A log hotel with a lobby 76.5 feet tall, built through one Yellowstone winter

Logs cut by hand, dragged in by horses, and a lobby 76.5 feet tall.

By Made Over Weekend · 3 min read

In 1902 the Yellowstone Park Association went looking for money to build a new hotel near Old Faithful geyser. The Northern Pacific Railroad paid, and the job went to Robert Reamer, a self-taught architect based in San Diego. Construction started in June 1903, and the Old Faithful Inn opened on June 1, 1904.

That is 13 months, and one of them was a long winter that The Henry Ford museum describes as particularly bitter. About 40 skilled craftsmen came in from Montana towns such as Gardiner, Livingston and West Yellowstone to do the work. A temporary sawmill was set up a few miles away, and a Livingston blacksmith named George Colpitts forged the iron hardware by hand.

How it was built

Reamer used what the park had. The foundation is rhyolite stone from the Yellowstone caldera, and the walls are local lodgepole pine. Ruth Quinn described to NPR how the timber arrived.

The wood was cut by hand, dragged here behind horses.

Ruth Quinn, to NPR

Inside, the lobby rises 76.5 feet to the roof, wrapped in balconies. The posts are whole lodgepole trunks, and the brackets that hold the beams are thick branches left on at Y shaped angles. Reamer sent men into the forest to find twisted, knotted wood for the railings and stairways, so no two pieces look alike. In the middle stands the stone fireplace, 15 by 15 feet at its base, with eight hearths, rising 41 feet.

The original part of the inn, now called the Old House, had 140 log walled rooms. A night cost 4 dollars. The National Park Service says it is considered the largest log structure in the world, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. On September 7, 1988, wildfire reached the area, and the inn came through with only minor damage while firefighters soaked it with water.

What it teaches a weekend woodworker

The lesson is in those branches. Reamer's crews did not fight the shape of the wood. They looked for a fork that already did the job of a bracket and put it where it fit. You can do the same at home with a forked branch from a fallen tree. Pick one that is dry and sound, peel the bark, and sand off the rough spots. Trim the fork so one arm sits flat against a board, drill pilot holes and screw it on from behind. Hang the board on the wall, screwed into studs, and you have a coat rack that no store sells.

Start small: one branch, one board, one Saturday morning. Once you see how good a crooked piece of wood looks in a clean frame, you will start looking at every fallen tree differently. Pick a simple plan, cut carefully, and let the wood do some of the talking.