.
National Park Service rustic – sometimes colloquially called Parkitecture – is a style of architecture that developed in the early and middle 20th century in the United States National Park Service (NPS) through its efforts to create buildings that harmonized with the natural environment. Since its founding in 1916, the NPS sought to design and build visitor facilities without visually interrupting the natural or historic surroundings. The early results were characterized by intensive use of hand labor and a rejection of the regularity and symmetry of the industrial world, reflecting connections with the Arts and Crafts movement and American Picturesque architecture.
Desert View Watchtower, also known as the Indian Watchtower at Desert View, is a 70-foot (21 m)-high stone building located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon within Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, United States. The tower is located at Desert View, more than 20 miles (32 km) to the east of the main developed area at Grand Canyon Village, toward the east entrance to the park. The four-story structure, completed in 1932, was designed by American architect Mary Colter, an employee of the Fred Harvey Company who also created and designed many other buildings in the Grand Canyon vicinity including Hermit's Rest and the Lookout Studio. The interior contains murals by Fred Kabotie.
Bryce Canyon Lodge is a lodging facility in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, United States, built between 1924 and 1925 using local materials. Designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the lodge is an excellent example of National Park Service rustic design, and the only remaining completely original structure that Underwood designed for Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Hopi House is located on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, within Grand Canyon National Park in the U.S. state of Arizona. Built in 1904 as concessioner facilities at the South Rim were being developed, it is the first of eight projects at the Grand Canyon that were designed by architect Mary Colter, along with Bright Angel Lodge, Hermit's Rest, Lookout Studio, Phantom Ranch, Desert View Watchtower, Colter Hall and Victor Hall,. Hopi House was built by the Fred Harvey Company as a market for Native American crafts, made by artisans on the site. The Hopi, as the historic inhabitants of the area, were chosen as the featured artisans, and the building was designed to closely resemble a traditional Hopi pueblo. Hopi House opened on January 1, 1905, two weeks before the El Tovar Hotel, located just to the west, was opened.
Grand Canyon Depot, also known as Grand Canyon Railroad Station, was constructed in 1909–10 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, in what is now Grand Canyon National Park. It is one of three remaining railroad depots in the United States built with logs as the primary structural material. The station is within 330 feet (100 m) of the rim of the canyon, opposite the El Tovar Hotel, also built by the railroad. The depot is designated a National Historic Landmark, is listed the National Register of Historic Places, and is included in the Grand Canyon Village National Historic Landmark District.
The Grand Canyon Lodge is a hotel and cabins complex at Bright Angel Point on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who designed a number of other hotels in national parks for the Utah Parks Company and other concessioners. Built in 1927–28, the Grand Canyon Lodge resort complex consists of the Main Lodge building, 23 deluxe cabins, and 91 standard cabins, some of which were moved to the north rim campground in 1940. All guests are housed in cabins detached from the main lodge, which serves as a dining, concessions and service facility. Constructed of native Kaibab limestone and timber, the complex was designed to harmonize with its rocky and forested setting. The Grand Canyon Lodge complex is notable for its setting and rustic design, as well as its status as the only complete surviving lodge and cabin complex in the national parks.
Grand Canyon Power House is a former electric power plant that served National Park Service and concessioner facilities at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand Canyon National Park. It is significant for its architecture, which masks the building's industrial function behind a veneer of rustic design. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark on the basis of its design quality and the level of preservation of its equipment.
Grand Canyon Village Historic District comprises the historic center of Grand Canyon Village, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. The district includes numerous landmark park structures, many of which are National Historic Landmarks themselves, or are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town design as a whole is also significant for its attention to integration with the Grand Canyon landscape, its incorporation of National Park Service Rustic design elements, and for the idiosyncratic design of park concessioner structures such as the El Tovar Hotel.
The Buckey O'Neill Cabin was built in 1890 by William "Buckey" O'Neill in what would become Grand Canyon National Park. O'Neill was, among many other things, a member of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, who had previously been an author, sheriff, and a judge in his native Arizona. He was killed in action in Cuba in 1898, but was instrumental in establishing what would eventually become the Grand Canyon Railroad and Grand Canyon National Park.
The Grand Canyon Inn and Campground, also known as the North Rim Inn, were built by the William W. Wylie and the Utah Parks Company as inexpensive tourist accommodations on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, in Grand Canyon National Park. Intended to complement the more expensive Grand Canyon Lodge, the cabins and Inn were located near Bright Angel Point, but father back than their more expensive counterparts, near the Grand Canyon North Rim Headquarters. The design of the cabins and the redesign of the Inn building were undertaken by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood.
Francis W. Wilson was an American architect. His practice in Santa Barbara, California included work for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and its associated Fred Harvey Company hotels, as well as many residences.
The Hull Cabin was built in the late 1880s near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon by settler William Hull. The Hull family arrived in the area in 1880 and established a ranch in the area, raising sheep and building the Hull Tank, a large earth-banked reservoir for their stock. The Hulls branched out into prospecting and were among the first to take in tourists heading to the Grand Canyon.
