[3] The watchtower was the last of the series of Mary Colter-designed visitor concession structures at the Grand Canyon until her renovation of the Bright Angel Lodge in 1935.

The base was intentionally designed to convey a partly ruinous appearance, perhaps of an older structure on which the watchtower was later built.

The main space is the Kiva Room in the base structure, apparently roofed with logs that were salvaged from the old Grandview Hotel.

[6] Mary Colter spent six months researching archeological prototypes and construction techniques before building a model of the site, studying the design of the tower using clay.

Geary's rock art paintings are copies of now-destroyed petroglyphs at Abo, New Mexico, and may be their only surviving representation.

Significant buildings include the Desert View Caretaker's Residence (1930), the oldest extant structure in the area.

In 2008, two tourists were banned from all American national parks for the period of a year after using white-out and permanent marker to correct the punctuation on a sign on the Desert View Watchtower, which had been painted by Colter.