GRAND CANYON, Ariz. — When the Dragon Bravo Fire suddenly picked up in intensity amid strong winds over the weekend, it destroyed an iconic piece of Grand Canyon National Park.
Many park visitors have taken to social media in recent days to reflect on the trips, celebrations and other moments they have associated with the Grand Canyon Lodge. The stunning facility offered unbelievable views from the edge of the North Rim, wowing visitors from all over the world for nearly a century.
In burning the lodge, the wildfire also destroyed a piece of the park with strong Utah ties.
How the lodge came to be
The original Grand Canyon Lodge opened in 1928, nearly a decade after Congress established Grand Canyon National Park.
Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who had already designed lodges for Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon and Zion parks in Utah as part of the Utah Parks Company, was hired to design the facility. Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Railroad, operated as a concessionaire between national parks and monuments in the region.
Underwood created a main lodge at the center of a complex that included 100 standard cabins and 20 deluxe cabins, the National Park Service noted in a report about the property’s history for the National Register of Historic Places. Many of the first lodge employees were college students recommended by faculty to work at the park, explained Davy Crockett, vice president of the Grand Canyon Historical Society, in a video of the lodge’s history.
Although located in northern Arizona, hundreds of prominent Utahns, including Heber J. Grant, then-president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, attended the lodge’s grand opening. Newspaper reports from the era explained why it was an immediate draw.
“As one sits at the windows of Grand Canyon Lodge, there is spread before him an immense chasm, 12 miles wide and a mile deep,” the Salt Lake Tribune wrote on June 12, 1932, as it described the area’s “breathtaking immensity.”
The first lodge fire and a rebuild
Then, just four years after it opened, the lodge and two of the deluxe cabins burned down. A kitchen fire broke out in the early morning hours of Sept. 1, 1932, forcing about two dozen employees to evacuate.
News of the fire traveled quickly, appearing in newspapers by the end of the day. The employees — all women — were mostly from the Salt Lake area and other Utah cities, the Deseret News reported at the time. A few Utahns also happened to be staying at the lodge at the time of the fire and escaped injury, the Salt Lake Telegram noted.
It would take years for the lodge to be rebuilt.
The rebuild, featuring some of the original structure’s stones, commenced in 1936, with yet another Utah tie. Federal officials picked the Ryberg Brothers Construction Company in Salt Lake City to oversee the rebuild, mostly following Underwood’s original design. An observation tower and second-story log dormitory were not rebuilt, the park service noted.
Crockett notes that more steel beams and trusses were used instead of wood due to fire concerns. The lodge reopened in 1937 to more rave reviews, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. Historians were quick to point out how it served as a symbol of a lost era in park travel.
“Grand Canyon Lodge is the most intact rustic hotel development remaining in the national parks from the era when railroads fostered construction of ‘destination resorts,’” the park service wrote.
What happens next?
After this weekend’s announcement that the lodge had been consumed by the wildfire, many are questioning what happens next. The Dragon Bravo Fire — first reported on July 4 — is still burning, having jumped from about 120 acres in size Friday morning to 8,570 acres as of Tuesday afternoon.
Grand Canyon park officials had already closed the North Rim over threats tied to the White Sage Fire burning north of the park’s entrance. That fire has since jumped from 8,700 acres on Friday morning to 51,922 acres in size on Tuesday, amid the region’s hot, dry and windy conditions.
There has been no talk of reconstruction yet; all that’s clear now is that the North Rim will be closed for at least the remainder of this year. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs called for a federal investigation into how the National Park Service handled firefighting operations, as the Dragon Bravo Fire was allowed to burn for days before it started burning out of control.
The fire also destroyed more than 70 other structures, including “numerous” historic cabins, park officials say. Only time will tell how much of the beloved area will be rebuilt.