As Labor Day approaches, the Dragon Bravo Fire, which began on the Fourth of July with a lightning strike, still rages along the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park in northwestern Arizona, 168 miles east of Las Vegas. Despite monsoonal moisture and improved weather conditions, it is still only 63% contained after consuming 145,504 acres.
Incredibly, when it started, National Park Service officials, rather than undertaking “full suppression” of the blaze, “managed” it as a controlled burn, which they called “confine and contain,” as an “alternative suppression strategy” to “reduce future fire hazards and promote healthier plant growth.”
“Unexpected strong winds” hit the area a week later, causing the fire to rage out of control. In the inferno that followed, the famous Grand Canyon Lodge, built in 1928, was destroyed along with 50 to 80 structures and numerous historic cabins.
At least one expert faulted the NPS for “institutionalizing controlled burns” and for not learning lessons from the disastrous 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which devastated the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Recently, Arizona’s elected officials called for an investigation into the NPS’s initial approach to the blaze, including claims the agency ignored its fire management plan.
Meanwhile, with the North Rim closed to visitors for the remainder of the NPS’s mid-May to mid-October season, many wonder whether the Grand Canyon Lodge will be rebuilt to its former glory, along with the scores of other accommodations for the area’s one million annual visitors. Although there is no word from the Trump administration or the NPS, I must admit, based on my experience, I have my doubts. Of course, the Grand Canyon Lodge was rebuilt before, in 1937, after it was destroyed by a kitchen fire in 1932; however, those were different days.
I learned how different it was in the 1990s when I represented Colorado’s Clear Creek County, the Alpine Rescue Team, and a Colorado concessionaire in their efforts to compel the U.S. Forest Service to rebuild a historic and iconic structure, not unlike the Grand Canyon Lodge, atop a Colorado Fourteener in my backyard. Sadly, we lost when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver ruled the agency had the discretion to do whatever it wanted.
If ever an artist popularized the American West, it was Albert Bierstadt, who, in the summer of 1863, journeyed thirty-five miles west of Denver to gaze upon a 14,264-foot peak. To the east, over the foothills, stretched the Great Plains; to the west towered the Rocky Mountains, angular and rock-strewn, dotted with alpine lakes and covered — below timberline — with a lush carpet of pine and shimmering aspen. Bierstadt called his painting of the peak that he named Mount Rosalie, after his future wife, which he completed back east, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains. While his painting became famous, the peak’s name lasted only thirty-two years. In 1895, the Colorado General Assembly switched it to Mount Evans, after Colorado’s second territorial governor. In 2023, the name was changed again to Mount Blue Sky.
People wanted to see the view that inspired Bierstadt. Even before 1920, roads began making their way toward the summit. In 1922, construction of a highway began. In 1930, Colorado State Highway 5, the highest paved road in North America, was completed. Then, in the late 1930s, three Colorado civic leaders decided that the hundreds of thousands of annual Memorial Day through Labor Day motorists to the top of the 15th highest peak in the lower 48 needed a structure to enjoy their visit better. In 1940, construction began on what famed Colorado architect Edwin A. Francis, inspired by “the moon, stars and heavens,” thought was his best work. In 1941, the “Crest House,” built of native boulders and stone, was finished. It was soon deemed eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
Over the years the Crest House served millions of tourists; its employees assisted hundreds of lost, stranded, injured, or ailing visitors to a summit where the atmospheric pressure is 60% that of sea-level; and it functioned as a vital communications center for the Alpine Rescue Team, during which Crest House employees provided first aid to trauma victims in “the golden hour” — the first 60 minutes following traumatic injury.
All that ended on September 1, 1979, when a propane fire destroyed the Crest House. The U.S. Forest Service, which then owned the Crest House, received more than $500,000 in damages and insurance to rebuild the structure.
After years of study, it fell to the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who sought to be the “environmental president,” to determine the fate of the Crest House. Incredibly, Bush’s Forest Service decided not to restore the historic structure, but instead to install “an unstaffed viewing platform and information station [amid] the Crest House ruins.” In doing so, the agency ignored the pleas of Clear Creek County, nearby Idaho Springs, the Alpine Rescue Team, and thousands of visitors. Most incredible was the Forest Service’s response to those who thought the Crest House met a safety need: “There is no requirement or obligation for the Forest Service to ensure the presence of people on a relatively continuous basis at the summit of Mt. Evans for safety-related purposes.”
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What a far cry from the day in 1941 when the local Forest Ranger wrote: “The Summit House meets a very outstanding public need, and the Forest Service is anxious to cooperate with you in any particulars that may serve to meet this need more fully.”
Those who think the NPS will not do what the Forest Service did to the Crest House in 1990 may be disappointed when deciding whether to rebuild Grand Canyon Lodge. After all, the Forest Service’s 1941 pledge of support came four years after the NPS rebuilt Grand Canyon Lodge. Fewer than five decades passed before the Forest Service abandoned its promise. It has been almost nine decades since the NPS endorsed that historic structure by rebuilding the Grand Canyon Lodge.
Mr. Pendley, a Wyoming attorney and Colorado-based public-interest lawyer who has been successful at the United States Supreme Court for three decades, served in the Reagan administration, and led the Bureau of Land Management for President Donald Trump.