The Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad, owned and operated restaurants, lodging, and bus tours in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park, and Cedar Breaks National Monument from the 1920s until 1972. Operating as a concessionaire of the National Park Service, the company operated from a base in Cedar City, Utah. The company's bus tours connected there with Union Pacific trains as well as tour buses from Los Angeles, San Francisco and other west coast cities, and offered a loop tour of the region's parks and monuments, escorted by a Utah Parks Company driver/guide.
Shortly after the National Park Service was created through the 1916 Organic Act, the brothers Gronway and Chauncey Perry applied for a transportation concession to take tourists from Cedar City to Mukuntuweap National Monument (later Zion National Park), incorporating as the National Park Transportation and Camping Company with William Wylie in 1917. The Parry brothers had previously operated a shuttle service from the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad to St. George, Utah which started in 1915; the new transportation concession operated with a fleet of used vehicles: one seven-passenger Hudson, a Ford Model T, and three Cadillacs. [1] : 23–24 The shoestring operation was run entirely by the two brothers, who were often so busy running the company they enlisted their younger brother, Whit, to drive tourists when he was just 13 years old. [1] : 24 When the United States entered World War I, the two older brothers joined the Army and turned over their proxies in the company to Wylie; upon their return in 1920, they discovered that Wylie had forced them out. After a court battle, Chauncey Perry and Wylie reconciled and restarted the company in 1921, now renamed to the Utah—Grand Canyon Transportation Company since they now provided trips to the Grand Canyon as well. After Wylie left the company, Chauncey invited Gronway to rejoin and Chauncey served as a guide during President Warren Harding's trip to Zion in 1923. [1] : 24–25
Union Pacific acquired the Los Angeles & Salt Lake in 1921 and extended a branch of the line from Lund to Cedar City in 1923, incorporating its Utah Parks Company subsidiary that year; the railroad-backed company bought out the Parry brothers in 1926 and installed them as company superintendents. [1] : 27 The typical route to Zion from the southwest was a dead-end at the time; tourists going in were forced to take the same way out until the Zion – Mount Carmel Highway and Tunnel was completed in 1930. The tunnel was not initiated until it was apparent that Bryce Canyon would be added to the National Park System. After it was completed, the Utah Parks Company set up the "Grand Loop Tour" for tourists taking buses through Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Cedar Breaks; the tunnel cut travel time to Bryce Canyon by half and reduced the distance from 149 to 88 miles (240 to 142 km). [2] After 1936, bus tours were offered on the National Parks-standard White Model 706. [3]
As the twentieth century progressed, railroad passenger traffic declined and the Union Pacific's interest in supporting National Park tourism correspondingly lessened. The railroad ended passenger train service to Cedar City in 1960, and in 1972 the Union Pacific donated its concession-related infrastructure to the National Park Service. The facilities at Cedar Breaks were razed, as were some of the developments at Bryce and Zion, but the remaining lodge facilities remain in use today.
In March 2007, Xanterra Parks and Resorts took over the concession at the former Utah Parks Company locations. In March 2014, the concession inside Bryce Canyon National Park was taken over by Forever Resorts.
The Utah Parks Company constructed rustic-style, stone-and-log lodges at each of the Park Service locations it served. Most of the major buildings were designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, a noted period architect. [4] : 5 (Underwood also designed the Ahwahnee Hotel (1925) in Yosemite National Park, and Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.) [4] : 12, 16 Underwood's surviving Utah Parks Company buildings are considered exceptional examples of the Rustic style of architecture, and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The company also owned the landmark El Escalante Hotel in Cedar City where visitors intending to take the park loop on a Utah Parks Company bus were required to stay their first night in Cedar City, which became known as the "Gateway to the Parks". [5] The venerable El Escalante was especially well known to escorts in the 1960s, many from Greyhound Bus Lines, arriving via bus for a tour of the Parks. With up to 39 travelers per tour, the groups took over the El Escalante, which offered only 23 rooms, and some were forced to share bathrooms. It was a common joke among escorts that if you could survive that first night at the El Escalante with a full tour, you could survive most anything.
Bryce Canyon National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rock. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet.
Cedar City is the largest city in Iron County, Utah, United States. Located 250 miles (400 km) south of Salt Lake City, it is 170 miles (270 km) north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15. Southern Utah University is located in Cedar City. It is the home of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Summer Games, the Simon Fest Theatre Co., and other events. As of the 2020 census the city had a population of 35,235, up from 28,857 in the 2010 census.
The Grand Staircase is an immense sequence of sedimentary rock layers that stretch south from Bryce Canyon National Park and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, through Zion National Park, and into Grand Canyon National Park.
State Route 12 or Scenic Byway 12 (SR-12), also known as "Highway 12 — A Journey Through Time Scenic Byway", is a 123-mile-long (198 km) state highway designated an All-American Road located in Garfield County and Wayne County, Utah, United States.
Gilbert Stanley Underwood was an American architect best known for his National Park lodges.
Xanterra Travel Collection® is a privately owned American park and resort management company based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, controlled by entertainment magnate Philip Anschutz. Denver-based billionaire Anschutz, who has an extensive history of developing and operating mineral, railroad, newsmedia and entertainment enterprises, is one of the largest private promoters of live events in the world, most notably soccer.
Zion Lodge is located in Zion National Park, Utah, United States. The lodge was designed in 1924 as a compromise solution between its developer, the Utah Parks Company, which wanted a large hotel, and National Park Service director Stephen Mather, who desired smaller-scale development. The Utah Parks Company had been formed in 1923 as a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, and was, like many similar programs, intended to stimulate passenger rail traffic to the national parks of southwest Utah.
Red Jammers are the vintage White Motor Company/Bender Body Company Model 706 buses used at Glacier National Park in the United States to transport park visitors since 1936. While the buses are called reds for their distinctive livery, painted to match the color of ripe mountain ash berries, the bus drivers are called jammers because of the sound the gears made when the driver shifts on the steep roads of the park. The "jamming" sound came from the unsynchronized transmissions, where double-clutching was required to shift gears prior to a 1989 retrofit that added automatic transmissions.
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.
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.
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.
Lund Highway is a road connecting Cedar City to the ghost town of Lund in Iron County, Utah. Although it is classified as a minor collector, it was once an important connection between the Union Pacific Railroad at Lund and the national parks of southern Utah and northern Arizona.
Zion National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals, and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. The lowest point in the park is 3,666 ft (1,117 m) at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft (2,660 m) at Horse Ranch Mountain. A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to 2,640 ft (800 m) deep. The canyon walls are reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone eroded by the North Fork of the Virgin River.
The Zion – Mount Carmel Highway is a 25-mile (40 km) long road in Washington and Kane counties in southern Utah, United States, that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
The historic building now operated as the restaurant Jakes Chaparral had a number of prior uses including Kanab Lodge, Parry Cafeteria, Utah Parks Building and Wok Inn restaurant in Kanab, Utah, USA. The original section of the lodge is a house built in 1885, which was expanded between 1928 and 1932 by the Utah Parks Company to serve as a rest stop for tourists about halfway between the north rim of the Grand Canyon and Zion or Bryce Canyon National Parks.
The Cedar City Historic District is a set of one hundred and seventy-two buildings in Cedar City, Utah. Of these, one hundred and four contribute to its historical integrity. Cedar City was originally an iron works near the Latter-day Saint city of Parowan. After Brigham Young shut down the iron facilities, two-thirds of Cedar City's residents left for other settlements. The remaining families prospered from sheep ranching. The Union Pacific Railroad connected to the town in the early 1900s and provided a tourism boom for the city. The district represents some of the oldest houses for Cedar City residents, most of which were farmers or ranchers. Later houses in the district represent early 20th century revivals.
Harry W. Child (1857–1931) was an entrepreneur who managed development and ranching companies in southern Montana. He was most notable as a founder and longtime president of the Yellowstone Park Company, which provided accommodation and transportation to visitors to Yellowstone National Park from 1892 to 1980. Child was, with park superintendent and National Park Service administrator Horace Albright, singularly responsible for the development of the park as a tourist destination and for the construction of much of the park's visitor infrastructure.
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.
The Hayduke Trail is an 812-mile (1,307 km) backpacking route across southern Utah and northern Arizona. It begins in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, before heading through the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, the Grand Canyon National Park and ending in Zion National Park.