Since its founding in 1916, the NPS sought to design and build visitor facilities without visually interrupting the natural or historic surroundings.

The early results were characterized by intensive use of hand labor and a rejection of the regularity and symmetry of the industrial world, reflecting connections with the Arts and Crafts movement and American Picturesque architecture.

The early wilderness preservation philosophies – expressed through painting, poetry, essays, and later photography – helped lay the foundations for the acceptance of the first national parks.

In those early parks where the Interior Department retained administrative responsibility (including Crater Lake, Mount Rainier and Glacier), government buildings usually were limited to primitive, vernacular expressions of facility need.

The formal classicism of this structure, with its ionic columns, three projecting porticos and symmetrical façade, made it clear that the building owed nothing to its setting.

However, in the post-World War II period, it became apparent that facilities could not be built in sufficient quantity to contend with a huge increase in automobile-borne park visitation.

Although the railroad's operations were on a much smaller scale than those at the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, its buildings were significant expressions of local park architecture.

The Yosemite Valley Stage Depot, which also served as a telegraph office, had a steeply gabled roof, which comprised more than half the height of the building, and diamond-shaped window panes.

Erected by the Desmond Park Company, the 2- and 3-story, shingle-covered structure had a distinctly Swiss Chalet design emphasis.

Although situated so that it had views of the Yosemite high country, the hotel was sufficiently removed from Glacier Point proper to reduce its visual impact.

Parsons Lodge was a wide building of low profile, whose walls appeared to be granite dry stone masonry.

[2][3] Clark’s original cabin, built in 1858, served as a shelter for early visitors and was known for its picturesque setting among the giant sequoias.

The exterior of the log frame structure was sheathed with shingles, and the building was heavily articulated with logwork piers and corners.

The Inn was designed by Robert Reamer, who is said to have "sketched the plans while coming shakily out of a monumental submersion in malt, and some authorities claim to be able to read that fact in its unique contours."

A series of four "trailside museums" were designed for Yellowstone by Herbert Maier in the late 1920s at Madison, Norris Geyser Basin, Fishing Bridge and Old Faithful.

Buildings in four historical districts—Nisqually, Longmire, Paradise, and Sunrise—along with patrol cabins and bridges make the park a showcase of the rustic style.

The National Park Inn at Longmire was designed as an unpretentious building in a beautiful location at the start of the Wonderland Trail.

The library, museum and visitor center, and the community building are all prime examples of rustic architecture dating from the early twentieth century.

In partnership with the Fred Harvey Company, the railroad built a luxury hotel, El Tovar, at the south rim in 1904.

The Santa Fe retained Charles Frederick Whittlesey of Topeka, Kansas, to design the building, which boasted more than one hundred bedrooms.

Built with turn-of-the-century eclecticism, El Tovar incorporated, according to Fred Harvey literature, exterior elements of the Swiss Chalet and Norway Villa, with an exotic combination of interior motifs, including a fifteenth-century dining room, and a series of "art rooms " which contained Thomas Moran paintings, Navajo rugs, and other Native American artifacts.

The stylistic choice on the part of Miss Colter and the Fred Harvey Company was primarily commercial, designed to stimulate interest in Native American goods.

Built of native stone, the canyon-rim structure had an uneven parapet roofline that matched the form and color of the surrounding cliffs.

Concessions at the Grand Canyon's relatively remote North Rim were built and operated by the Utah Parks Company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Designed by noted architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the massive, rustic-style lodge was built of timber, logs, and native limestone.

[11] Glacier National Park was established in 1910, immediately north of the main line of the Great Northern Railway.

The railroad immediately began a massive concession development program in and near the park, which included the construction of two major hotels and nine smaller "chalet" complexes.

Complete with music and writing rooms, sun parlor and emergency hospital, the hotel boasted unpeeled log pillars up to four feet in diameter.

Glacier's third rustic-style hotel, now known as Lake McDonald Lodge, was constructed privately in 1913 and added to the Great Northern concession in 1930.

[13] As well this style influenced hotels like the Château Montebello (1930), and many private residences, especially vacation properties and second homes built on lakes and in forests ("cottages" in Southern Ontario, "cabins" in Western Canada, etc.)