File:DesertViewWatchtower Richards.jpg

English: Evening falls on the Desert View Watchtower on the Grand Canyon's East Rim 36.0441° N, 111.8262° W. The 70-foot-tall (21 m) rock tower, with a hidden steel structure, was designed by Victorian-era master architect and interior designer Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, and remains one of merely a dozen or so buildings created from her imagination. Other Grand Canyon buildings by Colter include the Hopi House, Hermit's Rest, Phantom Ranch, Victor Hall for men (built posthumously), Colter Hall for women (built posthumously) and Lookout Studio. She began her work on the rugged palette of the Grand Canyon in 1905 and built the watchtower in 1932. The tower was created in the tradition of the ancestral Puebloan towers of the Navajo and Hopi people that once dotted the desert floor in the Four Corners region. The tower is perched on the very eastern rim of the canyon lip and has withstood the test of time, soaring temperatures, pelting rain and the worst of snowstorms. The inside of the tower features spiral stairs for visitors to climb to view 100 miles in any direction and take in desert floors, the lower canyon and even the Colorado river. View here to see a photographic simulation of the view https://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/desert-view.htm At the top of the stairs, the round watchtower room features a hand-hewn spiral lumber ceiling, stone floors, a grand fireplace and seating for visitors to rest. Windows line the circumference walls. Colter also designed the Southern Rim Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel, opened in 1908 with 22 rooms, now expanded to 100 rooms. The railway was once the primary way for visitors and workers to get to the Grand Canyon. Before attending high school, her father had collected Native American art and a friend of the family had given her small Sioux paintings that ignited her imagination. Her mother, fearful the artifacts contained small pox contaminants, there had just been a small pox epidemic in the area the artifacts were from, burned them. Colter had hidden the paintings and they remained on her wall of her home until her death. She attended the California School of Design in San Francisco where her dreams of designing buildings that blended with the nature of the Southwest and some facets of the Craftsman Era were fed by her teachers. Her buildings inspired by Native American tradition, culture and innovation are world-renown. The tower is nearby the airspace of the 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision between a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 and a Trans World Airline's Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation on Saturday, June 30 at 10:30 am PST. One-hundred-and-twenty-eight people were killed. It was the first air accident when more than one-hundred people were killed, and the accident led to the creation of the FAA. It's said that park visitors in the tower, though the area was heavily clouded, were able to view some of the horrific accident, the National Landmark marking the memorial is nearby located at 36.1030° N, 111.4960° W. Colter, a maverick inspiration born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, died two years after America watched with brokenhearted anticipation as some of the wreckage and just a small number of bodies were hauled up and spread under a covered area watched over by news media from around the country that had traveled there to cover the event. Colter lives on in today's Grand Canyon and her designs have have shaped many of the architect's buildings that dot the National Park Service areas.

Location: East Rim Dr., about 17 mi. E of Grand Canyon Village, Desert View. National Register of Historic Places, Arizona, County: Coconino County National Register Information System ID: 94001503

Asset ID: e05de104-d402-4494-9bbc-ff05eb399eda