Something New at the Grand Canyon

The back cover of this timetable is a full-page ad for “the new Observation Tower at Desert View.” The ad falsely claims that the tower “is a replica of the type of ‘watch tower’ frequently found in the larger prehistoric cliff dwellings in the Santa Fe Southwest.” In fact, most of the round rooms in cliff and other pueblo dwellings were kivas, used for ceremonial purposes. I don’t believe any of them were used for observation towers any more than than some of the taller square buildings were.

Click image to download a 43.5-MB PDF of this 64-page timetable.

Unfortunately, honesty is valued no more today than it was in 1932. Both the Wikipedia page and the Park Service web page for the Desert View Watch Tower, as well as Park Service interpretive signs at the site, claim that it was designed by Mary Colter. As I’ve noted before, the reality is that the tower was designed by a Kansas City architect named Robert Raney (as correctly noted on his Wikipedia page), while Colter only did the interior decoration (which is brilliant).


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