TIMBERLINE LODGE

Timberline Lodge

After regretfully bidding a too-soon-goodbye to Oregon Caves Chateau, we wound our way back down to the Redwood Highway. Late evening found us at Gold Beach Resort where our 28^th annual Zane Grey’s West Society convention was to be held. Two days later, my 28^th keynote address had to do with Zane Grey’s greatest obsession in life: to become the world’s greatest fisherman. After five wonderful nights of listening to the waves thunder in, we re-packed the Lincoln. It was easier now that we’d shipped three boxes of our stuff back to Colorado—yet perversely the trunk remained full.

We drove up 101 to Reedsport, where we bade our adieus to the Pacific—the Oregon Coast has to be one of the world’s most beautiful stretches of sea and sand—and took Highway 36 East, feeling we had good company as Zane Grey’s river, the Umpqua, followed us. Then we were back on I-5. I recited my favorite freeway quotation: Charles Kuralt’s, “Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel coast to coast without seeing anything.”

Finally, we reached our road, Hwy 26, and angled east into Mt. Hood National Wilderness. Then it was six steep miles up to Timberline Lodge. Since it was late June it was a bit of a shock to see so many skiers, for in Colorado our ski-lifts had closed for the season some time before. After checking in, we carried our luggage up to our to-be-expected small room. A TV set peered out at us with a sheepish look, as much as to say, “I know I don’t belong here, but what could I do?” More in keeping with the times, in the room were an antique telephone and fan, and an old wind-up clock. And single beds.

Mt. Hood

While the rest explored inside the hotel, I shutterbugged my way across the snowfield above the hotel. From there, it seemed like you could see forever. I didn’t know it then, but it was, without doubt, the grandest panoramic view—I could see snow-capped Mount Jefferson; farther away were Mt. Washington and the Three Sisters—we’d see during our entire trip. Snowcats loaded with tired skiers passed me en route to the lodge.

Dinner in the Cascade Dining Room was all I hoped it would be. We were lucky enough to get a window table. Afterwards, we played Phase Ten, ruined by Connie’s whupping us! Then everyone else retired, but I needed to write cards to our children and grandchildren and catch up in my journal. But there was no fire in the fireplace. When I asked why, one of the clerks at the front desk answered, “Sir, we can make one for you—where are you sitting?” Not long afterwards, I had my fire, my evening complete.

TIMBERLINE’S STORY

The lodge was born in the depths of the Great Depression. I chronicle the story of that time-period in my book, What’s So Good About Tough Times? (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook/Random House, 2001). It began on October 24, 1929—known forever after as Black Thursday—and continued its downward plunge through October 29—Black Tuesday. The free-fall continued: thirty billion lost during two short weeks. Panic gripped the nation.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year passed—things only got worse. By the time 1931 drew to a close, of the 122 million Americans, five million were unemployed; jobless rates reaching 50% in some areas. More than two million people wandered across the country as vagrants. Four hundred banks had failed and there was then no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Everywhere one looked, once proud, self-sufficient men and women had been reduced to begging for enough food so their families could survive another day. Since there were no credit cards, one either had money or one did not. Not without reason were six words seared into American consciousness for all time: Brother, can you spare a dime?

Things only got worse. By January 1932, more than two thousand banks had failed and thirteen million people were out of work. That November, desperate Americans tossed Hoover out of the White House and elected Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now 25% of the nation was without jobs, five thousand banks had collapsed, and in that maelstrom nine million family savings and checking accounts disappeared forever. And it continued on and on, the economy not recovering until World War II in the 1940s. Roosevelt’s response was the New Deal, the Work Progress Administration (WPA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); in these programs, FDR did his best to put the nation back to work. (Wheeler, 1-3).

In the midst of this Depression, Emerson J. Griffith, WA Director for Oregon, searching for ways to put Oregonians to work, came up with the idea of building a lodge on Mount Hood, at 11,235 feet, Oregon’s highest mountain, a mecca for mountaineers, skiers, and travelers. On Dec. 17, 1935, according to Christine Barnes, the WPA approved the project. The U.S. Forest Service provided the land, and Congressional and private funding was promised. Then began the search for an architect of note. Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who’d already left his mark on Yosemite, Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon national parks, was selected. But the U.S. Forest Service’s architects determined to have their say as well. In the end, both sides agreed to make Timberline a joint venture.

The result was a central wigwam roof, with two wings; at the center would be a massive octagonal fireplace—later changed to hexagonal. Instead of Underwood’s preferred great log exterior, park architects chose a board-and-batten, clapboard, and stone exterior, typical of some of Portland’s grandest mansions. The lodge was designed to grow right out of the mountain, the 92-foot high central conical head-house fireplace looming above the lodge roofline in the same manner the mountain itself juts up from its base. Wisely, they positioned the hotel at 6,000 feet, at the foot of the Palmer Snowfield, to capitalize on its potential to thereby attract skiers. Hundreds of unemployed were now put to work.

Underwood’s two-entry concept had to do with separating two potential clientele: skiers used the ground entry, and recreational visitors used the upper. The great hexagonal chimney sports six fireplaces, three in the lower lounge and three in the upper one. Griffith and park architects concluded that blacksmithing, wood-carving, and weaving would complement the architecture; a stroke of genius had to do with enlisting Portland interior decorator Margery Hoffman Smith to bring a “woman’s touch” to the project; she it was who brought stylistic harmony to the interior. What makes the lodge extra special is all the whimsical wood carvings of animals of the Northwest, some even in the balustrades.

One of the hand carved owl balustrade on the stairway.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to harness all these creative people who were longing to make a difference and desperately needed the work. What no one had anticipated was the resultant explosion of creativity on the part of the artisans; the result was much the same as what made Europe’s soaring Gothic cathedrals such masterpieces: each workman, even if carving or sculpting a portion of the structure far above the ground level—if it were but a gargoyle—gave it his all as if it were to last forever. Griffith, in a telegram, put it this way: “These men indeed feel they are putting their skill into a cathedral. Coming up from the depths of despair they work with a spiritual exaltation that sometimes amazes me.” (Barnes, 69).

President Roosevelt was there, on September 28. 1937, to dedicate Timberline Lodge to the nation; the ceremony was carried live on radio. It cost far more than estimated: $1,000,000 instead of $250,000. But today, a million visitors a year flood in. Because of this, the lodge is continually re-created with craftsmen who replace the furniture, drapery, bedspreads, ironwork, leatherwork, etc., in order to preserve the original look, quality, and condition. One of these contemporary ironworkers, Darryl Nelson noted that “The best compliment they can give us is when we see someone looking at iron we just put in and they’re saying, ‘Boy, they don’t make stuff like this any more.’” (Barnes, 71).

Like most of these wondrous old lodges, Timberline went through its tough times: it was closed during World War II; after the war, mismanagement forced it to close its doors for nonpayment of utility bills. It was saved only because of the single-minded passion of Richard Kohnstamm; his son, Jeff, keeps the dream alive today. Today, when its now world-famous Palmer Snowfield that retains its snow year-round makes Timberline home to one of the most energetic ski and snowboard scenes on the planet. Here organized training camps from all over the world work on their skills all through the summer months in the longest ski season in North America. (This section, Barnes, 61-71).

* * * * *

Miraculously, this one-of-a-kind treasure of a lodge is still with us. It is different from most other old lodges in that it is urban (only minutes away from Portland); like it or not, it is loved to death by millions. If people like Bob and Lucy Earp, Connie and me feel outnumbered by the skiers, if we miss the great unified lobbies of sister lodges, and the serenity that keeps them alive into a new century, we ought not to begrudge sharing Timberline with others who cherish it for different reasons than we do.

SOURCES

Barnes, Christine, Great Lodges of the National Parks I (Bend, Oregon: W. W. West, Inc., 2002). [Be sure and secure a copy of this book, for the “rest of the story”!]

AAA book on Oregon [an invaluable source].

“The Art of Timberline,” (Portland, OR: Friends of Timberline, n.d.

“Timberline” (Timberline Lodge brochure).

“Timberline Lodge—an Expression of Hope and Purpose” (U.S. Forest Service brochure)

SPECIAL NOTE

Next Wednesday, we move on to Paradise Inn on the slopes of Mount Rainier.

OREGON CAVES CHATEAU

We got up early, loaded the car, bade goodbye to the Zane Grey Society members who were staying at Crater Lake Lodge en route to Gold Beach; then, reluctant to leave both the lodge and the lake, we headed down the serpentine route to our first stopping point, the legendary Beckie’s Restaurant in Union Springs.  Since all four of us had eaten here before, breakfast here trumped even the one in Crater Lake Lodge.  The little rustic restaurant, legendary for its pies, is known even in Europe.  Outside we could hear the creek tumbling down to the Rogue River.

After one of the best breakfasts of the trip, we followed Zane Grey’s beloved fishing river all the way down to Grants Pass; there we connected with hwy 199 (the Redwood Highway) and angled down to Cave Junction; here, we veered left and began the long climb to Oregon Caves National Monument.  We’d first heard about the Chateau while watching Barnes’ PBS Series on National Park Lodges; then, after reading her commentary in her Great Lodges of the National Parks, we were intrigued enough to take a “look-see.”

There was so little traffic on Highway 46 that we wondered if we’d made a mistake.  We really began to wonder when we reached the last segment of corkscrew road that wound up, up, and up into the heart of Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.  Finally, we reached what appeared to be the end of the road—an almost deserted parking lot.  We decided to walk in, not knowing whether it would be worth the effort.

Lodge

Then we saw it—like something out of a dream: Oregon Caves Chateau.  It was so quiet—all we could hear was the soft wind in the old growth forest (defined as being at least 250 years old) and the cascading waters of Cave Creek flowing out of the Oregon Caves, tumbling over the great retaining wall into the Chateau’s pond; then gurgling its way through the dining room, and on down the ravine below.  Above, a deep blue sky so rare in today’s industrialized world.  The shaded lower parking lot was full.

It seemed like a national park lodge—yet, it didn’t.  Perhaps it was the old growth forest that made it such a magical place—almost primeval.  We entered the hotel from the parking lot into the chateau’s fourth floor.  Though there were people inside, voices were hushed.  It was almost as though we were in a great Gothic cathedral—perhaps we were; reminding me of lines from William Cullen Bryant’s “Forest Hymn”:

“The graves were God’s first temples. . . .
  As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
  Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold
  Communion with his Maker.  These dim vaults,
  These winding aisles, of human pomp or pride
  Report not. . . .  Thou fillest the solitude. 
  Thou art in the soft winds
  That run along the summit of these trees. . . .”

THE STORY OF THE CAVES AND CHATEAU

In 1874, Elijah Davidson discovered a cave entrance while hunting high up in the Siskiyou Mountains.  As word spread of the wonderland hidden within, adventurers came from far and wide, each exploring with candles or burning branches to light the way.  Vandals came too, ripping out stalagmites and stalagtites just to prove to their friends that they’d been here.

For here in what the Poet of the Sierras, Joaquin Miller, would later label “the Marble Halls of Oregon,” deep in the heart of Mount Elijah, were caverns such as “Paradise Lost,” with calcite flowstone and drapery formations in a room 60 feet high.  The largest room—about 250 feet in length—was created by underground streams.

Through the years its fame would grow.  In 1906, the Siskiyou National Forest was established; and in 1909, with a stroke of his pen, President William Howard Taft established the Oregon Caves National Monument (the nation’s 20^th).  But the first road didn’t reach it until 1922.

Unlike most national park lodges, the plans for this one were drawn by a local contractor rather than a well-known architect: Gust Lium of Grants Pass.  Lium, far ahead of his time, envisioned a chateau that would be an integral part of the landscape, so natural it would seem to have sprouted from the gorge into which Lium wedged it.  It would be a refuge from the outside world, anticipating Frank Lloyd Wright’s later Fallingwater House at Bear Run, Pennsylvania.

Construction began in September of 1931.  Lium and his small crew constructed a stout structure anchored to a reinforced concrete foundation.  Building materials were local: redwood, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, madrone, and white oak, as was the limestone and marble.  The exterior is slathered with Port Orford cedar bark.  The first floor housed the furnace, sprinkler system, machine shop; the second, storage and employees’ dining room; the much larger third floor housed dining room, ballroom, coffee shop, and kitchen; the fourth floor lobby, unlike most other park lodges, is only one story high—instead of looking up, guests look out into the old growth forest (indeed, they feel part of it).  The roofline is as jagged as the mountains themselves.  Everything was hand-crafted—even the furniture, the largest surviving set of Monterey furniture (a line that once graced the mansions of celebrities such as Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry.

The hotel opened in May of 1934.  Thirty years later, in December of 1964, after a record snowfall, suddenly a freak rainstorm blew in.  According to Barnes, then-manager Harry Christiansen, looking out the window of his second-floor apartment, suddenly noticed a trickle of water coming through.  Sensing disaster, he ran, followed by a deluge, a 48-inch-in-diameter log chasing him.  When the storm subsided, the two lower floors had been filled with tons of rocks, gravel, silt, and logs.  The entire foundation had slipped.  It looked like the end.  Next week, he told his board of directors in Grants Pass, “I’m sorry, gentlemen, ladies—it’s too bad, but the chateau is gone. . . .  I wouldn’t give you a nickel for the place.”

But the directors disagreed: They insisted he bring the chateau back to life.  Gust Lium, then in his 80s, was called back to direct the reconstruction; he and his crew “gently moved the mammoth structure back into place.”

Six months later, on May 26, 1965, the Chateau reopened.  Lium had accomplished a second miracle.  Only months later, he died.

* * * * *

We wandered through the Chateau almost in a daze, castigating ourselves for our failure to book rooms.  How could we leave such a pardise without fully savoring all it had to offer?  After extensive rambling, I sat down on a sofa next to the massive double fireplace.  Off to the side a gleaming grand piano.  The only light the flickering flames, the chandeliers with their fragile parchment shades, and the subdued light muted by the giant trees.  A couple came in, hand-in-hand and very much in love—What a place for a honeymoon!  I sank into a reverie.

Then it was time to go.  But none of us in the car found words easy to come by—each of us vowed to return.  And stay.  Lucy sighed, “Coming back must be a blessing for another time.”

For the Chateau is the very antithesis of crowd–magnets like Old Faithful and El Tovar.  And herein lies its uniqueness.  Barnes sums it up in these words: “Oregon Caves development is a lesson in ‘less is more.’  This small canyon, cut into the Siskiyou Mountains by Cave Creek, accessed by a twenty-mile-long, winding, two-lane road, is unlike the panoramic settings of other great lodges.  It is an introspective experience to stay in Oregon Caves Chateau.  Here, a cocoon-like setting pulls visitors into nature’s fold, much like descending into the caverns.”

(This section: Barnes, 74-81).

Before leaving, Connie got serious about national parks: she purchased a National Park Passport in the Oregon Caves entrance building designed by Lium to match the chateau. The Passport can be stamped with place and date just as is true with regular passports.  Thanks to it, we’ll now have a record of each park visit from this point on.

SOURCES:

Barnes, Christine, Great Lodges of the National Parks (Bend, Oregon: W. W. West, Inc., 2002). [By all means, get her book!]

“Cave Echoes,” Vol. 22—The Centennial Edition (Washington, D.C., The National Park Service, 2009.

Scott, David L. and Kay W., The Complete Guide to National Park Lodges (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1998, 2009).

White, Mel, Complete National Parks of the United States (Wahington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009).

* * * * *

Next week, we’ll move on to Mount Hood’s Timberline Lodge.

CRATER LAKE LODGE, CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK

Finding a rental car with enough trunk room for four people—for a month—was no easy task. Finally, Budget came through with a Lincoln Town Car (the only full-size auto with enough trunk room).

In mid-June, Connie and I picked up Bob and Lucy Earp at the Portland Airport Hampton Inn. We collectively gulped as we looked at all their luggage (from Tennessee) and ours (from Colorado). How in the world would we ever get all that in? We did—but it wasn’t easy.

Finally, with Bob in front with me and Lucy in back with Connie, we looked at each other: would our friendship stand a month together in the same car? We bowed our heads and prayed that God would grant us His protection and blessing. Out of our battery of resource books, we read out loud the lead quotation in Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns’ National Park opus maximus:

One learns that the world, though made, is yet being made.
That this is still the morning of creation. That mountains, long conceived, are now being born, brought to light by the glaciers, channels traced for rivers, basins hollowed for lakes.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. . . . The whole wilderness in unity and interrelation is alive and familiar… the very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, brotherly. . .

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in
and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest . . . in our
magnificent National Parks—Nature’s sublime onderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.

—John Muir

With that inspirational preamble, we drove off. I-5 South was predictably boring; but things got more interesting after we veered off onto Highway 58 at Eugene. Keeping us company for some time was one of Zane Grey’s most beloved fishing rivers, the North Umpqua. It was late afternoon before we hit the snowline. By the time we nosed the car into the Crater Lake Lodge parking lot, it was clear we wouldn’t be able to drive around the crater—too much snow!

By now, the lodge was an old friend: Connie and I first came here in 1962; our son Greg did too, but didn’t see much, since he was still in the hopper. The last time we visited it there was so much snow we had to tunnel our way through. But this year had been a light winter.

It is America’s deepest lake (almost 2,000 feet deep), and one of the ten deepest in the world; its beginning rocked the West: 7,700 years ago, towering Mount Mazama erupted with 100 times the magnitude of Mt. St. Helens in 1980, blowing ash and pumice over what is today eight western states and three Canadian provinces. The resulting caldron (six miles across), over millennia, gradually began to fill with water from rain and snowmelt—no streams feed into it or drain it. Snow is heavy, averaging 44 feet a year, thus its summers are short. It has been documented as the clearest water in the world, with perhaps as deep a blue as exists on the planet.

THE LODGE OREGONIANS WOULDN’T LET DIE

Most of our national parks were blessed by single-minded visionaries obsessed with saving them for posterity; this proved true for Crater lake as well: in 1870, a fifteen-year-old Kansas boy, William Gladstone Steel, idly thumbing through newspaper sheets that had been used to wrap his lunch, chanced to see an article about a mysterious “sunken lake” in Oregon. Not only did he vow to see it some day, he kept his vow. Fifteen years later, in 1885, the now thirty-year-old man stood on the lake’s rim—awestruck. Right then and there, he made another vow; to spend the rest of his life on its behalf. No small thanks to him, in 1902, it became the nation’s sixth national park. Steel became park superintendent.

But Steel yearned for more than just national park status, he wanted several lodges of the stature of El Tovar, Ahwahnee, and Old Faithful to grace it. But that task proved to be a veritable labor of Sisyphus for a number of reasons, chiefly his failure to find wealthy backers and the short summer seasons. Finally, concluding that he’d just have to make do with what he had (the support of Portland entrepreneur Alfred L. Parkhurst, architect R. H. Hockenberry, and builder Frank Keyes), plans to construct a lodge of some 77 rooms were set in motion.

Sadly, however, so underfunded was the project that they were forced to cut corners—but it was either that, or nothing. One of those cost-cutting decisions resulted in their foregoing strong roof trusses. Predictably, the roof collapsed during the blizzards of 1913-14. But the lodge bravely opened its doors anyway, in its unfinished state, in 1915.

And the people came. The late teens and Roaring Twenties spawned an explosion of automobile travel, and Crater Lake Lodge became a popular destination—at least when snow melted early enough. But always it was a battle to keep it open. Ownership changed hands again and again. In 1959, plans were made for its razing—but somehow it survived until 1984 when the National Park Service recommended that it be demolished, and a new one constructed away from the rim. And they had reasons: “The truth was that the old lodge was a dump. The roof sagged, the bathrooms were spartan, light fixtures dangled from the ceiling, and the wind whipped through the walls”. . . . As time passed, “it would kind of move and creak and groan with the snow in the winter . . . so heavy that the roof was kind of flattening out the building and the walls were bowing.” (Barnes, 90).

But then the people of Oregon stepped in to save the beloved old derelict. In 1987, the Oregon legislature passed a resolution to save it. A state-wide campaign known as “Saving Crater Lake Lodge” was organized. But none of it arrested the deterioration. Finally, in 1989, with the central roof threatening to collapse, the lodge was ordered to close.

Then began a six-year effort to save it. It soon became evident that if it were to survive, it must be dismantled and rebuilt from the foundation up. In the ensuing process it was discovered that it didn’t even have a foundation; nor was there any solid infrastructure. $15,000,000 was spent in painstaking efforts to not only restore the lodge, but, more importantly, restore it to what it never had been: a lodge anchored by a solid foundation and a steel-beamed infrastructure. The great hall was rebuilt and the kitchen gutted, then replaced. Windows overlooking the lake were positioned so they would showcase the reason why people came here, and everything radiated out from the great hall and the fireplaces.

On May 20, 1995, Crater lake Lodge—against all odds—reopened. Barnes concluded her moving story with these words: “The essence of Crater lake Lodge lies in its memories. While the historic structure no longer bears the ragged signs of aging, the heart of the lodge remains the same. It is still a wonder of man perched on the edge of a wonder of nature.” (Barnes, 93).

* * * * *

We checked in. Our fourth floor dormer room was small, as are almost all old hotel rooms. Those who thronged early lodges spent little time in their rooms, but much time exploring the parks; in the evenings, they reveled in each other’s company in the great halls, listened to music, played board games, and dreamed by the great fireplaces.

At Crater Lake Lodge, time stood still. Here we met not only Oregonians but people from all over the nation and from around the world. Each had come to savor a long-loved artifact of a bygone world that had miraculously survived until the Year of our Lord 2010. Like us, they’d come here to escape a cacophonous modern world so devoid of serenity and peace.

As we ate our dinner by the window, we gazed out, entranced, at the breathtaking late afternoon diorama of changing colors. No one was in a hurry to leave the table. Afterwards, we walked outside again, then came back and played a board game by one of the fireplaces. Later, we crawled into our bed (small compared to our usual standards) and snuggled—we had to! During the night, the 95-year-old building talked to me. And I couldn’t help but wonder who else had slept in this same little room. What were their thoughts? One of my last thoughts had to do with gratitude: I’m so grateful this place is still here!

Next week, it’s on to Oregon Caves Chateau.

SOURCES:

Barnes, Christine, Great Lodges of the National parks, Vol. 2 (Portland, Oregon: Graphic Arts Books, 2008). These two books are must-reads for all who treasure our parks.
Duncan, Dayton and Ken Burns, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, 2009).
White, Mel, Complete National Parks of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009).

NATIONAL PARK LODGES SERIES #1

A KEN BURNS PILGRIMAGE
VISITING THE NORTHWEST NATIONAL PARK LODGES 

Bob & Lucy Earp, Joe & Connie Wheeler

It all began with our dear friends, Bob and Lucy Earp of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  They called us and asked us about our reactions to the recently-aired Ken Burns PBS series of programs on our national parks.  We told them, “They were great!  Made us want to visit all of them.” 

As it turned out, they’d responded the same way.  “Well, how would you like to do just that?  We could start by visiting the Northwest lodges next year, right after the Zane Grey’s West Society convention in Gold Beach, Oregon.” 

It took a year to make all our bookings and clear our schedules so that we could dedicate a month of our lives to such a venture.  Our primary concern—other than the cost, of course—had to do with whether or not our friendship could survive such close quarters 24/7 for that long.  In the end, given that it had already survived several cruises together, we decided to risk it. 

Interestingly enough, at our recent 28^th Zane Grey’s West Society convention, I told attendees about our pilgrimage and asked them, “how many of you watched the Ken Burns National Park series?”  Almost every hand went up!  Clearly, there is renewed interest in our national parks all across the country.  Since so many of our Society members appeared to be green with envy, we concluded that many of you who tune in to “Wednesdays with Dr. Joe” each week might be equally interested in vicariously enjoying the journey with us; then later, possibly visit these sights yourselves.  Hence the birth of this series of blogs. 

PREPARATION FOR THE JOURNEY  

Since all four of us were interested in learning as much as we could about the places we visited, we began putting together a library of reference material which we could share on the trip.  This way, we’d know what to look for when we arrived at each location. 

Following are items we considered essential: 

• AAA maps of each state we’d visit.
• AAA books dealing with each state.
• Most important of all: Christine Barnes’ splendid two-volume books for the PBS Series, Great Lodges of the West, aired in conjunction with Ken Burns PBS park series) (Bend, Oregon: W. W. West, Inc., 2002, 2008).  These books are the result of a prodigious amount of research and are lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs.  You’ll want to pick up a set for yourselves whether or not you visit these lodges yourself; however, I’ll be surprised if they don’t launch your own personal journeys of discovery.  They will be our primary sources for this blog series.
• Second in significance to Barnes, is David L. and Kay W. Scott’s The Complete Guide to National Park Lodges (Guilford, CT: The Globe Pequot Press, 1998, 2009).  This book’s main value has to do with smaller lodges not included in Barnes’ books.
• The bible for studying into our national parks has to be Dayton Duncan’ and Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf/Random House, 2009).  It is already in its second printing.  Much of the PBS text is incorporated into the book.

 

• Also new is Mel White’s Complete National Parks of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2009).
  There are a number of scenic drives books out, but the one we took along was The Most Scenic Drives in America (Pleasantville, NY: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1997).  Together with the AAA books, it makes road trips a lot more informative as it highlights the key sites to take in while in each area.
• Since three of the lodges we visited (Old Faithful Inn, Lake Quinault Lodge, and Lake Hotel at Yellowstone) were designed by the now legendary park architect (indeed, one of the fathers of “parkitecture”), Robert C. Reamer, we purchased Ruth Quinn’s insightful Weaver of Dreams: The Life and Architecture of Robert C. Reamer (Bozeman, Montana: Artcraft Publishers, 2004).

Besides these, there are many other helpful books, especially the beautiful national park books put out by various publishers (such as K.C. Publications, Sierra Press, etc.). 

 

 

SPECIAL NOTE 

Under national parks, we also include national forests, national monuments, national recreation areas, etc. 

Aug.   4 A Ken Burns Pilgrimage Visiting the Northwest National Park Lodges 

Aug. 11 Crater Lake Lodge (Crater Lake National Park) 

Aug. 18 Oregon Caves Chateau (Oregon Caves National Monument) 

Aug.  25 Timberline Lodge (Mount Hood National Wilderness) 

Sept.   1 Paradise Inn (Mount Rainier National Park) 

Sept.    8 Stehekin Landing Resort (North Cascades National Park) 

Sept.  15 Enzian Inn (not a historic hotel, situated in Washington State’s faux Bavarian village, Leavenworth) 

Sept.  22 Lake Quinault Lodge (Olympic National Park) 

Sept.  29 Crescent Lake Lodge (Olympic National Park) 

Oct.     6 The Cascade Loop 

Oct.   13 Grand Coulee Dam and Lake Roosevelt 

Oct.   20 Old Faithful Inn (Yellowstone National Park) 

Oct.   27 Lake Yellowstone Hotel (Yellowstone National Park) 

Nov.     3  Jackson Lake Hotel (Grand Teton National Park) 

Nov.   10 Glacier Park Lodge (Glacier National Park) 

Nov.  17 Many Glacier Hotel (Glacier National Park) 

Nov.  24 Lake McDonald Lodge (Glacier National Park) 

Dec.    1 Prince of Wales Hotel (Glacier/Waterton Lakes National Park) 

Dec.    8 Young People—and the Old—Who Work in National Park Lodges and the Recession 

Dec.  15 Last Thoughts – Memories – Our Top 10 Lists 

*   See you next week; would be honored to have you journey along with us.