< Old Faithful Inn Gets a Quake-Resistant Facelift

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Heard on All Things Considered

August 17, 2007 - ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

A historic American landmark is getting a facelift. Old Faithful Inn opened its doors to visitors in Yellowstone National Park in 1904. Time and the elements have taken their toll and engineers worry that one big earthquake could topple it.

So as Wyoming Public Radio's Kristin Espeland reports, workers are renovating and shoring up the Old Faithful Inn one log at a time.

KRISTIN ESPELAND: Walk into the lobby of Old Faithful Inn, look up and you can understand why people travel from all over just to see it.

Ms. SUZIE HAAS(ph) (Resident, Charlotte, North Carolina): I'm Suzie Haas. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. And it's beautiful and I'm amazed that it was built so long ago.

ESPELAND: The lobby is a warm, wooden atrium ringed by several balconies with gnarled railings. Thick, art deco carpets welcome at every entrance and a stone fireplace the size of a car takes center place. Park guide Carlos Labotta(ph) always brings groups here.

Mr. CARLOS LABOTTA (Park Guide, Old Faithful Inn): It's definitely a crown jewel of architecture in this country. And whatever we can do to keep it going for our children to come to be able to walk in here and say, wow, like most people do when they walk in through the front door. They look at the ceiling. They look at them and go, wow.

ESPELAND: Architect Robert Reamer designed Old Faithful to complement its natural setting. The materials he chose, local and abundant pines and giant stones, launched a new style, often called Parkitecture. But more than 100 years later, the exterior logs are rotting. The infrastructure reads like a history of American plumbing and wiring. And engineers determined the whole building could collapse in an earthquake. So the park service put up $30 million for the renovation in 2004 and they've almost finished.

(Soundbite of construction)

Outside the inn's east wing, a worker is dragging an arched knife across an old log, pulling up curls of bark. Leading this team of woodworking contractors is Rand Olson(ph).

Mr. RAND OLSON (Contractor): The existing logs that came out of the building were mostly unpeeled, but having the bark left on them, they don't really accept the stain.

ESPELAND: So workers are peeling thousands of logs by hand and bracing any rotten ends and then putting them back. Add to this meticulous work the fact that Old Faithful Inn lies more than a two-hours drive into the heart of the park and hours from the nearest big town.

Peter Galindo manages the project. He says they hope to be done by this summer. But a shortage of workers willing to live four days at a time in a camp onsite has pushed the project into next year. He says he hopes they finish before winter, but it isn't likely.

Mr. PETER GALINDO (Project Manager): You know, it's very difficult to do any construction here in the park because it's so remote. And then a lot of this interior work is done in the wintertime, and there's no roads open in the winter. So all your material, food, everything needs to be brought in on over-snow vehicles.

ESPELAND: Back inside the lobby, families and tour groups shuffle around with necks craned up. A little, live piano music recalls earlier days. Galindo says the renovation has turned up some surprises from those days. Under the dining room floorboards, workers found old menus offering steak dinners for less than a dollar. And on top of the inn, they found another message from the past.

Mr. GALINDO: We took down the flagpoles up on top of the inn on the widow's walk, and they have these 10-inch diameter copper globes on top. And when we removed those globes, one of them had a note in it. And it was dated as like, 1911. And it stated, I so and so and my friends so and so were here putting up these flagpoles. Hope you enjoy them. See you in heaven.

ESPELAND: Even workers in 1911 must have felt they were putting the finishing touches on a landmark.

For NPR News, I'm Kristin Espeland.

SIEGEL: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

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