Great Lodges Of The National Parks, Volume two, by Christine Barnes

This book, in a roundabout and somewhat indirect way, indicates one of the main problems that this nation has with its public broadcasting. It is fortunate that this book is full of generally gorgeous photographs of generally gorgeous lodges–though at least one of the lodges is somewhat plain and even ugly–otherwise this book would be notable mainly for its text, and that presents some problems to the reader. The problem with a book published under the aegis of the Public Broadcasting System is that it represents the political agenda of the PBS, which is not an agenda I have any reason to feel fond about. This book drones on endlessly about the supposedly beneficial results of stealing land from the states and people of the West to support the efforts of tourists and wealthy people from the East who wanted places to relax in bucolic natural vistas to turn into national parks and monuments and other federally owned property. Beyond that, the author’s sycophantic praise of wealthy leftist benefactors (the same sort of ilk who subsidize public television and radio as long as it promotes their progressive message) and idolatrous regard for FDR also are sore spots to a book that could have been far better than it was, at least as far as its text is concerned.

This book is between 150 and 200 pages long and it is divided into ten chapters (one for each of the lodges that it discusses) in three parts (for the different styles of architecture involved in the lodges. The book begins with acknowledgements, a foreword, and an author’s note. This is followed by three discussions of grand lodges, the Lake Hotel at Yellowstone National Park (1), the Stanely Hotel at the Rocky Mountains National Park (2), and the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley National Park (3). Despite their beauty, there were complexities and budget concerns and various expensive changes over time for all of these lodges, despite their grand nature. The second park of the book contains classic lake lodges, namely Lake Crescent Lodge and Lake Quinault Lodge in the area of the Olympic National Park and neighboring Olympic National Forest, respectively (4, 5), as well as Wallowa Lake Lodge in this gorgeous Wallowa/Whitman National Forest (6). The last four lodges, one of which, the ugly Jackson Lake Lodge, serve as new visions of modernist architecture. These include the aptly named and highly vulnerable Volcano House (7) in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park, Glacier Bay Lodge in Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, and finally Camp Denali in Denali National Park & Preserve, the last two in Alaska. All of these lodges are in the West, perhaps to make the travel budget less onerous for the OPB staff that worked on the book. The book ends with a selected bibliography and sources, photography credits (the photos are the real star of this book), an index, and travelers’ resources.

One of the fascinating aspects of this book is the way that it shows the political nature of all kinds of things that one would not think of as being particularly political. For example, there appears to be a strong belief in the National Park Service of creating lodges that blend in well with the environment around them, but what this means depends widely on the era one is working with, as the “parkitecture” that is my favorite, as well as the rustic lodges that are appropriate in more forested areas are contrasted with at least one lodge that is a modernist monstrosity that makes one want to look at the gorgeous scenery so that one does not have to look at the ugly building itself. One of the aspects that the author of this book cares about that I find more than a little bit odd is the way that the author seems obsessed about recording who has the concessions contract at any given time for the lodges. While I care a great deal about food and enjoy eating good food, never once in my life have I inquired as to who has the concessions contract for a hotel or lodge or any other place where I have stayed. I enjoy the food–if it can be enjoyed–and that is that, but this author makes a great deal of noting the identity and changes of who has the concessions contracts for the lodges and the changes in alcohol policy to reflect the biases of the time and the important people involved at the particular park. One thing that this book demonstrates is that the National Park Lodges are a lot more drama-filled, a lot more corrupt, and a lot more weird than one would have thought.