Mary Colter

Mary Colter was one of very few women working as architects in her day, and she spent most of her career designing for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad. At the Grand Canyon she shaped what a visitor sees on the South Rim: buildings that look as if they grew out of the rock or were built by people who had lived there for centuries, mixing Spanish, Native American and rustic ideas into a style the whole Southwest copied.

On our walk you meet three of them. Hopi House of 1905, modeled on Hopi dwellings, was built to sell Native American crafts. Lookout Studio of 1914 perches on the rim like a pile of stones, and was built to compete with the Kolb brothers' studio next door. Hermits Rest, also 1914, at the far end of Hermit Road, was built to look like a natural stone formation half sunk into the earth, as if a reclusive mountain man had pieced it together. Step inside to the fireplace in its great half-round alcove.