Viva Las Vegas - Part 2: Thematic Archaeology.

June 19, 2021 by Dave Gottwald

One of my personal guilty pleasures in doing site research is finding the really run down stuff. Destinations that have seen better days; neglected, even partially or totally abandoned. In mega-themed areas like Las Vegas, you can always find some place down on their luck. But I thought was that too easy. So I decided to go further afield.

Totally Terrible

About 25 miles south of the Las Vegas Strip sits Terrible's Hotel & Casino, which opened as the Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall in 1987. In 2014 it was purchased by the Terrible Herbst Oil Company who own those convenience store gas stations you find throughout the Southwest featuring the “Terrible Bandit” mascot. The eponymous renaming took effect four years later.

Terrible’s Hotel & Casino (just outside Primm, Nevada), satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

The site is basically a massive truck stop with ramps and service stations designed to support large semi-trailer rigs. As such, it would appear that most of the casino patrons and overnight guests at Terrible’s are also truck drivers.

The place was in awful shape, and it was cheaply put together to begin with. Which is why I kind of love it so much. I find beauty in the peeling paint and sun bleached stucco.

There was period from the late 80s to the late 90s when thematic design in Las Vegas was just running rampant. As much as I dig this stuff, it really was out of control. This was the era that gave us all the massive kitschy mega-resorts with their own easily-identifiable themes: Excalibur, Luxor, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Paris, NY NY, etc. So in order to complete, even the more down market establishments made an attempt to slather on some theming. And here at Terrible’s, it’s Vegas’s oldest, its original theme: The Old West.

I ducked inside for just a moment. It was quite dark and the gaming areas were pretty tight quarters, so I didn’t have much leeway to take pictures. Apart from the cute, backlit glass, wood typography signage, there wasn’t much design either. The fun stuff was all outside.

Zooming by on the highway, there’s no way I would have noticed this. In order to foster an illusion of structural diversity, paint lines run all the way to the ground, whether the façade changes or not. Up close this looks super cheap. But from a distance, at speed? I’d have to admit, it’s effective.

What’s most fascinating to me about all these exteriors is that not a single one of them is functional. The lineup of “old timey proprietors” is clearly cribbed from Disney’s Main Street USA, but you can’t open a single door. Like with the paint job above, they’re designed to read from the highway, but crumble upon closer inspection.

And speaking of crumbling. Look at this fabulously distressed lettering. My fellow road tripper David Janssen, Jr. calls this “roached” after a term one of his painting professors used to say.

The above roached letters are actually routed in wood. But most of the primary signage is wood typography—set in fairly authentic faces—rendered in backlit plastic.

Only the actual entrances to the casino areas are real, functioning façades with real doors and windows. The north end features a porte-cochère as that’s where you enter the hotel. Here on the south end it’s just an extra way to get in and gamble for a spell during a rest stop.

I have to wonder if they run these popcorn lights at night. It’s probably expensive, so I doubt it.

Along this south edge of the parking lot you get even more of the “town” that they are trying to suggest.

A red rural barn, crammed right in between the Main Street USA type buildings. I really like the routed type here; it’s a shame it’s painted the same red as the barn and thus only reads if you’re standing right in front of the thing (defeating the purpose of having the structures present well at a distance).

The backlit sign here missing its graphic front suggests that indeed this casino hotel was built with more detail in the late 80s than which have survived to the present day. There is some humorous realism here as well—notice it’s a guns and ammo shop.

Pete’s Dragons?

Terrible’s is actually kind of late to scene around these parts. Another dozen or so miles down Interstate 15, sitting right at the California state line, is Primm. Until the mid-nineties it was simply called “State Line.” But there’s also a Stateline on the southeastern shore of Lake Tahoe, so it was renamed for original developer of the town to avoid confusion. It also sounds better.

Primm, Nevada, satellite view. Click for link. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

Since the late nineties, Primm has been a complex of three casino hotels and an outlet mall. At one time there was both a novelty tram to the north, a train (referred to as a “monorail” but it actually runs on two rails), and a single-car tram to the south that transported people between the casinos and over the interstate highway. The northern highway crossing only lasted the first year or so.

The first casino hotel to open here was Whiskey Pete’s in 1977. Why is it called Whiskey Pete’s? As documented in Weird Las Vegas and Nevada, the local lore is that the owner of the gas station that used to be on this site was a bootlegger during prohibition. “Whiskey Pete” died in 1933 and dedicating a casino hotel to his namesake seems entirely appropriate.

Okay. But why is the place a medieval castle? On this i have no information. But it’s garish, charming, ugly, and totally incongruous. I think the palm trees are a nice touch. And I suppose the cartoon mascot up at the ramparts is Pete. This is the cheesiest kind of theming possible. Even though the place is not super run down like Terrible’s, this is guilty pleasure territory.

Old West 19th century wood typography on a castle. Very miniature golf.

Here is the rather silly looking single car tram that used to travel back and forth over the interstate highway connecting to the Primm Valley Resort to the east. It fell silent sometime in 2016. I’m getting Logan’s Run (1976) vibes. The thing about monorail technology is that it looks super cool and futuristic when you have a long, multi-car train. When it’s just a single little pod somehow it’s incredibly laughable.

Some of the architectural features are suitably grand. You can see to the right where the tram track (white concrete) connects with the casino structure.

I was not able to get many good photos inside, because it was dark and there was nothing noteworthy besides the gaming areas (which you are not permitted to photograph on any casino floor).

The famous Ford Deluxe V-8, shot full of holes in 1934. Wikimedia / Public Domain.

However, Whiskey Pete’s is home to the “Bonnie and Clyde Death Car.” The bullet-ridden Ford Deluxe V-8 was bought by the Primm Valley Resort and Casino in 1988 for ~$250,000.

It was pretty difficult to snap a picture of, sitting most inappropriately and incongruously off to the side of the gaming tables behind plexiglass walls. It’s sort of the intersection between a down market themed casino and the classic Americana roadside attraction, a tradition since the first automobiles.

Primm & Proper

Three casino hotels. Three themes. The other two are over on the opposite side of the highway. Opened in 1990 as Primadonna Resort & Casino, the Primm Valley Resort (as it is known today) is done in a sort of colonial / Victorian motif. It reminded me of a cheap and obnoxious version of a genre which Disney has replicated all over the world (with tons more money of course). I saw one of these original, vintage seaside resorts at Cedar Point in 2017.

Again, we have palm trees.

I spent very little time inside, because again the lighting was not great and there was not much to see beyond the gaming areas. Except up at the ceiling.

Here’s a Disney trick, though not executed very well—forced perspective. There’s a little faux second story with windows, curtains and shutters, and fake balcony railings, all decked out with ridiculous trim and routed wood filigree. Really the only thing of note on this archeology trip.

Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo

Next door, however, was the mother lode. This was by far my favorite resort in Primm, though it’s in as just as sorry a state as the other two. Obviously a tribute to William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, this was the last Primm casino hotel to open in 1994, Buffalo Bill’s.

The early to mid-nineties was a peak time for both Rollercoaster Wars and Theming Wars. Everyone was trying to outdo each other with ridiculous extremes, and Buffalo Bills fits right in there. How to grow beyond the core drinking and gambling folks? Every casino company was trying to find new ways to capture the Disney market, the family market. One of the ways was more and more fanciful theming. And the other was to add non-gambling attractions in the form of rides and shows that would be attractive to teens.

The hotel casino opened in May 1994 and its signature attraction followed in August. When Desperado opened it was the tallest roller coaster in the world with a first drop of of 225 feet (209-foot lift hill, maximum speed 80 mph), making it a major draw for Primm. Roller coaster aficionados from all over the world would travel to Buffalo Bill’s just to ride it. Perhaps they would stay a night or too. And drink and gamble some.

Although I didn’t gamble or spend the night, I’ve ridden Desperado twice, once in 2003 and again in 2008. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. But it was an intense once for sure. Watch the above POV footage to take a ride yourself (it starts at about 1:23).

As with all coasters in the Roller Coasters War, it didn’t hold its title long. So once all the superfans showed up and rode Desperado once or twice, they moved on to the next big record-setting destination. And even in the longer haul, such a thrilling ride wouldn’t be suited for younger visitors. Buffalo Bill’s had this figured out, so they also opened with a log flume ride in the classic Arrow tradition. Both attractions have outdoor portions and indoor parts that weave through the casino itself, which is exciting for both riders and the gamblers watching them.

Old West Kitsch is everywhere at Buffalo Bill’s, but it’s of a much higher quality than I saw at Terrible’s. Not as slick as DIsney’s Frontierland, not as authentic-feeling as Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town. Let’s split the difference; somewhat like Cedar Point’s Frontier Trail.

The complex is a lot bigger than you get a sense of from the parking lot and front entrance. The “B Tower” in blue in the upper right of this map is the barn-like structure that’s so prominent when you drive up. Everything else is kind of hidden from immediate view. This is smart on the designers’ part, because there’s a big reveal when you walk into the gaming floor.

Operating Primm Resorts “Monorail” Train, 2009. HowdeeDoodat/Flickr. — Operating Primm Resorts “Monorail” Train, 2009. *HowdeeDoodat/Flickr.*

When I visited in 2008, the main train between Buffalo Bill’s and the Primm Valley Resort was still running; by 2019 it was not. Its four cars were capable holding a maximum of 96 people. Again I put “monorail” in quotes because all these trains and trams actually ran on two rails. I would assume that the resort owners realized that the public probably associates “monorail” with “Disney theme park” so it’s a clever misnomer.

The “monorail” station sits outside above the hotel’s porte-cochère on the second floor. I especially love the Windsor typeface treatment. Maximum cheese.

The train platform is flanked by a little Frontier Town façade which reminded me very much of the original Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland at Disneyland (1960–1977).

Although executed cheekily, there are some nicely thought out details here. Observe how when the elevated track leaves the “Old West Town” station at the casino, it’s supported by a wooden railroad trestle which looks and feels authentic to the period.

Only after the track is a good distance from the themed station area do the supports assume the more traditional, modernist-looking (Disney-like) concrete look.

Again, I couldn’t tell what was inside from the street, and this is a wise design move. I had some vague memories from 2003 and 2008, but did not take any pictures on those visits. So I went in pretty cold here. What fun! This is the late 80s to early 90s Extremely Overdone Theming but it’s not half bad.

The architectural details are, again, not Disney but certainly superior to say, a Six Flags environment. The front desk, guest check-in area is made to look like a two story rooming house. There is a mining sluice and water features in the queue area as you wait to speak with someone.

Similarly, the cashier where you cash in your chips is made up to be a bank. The Spanish tile roof and Mission-style stucco are done fairly well. It’s cute. And look at that massive tree trunk to the left! There are several fake trees rising all the way to the pitch black ceiling to make it feel like we are outdoors at night—a common thematic design trick—like the Blue Bayou restaurant at Disneyland.

Something I have observed at other themed casinos on The Strip is that often the design features are used to hide structural supports, as with the false chimneys here on the “Livery Stable Blacksmith” barn.

Here is the “monorail” station from the inside, above the casino exit.

I love the incongruity here, and there is a lot of it throughout the American Southwest. The typeface style (a slab serif) is authentic to the nineteenth century.

But of course the neon is not.

The “Star of the Desert Arena” is themed at its connection to the casino floor areas, but as seen from the parking lot it’s just a massive warehouse. The 6,500-seat indoor hall was built for concerts of the top 40 variety.

There is more detailing here than I expected. Lots of different kinds of buildings. Here the Denny’s chain restaurant location is contained within a brick structure labeled “Feed & Grain.” The inside-for-outside, day-for night is a relaxing shift from the pounding heat outside. One reason people stay inside gambling all day in Nevada is that the air conditioning can’t be beat.

The gaming floors were nicely themed, but of course I’m not allowed to linger around the table games and slots and take photos. So I wandered over to the small food court which is again done up to be part of this “town.” Even the Panda Express is part of the show. From this low angle you can clearly see the filmic and theatrical origins of thematic design; note the stage lighting on the ceiling.

The Buffalo Bill’s people really spent extra on design touches here where they didn’t need to, but the era in which the resort was built was one of this kind of excess.

The two times I had visited prior, I not only rode the signature roller coaster but also the Adventure Canyon Log Flume. In 2003 it was the basic attraction that the hotel had opened with, presumably. By 2008 they had added a “shooting gallery” element to make it more interesting (and perhaps extend its shelf life). There was a light sensor rifled in the log and you used it to shoot at targets throughout the route and rack up a score.

It was sad to see the ride drained of water and basically left to rot.

A tour of the shuttered property, fall 2020.

It was quiet when I visited in the summer of 2019. None of the rides nor trains were running. All of the Primm resorts appeared to be struggling. So when the COVID-19 Global Pandemic hit in the spring months of 2020, they simply got wiped out. Buffalo Bill’s has been completely shuttered with no announced plans to reopen (as of June 2021).

I don’t know what the future holds for Primm and its three resorts. But Buffalo Bill’s in particular is a wonderful snapshot—like an insect trapped in amber—of that time from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s when every casino operator in the region thought that theming would guarantee revenue. Through the lens of the Disney experience, in order to draw families, all you needed to believe was that “if you build it, they will come.” And for a while, it worked. Part of the problem was that the funds invested got the operators some level of thematic design, but without the experiential holism that makes Disney’s projects so superior. The other issue is that there is no media synergy—no intellectual properties or cinematic universes with memorable characters and elaborate backstories—to draw from in.

That might to be the ultimate lesson to take away from places like this; the larger mediascape is the focus, and theming is but one expression of its filmic grammar. It’s the fire keeping the hot air balloon aloft, and without the flame, the whole thing just deflates and comes crashing to the ground.

Continued in Part 3.

Viva Las Vegas - Part 1: Micro-theming and Faux Urbanism.

May 23, 2021 by Dave Gottwald

I haven’t spent time in Las Vegas in a research capacity since 2008. So for a city that is constantly reinventing itself at every turn, there was a lot to take in when I visited again during the first week of July, 2019. I wanted to focus on emerging trends in thematic design, as well as look for any marked changes to The Strip’s most iconic casinos and resorts.

LINQ Promenade, Las Vegas Strip, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

I stayed at Harrah's on the north end of The Strip. A few blocks walk to the south is a newer “faux urban corridor” which runs down a wide pedestrian alley. As you can see here in the satellite view, this “street” terminates at a massive Ferris wheel called the High Roller which opened in 2014. At 550 feet, it’s currently the tallest such attraction in the world.

To the south (right) is the The Flamingo. The original hotel opened in 1946, and the current structure barely resembles what came before. Third to open on the Strip, it’s now the oldest and the last remaining casino which opened prior to 1950. To the north (left) is The LINQ Hotel + Experience which opened in 2013. This property had for many years been the down-market Imperial Palace (1977)—the only Asian-themed resort on The Strip—and before that the Flamingo Capri (1959).

The corridor in between the two resorts is called The LINQ Promenade. It's sort of Universal CityWalk-like with a greater emphasis on realism. Very Caruso. This side alley off The Strip is certainly not on the level of considered backstory as Disney Springs at Walt Disney World. But the design impulse is still there—to simulate the natural layering which occurs over time in the urban environment.

What is the appeal of this faux urbanism? It's ironic that they want to recreate it here in Las Vegas, a city whose development is its antithesis. False brick buildings and storefronts recall a “timeless but in the past-ness.” Although the promenade is for pedestrian access only, curbs line either side of the storefronts. I almost expected replica pay phones fire hydrants.

Within this faux urban environment is a considerable amount of what I’ve come to call “micro-theming.” Each shop and dining establishment increasingly has its own themes buried within the mega (uber) themes of the resort areas themselves. What I used to call an “all you can eat thematic buffet” that arose during the 1980s placed variety primarily at the resort level. If you wanted to sample a new theme, you walked on.

There seems to be more micro-theming in Las Vegas than I remember in 2008. All the mega-themed resports, the Luxors and Excaliburs and New York New Yorks and Bellagios and Venetians, seem to be a bit passé. The big ones are still here, lively as ever, but they’re also full of a diversity of micro themes.

Again, the layering here isn’t exactly Disney-level. But the designers made an effort to establish a more natural urban sense of place over time. Some buildings are made to look older than their current tenants.

Not that most folks would notice but there appears to be little micro histories built into most structures. For example a sports bar featuring sexy school girls looks like it has been installed into an early 20th century bank.

All of this is mixed with more contemporary retail and dining design, like you might find anywhere across the Sun Belt. Bright and open. Employing vernacular architectural styles, but without any dressing down or aging. “Old built as new” as you might find anywhere from Santa Barbara to Santa Fe.

The plantings in particular suggest nearby Southern California.

Southeastern small town folkiness is also thrown into the mix, though the buildings themselves are all brick and suggest larger cities in the North.

I call this sort of thing “Cracker Barrel Pastiche.” It’s the sort of establishment where sweet tea cocktails are served in mason jars and peanut shells cover the wood plank floors.

In a nod to classic, Rat Pack-era Vegas, there is neon signage throughout. This little bit in the window adds some Nashville Honky-tonk flavor.

But some of the other marquees are much more elaborate and smack of a mid-century supper club.

One thing the faux urban approach provides to contemporary brands is the opportunity to place themselves in an alternate history of sorts, in a grand imagined past. In-N-Out Hamburgers was founded in 1948, but it was a simple roadside drive-thru stand. Here the fast food restaurant has been reimagined as a Hollywood Golden Era movie house.

Everything continues to be nested like Russian dolls—themes inside themes inside even more themes.

If you want to change immersion channels you just walk into a different restaurant or bar instead of a new hotel property. Perhaps the mega-resort approach is truly becoming a thing of the past.

For those who are looking to notice it, the incongruities in these types of environments can be overwhelming. I'm beginning to wonder if the overall audacity of it all is the appeal. I still see visitors of all stripes who are saying to themselves “wow they actually did this” whatever “this” is.

In this case, a celebrity chef fish ‘n’ chips restaurant’s entrance is a pair of oversized, cartoonish London telephone boxes.

Excess in this context doesn't just mean a lot. It also means ridiculous as in “this doesn't make sense to me.” I look at a design decision and laugh and think this is a mistake but maybe it's not a mistake. The contradiction is the point. It's the appeal.

In the end, it’s all just the wrapping paper on the real package: getting you inside the casinos to gamble.

The most meta moment I had during my Las Vegas stay was certainly this souvenir shop. The classic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign designed by Betty Willis in 1959 can be found all over town, from the replica photo-op at the airport to t-shirts and coffee mugs. In 2005, even the Nevada license plate issued to commemorate the Las Vegas centennial featured the sign.

Although Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) has owned the sign since their purchase of its fabrication in the early 1960s, they lease the sign to the county and the design itself has never been trademarked (rumor is that Willis wished it to be her gift to the city and remain freely in the public domain).

Seeing it here, tucked into this promenade of faux urbanist micro-theming and adapted into a storefront fin was almost a bridge too far.

Continued in Part 2.

Monument (to Cinema) Valley.

November 09, 2020 by Dave Gottwald

I mentioned a few posts back that I would elaborate on why Monument Valley Tribal Park is such a special place for me and why I’ve longed to visit the site since I was probably nine or ten years old.

Monument Valley, The Mittens, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Yes indeed I was drawn to the valley partly because its contours are the basis for three out of four Big Thunder Mountain attractions Disney Parks around the world.

That the “Mittens” (West and East Mitten Buttes) of Monument Valley are so recognizable around the world is due to the Western genre of cinema.

The Westerns of John Ford

For most Americans, Monument Valley became cemented in the public imagination due to the films of one man, famed director John Ford (1894–1973). Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948). and most notably The Searchers (1956) all feature the vistas and Mittens of the valley as the primary canvas for their narratives. Ford shot a total of ten films here, and many other directors have followed in his stead.

Monument Valley, John Ford Point, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

When Ford first saw Monument Valley, he knew it was something special. And moreover, something inherently cinematic about the look of the place. Settings on film have to read for an audience immediately, communicating through visual literacy. Hyperbolic, iconic, and unmistakable.

As the story goes, John Ford’s discovery and popularization of the valley is credited to Harry Goulding, provisioner and trader to the local Navajo population. After visiting the region with a friend in 1921, two years later Golding and his wife claimed 640 acres and began raising sheep and trading with nearby Native Americans. Towards the end of the 1920s they established their Monument Valley Trading Post which later evolved into a lodge. “Goulding’s Monument Valley” still does business today.

According to the Goulding’s organization, it was the Great Depression which brought Harry and John together:

So Harry and Mike set out on a journey to Hollywood, California with their last $60. By luck and perseverance, Harry met the famous director John Ford. When Ford saw Harry’s photos of Monument Valley, he knew it was the perfect location for his next movie. The Gouldings received an advanced payment, and in a few days, John Ford and his crew began filming Stagecoach starring John Wayne.

The valley’s Hollywood fame goes well beyond Ford however. There’s an entire wikipedia page devoted to films shot on location here.

However, most of them are not the reason I’m so personally attached to Monument Valley…

Airwolf, 1984–1986 series. All screen caps are from my Blu Ray collection. — *Airwolf*, 1984–1986 series. All screen caps are from my Blu Ray collection.

Airwolf and the Lady’s Lair

That honor goes to Airwolf, an action-adventure series which ran from January 1984 (the two-hour pilot movie debuted directly following the Super Bowl that year) to the spring of 1986 on CBS. A syndicated fourth season, shot in Canada, ran on the USA Network basic cable channel with a completely different cast (but the same aerial stock footage) until August 1987, but let’s try and forget that completely.

Airwolf starred Jan-Michael Vincent as Stringfellow Hawke, a loner Vietnam veteran and test pilot who steals a top secret, supersonic stealth helicopter “Airwolf” back from Gaddafi (Libya being one of the more popular bad guys of the Reagan era). Helping him is sidekick Dominic Santini (Ernest Borgnine). Hawke brokers with his intelligence community contact Archangel (Alex Cord) that he won’t return Airwolf unless the government can find his brother who is MIA in Southeast Asia. Thus the premise is typical of other such competing shows like Knight Rider and The A-Team; Hawke and Santini use the helicopter to go on missions which defy traditional intervention as “outsiders.”

As I loved the show so dearly as a child—watching it after it was canceled, for years, first on the USA Network and then KTLA 5—I could on and on, but I’ll spare you and just provide a link to the wiki.

Typical of other “hardware” series of the 1980s, the star of the show was really the helicopter itself, which they affectionately call “The Lady.” Hawke refuses to return Airwolf to the government agency which developed it, so he needs to hide it somewhere. This became a running trope during the first season of the show, that certain government operatives are always on Hawke’s heels but can’t find the chopper.

Airwolf shooting locations in Monument Valley. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google. — *Airwolf* shooting locations in Monument Valley. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

By the magic of location shooting, where he secreted away The Lady was Monument Valley. In the show this hiding place, a sort of cave with a hole in the top for the helicopter to enter and exit, was known as “The Lair.” As you can see in the map above, a composite of two different mesas were filmed for the “fly-in” and “walk-in” views for this location.

Because it was obviously quite expensive to fly the star helicopter (a modified Bell 222) and a whole second unit crew out on location, they only went twice: early December 1983 and then again in July 1984.

In the pilot episode “Shadow of the Hawke,” Dominic flies Stringfellow out to what he thinks will be a good hiding place. “This is it. Valley of the Gods. Even the Indians don’t come up here,” Ernest Borgnine says, establishing its remoteness. The name he gives is confusing, though, because there is a real Valley of the Gods with similar scenery just across the border in Utah.

The script had to explain the unexpected storm which befell the second unit photography. Thus Dominic notes that “there’s always a little snow up here, even in the summer” allowing for the use of the footage year-round. They then approach Thunderbird Mesa and attempt to fly into “The Lair.”

When Airwolf was depicted as leaving “The Lair” it was shown from this angle. In reality there is no cave at the bottom which a helicopter (or today, I suppose, a drone) could hover into and land.

Watching this stock footage over and over on series was fascinating to me as a child, because a.) snow on Southwestern-type rock formations looks very cool and b.) I was young enough to think that it might be movie magic that it was even snowing in the desert.

Southwestern snow, everywhere. It all looked so strange, particularly when I watch reruns of Airwolf it was invariably during the summer months. Where was this magical place? I didn’t know what Monument Valley was at that age. It seemed sort of unreal. It looked kind of like the Grand Canyon, and I had seen pictures of that. Maybe it was nearby?

Comically, this wintertime footage of the valley was also used whenever Airwolf went flying off to a cold locale—repeatedly violating the borders of the U.S.S.R.—and as it was a hastily edited show which was heavily reliant on stock footage, we got things like what you see above from that initial second unit shoot, which could be tundra anywhere I suppose.

But while flying through “Russia” or “Alaska” you’d suddenly get a shot like this. Of course I didn’t realize how cheesy this is until a got a little older.

In July 1984 the show’s second unit returned to shoot more footage of the Airwolf Bell 222 before the start of the 84-85 season. This time the valley appropriately scanned as “desert.” The motion blur as seen above is because Airwolf is supposed to be supersonic, even though it’s impossible for helicopters to fly faster than sound (due to something in physics called “flow separation”). So they sped up the footage instead.

In the show’s second and third seasons, this “natural” and “expected” summertime footage was used exclusively, and the snowy Monument Valley featured in that first short episode run (Airwolf had been a midseason replacement) was never seen again.

So much for there always being a little snow “even in the summer.”

The other thing about Airwolf’s hiding spot is that Hawke and company are always a short flight or drive away, despite being headquartered in Southern California. Often they appear to retrieve the helicopter within minutes of needing it. In one first season episode, the “Valley of the Gods” was shown to be found on a “Las Vegas sectional map” but still, in Dom’s Bell JetRanger, that’s quite a jaunt.

The entire three or four hours I spent at Monument Valley, there was only one album in the CD player of my truck: the wonderful Airwolf Extended Themes soundtrack (2014) produced by Mark J. Cairns. This allowed me to live out my childhood memories of lying on the floor of the family den, transfixed by this supersonic stealth helicopter and its secret hiding place, “The Lair” in the “Valley of the Gods.”

Back to the Future III, 1990 film. All screen caps are from my DVD. — *Back to the Future III,* 1990 film. All screen caps are from my DVD.

Where You’re Going There Are No Roads

Yet there’s still one more reason I was delighted to finally make it to Monument Valley after all this time.

The year after Airwolf debuted, Back to the Future (1985) appeared in theaters, and my childhood brain was forever changed. The eventual trilogy would become one of my very favorites. While my schoolmates were playing Star Wars and Han Solo during recess, I was dreaming of my own Delorean time machine and imagining travelling back in time at 88 miles per hour.

Back to the Future III (1990) is the final installment. I won’t get into to all the details, but suffice it to say, present-day (1985) Doc Brown is trapped one hundred years ago in the Old West. 1955 Doc has to help 1985 Marty McFly go back to rescue his future self and prevent him from being murdered.

What’s so appropriate—and for my purposes, revelatory—is the set piece director Robert Zemeckis and crew came up with for the time travel sequence back to 1885. Zemeckis not only sought Monument Valley for the location shoot (which is somehow only a short drive for Doc from Hill Valley, California; then again on Airwolf they made it out from Van Nuys on a weekly basis) but decided that Marty depart from a midcentury drive-in movie theater.

Note the painted mural of charging Indians below the screen. Marty says to Doc that if he drives towards the screen he’s “going to crash into those Indians.” Doc reminds him that he’s “not thinking fourth dimensionally” and that once he travels back in time “those Indians won’t even be there.”

The joke is that as Marty reaches the drive-in screen, accelerating to 88 mph, he’s instantly transported back to 1885 and what was a painting becomes real. The Indians, being chased by a brigade of the U.S. Calvary, are charging straight towards him in the Delorean.

Above is the whole clip so you can see how clever the shot is.

There are a couple of things going on here. First, in a very real sense, the movie screen is a kind of time machine, transporting us to whatever setting the film requires. The audience enters the image to experience a movie, just as Marty penetrates the drive-in screen and “smashes” into the past.

Second, Monument Valley represents “The Western” as a film genre. Marty isn’t actually travelling to the real past, rather, he’s travelling to the Old West as it is represented in the movies. I’m pretty sure Zemeckis only intended the location to be a loving tribute to all the John Ford Westerns shot here which he probably watched as a kid. But taken critically, it’s actually a profound statement. Monument Valley = the Western genre, and Marty driving through the movie screen = literally entering that genre.

Later in the film, Doc and Marty attempt to get the Delorean up to 88 mph using six horses to pull it. Again, this is a clever tribute to the first feature Ford shot here (at Goulding’s suggestion), the John Wayne classic, Stagecoach.

So why all this about Airwolf and Back to the Future III…what does this have to do with theming? Well, my emotional connection to this landscape only exists cinematically. Monument Valley is a visual feast in its own right, as magnificent as the Grand Canyon or any number of other National Parks in the region. But if not for film and television, it wouldn’t hold such powerful, potent nostalgia for me.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I wanted to drive through the valley like Marty McFly did before me. I wanted to imagine flying through the landscape in Airwolf (and listening to the show’s soundtrack allowed me to do just that). And why should I be? This is very common phenomenon. There are entire tourism sectors based solely in televisuals, from visiting “James Bond Island” in Thailand to staying the night in a “Hobbit Hole” in New Zealand.

As my colleague Gregory Turner-Rahman and I argue in our award-winning article, “The End of Architecture: Theme Parks, Video Games, and the Built Environment in Cinematic Mode,” the movies colonize our experiences of the physical and virtual world, and alter our perceptions and expectations of spaces. My satisfying response to Monument Valley is just one more example.

Welcome to Westworld(s).

September 13, 2020 by Dave Gottwald

As I mentioned in my last post, I have personal reasons for both Bryce Canyon National Park and Monument Valley Tribal Park being on my bucket list since childhood. And actually this is true for Arches as well. The common thread? Theme parks, television, and the movies.

The Hoodoos That You Do So Well

Bryce Canyon is most famous for what are called its “hoodoos.” These rock formations are distinct from what are called pinnacles or spires in that they do not uniformly taper upward to a point. Rather, hoodoos are a product of erosion which vary in thickness and somewhat resemble totem poles. They are also found in the east side of Zion National Park to the south.

Bryce Canyon, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

From the rim looking down Bryce seems deceptively contained. Yet from a bird’s eye view you can see how extensive the canyons of the park are.

I was curious where the name “hoodoo” comes from, and thought it might be an Anglicization of a Native American word (I’d seen it rendered mistakenly as “hudu” before). Turns out, it actually comes from West Africa. “Hoodoo” in the Hausa language means roughly the “practice of retribution.” Hoodoo, like voodoo, is a spiritual system created by African slaves in the New World. The rock formations resemble the candles used in Hoodoo ceremonies.

The hoodoos of Bryce vary tremendously in size, shape, and coloration. Many of them looked like undersea coral to me. I also was under the mistaken impression that they stood fully formed from the canyon floor like piles of candle wax. In fact, they tend to appear in croppings not unlike fences high above the hiking trails, emerging from hills of loose soil.

In other places around Bryce they look less like individual totems and stand like walls.

And from a far distance, they lose all definition and blend together completely.

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland, 2007. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland, 2007.

“Something Like Walt Disney”

This is more of what I expected to see at Bryce Canyon. I assumed that all hoodoos were freestanding towers resembling candle wax drippings. My preconceptions come from the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad attraction at Disneyland, designed by Tony Baxter. The attraction has since been adapted for other Disney Parks around the world.

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Baxter initially conceived of the attraction in the mid-1970s as a themed take on Arrow’s mine train coaster (which was quite popular at more than one Six Flags park) for the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. But the company switched gears and wanted the attraction to debut first at Disneyland, replacing the aging Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland which had opened in 1960 as an expansion of the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train (1956).

Vintage postcard, Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland. Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc. — Vintage postcard, **Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland**. Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc.

It was a natural fit. The Mine Train attraction already featured faux rockwork which could have been referencing any one of a number of National Parks throughout the Southwestern United States. And the look of the trains would be retained pretty much untouched for the new roller coaster.

As Baxter recalled in The Disney Mountains: Imagineering at Its Peak his initial design concept for the Magic Kingdom was in the words of author Jason Surrell “a majestic Southwestern landscape inspired by the craggy spires and rugged gorges of Monument Valley, Arizona.” But he did not feel the theme would be appropriate for the more intimate scale of Disneyland:

We had created a Monument Valley look for Florida, which has a very spectacular, classic grandeur and conjures up all of the different emotions that really work with the scale of Walt Disney World, which is a spectacular Park. Well, Disneyland is a charming Park, so we had to find an aesthetic that was compatible with Fantasyland, which was was to be Big Thunder’s next door neighbor.

The National Graphic issue Tony Baxter found in the Disney research library. — The *National Graphic* issue Tony Baxter found in the Disney research library.

Baxter went on to describe his research process:

I was looking through National Geographic and I found a great article on Bryce Canyon in Utah, and on the first page it said ‘It all looks like something by Walt Disney'—that it is that fantastic and fanciful—and I said, ‘I think I’ve hit pay dirt here, this is what we’re going to do.’

Surrell’s book identifies the issue (October, 1958) and so I tracked down a copy online for a couple dollars. You know what? Tony Baxter remembered the quote from the article exactly.

Spreads like this fired Baxter’s imagination.

Here is a perfect example of what my colleague Greg and I call “cinematic subsumption” and the bizarre feedback loops which it can bring about. In our award-winning 2019 article for The International Journal of the Constructed Environment, “The End of Architecture,” we describe the process of filmic grammar affecting all manner of design, and basically taking over (“subsuming”) the built environment.

In this example, a writer and his wife visit Bryce Canyon. She observes (not inaccurately) that Bryce Canyon, basically, reminds her of an attraction at Disneyland. Two decades later, a Disney designer reads the article, and now themes an attraction after that very same National Park. Accepting that the theme park model is based in filmic grammar, essentially her observation is that “this looks like a movie” and then a movie gets made based on that observation.

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland, 2008. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland, 2008.

This is the feedback loop of cinematic subsumption—blurring the line between the source and the reference, the copy and the original. The kind of stuff that Jean Baudrillard was on about in his famous Simulacra and Simulation (1981).

Theme Park —> National Park —> Theme Park —> ?

The hoodoo rock formations of Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland are a thematic interpretation of someone’s observation of a National Park looking like the thematic. Of course the landscape design for the attraction as a whole incorporates many other visual cues of “Southwestness” like the various cactus species pictured above. And there’s certainly no runaway 19th century mine train in Bryce Canyon.

See from a distance, Tony Baxter’s hoodoo spires look like something out of the Candyland board game. And the singular statement of a “mountain” now reveals itself to be thoroughly divorced from the realities of the topography of Bryce itself. Not so much the greenscape (notice how many trees, particularly evergreens, are visible in the above photographs from my visit) but in that the foliage is far denser than the rock formations themselves. The site of Big Thunder is completely surrounded, enveloped.

I also didn’t see any dinosaur bones at Bryce Canyon National Park, though there are many significant sites elsewhere throughout the state of Utah. So this is kind of regionally resonant.

Notice how Baxter uses the ribcage as a tunnel-like element for the water splashdown finale of the coaster, which is something atypical for this kind of ride. The Arrow originals didn’t have splashdown elements; this appears to be cribbed from the way the Disney designers slowed the Matterhorn Bobsleds down at the end of their speedy downhill journey.

Monumental Interpretations

The original Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland opened in September of 1979 after roughly two years of planning and construction, including the deinstallation of the Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland. The attraction design for the Magic Kingdom—which Tony Baxter had been toying with for years (his first sketches date to 1971–72)—debuted there at Walt Disney World in 1980. And true to his initial vision, it was still based on the famed vistas of Monument Valley which straddles the state line of Arizona and Utah.

Monument Valley, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Unlike Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley has a robust cinematic reputation. The location has been widely used in American Westerns of the mid-twentieth century, most notably in the films of John Ford.

Thus being primed in the movie memories of so many Americans, the remarkable skyline is ideal fodder for theme park interpretation. Everyone from Grandparents to teenagers will likely find the setting oddly familiar. The most iconic forms of the valley are known as “the Mittens” (formally the West and East Mitten Buttes), resembling as they do, upright hands complete with thumbs.

Although the Mittens are the most iconic, Monument Valley’s contours and features are more diverse than you would guess. There are all kinds of cool buttes, mounds, and croppings. All of them very large.

And everywhere you look, the vista changes. It’s like a different park with each turn of your shoulder. I could have spent a week there (which you can actually do on private off-road tours with Tribal guides).

Big Thunder Mountain at Walt Disney World, 2007. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Walt Disney World, 2007.

Honey I Shrunk the Valley

The last time I visited Walt Disney World thirteen years ago, their Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was closed for an extended refurbishment. So not only was I deprived of riding it, I couldn’t get many photos either. Above you can see that the geologic language of Monument Valley has been interpreted with great elasticity. At the entrance and throughout the queue are whole features of the valley, shrunk down.

No rocks like this exist at such a scale at the actual site. The buttes which have been interpreted for the attraction are all massive in real life. The smaller rocks above in the foreground are soft and broken, which much loose soil around. All similar rocks at the Magic Kingdom’s Big Thunder are sculpted, moulded, and rigid—just like the larger formations in Monument Valley.

Big Thunder Mountain at Walt Disney World, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Walt Disney World, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

When the project moved to Disneyland in the mid-1970s, Tony Baxter had to mirror his original layout and condense it somewhat to make it fit in the much smaller footprint allocated for the attraction at that park. Returning the project back to Walt Disney World allowed him to resume his design work at the intended scale and orientation. The Magic Kingdom version sits on 2.5 acres, some 25 percent larger than the Disneyland site. Also unlike at Disneyland, this Big Thunder sits directly alongside the shores of the Rivers of America, providing an even more incongruous interpretation of Monument Valley, where there are no significant bodies of water around for hundreds of miles.

Like the Disneyland original, this second attraction features a single, central mountain for which Big Thunder takes its name. At 197 feet, it’s actually the tallest “mountain” in the entire state of Florida. The interior of the structure houses the ride’s exciting finale and final drop.

What I find interesting here is that Monument Valley has no peak-type structures, so like with the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon, Baxter and his design team had to cheat a bit to provide a mountain in the vernacular of a landscape which actually doesn’t lend itself to one. A singular “peaked” hoodoo at Disneyland and a singular “peaked” mitten at the Magic Kingdom.

Big Thunder Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008.

The West Comes East

When Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983 as the first overseas Disney park, it did so without an iconic “wildest ride in the wilderness.” However a spot was set aside for it during master planning and it was always intended as an addition for the park’s first expansion phase. Big Thunder Mountain (no “Railroad” in the title) opened at Tokyo Disneyland on July 4, 1987. This was likely a deliberate nod to the pure “Americanness” of its Western setting.

Big Thunder Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Tokyo Disneyland, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Here in Tokyo the footprint is smaller like at Disneyland, yet along the shores of the Rivers of America like at the Magic Kingdom. The design motif is once again rooted in the majesty of Monument Valley, but Baxter and the other designers also made sure that there were many elements unique to this third iteration.

For example, the attraction queue has a series of interesting twists and turns which are only found in Tokyo. I found the rockwork here to be a more thoughtful interpretation, overall, of Monument Valley. For one thing, the scale is far less reduced.

What the Disney designers have done more successfully here than at the Magic Kingdom version of Big Thunder is to take these massive buttes and better reproduce their crags and contours at human scale. The forms work better as “human or a bit taller than human” rather than the toadstool-like, trash can-sized rocks at Walt Disney World. You shouldn’t be able to sit on a butte. But walking next to one seems to work. The macro becomes the micro.

There is also a lot more thematic prop work at the Tokyo attraction, to the point where the “valley” seems to be littered with antiques. The above scene looks like a junkyard, circa 1890. Also notice the forced “wall” of buttes in the background.

Because of the tighter attraction footprint, the wall functions like a fence blocking the buildings behind. This is clear by looking from above.

Bryce Canyon, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Oddly, this seems true to what I saw at Bryce Canyon, with walls of hoodoo croppings that looked like barriers. Even the satellite view looks the same. So there’s a little bit of hoodoo magic in Tokyo’s Big Thunder Mountain after all.

It was my impression, both times I’ve visited (2001 and 2008), that the interpretation of Monument Valley and overall theming at Tokyo Disneyland’s Big Thunder is more immersive than its stateside sister attractions. The propping might be a tad excessive, but the rockwork is terrific.

POV footage of Big Thunder Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008. — POV footage of **Big Thunder Mountain** at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008.

On my second visit to the park in 2008, I recorded some POV video footage with my digital camera. I didn’t have a great one at the time, so it’s pretty amateurish. But I was able to review it and note the attention to detail in crafting even more arch passages than the Magic Kingdom version has. Again, the detailing throughout vibes nicely with what I found out in Monument Valley.

Tom Sawyer Island at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008. — **Tom Sawyer Island** at Tokyo Disneyland, 2008.

And it doesn’t end there. Unique to Tokyo Disneyland is the fact that the “Monument Valley-ness” extends beyond the Big Thunder attraction itself and onto their Tom Sawyer Island. The first of these artificial islands is surrounded by the Rivers of America at Disneyland, and there is a nearly identical island at the Magic Kingdom. The Disneyland version was rethemed in 2007 as a “Pirate's Lair” referencing the popular film franchise.

The Japanese have a great love of classic American Westerns (this part of the park is even called Westernland) so extending the iconic Monument Valley rockwork and colors out into the rest of the environment makes total sense. Even if these small buttes and peaks look totally incongruous on an island facing a river surrounded by greenery.

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland Paris, 2008. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland Paris, 2008.

L'Ouest Est le Meilleur (The West Is the Best)

As deep as the Tokyo version’s impression was on me, I have to say, none of the other Big Thunder Mountain attractions even compare to what Tony Baxter and his design team came up for their fourth and final version, which opened at Disneyland Paris in 1992.

Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland Paris, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland Paris, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

There are many factors which make this version of the attraction so unique. First of all, Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer aren’t well known in France, so a Tom Sawyer Island was dropped. Second, although this area would still be called “Frontierland,” in spirit Tokyo’s “Westernland” appellation is more appropriate. Only the American West is represented; the Rivers of America here are the Rivers of the Far West. And out on its own landmass is the icon at the center of the entire story: Big Thunder Mountain.

Disneyland Paris is the only park to feature a Big Thunder attraction on opening day. And as he mentions in Surrell’s The Disney Mountains: Imagineering at Its Peak, Baxter appreciated that he was able to incorporate it into the masterplan this time, for

[this] allowed Big Thunder to take center stage, which it couldn’t do at any of the other parks because it was built after the center stage was completed, so it’s always out on the end or in the corner—peripheral. In Paris, we were able to put it right in the middle of Frontierland, knowing that hearing the screams and the bells and whistles would bring an energy level to Frontierland that we really wanted.

The mountain is not only the visual focal point of the Frontierland at Disneyland Paris, but also the narrative one. For the first time Baxter and the other designers created a master spatial narrative for the area. The Frontierland areas at prior parks had all been collaged together to represent different parts of the county’s wildness. With only the West in Paris, the land became the gold mining town of Thunder Mesa.

Guests queue up for the attraction in the mine structures in the town on the shores of the Rivers of the Far West. Then you ride the train through a tunnel under the water to emerge on the island, complete the rest of the route, and go back through another tunnel again to disembark.

Given the Channel Tunnel (“Chunnel”) which was under construction at the time and now connects England and France by rail, this was a very clever design move.

POV footage of Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland Paris, 2008. — POV footage of **Big Thunder Mountain** at Disneyland Paris, 2008.

Again, my POV footage of the ride isn’t great. But in reviewing it I could see that the attention to detail at Tokyo was taken even further. Also, there appears to be a blend of Monument Valley “butte and mitten language” with the Bryce hoodoo vocabulary from the Disneyland original. Some of the hoodoo forms are visible above in the top right. In an interview with Tony Baxter for “The E-Ticket” Magazine published in 2009, it turns out he confirmed this:

For Big Thunder Florida we chose the grandeur and spectacle of Monument Valley as inspiration for the rockword. In Disneyland, we went with the charming and fanciful rock formations of Bryce Canyon. In Disneyland Paris, I think we were successful in blending the two.

One thing that really caught my eye going over my photos and footage from Paris is the amount of visible rock strata incorporated into the design. It’s a touch of realism that adds a bit more immersion to the landscape, also there is not much in the way of dramatic strata at either Bryce Canyon or Monument Valley. It just feels “prehistorically Southwestern.”

An element which is completely unique to the Paris attraction is that faux trees dot the mountainscape. And they’re evergreen conifers; they look like little Christmas trees! Sure, all four Big Thunder attractions feature iconic cactus varieties. The ones in California and Florida are real; the ones in Japan and France are faux saguaros. But fake trees, especially ones we associate with winter, were odd to see indeed.

What I realized is that the climate at Disneyland Paris makes things tricky. The week I visited in April of 2008, it lightly snowed twice. Even on the sunbleached day I took my POV footage on the ride, it was freezing cold. In the picture above you can see how the evergreen species planted around the edge of the Rivers of the Far West at the right visually compensate for the loss of leaves on the trees to the left.

Tony Baxter and his designers tried to convey a singular American West setting, yet nature stopped them cold. So, even faux evergreens were made part of the attraction design, to blend with the rest of the live plantings. As someone who grew up in the Western United States, it looks odd. Mountain smashed together with river and desert. But I suppose the French just go with it.

One last thing. The artificial rock designs at Disneyland Paris around their Big Thunder are more naturally ocre in color. At Disneyland, they are light tan, brightly bleached (somewhat like Bryce Canyon). At the Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland they are super red, almost comically bright orange. But the coloration felt the most natural at the Paris park. They nailed that bit, despite the fact that the rocks are scattered throughout the foreground of landscapes they would never been found in naturally. The forest above looks like Ohio. The rocks look like New Mexico.

Well that’s it for theme park connections. Up next I’ll look at the television and film ties to Utah’s national parks which made them such must-see destinations for me on this past roadtrip.

A Walk in the Park(s).

August 30, 2020 by Dave Gottwald

During my summer of 2019 travels I managed to visit six national parks in Utah and Arizona. Quite some time ago on this blog I discussed “National Parkitecture” which is a term design people throw around sometimes when looking at the themed stylings of the National Parks lodges throughout the Western United States. Parkitecture is sort of a Venn diagram overlap of branding (logos, typography, wayfinding), theming (interiors, furniture and fixtures, fabric), and the design of the structures themselves.

There wasn’t as much Parkitecture this time out, but I want to note a few things.

Bryce Canyon National Park

The first stop south from Provo for myself and fellow road tripper David Janssen, Jr. was Bryce Canyon. This magical landscape has been on my bucket list for longer than I can remember. I’d been to Utah before but was never able to make it happen. I’ll be elaborating in a future post as to what exactly the allure of Bryce is for me, but it suffices to say I was really looking forward to checking out the park’s trails.

For each of these parks I’m providing a satellite image, because often the terrain is not what it appears to be from various vantage points on the ground. Here you can see the true vastness of Bryce. We had an amazing all-day hike throughout, covering a nearly 2,000 foot change in elevation.

Before hitting the trails, however, I wanted to see if there was any Parkitecture to be found. The Lodge at Bryce Canyon is done in a style which I’ve seen before at other parks, a sort of glorified “log cabin” approach which is a branch of the National Park Service rustic style.

Here the scale is smaller and it’s far less elaborate. The lodge was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood and constructed 1924–25. Underwood did a ton of architectural work for the National Park Service, yet of his structures at Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon, this is only one which remains complete.

The roofs are known for the shingles, which Underwood designed to warble. The effect is a kind of optical illusion of motion or distortion. Even at a distance it’s noticeable.

I didn’t have much time to explore the lodge, and I guess the grounds are more interesting on the other side, opposite from the direction I approached.

There are great details however, like these wrought iron sconces. The lighting might be contemporary LED, but the effect is well-themed.

What the Bryce park grounds definitely had in abundance was the routed wood lettering that has become nearly synonymous with the National Park Service in the public’s eye.

Such signs were all over the more than 12 miles of trails which we traversed that day. Some examples were of a quite older vintage, which I appreciated.

Zion National Park

The next day we headed a bit further south to Zion, which I had visited years back. Although far from my favorite National Park, it’s a beautiful site which is perhaps too popular for its own good—something like 2.5 million visitors a year.

The grounds are essentially a long winding riverbed canyon leading up into a backcountry area which far fewer tourists take the time and energy to explore. You need a permit, and you need to make it to your campsite on foot, traversing the waters of the river more than once.

I found the graphic identity of Zion to be unexpectedly distinct. The park doesn’t appear to truck with most of the NPS standards for lettering and signage.

A new state-of-the-art visitor center complex opened in 2000. Much was made of its energy efficiency and sustainability after a decade of over-taxing the park with increasing visitorship.

I really liked the design which is an amalgam of clean mid-century modernist lines and an overall materiality and attention to detail rooted in the region’s history. I’ll call it “nearly thematic” design.

The Floor of the Valley Road (Zion Canyon Scenic Drive) runs 6.5 miles up the canyon of the North Fork of the Virgin River through Zion. Since 2000 when new visitor center and transportation complex were introduced, the road has been closed to private vehicle traffic during the peak tourist season (April–October). You instead ride on a line of shuttle buses.

I’m not quite sure what this 1980s sass is all about. It’s only on the busses. “Zion - The Daytime Soap.”

Each bus stop carries the same sort of “nearly” thematic design, well-integrated with the landscape utilizing appropriate materials. Pretty charming, actually.

Restrooms along the route and at trailheads are all rendered in a more “rustic cabin” style which eschews the modernism found on the park’s other structures.

Zion Lodge was designed by the aforementioned Gilbert Stanley Underwood and constructed in the mid-1920s during a National Parks building boom which included his work at Bryce and the Grand Canyon.

A fire ravaged the original lodge in 1966 and it was hastily rebuilt in something like one hundred days with little regard for Underwood’s original design aesthetic.

Fortunately this was rectified in the early 1990s with an extensive restoration reintroducing Underwood’s approach. Something still felt a bit off to me though, especially in the interiors. It was a bit too clean, a bit too corporate. Like an upscale restaurant chain trying to go for “Rustic Old West.”

The new structures which were added in the 1990s were designed in the same style as the original lodge, providing overall unity to the site. In this I think they did far better with the exteriors.

Grand Canyon National Park

I’d been to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon before. Still haven’t made it around to the North Rim; that will have to be another time. Before I had visited in the late springtime. It was different visiting in the summer for sure—lots more people. Tons of overseas tour groups, mostly from China.

Grand Canyon, South Rim, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

The South Rim area is essentially a small village of facilities which includes various lodging options and a transportation hub linking to a railroad line.

After walking the long trail that winds along the South Rim of the canyon, we came to the village. The first structure I spotted was this Native American-looking two-story pueblo kind of thing.

As I learned later, Hopi House was built in 1905 as, well, a gift shop of sorts for tourists. And it was designed by a white architect, Mary Colter. This is pre-thematic design, in that it predates cinema, but is still a hyperbolic and fanciful reinterpretation of historical forms and “otherness.” In fact, Hopi House is very much like a cultural display at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893.

The concessionaires occupying the building were Native American, offering Navajo (here spelled as the anglicized “Navaho”) rugs and various handmade crafts. As I explored the interior retail spaces I wondered what the Native peoples working here thought of Mary Colter’s invention. Does the lack of design authenticity matter? Perhaps it has been embraced, just like the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles which were actually the work of white Hollywood art directors.

Just across the way from Hopi House is the historic El Tovar Hotel. This massive structure also dates to 1904-05 and was designed by Charles Frederick Whittlesey. Whittlesey began his career as a draftsman for the famed Louis Sullivan before being hired in his early thirties as Chief Architect for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. This position lead to a number of notable projects throughout the Southwest, the El Tovar among them.

El Tovar is an early example of the aforementioned National Park Service rustic “Parkitecture.” Like most National Park lodges, the hotel has undergone numerous additions and renovations over the years.

This entrance sign uses a typeface here resembling Rubens which was first cut in wood by John F. Cumming in Boston sometime between 1881 and 1884. However the face did not become widely available nor popular until it was rendered in phototype in the 1960s. So my guess is this sign dates to the 60s or 70s. To my eye it looks like a Southern California Mexican restaurant.

The Parkitecture here is one of the earliest iterations. There is a strange mix at work: locally sourced rockwork, which speaks to the Arizona setting, yet wedded to a kind of log cabin interpretation.

Seeing the log cabin look in the Pacific Northwest or in Western National Parks like Glacier, Yellowstone, or Yosemite makes sense to me. Overlooking the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, it’s not unattractive per say, but it stands out. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s “rustic” but not really the right kind.

Other parts of El Tovar eschew the log cabin feel. This is the opposite façade (reverse of the entrance side) which features paneled walls and shingled roofs. There is also more natural stonework.

All of this appears to be true to the original design and is not the result of a series of renovations. El Tovar is an eclectic blend of a rustic Western-Swiss theme, the California Mission style, the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and elements of various Southwestern Native American motifs.

Adjacent to the El Tovar and just below it in a valley is a railroad station which is still serviced by a vintage line which arrives from Williams, Arizona. Like other smaller amenities structures around El Tovar, it’s done in a straight-up rustic log cabin style.

Hopi House is far from Mary Colter’s only contribution to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. In fact, she designed four buildings at this site as chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company which were, as a group, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Perhaps her most famous of these is the Desert View Watchtower (1932). Like Hopi House, Colter sought to design a structure for tourist purposes which leans into Native American history, here specifically the watchtowers of the Ancestral Puebloans. Colter’s version, however, is far larger. Again, I have to wonder what contemporary Native Americans from the region think about this appropriated pre-thematic design.

One last touch I caught as we left the park through the east entrance. Although superficially resembling the entrance signage found at many National Parks, this one is constructed of local stone. And there is a deliberate nod to Colter’s Watchtower on the right side, complete with windows. Nice.

Monument Valley Tribal Park

Like Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley has been on my bucket list for years and years. I drove past the park on a roadtrip many years back but did not have time to stop and explore. Like Bryce, my interest in visiting was personal (read: cinematic) and I’ll go into detail on that in a future post.

Monument Valley (in the Navajo language this is Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii meaning “Valley of the Rocks”) straddles the Arizona–Utah state line and is completely within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation. As such it’s not a National Park, but rather a Native American equivalent, the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park.

As I’ve mentioned before, I like to visit sites without much preparatory research so that my observations remain fresh. I expected at least some thematic design in the form of rustic Parkitecture, but found none here. The primary visitor center is rendered in a modernist style with materials that are appropriate to the setting. Not terribly exciting for my purposes.

The adjacent View Hotel was equally nondescript. In fact, the garish signage plastered all over it made the building rather obnoxious. It’s a shame that the Tribal Park has not chosen to capitalize on the rich design heritage of the Navajo and other Native American tribes of the region.

If they were to do so, they could eclipse the lovely, though obviously appropriated, forms of Mary Colter I saw at the Grand Canyon. By hiring Native American architects to interpret historical forms and construct them on tribal land at Monument Valley, the tribe could do something very special. Instead I found something that looks like a villain’s lair in a James Bond film. It’s a shame and such a lost opportunity. Thoughtful design doesn’t have to cost more than generic projects.

Arches National Park

Arches, once again, has been on my bucket list since childhood. Luckily I have a friend who lives in Moab, Utah so it was easy to set aside a few days and spend one in the park. My buddy is a LEGO freak who actually photographs his custom builds in and around Moab and produces a calendar every year featuring the quite charming images.

I had an incredible day exploring Arches, and again, I had personal (read: movies!) reasons for doing so which I will elaborate on later. As far as thematic design, Arches was (once again) kind of a bust.

The entrance sign was a more unique take on the NPS conventions, built of local materials.

I did find a bit of theming at the visitor center. The water service stations were fashioned to look like they were natural rock features. Kind of neat, and a small detail that—given the more modern design of the rest of the center—was completely unexpected.

Canyonlands National Park

I only had time for a brief stop at Canyonlands on my drive out of the Moab area. The park is just north of town and is insanely large. It would take weeks to explore it all (and an all-wheel drive vehicle, which I didn’t have). I had to settle for a short hike and table any more extensive adventures for another trip.

This National Park is of the rougher, backcountry variety. As such, there are no destination resorts and few facilities. Although I had a nice hike and saw some cool arch structures and lively vistas, there was no Parkitecture to be found at all.

I did appreciate the extremely simple, old school approach to the entrance signage. Routed in wood and sporting the same typography that you can find throughout the National Parks System. Course and unrefined, just like Canyonlands itself.

Well that’s it for the National Parks of the Southwest which I toured in the summer of 2019. Next up I’ll being looking at the Mythic West of Hollywood and commenting on my own interest in some of these park locales and their connection to theme parks, movies, and television.