The greatest gift that you get from Crater Lake
is the opportunity to sit at this lodge on the edge
of a caldera and contemplate the sunset and the sunrise.
Production of Great Lodges of the National
Parks was brought to you in part by MJ Murdock
Charitable Trust, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation,
and by contributions to your PBS station from
viewers like you. Thank you.
Seattle personifies the pioneering spirit of
the Pacific Northwest sandwiched between the
Puget Sound and the rugged terrain of the
Cascade Mountain Range. It is a major
metropolis bordered
by some of America's most beautiful natural
areas and shadowed by one of the world's great mountains.
Mount Rainier is the icon of the Northwest. You
can see it from the east side, from the west side,
from Seattle, Tacoma, even from Portland,
Oregon. When people think of national parks,
they think of Mount Rainier as one of the
finest examples of that.
It's certainly a great lump of a mountain, a
beautiful white cupcake sitting over there on
the horizon. Rainier is really fundamental to
our sense of place here in the Northwest. Those
of us
who live here. Paradise Inn is an opportunity
for the public to come here and slow down
and experience a little bit of the old world,
but the Paradise Inn and the meadows of
Paradise and
the views of the mountain all are just
intertwined, and it creates an experience
that's unforgettable.
Mount Rainier National Park was established in
1899 and the inn built in 1916 at the dawn of the
National Park Service. Paradise Inn represents
an early attempt to provide comfortable accommodations
inside a national park. At a time when many
other park lodges were being financed by the railroads,
Paradise Inn took another route. The railroads
had a great influence on early park development.
They not only influenced the settlement of the
West, but they also started the tourist movement
and brought people out to the west to see it.
In the Pacific Northwest, the railroads
couldn't make
the grade up to the high, high level, but they
were able to make the grade up to the high level.
The railroads couldn't make the grade up to the
high mountain areas that the public wanted to
be at,
so instead of having the major railroads
developing these parks, we had little entrepreneurs.
There were some like 42 concessioners, so there
were people all over the place,
opportunists taking advantage of this wonderful
environment and encouraging people to come and
pay them money for the privilege of staying
here in various kinds of tent camps and other accommodation.
Paradise Inn largely owes its existence to
Stephen Mather, the first director of the
National Park
Service. He was dismayed by the carnival
atmosphere of competing concessionaires at
Rainier. He envisioned a seamless park
experience. Stephen Mather came out here to try
to address
some of these issues. He gathered local
businessmen from Tacoma and Seattle. They did a
tour around the
park, and they went back to the Rainier Club in
Seattle, and he sort of laid the cards on the table,
and he said, we've got some problems here.
Mather convinced them that they needed to raise
money to
build a lodge at Mount Rainier and to have a
single private concessionaire running the lodge
on park
service lands. In 1916, the Rainier National
Park Company was formed, and work began on
Paradise Inn.
Patterned after European lodges, the Inn is
dominated by its massive three-story shingled roof.
Likened to a Swiss chalet, its alpine design
fits well with its environment.
The structural elements expressed on the
interior and exterior in their native form
express the
natural features of the park. We have the
timbers that we see that came from the forest
around here. They represent the trees right
here at Timberline. Ironically, it was an 1885
forest fire
which unexpectedly provided the distinctive
timbers for the construction of Paradise Inn.
But it went through quickly enough that it
didn't destroy the heart of the wood, it just really
pretty much burned the bark and killed the
trees. It was called the Silver Forest because
they had
weathered to a wonderful silver color. Here's
some of the examples. These are the
columns in the in the building that support the
frame, and we have a whole our own silver forest
here in the lobby and in the dining room of the
inn. The mezzanine in the great hall, the lobby,
of this wonderful building was added primarily
for structural support. The building itself is
resisting, trying to resist immense
world-record snowfalls that we get up here at Paradise.
In the lobby here, on days when you can't see
the mountain, you get an experience of being in the
forest. It brings the outdoors in and you don't
leave it. We have the massive stone fireplaces
that came from the mountain and represent the
mountain and the massive geological elements.
One of the inn's distinctive features is the
original handmade furniture,
all crafted by German carpenter Hans Franke. He
started coming up for seven years crafting
furniture from the local Alaskan yellow cedar
and making this wonderful furniture. He trudged up
here in the spring when the snows relented
enough to let him get up here and spent all
summer and
and into probably around November when he was
chased out by the weather. He did a series of
park benches with tables that are along the
window wall in the front of the inn and those
things are
about six, 8 feet long and the tables are
£1,500 of solid log and several of the tables are
literally just half a slab. The top has been
cut off and the lower part is rounded. This is an
example of one of the things that Hans Franke
did for us. This piano is an upright piano that was
completely clad in logs. I like to think of the
huge jackknife that it would have taken to sharpen
these pencils and under this wonderful roll top
is a keyboard. We've been told that Truman came
in and sat down here and played this piano for
us for like I guess an evening event while he was
here visiting in the park so it sort of
exemplifies how kind of what a special thing
this is for us to
have here at Paradise Inn. The inn features two
types of lampshades in the main hall. The small
conical lampshades near the ceiling date from
the 1930s. The larger lampshades are a simple design
made of parchment paper and painted with wild
flowers native to the park. By the mid 80s the
original set of shades had become too worn for
more than 50 years of use. Dale Thompson, a retired
park naturalist and wildlife artist, was called
in to paint new ones. Some two years after I
left the
National Park Service and had begun my new
business in wildlife art, the park staff
approached me
about my interest in painting new lampshades to
replace those that had hung here for 50 years
and it had a great deal of appeal to me because
it was an opportunity to give something back to
an organization that had been good to me for
some 20 years of my life. I was required to do these
new shades of the very same materials as the
originals using the heavy tag board and lacing them
to the metal hoops with raffia. I had to work
in the very same art medium which was just good old
school children's tempera. There were a total
of 74 shades and so I literally had to shut
down my
wildlife art business for a period of between
three and four months to complete them.
I still consider Mount Rainier and Paradise my
second home. It's wonderful for me to come up
here to enjoy the parks now like just any other
visitor but also to come up to this historic
building and it's particularly gratifying for
me to know that the lampshades I painted for the
in may be here for another 50 years. That
leaves me with a good feeling.
Adorned with over 25 glaciers, Mount Rainier is
one of the highest mountains in the Continental
United States. A testament to the conflicting
forces that created it, it is a volcano covered
with ice. Mount Rainier has more ice on it than
all of the Cascade volcanoes combined
and there's no place quite like that in the
lower 48 where you can with a short walk or even
even a drive be able to see glaciers like North
America was covered with 10,000 years ago.
These glaciers are the reason there is a Mount
Rainier National Park. The study and preservation
of these rivers of ice is what led to the
formation of the park at the turn of the century.
One of the largest, the Nisqually, extends all
the way to the summit and begins just a short walk
from Paradise Inn. Nisqually Glacier is
probably one of the most studied glaciers in
the United
States. It's the main glacier on the south
flank of the mountain comes down past the
south flank of the mountain comes down past
Paradise. You've got good clean ice and snow
at the top and as you move further down it
becomes more and more concentrated with debris.
You'll also notice that every time it goes
around a bend or over a ridge or something
it'll form crevasses. But the river flowing out
of it is very very milky or muddy in color
and that's due to the debris that's been ground
up by the glacier.
The park has a lot of variety. It's old growth forests,
glaciers, wildlife, beautiful wildflowers. It's
an experience that's not to be missed.
I think often we want the weather to be sunny
and clear but
really there's a lovely soft quality on a wet
day with the world kind of closed in upon itself.
Ruth Kirk has lived in the Pacific Northwest
for over 40 years and has written books about national
parks and wilderness areas. One of them,
Sunrise to Paradise, is a celebration of the history
and beauty of Mount Rainier. You know there are
people that think Rainier is a myth because it
doesn't show every day but it's not a hussy
that's going to just show it all every day.
There are
days it just is being very quiet and behind the
cloak of the gray sky. I certainly enjoy
wandering around under those circumstances in
the forest or up in the high country at Paradise.
The flowers get all spotted with the droplets
and sometimes you'll see perhaps a deer wandering
through the mist, oblivious of it. I think the
deer is not yearning for sunshine at all. It takes
it as it comes. After a day on the mountain or
in the meadows, visitors are grateful for the warmth
of Paradise Inn. Its rustic charm complements
the park experience. Everybody has a perception when
they come to these types of facilities. You
need to be willing to experience the outdoor. That's
what these facilities were built for. Not
necessarily as hotels but more of a place to rest
during the evening. Spend your daytime out in
the park enjoying the nature. These buildings
are not
full of the modern conveniences, telephones,
TVs. We don't have them. I'm not sure that television
would really enhance your experience of the
mountain. You might then be tempted to stay in
and watch some sitcom instead of watch the
sunset. The things that you can do somewhere else,
do them somewhere else and come to the mountain
for the special qualities that it has to offer.
Nothing makes me feel better than to see people
and families and international visitors just
sitting in the lodge enjoying the fireplace,
enjoying their families and feeling very comfortable.
I think the Inn has charm and appeal to us
partly because it is old. Something that is old,
that is familiar, that's the same building that
our parents, grandparents saw. That has a great appeal.
About an hour and a half's drive east of
Portland sits Oregon's highest mountain,
Mount Hood. Like Rainier, it is one of the
volcanic peaks of the Northwest Cascade Range.
Perched 6,000 feet up the south side of the
mountain is the awesome Timberline Lodge,
an amazing achievement born on the heels of one
of America's darkest moments. Timberline was built
in the Depression and I think it still stands
as a symbol of hard work and determination and quality.
What it reflects at the time of our history of
the Great Depression and the American public's
willingness and ability to recover from that.
And all Americans should be proud of what we
can do
when we pull together on something like that
and given the opportunity to do it and to do
our very
best. In the early 1930s, America was reeling
in the midst of the Great Depression. There was a
crisis in this country unparalleled other than
the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt was
elected to
office in part because he promised to bring the
country out of that. The hotel is a product of its
time. You had recreation growing, you had
skiing industry that was clamoring for this opportunity
for a hotel on a mountain, you had the Great
Depression and then FDR's response to that in
the New Deal. Part of the New Deal was the
Works Progress Administration. The WPA was
charged with
funding projects that could employ and train an
American workforce decimated by the Depression.
Timberline Lodge was intended to teach new
trades to hundreds of workers.
Unlike other lodges, it was built with public
money and on forest service lands, not in a
national park. Construction began in 1935 with
more than 600 trainees taking part. Timberline
was completed in 1937 and dedicated by
President Roosevelt. One of the design schemes
for the
building and one of the parameters was to use
local materials. They wanted to showcase local
materials in the construction as well as local
artisans and craftsmen and architects in developing
the lodge. The lodge itself, it grows right out
of the mountain the way it's been designed and
sited on the mountain. Timberline's original
structure has remained virtually unchanged
for over 60 years. Built in three main
sections, the two side wings are joined by an enormous
three-story hexagonal head house featuring a
center 80-foot high chimney with 3 hearths
on each floor. The main head house fireplace is
sort of the central focus of the building.
The rock work is so big and massive that it
seems to be the focal point for the whole room.
This is my favorite room in the whole building
and we call it the heart of the mountain area and
it's the fireplace is all the original rock
work in the hand-linked wrought iron and you've
got the
wonderful handrails that are made out of the
railroad tracks. The room itself has the same
six sides and the fireplace has the same six
sides and the big tall pillars have the same
six sides so it's a great way to see that the
architects and the blueprints and the craftsmen
all work together hand in hand. Echoing the
hexagonal theme, three massive iron chandeliers
light the main level. The head house is also
home to the cascade dining room and on the
upper level
the ram's head bar, one of two in the lodge.
The upper level also has a dining area featuring
several little nooks and alcoves and depression
era art decorates nearly every wall. There were
a number of artists on the WPA project who are
of national stature. Howard Sewell painted a number
of oil paintings for the lodge including two
large murals that were used in the cascade
dining room
for many years. In this room, the blue ox bar,
there are glass murals that were executed by
Virginia Darcy. First she did drawings and then
cut the glass to fit in place. They show Paul Bunyan
and his blue ox babe. It was a real renaissance
in art in America during the Roosevelt time
and this building is a personification of that.
The WPA had a teaching component to it so they had
some good lead craftsmen up here but they were
also teachers and taught other people to be iron
smiths and wood carvers and weavers. Dick
Constam came to Timberline in 1955 at a time
when the
legacy of the early artisans was in danger of
being lost. Years of mismanagement had plunged
Timberline into debt and disrepair and it was
closed in 1954. After becoming the concessionaire,
Dick's RLK company reopened the lodge and began
a long process of restoring it to its original
beauty. Known affectionately to the staff as
RL, his vision is what has made the lodge the success
it is today. We've tried hard to keep the
building looking the same as it has in the past
and I think
people like that. It reminds them of when they
were here before because it is the same and we
don't change it. Once the structural problems
were addressed, Dick faced an even bigger challenge.
The lodge's fabrics, rugs, and handmade artwork
had all become tattered and worn. Neither Dick or
the Forest Service could afford to replace them
with handmade items. So the people of Oregon came
to the rescue. Friends of Timberline was
established in 1975 by a group of people in
Portland that loved
the lodge were avid skiers, longtime family
history in Portland and Oregon and they saw the
lodge in a
condition that was unacceptable and they really
they really took the task. Friends of Timberline
was the last piece. Today this unique
triumvirate of the Forest Service, the Friends Group,
and the concessionaire ensure the future of
Timberline Lodge. Here you've got one of the
biggest agencies in the country, a small
private company, relatively small private
company, and a
tiny non-profit do-good all contributing to do
a part of a job that nobody could afford to do before.
We always try to maintain the historic
integrity using the same fabrics, using the same
techniques, and in some cases using the same
people. I've always looked at this place like a
big dollhouse. Lenny Adamson was first hired to
loom fabrics for Friends of Timberline in 1975.
She quickly fell in love with the lodge and has
been involved ever since. As curator she oversees
the upkeep and preservation of Timberline's
handmade arts and crafts. Friends of Timberline
sponsored craftsmen for a number of years and
still do to replace things that were missing from
the lodge originally. What's unique to us is
that the craftsmen really never stopped
creating for
the building. Here we still believe on the
hands-on and we're not faking it. We don't
have to play like we're candle makers or
weavers or blacksmiths. We're actually living it.
True to its WPA roots, Timberline is now
training a whole new generation of volunteers
in restoring and maintaining its handmade
artwork. We're restoring the wood. So first
what we're
doing is doing a light cleaning and then we're
going to go back over it with some oils. Everything
in this building is hand-done, hand-crafted.
There are no machined pieces and I think that's
why it's
a world-class building. Some of the most
significant craft work in the lodge is its
hand-forged iron. Original items like the
Zigzag framed chandeliers in the head house
complement more recent additions like the iron
banisters with pine cone finials installed for
safety. All of this iron work is in the charge
of Blacksmith extraordinaire Darryl Nelson.
The really special thing about Timberline as
opposed to iron work in other places is that
most of the smiths that worked at Timberline
weren't ornamental or architectural or decorative
smiths. They were smiths from the railroad or
logging company smiths and the work reflects
that in its mass and in its simplicity to
perform the task that it's been made to do.
The original iron work was designed and built
by Timberline's first Blacksmith Obie Dawson.
40 years later he trained an amateur blacksmith
named Russell Moggins who restored and refinished
the many pieces of iron work in the 70s. Today
Darryl carries the baton for a new generation
of iron enthusiasts. I feel the obligation to
pass on what I've learned as Russell passed on
to me
and Obie passed on to him and so that's one of
the things that give me the most pleasure
from this business is passing the knowledge on
to two young people. Well Ram's heads has kind
of been
a logo of Friends of Timberline. We started
making these ram's heads in 1985 to sell to
earn funds
to upkeep the lodge. There it is. Even with the
Friends of Timberline and the funding that they
come up with there's there's so many things to
spend it on that sometimes we forget to send in a
bill and at those times I feel like a
preservationist. I think people come here first
and foremost for
the skiing for the snowboarding to play in the
snow for the hiking the climbing the easy access
to the outdoors. It's a lot of fun living and
working up here in the mountains. Jason Smith is
the executive sous chef at Timberline. Like
many employees here whenever he gets a break
from work
he likes to take to the slopes of Mount Hood. I
guess I describe myself as a little bit more of a
freestyle skier than like a racer. I like to
hit jumps. I like carting big turns on wide open
spaces too. That's one of the things I like
about skiing up at Timberline. Our guys that
are doing
our dishes in our dish room for us they'll turn
around you'll see them every day as they're just
being their dishwashers then all of a sudden
you'll see them out on the slopes. They're all
really good a lot of talented people up here.
See if I go skiing before work it's just for an hour
or two then head into work for another eight.
We do that a lot throughout the season. Okay let's
see we have a lot of things going on this
weekend especially the Cloud Cap party. Food at Timberline
is in the charge of Master Chef Leif Benson. He
is known as a true pioneer of Northwest cuisine.
Everything that we do here makes a difference
to me so what happens in the morning and at breakfast
and at lunch and when I'm not here makes a
difference to me. We're looking for creating a
very unique Northwest experience not just
coming up for food. Our challenge here is to
make it
unique enough where that it will be a different
presentation different press preparation than
probably anywhere else. Let's say are you uh
we're probably about 20 minutes from dessert.
Yeah I think we're about ready to go.
The reason I wanted to have this dinner tonight
is to kind of celebrate and thank the triumvirate
that's made Timberline such a success and
that's friends at Timberline and the U.S Forest Service.
We've done this together and it's a big success. Cheers.
Timberline is an amazing achievement. From its
works progress roots through its decline and
revitalization it has spanned the years with
great dignity and glory. It stands today as a
symbol of
America's artistic heritage and of Oregon's
pride. There's a real sense of spirit here and
a sense
of ownership and Timberline is sort of every
Oregonian's mountain home we call it.
I think people get a personal kick out of showing
visitors from out of town how they have
something special in Oregon that they can point
with pride to.
330 miles to the south of Timberline tucked
away in southwestern Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains
is one of the state's best kept secrets. Oregon
Caves is among this country's first national
monuments set aside in 1909 to preserve the
marble caverns that delve deep into the mountainside.
They are adjoined by the Oregon Caves Chateau,
a bark covered lodge that seems to have grown
out of the forest as naturally as the trees
that surround it. Its remote location makes it
the least
known of the lodges of the Pacific Northwest.
The Chateau is an integral part of the whole
part of the whole landscape here. It's a neat
old resort emblematic of the old resorts around
turn of the century a refuge if you will a
place to rest and recuperate and get away from
it all.
It's quiet oh quiet.
There'll be very few places where you'll go
that it's absolute quiet.
Completed in 1934 the 10-sided six-story
structure sprouts up from a ravine and seems to
be a natural
part of its environment. The Chateau was the
vision of a local virtually unknown contractor
a man named Gust Liam. He happened to be a very
skilled carpenter who could also serve as
contractor. He had enough talent to do
architectural design and you have to say when
you look at Oregon
Caves Chateau that it's a brilliant piece of
work. Just describing it it's so irregular all
of its
sides are different. The window shapes and
sizes are very different. Doors are different
and yet the
thing works. Gust Liam knew the area knew the
material so that made a difference. There was a
master plan by the forest service but he found
the spot the ravine and what he looked at was a way
of being environmentally sensitive of providing
a very low story facade as you approach the building
and then to tumble the building down the
hillside so because he built in this area he
knew how to
pick the lumbers pick the finished materials
and really make it all work on a site.
The stairwell as an example uses all the local
materials that they're orchestrated there's a
crescendo of the large massive posts of dug fur
then there are the carrying elements that support
the stairs you know you're in the Siskiyou
forest in a rustic setting and all that
actually blends
so the colors absorb and the light bounces off
it. The fireplace which is rather unusual being
double-sided is a massive stone that goes
directly down to the foundation. Liam saw a way
of relating
the flow of water down into the building by
actually channeling a flow through the floor
of the living room and then out into the ravine.
So the waterfall that trickles over the edge into
a lagoon then is channelized down under the
floor of the dining room so that while you're sitting
there you can hear the water. So you're looking
at the the walls of glass out into the ravine and
then the water flowing and the continuous sound
the waterfall is part of the rusticity part of
the character of the place. A few steps
downstairs provide a trip back in time to the
Oregon Caves
Cafe. Added to the chateau 20 years after it
opened it harkens back to the days of soda jerks
and Bobby socks. Its vinyl stools and soda
machines are all original. Dating back to the mid-50s
these are some of the newest items in the building.
Most of the furniture in the chateau dates back
to its opening in the 30s.
In keeping with the style of this bucolic time
capsule nearly all of it is of a rustic mission
inspired design called Monterey. Designed in
the 20s it has been rediscovered and is
collected by
enthusiasts all over the west. Geraldine Ness
is an authority on Monterey furniture. So this is
where it all started. This is my first piece of
Monterey and it's what sent me on my mission to
find out who made Monterey and what this
furniture is all about. I found my first piece
of Monterey
in an antique store and I had no idea what it
was. It was stamped Monterey on the back and it
had a
horseshoe on it and it was closed up and it
looked like an old chest made out of oak with
heavy metal
strapping and I thought it was just wonderful.
I learned that George Mason created Monterey
furniture and he was alive in his 80s and he
lived in Santa Cruz. Geraldine continued to
research and
buy the furniture. Then while vacationing one
weekend at Oregon Cave Chateau she stumbled
onto one of the largest collections of Monterey
in the world. My husband was signing us in and
I was looking around the lobby and all of a
sudden I noticed the furniture in the lobby and
I went
oh my god what is this and I went racing over
to the furniture got down on my knees and I'm turning
it upside down to see if it has any branding on
it and sure enough all the furniture was branded.
At the horseshoe it had the Monterey. I believe
the Chateau's collection is the largest public
collection and should be preserved and retained.
The Inns collection of Monterey was once much
larger. In 1964 the dining room furniture was
lost in a catastrophic event that nearly
destroyed the
Chateau. I arrived here in 1964 to take over as
general manager for the Oregon Caves Company.
Harry Christensen had just taken over as the
lodge's manager and after a successful summer
season he was supervising the lodge for the
winter with his wife and assistant manager Bob Hines.
By Mid-December near record snowfall was
followed by a freak winter rainstorm
causing massive flooding in the hills above the Chateau.
I was looking out the window of my apartment
which was on the second floor of this hotel
and I noticed that there was a trickle of water
coming through the archway of the chalet.
When I suddenly said to Bob I said what's that
noise and he looked at me and his eyes popped
open and he says I don't know what it is but
run and what are you talking about he says run
get out of here. He went scrambling up the
stairways to his apartment I ran down the driveway
all I can remember of that at the moment is a
big log chasing me. I later made firewood out
of that
log it was 48 inches in diameter. The sudden
winter flooding loosed tons of water and debris
down on the Chateau. When it was over the three
lower floors were filled with mud and rocks.
I had a meeting with the board of directors and
I said I'm sorry gentlemen ladies
it's too bad that the Chateau is gone. Dining
room is ruined, coffee shop is a mess,
the kitchen is full of mud, everything
downstairs I said it's completely covered.
I wouldn't give you a nickel for the place and
I said I'm through. The directors however would not
give up so easily. They ordered Harry to get
the Chateau in working order. Luckily Gust Liam the
man who had built the Chateau 30 years earlier
was still alive and with his help Harry hired crews
and began rebuilding. Liam would pass away just
a few months after work was completed in the spring
of 1965. Believe it or not we did it. On the
26th of May we opened this hotel back in the same
condition literally that it was before the flood.
At 480 acres, Oregon Caves is among the
smallest national monuments in the United States.
By the way does everybody know what this animal
here is?
John Roth is the natural resources specialist
at the monument and is an authority on the
Oregon Caves.
Caves tell us a lot because they're a
three-dimensional window into the past and
under the earth so they expose things in three
dimensions and especially they don't have any
vegetation to cover them over so all the
geologists expose what geologists call 100%
exposure, which is a natural resource.
So they expose things in three dimensions and
especially they don't have any vegetation to
cover them over so all the geologists expose
what geologists call 100% exposure, which is a
geological dream.
The end result in this particular cave we can
see over 200 million years of geological
activity exposed in the walls of the cave.
Visitors to the park are taken through the
caves in groups of 16 on a 90-minute tour.
Filled with fascinating and often very unusual
formations, the caves offer a glimpse at the
earth's interior decoration.
Another neat thing about this cave is the
bedrock itself is very complicated and
illustrates perhaps the most complicated
geology in America in this region.
The best-known formations in the cave are these
kind of composite drapery stalagmites that are
also a form of flowstone as if the rock is
actually flowing downhill.
The chateau's warm golden ambience is as deep
as the forest that surrounds it. The rough
stone of the fireplace, peeled log beams and
wood paneling create an aura as mysterious as
the caves from which it gets its name.
None of the 23 guest rooms are alike and nearly
all feature distinctive Monterey furniture.
The chateau remains virtually unchanged since
it opened in the 30s, a comfortable old world
resort stuck in a time warp.
They haven't tried to modernize it too much. I
mean like these light fixtures that are over
here, I would swear those are the same ones
that were here when we were working here. They
look the same.
Dick and Kathy Gordon first met at the caves in
1963. He was a cave guide, she worked in the
gift shop.
Over the two years they worked at the caves,
they formed a romance that resulted in their
marriage in 1965. Today, Dick is the general
manager of the chateau.
If you were going out on a date today to a
movie, you may talk to your date maybe five
minutes all evening because you're being
entertained by something else.
You get up here, you're your own entertainment
and you really get to know your significant
other very, very quickly.
After working in 63 and then 64, then we got
married the summer of 65 and then we came here
for our wedding night.
There is no difference today to the cave or to
this property from the mid 1950s. It's like
time standing still. It just never changes.
I really don't know any place else in the whole
world that's as untouched by time as this place
is and I hope it stays that way.
I think that humans have a potentially fatal
flaw and that is that we become obsessed with
ourselves too much.
And both the natural beauty of the cave and the
natural beauty of the chateau helps us get away
from ourselves.
I love the place and I'll always love it.
It's a beautiful place and it's a wonderful
thing. Thank God it's still here.
130 miles northeast of Oregon Caves, near the
point where the Siskiyou Mountains converge
with the southern peaks of the Cascade Range,
is Crater Lake.
Cupped in a half million years of volcanic
accumulation, the midnight blue lake is one of
nature's most majestic surprises.
Crater Lake National Park is one of those
places for me where I go to and I have a
feeling come over me.
When I come up that rim and I get the first
view of the lake, you know, it's a euphoric
feeling for me.
Where else can you spend the night on the edge
of a caldera made by a mighty eruption over
7,000 years ago and contemplate the sunset and
the sunrise?
I mean, there aren't very many places like this.
The rehabilitation has made the lodge complete.
Basically, for the first time in history, today
is really the finest hour of Crater Lake Lodge.
Crater Lake is a caldera, a vast crater left
behind by a volcanic eruption.
Where there's now a crater, there was once a
mountain over 12,000 feet tall.
The eruption that occurred 7,700 years ago was
epic, one of the largest to occur in this part
of the world for tens if not hundreds of
thousands of years.
It wasn't until the middle 19th century that
the 1st American prospectors stumbled onto the caldera.
In 1885, the lake was visited by a man who
would become the founder of Crater Lake
National Park, William Gladstone Steele.
And as the story goes, back in Kansas, he
looked at a newspaper that wrapped his lunch
and saw an article on Crater Lake and resolved
that he was going to come out and he was going
to see Crater Lake.
And once he did, he worked tirelessly until
Crater Lake was established as a national park
in 1902.
Steele became the park's first concessionaire,
but early tent villages he set up did not match
his grand dreams for the area.
In 1909, he teamed up with a Portland developer
to build a lodge on the rim of Crater Lake.
The lodge would open some five years later, but
the construction never really ended.
The next 60 years would be a long misadventure
of patching and repairing a crumbling monolith.
The lodge's problems stem from, you know, the
typical business failure reason is undercapitalization.
The concessionaire who became involved with it
didn't have enough money.
He didn't know what he was into, so not enough
money to start with.
A very short construction season, even when it
was underway, conspired to produce a lodge that
was dramatically under built.
It took forever to be completed.
It was continuously under construction, back
from the time of World War I on through the
1920s into the 1930s.
It was in varying stages of construction, and
it was never actually really completed.
A tattered building was not enough to keep it
from becoming a very special place to the
people of the Northwest.
The lodge provided accommodations next to one
of the world's true wonders.
Russell Sadler's connection with the lodge
began in 1965, when he came to Crater Lake and
spent a summer as a wine steward in the lodge's
dining room.
You worked from 7 in the morning, 9:30 at night.
There were little breaks during the day, but,
you know, resort life hasn't changed.
You work day and night.
The lodge is the key to access to the lake,
particularly the kind of time you need to spend
to get a sense of this place.
Eventually, even its extraordinary location was
not enough.
By the 70s and 80s, the structural problems
were beginning to add up, and Crater Lake was
in danger of losing its historic lodge.
The lodge is a pretty old building, and as time
went by, it would kind of move and creak and
Groan with the snow in the winter,
and it was getting so heavy on the roof that it
was kind of flattening out the building, and
the walls were bowing out.
It was a decrepit, old derelict. It was in
really sorry shape.
It was not an option to simply restore the old
lodge as it existed.
It was already being held up by wire rope and cables.
Crater Lake Lodge had become unsafe and was
facing demolition in 1984.
There would be no lodge today were it not for a
local public outcry that led to its complete reconstruction.
Like at Timberline, it was the will and
determination of the people of Oregon that came
to the rescue.
At the head of this campaign was the Historic
Preservation League of Oregon and Eric Eisman.
We ended up with over 4,000 testimonials,
postcards, letters that just came flooding into
the office
from people telling us about their experiences
at the lodge and why those experiences were
important in their lives.
So, armed with that information, we went back
to the National Park Service and said, look at
this. This is unanimous support.
The Park Service got the message and in 1991,
Congress funded a rehabilitation
that would finally make the original idea of
Crater Lake Lodge a reality.
The first thing we did was identify the
character defining features of the Historic lodge
and we decided to retain all of those character
defining features in the rehabilitation.
There was a combination of reconstruction,
rehabilitation, and restoration.
So, it was a combination of all those three
elements that came together with the lodge.
From the outside, the new lodge looks just like
the old.
But inside, it's a modern hotel, which
preserves many of the original's features.
The stone fireplace, which is a historic
element and a character defining feature in the
dining room and in the great hall,
were identified and numbered before we took
them down, each individual stone, and then
those were put aside again
and then once ready, they were put back exactly
as they were.
Other elements include the log handling inside
and those are actually segments of large logs
that were cut
and placed as a finished material on the inside
of the lobby, the great hall, and the dining room.
Another major element is the historic stair
inside the great hall and it was a peeled log stair.
We used the major log components to use in the
reconstruction of the stair.
The lodge's central great hall forms a natural
meeting area where people can relax, read a book,
or wait for a table in the grand dining room.
The new lodge opened in 1995 and unlike the
original, it is built to last.
The most popular gathering area is the large
terrace balcony that faces the rim.
It's the perfect place for watching the sunset
or sunrise with a cup of coffee.
Staying in lodges is a great thing to do
because they're such an important part of our history
and a part of what made this country these
great places that we have that are so valuable
and to be cherished.
You know, I think the scale of it is what sort
of surprises you most.
I didn't expect it to be quite this big and the
blue of the water, which everybody talks about,
it's magnificent.
John and Mary Jane Toohey have visited several
lodges throughout America,
but this is their first trip to Crater Lake.
Ahoy, welcome aboard.
They've chosen to take the hour and a half long
boat tour that traverses the lake
and points out the major features of the crater.
Here we get to get inside a volcano, see how it
was formed,
and it continues to shape the landscape here
and maybe get some clues about what might
happen next.
Here's Wizard Island.
Wizard Island is a cinder cone volcano in the
remnants of the collapsed volcano that we call
Mount Mazama.
Probably formed soon after the collapse of
Mount Mazama, maybe within the first few
hundred years.
Today it stands about 764 feet above the level
of Crater Lake.
We're about to see the oldest rock exposed
anywhere within the caldera.
It's 400,000 years old, and we call it the
Phantom Ship.
The Phantom Ship is an enormous ancient rock.
Its trees belie the harshness of life in the crater.
The little one on the end is over 100 years old.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special treat
for you coming up here.
The log that you see floating in the water
ahead and just a little bit to the right of the
boat is called the Old Man of the Lake.
It's a piece of mountain hemlock about 40 feet
long, most of it under the water obviously,
floating vertically.
This log has been floating vertically around in
the lake for at least 100 years and maybe much
longer than that.
Apparently the sap sealed the wood in such a
way that it can't become waterlogged and sink
to the bottom.
It's a freak of nature.
It always helps, I think, to be taken out by an
expert, so he was awfully good.
Seeing that 40-foot tree floating vertically in
the water was remarkable.
And to think that it moved six miles here in
the last three days or so, that's something you
don't see in Chicago very often.
Almost 100 years after William Steele's vision
of Crater Lake National Park became a reality,
the park is thriving beyond his wildest dreams.
Today, it's visited by nearly a half a million
people annually and is one of the most popular
parks in the Pacific Northwest.
Areas like this are international treasures.
They're unique and they're pristine and they're
preserved for the education and scientific
study and the enjoyment of the public.
I think all of us have a share in a common
heritage and that heritage is our natural
resources base and it's also our cultural and
historic resource base.
And that's why Crater Lake is such an important
place because it's part of our birthright that
needs protecting.
Today, Crater Lake Lodge stands in its final
glory, the elegant idea of a bygone era.
While the historic structure no longer bears
the ragged signs of aging, the heart of the
lodge remains the same.
It is still a wonder of man perched on the edge
of a wonder of nature.
I think the greatest gift that you get from
Crater Lake is the opportunity to sit at this
lodge, rocking chair out on the porch,
and contemplate this place and realize how
insignificant human beings really have been.
Explore the Great Lodges of the National Parks
and download a screensaver at PBS online. Set
your browser to PBS.org.
The entire four-part series, Great Lodges of
the National Parks, is available on
videocassette or DVD. The companion book to the
series is also available to order.
Call PBS home video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
Production of Great Lodges of the National
Parks was brought to you in part by M.J.
Murdoch Charitable Trust.
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.
And by contributions to your PBS station from
viewers like you. Thank you.
This is PBS.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God, I just look so ugly.
I thought it was going to be fun.
This is our dinner.
Quit your whining. It's not attractive.
Kind of wishing you guys would kick us off.
Find out why the good old days weren't on the
PBS series Frontier House.
Coming in August on KLRU.
And now, a KLRU local one-minute egg.
(music playing)
Watch Egg the Art Show Fridays at 10:30 p.m. on KLRU.
Coming soon, an all-star bluegrass celebration.
With Ricky Skaggs. Vince Gill.
Allison Kraus and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas.
Earl Scruggs. Ralph Stanley. Patty Lovelace.
Travis Tritt. The Del McCurry Band.
Dan Tominski. Nickel Creek.
Bruce Hornsby. And a tribute to Bill Monroe.
Friday, August 16th at 8 p.m.
I'm Rick Steves.
Join me for a special three-hour adventure,
Exotic Europe.
We'll meet some mountaintop kings and gods.
And watch a little oil wrestling in eastern Turkey.
Learn a traditional folk dance in Bulgaria.
And discover a hidden mountain monastery.
We'll be serenaded by Sicilian market mongers.
And explore a secluded Greek temple.
Tuesday, August 13th at 9 p.m.
My name is Vito Carbone.
I'm a regional manager for Wells Fargo Bank.
And a KLRU Board of Director member.
In 1962, I was a young lad running around the
streets of New York.
Instead of being at home watching public television.
And all the benefits it provides our youth.
Please take advantage of what KLRU can do for
you and your family.
And ask yourself, where were you when KLRU went
on the air?
KLRU, celebrating 40 years in Central Texas.
Welcome to the future.
PBS Digital.
It's the deepest crack in the Earth's crust.
The river made it.
But humans reshape it.
It harbors the spirits of ancestors.
The garbage of idiots.
And the power to light up Vegas.
It's not just another pretty view.
Join us now as we explore the layers of
conflict within the Grand Canyon.
A Naked Planet special.
This program was made possible by contributions
to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
Deep in the heart of the desert southwest lies
one of the world's most amazing marvels.
It's over a mile from top to bottom.
It's hundreds of miles long.
But you wouldn't even know it's there.
It's the most beautiful place in the world.
It's over a mile from top to bottom.
It's hundreds of miles long.
But you wouldn't even know it was there.
Until you were right on top of it.
The Grand Canyon.
If there's anything the Grand Canyon gives you
a sense of, it's a sense of space.
It's just something, it's what we like to call
in the business is canyon magic.
Many, many people come to the Grand Canyon and
they look at the wonderful geology and it is a
wonderful textbook for geology.
But it's also a wonderful textbook for human history.
The Grand Canyon is our relative, our
grandmother earth.
And our ancestors are still here.
The spirits of our ancestors are still here.
Recently I came across this really wonderful
quote by a great Grand Canyon geologist of the
last century.
His name is Clarence Dutton.
And Dutton wrote, dimension at Grand Canyon
means nothing to the senses.
And all we are left with is a troubled sense of immensity.
And I like that idea, a troubled sense of immensity.
At times I feel very special at the Grand Canyon.
And mostly I feel very insignificant.
And it makes me ponder what is my place on this
planet earth.
And I have a feeling that I'm never going to
figure it out.
The Grand Canyon is the most famous natural
wonder on the face of the planet.
In places it's 18 miles across and up to a mile deep.
It snakes its way between Lake Mead in the west
and Lake Powell to the east.
A 277 mile long open wound carved deep into the
earth's crust.
For scientists, a journey into its depths is a
rare chance to peer back into the early history
of the planet.
For most of us, it's simply the size of the
canyon that makes it an irresistible place of pilgrimage.
But one response to these feelings has been
man's urge to control and dominate the canyon
and its river.
Since it was first invaded during the days of
the Wild West, its waters have been damned,
its walls blasted away, and its depths flooded
in the name of progress.
Yet the more we learn about the canyon, the
more it seems that whatever we do to change it,
the canyon may yet be too big to be tamed.
The obvious question is why do people feel the
urge and the necessity to come to the Grand Canyon?
They've seen pictures, they've heard about it,
why do they want to come here?
And I guess the simple answer is there is no
other scenic spectacle like it on the earth.
There is no other canyon that even comes close
to what the Grand Canyon is all about.
In 1903, champion of the great outdoors,
President Theodore Roosevelt,
declared the Grand Canyon a great sight that
every American should see.
From that moment on, the canyon's fate as a
tourist destination was sealed.
The Grand Canyon is in the western part of the
United States, in the state of Arizona.
You can easily find it if you look for the
Colorado River, which begins up here in
northern Colorado,
runs down through Utah and Arizona to the
Mexican border, and finally into the Gulf of California.
This of course refers to the fact that it is a
very big canyon, and canyon is defined as a
deep valley.
Five million people visit each year, and for
the vast majority the encounter centers on the
South Rim,
from where everyone takes pictures.
However crowded the experience still leaves an
indelible impression on all who confront it.
I feel that connection with God because I can
see the Majesty of this unbelievable sight,
and you can just wonder what else is there, and
the other planets and the stars.
It's a step to the universe, a greater being.
Something that the indigenous peoples who've
lived here for 1000s of years learned many
centuries ago.
The Hualapai Indians are just one of several
Native American groups who believe that their
ancestors were created here.
This is Spirit Mountain to the southwest of the
main canyon. To the Hualapai, it's the place
where the world began.
Spirit Mountain is the place of our creation.
The Grand Canyon is a part of the territory
there within this area,
and the canyons, that's why it's so significant
to us because this is where our creator sent us
to live,
and he gave us the water, he gave us the
plants, and he gave us the animals to survive
off of.
He taught us this, and he taught us to be good,
and it's a lot like what the Bible says.
That's why Spirit Mountain is so important.
These markings carved into the rock are
literally the Hualapai's history written in stone.
They tell of a flood that covered the world,
and how the creator sent word to dig a huge
hole to drain the land,
and how, as the waters receded, they left
behind Hia Tarta, the backbone of the world,
the Grand Canyon.
This history is real to us, and this is our
history through the rocks, and this is what the
writings are about.
They usually tell us where the springs are,
what the landscape is like, the dangers and trails,
and where the canyons are, and if it's going to
be a difficult travel or not.
The Hualapai's creation story has echoes in the
scientific version of events.
The formation of something as large and
spectacular as the canyon
was the result of powerful and violent events
involving fire and flood.
Combined forces, which over millions of years
have peeled back and exposed these bands of
colored rock,
are elements that not only give the canyon its
unique appearance, but reveal vital clues as to
how it was formed.
One of the real keys to appreciate the Grand
Canyon is the variety of rock, the variety of
strata that we see here.
If you look out here, even without knowing the
names of rocks, you can see the bottom of the
Grand Canyon is very distinctive.
We call it the inner gorge. It's made out of a
couple of types of rocks we call igneous and metamorphic.
The upper part of the Grand Canyon, the upper
three quarters, very, very distinctly layered.
The 9 bands of rock that make up the top layers
of the central canyon are limestone and sandstone,
laid down between 250 and 850 million years ago.
At the canyon's deepest, within its inner
gorge, lie rocks which are evidence of a
totally different world,
so ancient that life, even in its most
primitive form, had not yet begun to evolve.
These rocks are the remains of a once huge
volcanic mountain range formed 1.8 billion
years ago.
If you really want to simply state why this
canyon is so very special to the planet Earth,
from the very bottom of the Grand Canyon to the
very top, we have here in one vertical mile
just about every type of rock you could
possibly imagine. It doesn't get any better
than this.
How these rocks came to be exposed is the
result of two incredible feats of geology which
formed the canyon.
The Grand Canyon lays within the Colorado Plateau.
Once the bed of an ancient sea, this entire
area is now 7,000 feet above sea level.
How do you get a bunch of rock at 7,000 feet?
Particularly rock that was formed in a warm
water sea environment.
It's due to an extraordinary event known as uplift.
When we're talking about the uplifting of a
continent, we're talking about the entire
Colorado Plateau.
The powerful forces of uplift occur when one
continental plate meets another.
One of them has to give and is forced downward
into molten magma below the Earth's crust,
where the solid rock is melted.
This cooking deep in the Earth creates intense
pressure beneath the surface plate, forcing it upwards.
So you have an uplifting of this entire
Colorado Plateau feature area.
And as it uplifts, it happens over a long, slow
period of time.
And it uplifts that rock from sea level to over
7,000 feet.
And in some areas when we're talking about
Colorado Rockies, we're talking about it
uplifting over 12,000 feet.
Over a period of five million years as the
plateau lifted, the Colorado River working
under gravity
and trying to find sea level worked against it,
slicing down through successive layers of rock.
As a result, though uplift has provided the
elevation, it's the river that has gouged out
the canyon.
The erosive power of the Colorado River is
second to none.
It's fed by a vast catchment area, including
melting snows from the immense Rocky Mountains.
Its side canyons, which lead into the main
valley, add to this by periodically funneling
even more flood water into the canyon.
During high flood, the waters have been known
to move giant boulders the size of a car.
The river's raw power tore so violently into
the Colorado Plateau after it rose up out of
the sea
that it cut the canyon out in five million
years, virtually overnight in geological terms.
As the Grand Canyon was carved, the powerful
dynamics of both river and rock uniquely
combined to affect every aspect of life here.
At the heart of a remote side canyon deep
within the southwestern stretch of the Grand
Canyon is Matwita.
It's a natural spring settled by the ancestors
of the Hualapai 600 years ago.
The Hualapai have always fiercely protected
their sacred lands in the canyon from outsiders.
Now they are being visited by a scientist who
spent his life trying to understand the
influence of the Grand Canyon on the evolution
of life here.
For paleontologist Jim Mead, this investigation
is made possible by the unique way in which
caves preserve the remains of ancient,
long-extinct animals.
Caves owe their existence to the erosive power
of the Colorado River.
They make the canyon a laboratory that contains
an extraordinary story about the exotic animals
that once roamed here.
As water percolated through the limestone and
dolomite when the river was much higher than
what we see today, that water etched out the caves.
These are now available to be lived in by the
ring-tailed cat, the pack rat, the mountain
Goat, the ground sloth or people.
No one has precisely counted all the thousands
of caves in the Grand Canyon region.
Jim Mead has investigated many of them, but
here on the Hualapai reservation he is seeing
caves few people have ever visited.
For the Hualapai, caves are burial sites and
must be treated with respect.
So this is the cave.
Come here. How are you?
Jim Mead is as likely to find human remains
here as those of animals.
This is a fantastic place. You can see on the
floor back in here areas that obviously not
only people but say bighorn sheep and other
animals have lived.
The inner canyon is extremely dry and these dry
conditions in the caves result in the
extraordinary preservation of organic remains
stretching back thousands of years.
This is a warehouse of information that I see
both from the present-day ecosystem and from
the Ice Age.
Each one is definitely a museum.
This is a skull of a California condor.
What makes it very unique if you can is the dry preservation.
You can see here's the eye here where my thumb
is and the beak.
What's really unusual is the fact that we have
the keratin beak here at the end.
This is the material that usually erodes away
and this specimen is 14,000 years old.
Remains like these are not fossils where living
tissue has been turned to stone but actual bone
preserved unaltered since the last Ice Age.
Other extraordinary remains allow Mead to
reconstruct the ancient environment.
This dried out dung is 11,000 years old.
It's full of grass and other plant remains
which prove that the creature that left it here
grazed in an environment cool and wet enough to
sustain grassy savanna-like conditions.
The extinct American mammoth.
It's an unusual remain. This one dates about
11,600 years old and it's unusual in that we
have over 300 cubic meters of this mammoth dung.
Looks like it was laid yesterday and actually
if you were to moisten this down you would say
a few other things about how fresh it is too.
Totally desiccated. Totally dried it out.
Jim Mead's discoveries reveal that the climate
here must have been very different to support a
range of extinct animals.
I would have fully expected 11, 12,000 years
ago to see mammoth, herds of horses and camels
up there.
It wouldn't have looked like the Serengeti
Plain but it would have definitely been quite
different than what we see today.
Mead's work also indicates that the end of the
last ice age saw a sharp change in climate.
An increase in temperature killed off the
vegetation on which the mammoth depended, so
driving them out.
But one species more adaptable than most
survived and proliferated. Man.
Archaeological discoveries show a magnificent
culture once flourished here, a prehistoric
culture that reached a level of sophistication
greater than anywhere else in North America,
but mysteriously disappeared.
The Grand Canyon is an environment of climatic extremes.
From scorched canyon floor to the rim a mile
above, there's as much climatic variation as
you'd find on a thousand mile journey from the
deserts of California to the snowy mountains of
southern Canada.
And it's this that made the canyon a place
where Native Americans flourished.
The Hualapai can be traced back 600 years.
Their songs and prayers appease the spirits of
their ancestors and the land itself.
But they were not the first native peoples to
live here.
The canyon lands have seen ancient cultures
grow, flourish, and mysteriously disappear.
Evidence of this culture much older than the
Hualapai is being uncovered by Archaeologist
Jan Balsam within the Grand Canyon National Park.
We have recorded somewhere around 3,700
archaeological sites in the park.
We estimate that there's somewhere around
50,000 sites in the park, so we have our work
cut out for us. We have a lot to do.
This rubble is all that remains of a Pueblo, a
prehistoric Native American settlement which
dates to a time before Europeans came.
We are literally a stone's throw away from the
state highway that runs along the East Rim and
Grand Canyon National Park.
And this is a prehistoric Pueblo that was
occupied somewhere around a thousand years ago
by the ancestral Puebloan people.
Some folks know them as the Anasazi.
At the height of their occupation, the Anasazi
ranged throughout the canyon.
The nearby ruined Pueblo of Mesa Verde was
begun 1,200 years ago, proof of a culture whose
architecture displays a sophistication
unequaled anywhere else in prehistoric North America.
The Anasazi were also among the earliest in
North America to adopt agriculture, using
maize, beans, and squash crops developed by the
great pyramid builders of Mexico.
The unique environmental characteristics of the
Grand Canyon helped them to do this.
You know, the way people use the canyon is
totally tied to the formation of the canyon itself.
If you look at the way the rims are and how
people were using it down into the river, there
is a definite correlation between how people
were living and the canyon itself.
I mean, they really, in a lot of ways, became
one with the canyon, knowing exactly when to
move, how to move, and were totally in sync
with the environment and the geology and the
plant life and the animal life.
The folks who were living here were very, very successful.
But being farmers didn't mean ancient Indians
were tied to one place. Making use of climatic
variations also led to a nomadic existence.
In winter, they stayed deep within the canyon,
which provided warmth and protection.
Fertile soils brought by seasonal floods on the
Colorado River made shorelines ideal for
growing crops.
In the summer, the top rim of the canyon
provided relief from the inferno of the inner gorge.
The land itself has always been in control
here, but play by the rules and the canyon can
be very bountiful.
You're almost 5,000 feet in elevation and
plants become available at different times of
the year.
The animals use different elevational levels as
you go down to the river and back up again.
So folks really did have a pretty good grocery
store, really.
Just how prosperous prehistoric occupiers were
is hinted at by the range and quantity of
artifacts found within archaeological sites
connected to the canyon.
Well, let's see. We've got quite a little
assortment of artifacts here.
Everything from pieces of pottery to pieces of
chip stone that would have been used to make
projectile points or arrowheads, scrapers,
knives, all sorts of things like that.
There's a small piece of decorated pottery.
There's not enough of the design here to see,
but there's some small black lines on top of a
white slip.
This would have been the inside of a bowl, it
looks like. Probably was made around 1050 A.D..
A lot of the corrugated pieces, folks would be
making pottery and they'd be rolling out clay
in their hands and then they'd sort of build it
from a base up.
And one of the neat things about these is that
you can still see the fingernail impressions
where they'd roll the clay out and build their pots.
They were very good potters. I mean, you're
looking at things that are a thousand years old.
But around 800 years ago, the Anasazi suddenly
disappeared from the canyon. The exact reasons
are still a mystery.
The arrival of competing tribes and even
cannibalism have been claimed as contributing factors.
But what is certain is that a significant
change in climate happened at that time.
Evidence suggests that temperatures soared, the
desert expanded and crops withered, driving the
Anasazi away, just as it had the mammoths
10,000 years before them.
After the Anasazi disappeared, roaming bands of
hunters moved in.
But when Europeans eventually confronted the
canyon, it was seen as nothing but an obstacle
to their progress.
We have other figures in our history that have
looked at this as an utterly profitless place,
believing that they would be the first and the
last to see any profit from this place and to
ever visit here.
Yet we go back again and look at the
prehistoric record and we know that people were
living here for maybe as many as 10,000 years.
They didn't see this as a barrier.
In 1540, Spanish conquistadors moving up from
Mexico spent a week attempting to find a
crossing point and gave up in despair.
For them, this hole in the earth was too vast,
the landscape too baffling.
For hundreds of years after, the place that's
now a mecca for tourists was avoided completely.
By the mid-1800s, the Grand Canyon was still
one of the last uncharted regions in the entire
United States.
But with westward expansion, the race to map
and survey the region at last opened up the canyon.
In 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran named
John Wesley Powell became the first person to
lead an expedition through the canyon by boat.
Powell's three-month journey into the unknown
took the lives of three men, but in doing so,
placed the Grand Canyon into the hearts and
minds of America.
By the beginning of the 20th century, in the
wake of Roosevelt's endorsement, the invasion
of the canyon was well advanced.
The Grand Canyon changed forever.
This is Lee's Ferry. Located at the eastern
upstream end of the canyon, it's the only place
along its entire length where the river is
directly accessible.
In the days of the Wild West, it became a ferry
point. A settlement grew up here, and the
remains of this outpost are still visible,
abandoned since the 1920s.
Today, Lee's Ferry has been reborn because of a
challenge that has thrilled people since the
days of John Wesley Powell.
Running the mighty rapids of the Colorado.
Commercial river running began in the early 50s.
Trips were undertaken during periods of high
flood waters, making river running a high-risk
thrill ride.
Confronting the might of the Colorado had a
powerful impact on all who took part.
River runners like Stacey Woodard are the
latest in a proud tradition.
My roots are down here. My third
great-grandfather is John D. Lee, who was named
after this place that we're at right now.
The passage of time has done nothing to lessen
the impact the experience has on the
present-day generation.
This is my life. I dream about it in the
wintertime, the off-season.
You can talk to every boatman on this beach
right now, and I pretty much guarantee it that
they would say the same thing.
Some people say that the Grand Canyon, the
Colorado River, has changed their lives, and
that's very, very rewarding for me to hear that.
(music playing)
You don't conquer the Colorado. The Colorado
River is in charge.
(music playing)
Every once in a while it'll give you a break
now and then, but if you try to beat the
Colorado River, it's futile.
(music playing)
Rather than a view from the rim a mile above,
many prefer to see the canyon close up.
For them, river running is the ultimate way to
experience it.
Good to see you.
When he was young, Larry Sanderson was among
the first to mount expeditions, and to this day
finds the draw of the river a powerful one.
I hate to see these boats leave without me on them.
When you're down there in the canyon, you see
the river, the canyon walls, and everything
else is just gone.
You just have a complete isolation, and there's
the beauty.
The things that are so dear to you in the
outside world, completely gone from you, and
you just be engrossed in that canyon.
River running the Colorado is now big business,
experienced by over 25,000 people a year.
Have a great trip.
It has turned experiencing the Grand Canyon
into a fully interactive sport.
But the Grand Canyon is no theme park.
The ecology of the canyon, always a fine and
delicate balance, is only made all the more
precarious by human intrusion.
Many creatures have suffered as a direct result
of the invasion of the canyon.
And here at the Vermilion Cliffs, just two
miles downstream of Lee's Ferry, one species
more than any other has been brought to the
brink of extinction.
The Californian condor sailed the thermals
above the Grand Canyon centuries before any
human set foot in it.
For at least 40,000 years, it adapted to
climatic upheavals and survived the Ice Age.
Then the white man came, and within the space
of 80 years, it had been hunted almost to extinction.
By 1982, only 22 birds remained.
Facing total annihilation, they were all
captured and placed in protective custody.
Only time would tell if they would survive.
The condor was reintroduced into the canyon in 1996.
It's too early to tell if their future is assured.
Sean Ferry is the field leader of the Condor
Recovery Program.
He's responsible for nurturing the birds
through the critical first few years of adjustment.
It's a pretty unique opportunity that we can so
quickly try and counteract something that was
ultimately man's fault, if you will.
We're looking for our moat area, since most of
their problems were related to humans.
Are they all here? Yeah, we've got eight up
here at the carcass.
Condors grow up slowly. It takes them five
years to reach maturity.
They need space and seclusion, and the canyon
plays a crucial role.
Searching for food, the birds use the canyon as
an aerial highway.
Riding the strong thermals, they execute round
trips of anything up to 600 miles in less than
four days.
Tagged with radio transmitters before their
release, monitoring the birds' movements is a
daily ritual.
Even so, it's rare to see them up close, and
rarer still to find these solitary birds in
large numbers.
But Ferry and colleague Kirsty Bly are lucky.
A fresh carcass is a powerful draw for a
species that does not itself hunt to eat.
They're strictly scavengers. They're carrion
feeders. They don't feed on anything unless
it's dead.
They're a social bird. They work together. It
benefits the individual to work as a group.
One bird finds a carcass 10 miles away and
circles over it in classic vulture fashion.
The rest of them key in on that behavior and
all go over and feed.
14's still there though.
Whoever that other unknown bird is, it may be
27 because there's no other transmitter coming
from this location.
We keep very close tabs on the birds. They're
all still very young.
There's only about 150 in the world, so each
bird is extremely valuable.
We monitor them as closely as possible.
Our goal is to have a self-sufficient
population out here.
We don't want to be feeding them.
My goal is to have birds out here without
wingtags and transmitters on them.
Just being condors, breeding in the canyon,
doing what they do.
That's our ultimate goal. We don't want to have
a free-flying zoo out here.
We want condors and wild condors.
The story of the condor shows how damaging the
impact of people can be.
But the use of the Grand Canyon as more than a
place to simply relax and enjoy
has had the farthest-reaching implications for
its future.
This is a landscape created by the raw power of water.
And that power is now being harnessed by tens
of millions of people.
Las Vegas is one of the entertainment capitals
of the country.
Here, everything fake is fun.
They've even built a plastic canyon.
Most visitors remain unaware of the huge
influence the real Grand Canyon has.
On the survival of Las Vegas.
The energy to light every neon sign is derived
directly from the waters of the Colorado River
as they pour through the canyon.
Without the power supplied by the Grand Canyon,
Vegas would be a ghost town in the desert.
Not only Las Vegas, but other towns in the
region owe their presence to the canyon.
Lying at its eastern end, 40 years ago, the
town of Page didn't exist.
One of the driest environments on the face of
the planet,
it is not a place you would immediately
associate with well-manicured golf greens.
But they're here.
Today, technology means man can do whatever he wants.
Today, technology means man can impose himself
and his pursuits on the landscape,
even building golf courses in the desert.
Page and its golf course, just like Las Vegas
and its lights, exist
because of the Glen Canyon Dam.
Ten million tons of poured concrete
pinned into 700 foot sandstone cliffs.
The Glen Canyon Dam near Page was completed in 1963
and generates enough power to supply millions
of city dwellers.
It's a staggering feat of engineering.
And during the lean 1950s, provided Larry
Sanderson with a living.
From river running, he turned to high scaling.
High scalers, a special breed of men, are
needed for the canyon conquest.
Men who swing nonchalantly from their lines to
trim the high cliffs by hand.
Prying here, probing there, sending loose slabs
of rock tumbling down,
making certain the concrete structure man will build
will truly and precisely fit into tailored rock walls.
Go over the canyon wall the first time, if you
go down here and try and look over the side,
it's a little spooky.
The second time I was able to go over and maybe
look down a little bit,
but that first time, it gets you.
I was in three rock slides.
One time was tons of rock came over me
and I had swung inside of a tunnel to keep from
getting hit.
Untied off of the rope.
We had three high scalers that were killed.
So it is a danger.
You only make one mistake, high scaling.
After years of survey work and preparation,
one of the proudest moments in Sanderson's life
came with his part in the dedication ceremony
to mark the start of the dam's construction.
Right over there was where we had to blast the
first blast
for the dedication for Eisenhower to punch the
button in Washington
and then the plunger man pushed the button.
Oh, it was a great moment.
You should have seen, it filled this whole
canyon with dust as it went off.
They wanted a lot of noise and a lot of dust
and we sure did that.
The dam took ten years to complete.
As a high scaler for almost 35 years,
Larry Sanderson owes his livelihood to the Glen
Canyon Dam.
For him and thousands like him, it has brought
nothing but good.
When we first came out here, there was nothing.
Just the sheer canyon walls.
And then after we built the dam,
we got a lot of dust and we sure did that.
And then after we built the dam and the lake
started backing up,
it made a complete change from a barren desert area
to an area where recreation is so great.
And so many people can come and enjoy it now,
where before there wasn't even any roads here.
Nobody could ever come out here and see the
great beauty that we have.
Because the dam means the flow of the mighty
Colorado River is controllable,
today massive flash floods are a thing of the past,
allowing river running nearly all year round.
But constructing the Glen Canyon Dam has done
more than tame a wilderness.
Build any dam and you create a lake.
And the one behind Glen Canyon Dam is vast.
This is Lake Powell.
A 186-mile long reservoir providing water to
millions of homes
and providing one of North America's premier
boating marinas.
But its waters hide a secret sacrifice for the people.
They hide a secret sacrificed in the name of progress.
Under the waters of Lake Powell lies the old canyon.
Inserting the dam like a 300-foot thick
concrete plug
has had the effect of drowning this immense
section of canyon,
creating in its place a 600-foot deep reservoir
with a shoreline almost 2,000 miles long.
It's a playground that brings pleasure to millions.
But there are those to whom constructing the
dam has come at a heavy price.
A few sections of Glen Canyon survive the drowning,
and the vast majority was lost beneath the lake.
These sandstones are the compacted remains of
ancient desert dunes,
carved and shaped by hundreds of thousands of
years of flash floods.
Back in the 1950s, Hollywood starlet Katie Lee
spent years exploring them.
To her and her close friends, this was paradise.
I hiked in here maybe 25, almost 30 years ago
for the first time,
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I didn't think that there was a place on earth
like this,
just a big slice out of the world.
And so narrow as to be unreal.
Deep narrow-slot canyons are formed by water
rapidly eroding back
deep cracks within the sandstone,
and were especially dramatic within Glen Canyon.
I got an affinity with those particular kinds
of canyons.
I liked them a lot better than the wide-open ones.
They feel more intimate, and they feel more mysterious,
and they feel more like I'm down in the womb of God.
I'm down in the womb of Mother Earth.
But you know, what's happened is that I can't
be in these canyons anymore.
Nice place.
When I actually saw the water coming up,
when they actually flooded that place,
it just broke my heart.
There's no words for what I went through with that.
When the dam was in place, it took just 17
years to drown a canyon
that took five million to form.
The landscape has changed beyond recognition.
To me, it's just one of the great, great
blunders of humankind,
to take this incredible spot and trash it.
Today, Katie Lee belongs to a pressure group
who campaigned for the draining of Lake Powell,
a canyon now a gigantic boating marina.
When people look at that thing and they think
it is absolutely gorgeous,
I just wish that they could have some idea
of what they're racing over in these stupid
little jet skis.
There's noise.
There's nothing to compare with what it used to
be like.
You can feel the anger and water behind it,
those ugly, ugly pieces of cement that we put there.
But nature has already bitten back.
Like the canyon they flooded,
Lake Powell and its dam may not last forever.
In 1983, above average volumes of meltwater
from the Rockies
tested the Glen Canyon Dam to its limit,
and while constantly attempting to relieve pressure
and rapidly rising water levels, every
available overflow was opened.
A volume of water equivalent to the amount required
to meet the annual needs of nearly five million individuals
was forced through the tunnels in just two months.
As it did so, first concrete, then underlying sandstone,
were spat into the canyon below.
By the time the flood had subsided,
the dam had gouged these huge holes into the
spillway walls.
The dam had come close to being overrun.
To this day, the dam is waging a war with the
forces of nature.
Sandstone, the very rock within which it sits,
is by nature porous.
Today, water constantly pours into access
tunnels deep within the bowels of the dam.
Along the exterior cliff walls, it exploits any
weaknesses within the rock.
Slowly, the irresistible force of the river is
finding its way through,
and it's a process that's nothing new.
Geological research shows that the Grand Canyon
has always been subject to violent upheavals.
Perhaps sooner or later, the Colorado may one
day sweep away the Glen Canyon Dam.
How do we know? Because it's done something
like this before.
Geologist Ivo Luquita considers that here at
Taro Weep on the Grand Canyon's north rim
is the best evidence yet that in the past
amazingly violent events shaped the canyon's future
in relation to which mankind's impact is nothing.
Compared to the forces that the violent earth
has thrown up at Taro Weep,
anything humans can build is comic by comparison,
if you see things from Ivo Luquita's perspective.
That white thing that you see down there on the
river is a lava falls rapid,
which is the biggest and most fearsome rapid on
the entire Grand Canyon.
And it is really quite remarkable that where
you're standing up here on the rim,
you can barely hear the sound of this rapid.
But this rapid is in fact evidence of one of
the most spectacular geological events to have
ever hit the canyon.
The real star actually of the scene that you're
looking at are those dark rocks
that seem to be flowing down into the Grand Canyon.
And in fact it did flow. These are ancient lava
flows that went into the canyon,
a river of fire meeting a river of water.
And they basically plugged the canyon up. They
dammed it.
These lavas came from many vents, of which we
can see several.
There is one across there, across the canyon,
which has been eroded somewhat.
And there's a whole bunch more of these cinder
cones and vents throughout this region.
Like many volcanoes, cinder cones are small
mountains of ash left behind by molten lava.
Much of the Grand Canyon region is dotted with
these lava vents,
but their formation here at Toroweep is unusual.
Geological fault lines crisscross the canyon
and form when tectonic activity causes plates
of rock to split and offset.
At Toroweep, the plates of rock either side of
the fault line were then stretched apart,
allowing lava to escape up from the molten
magma beneath the earth's crust,
leaving behind the cinder cones we see today.
Five hundred thousand to a million years ago,
when these lavas were flowing into the river,
it must have been an absolutely awesome sight.
The lava spewing from such volcanic eruptions
would have created a dam twice the height of
Glen Canyon,
flooding an area three times the length of Lake Powell.
Compared to any man-made dam, the impact on the
ecology of the canyon must have been devastating.
But over a mere few thousand years, a split
second by geological standards,
the Colorado River simply eroded the lava dams away.
This canyon, this river, has experienced many,
many damming events in its history from lava
flows and other things,
and it has overcome these obstacles many times
and quite rapidly.
It means that species, the ecosystem that's in
the canyon, has evolved to cope with these
kinds of events.
So presumably the ecosystem will learn to cope
with this particular dam also.
And Glen Canyon Dam, from the geological
perspective, from the non-human perspective,
is just a mere incident, something that happens
and a twinkling of an eye and is gone.
The day might come when the dam is sitting
there, a huge concrete monolith,
and the buttresses into which the dam is built
are simply gone.
Dams made from harder stuff than concrete, dams
twice as tall and twice as thick as any
modern-day examples,
were easily swept away by the Colorado River.
The huge volume of water that had built up
drained away, tearing through the canyon in a
massive flood.
The history of the Grand Canyon shows how the
landscape reshapes and reforms,
even if to us it looks like it has always been
the same.
At five million years old, the Grand Canyon is
still a geological infant.
It's a staggering monument to nature's raw
power and beauty,
one that forces us to examine our relationship
with the planet as a whole,
a relationship that some have understood for centuries.
The Grand Canyon holds a lot of information
about the past,
but it also is important for people today to
recognize that,
for us to manage it and protect and preserve
these areas are very important for the future
of our children.
After the Grand Canyon became famous, its sheer
immensity seemed to drive people to tame it.
Yet the changes they made have done nothing to
challenge the true grandeur of the canyon,
which will remain testimony to the power of the
earth, not of humans.
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I'm Dave Pelz.
And welcome to the Dave Pelz Short Game Show on
the Golf Channel Academy.
You've caught me working on my putting again.
And it's good.
I'm glad to have you back.
I hope you enjoy the show today.
It's going to be very interesting.
We're out here at the beautiful Vineyard Knolls
Golf Course.
I'm glad to have you with us because we've got
a great show.
The show this week is on the specifics of
reference checks for developing a great putting stroke.
Now I've dealt with some putting things on
previous shows.
And there are some generic problems like
breaking down of the wrist.
About moving your body motion during the putt.
And about being focused on line.
What I call line locketness.
But I've got a special friend of mine.
Actually one of my staff.
His name is Dick Hill.
We're going to work on giving you some checks
for those generic problems in putting.
But we're also going to work on some specific
problems that I think you might have.
Now Dick Hill.
This is my good friend for many years.
I found him playing the Senior Tour a few years ago.
And I tried to convince him that nobody really
cares if he wins the Senior Tour event or not.
I wanted him to come and help me make a difference.
Help me as an instructor.
A professional teacher in our short game schools.
This man has really developed a good putting stroke.
Now Dick what I want you to do.
Welcome by the way.
I'm glad to have you.
As usual. Alright.
We're going to work on some specific problems
that we find in golfers.
We're going to talk about how they stand and
align to the hole.
How they can check where their eyes are.
We want to show where they are swinging and
hanging their arms.
And where they're swinging their arms.
We want to give you some checkpoints.
Some reference things that never change.
So that when you get to the golf course we know
you practice properly.
Rather than just practice and not get any better.
Are you ready?
I'm ready. Alright.
Let's go.
Now we're going to set up.
Let's go.
Alright now I want to set this up Dick.
I've asked Dick to simulate what we see in our
short game schools.
He's going to mock up some putting problems here.
And I want to show you.
Just imagine now this is one of my students.
And he's going to do some things.
He's going to move his body.
Body motion.
He's going to break his wrists.
Break down through impact.
And he's going to be totally focused on his
line and forget about speed.
So he might leave this short or knock it way by.
I don't know.
But Dick go ahead and give us a look here.
Actually that's.