The Union Pacific's Grand Loop Tour
The railroad helped bring infrastructure and tourists to national parks in the early 20th Century
America’s railroads played a major role in the development of lodging facilities in several of the western national parks. They did this in hopes of producing destinations for travelers and therefore increase their revenue.
The Northern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Great Northern Railroads developed and promoted lodging in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and Glacier National Parks.
The Union Pacific Railroad (UP) promoted travel in southern Utah and northern Arizona which will be the focus of this post.
In 1923, the UP constructed a 33-mile branch line from Lund, Utah, on its Salt Lake City-Los Angeles main line, to Cedar City, with the goal of promoting train travel to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks and Cedar Breaks National Monument in southern Utah, as well as the north rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona.
The Utah Parks Company Brings Tourists to National Parks
About the same time the spur was built, UP formed a subsidiary bus and hotel management company, the Utah Parks Company (UPC), which built hotel facilities and offered tours of the parks through a concession agreement with the National Park Service (NPS). From the Cedar City depot, the UPC took vacationers on escorted "All-Expense" tours in a fleet of buses with rollback tops.
UPC constructed lodge facilities in Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks and Cedar Breaks National Monument in 1924. The Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim was constructed in 1927. All the UPC lodges were designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who would later design the famous Ahwahnee Lodge at Yosemite.
Underwood’s rustic architecture used native materials in its construction, including logs and log slabs, rough angular stones with steel and concrete reinforcement hidden beneath.
Cedar City - “Gateway to the Parks”
Cedar City is located in southwest Utah about 250 miles south of the state capital, Salt Lake City, and 170 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada on Interstate 15. Cedar City was originally settled in late 1851 by Mormon pioneers. With its location near a major rail line, it became the “Gateway to the Parks” and was the beginning and the ending point on the Grand Loop Tour.
In 1919, supported by the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce, the El Escalante Hotel was built with locally made brick. In 1923, the hotel was purchased by the UP to accommodate tourists wishing to explore the Grand Loop Tour. It hosted thousands of visitors a year, including movie stars such as Harry Fonda, John Wayne, Olivia deHavilland and Roddy McDowell and President Warren G. Harding.
The hotel was named "El Escalante" in honor of Friar Escalante who had traversed the region in 1776. It not only served as a hotel but as community event space and as dorms for pilot trainees during World War II.
After the UP purchased the El Escalante Hotel in 1923, they built the Cedar City Railroad Depot across the street from the hotel.
With the decline of rail travel, the hotel was sold to the city in the late 1950s. In August 1971 it was sold to a private entity who sadly demolished it. The railroad depot was closed in 1959. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It currently houses storefronts for several local businesses.
Next Time
In the next post, we’ll begin the Grand Loop Tour and visit Cedar Breaks National Monument and the historic lodge that was demolished but the public outcry about its demise helped save and preserve the lodges of Zion, Bryce Canyon and North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Cedar Breaks is a hidden gem.
I had the privilege of working as an interpretive ranger at Cedar Breaks last summer, and became enthralled then with the Utah Park Company history. The Homestead State Park museum in
Cedar City has wonderful displays of the that history. I'll look forward to your future stories before commenting further. Other than to say I enjoyed giving a guided walk to part of the site of the Cedar Breaks Lodge; I entitled the walk "Magical History Tour". Unfortunately, bad monsoonal weather nixed many of the walks.
Gosh Jan, this is wonderful. This is the story of my origins! Thanks so much.