Bright Angel Lodge is located in the Historic Rim District of Grand Canyon National Park, approximately 6 miles from the South Entrance Station and approximately 26 miles from the East Entrance Station. The closest town is Tusayan, Arizona, approximately 7 miles away.
| Bright Angel Transportation Desk Hours (928) 638-3283 | |
|---|---|
| March – October | 5:00am – 8:00pm |
| November | 6:00am – 7:00pm |
| December – February | 6:00am – 6:00pm |
Check-in time: after 4pm
Check-out time: 11am
Children 16 and under stay free.
Cancellation policy is 2 days prior to arrival date.
Click here for a list of facilities & services at Bright Angel Lodge
♦ Elevation – 7,000 feet at the South Rim. 2,500 feet at Phantom Ranch.
♦ PHONE NUMBERS & WEBSITES
| RESERVATIONS | LOCAL CONTACT INFORMATION | WEBSITES |
|---|---|---|
| (888) 29-PARKS (888) 297-2757 From outside U.S. (303) 297-2757 | Phone: (928) 638-2631 Fax: (928) 638-2876 Transportation Desk: (928) 638-3283 Maximum # of rooms bookable by CRes at any one property is 9. If guest is booking more than 9 rooms at the same property, they must contact group sales. Lodging Group Sales – best method is to contact via email at groups-gcsr@xanterra.com Lodging Group Sales phone: (800) 843-8723 FIT Email: fit-gcsr@xanterra.com FIT Reservations: (800) 376-6629 | www.grandcanyonlodges.com www.nps.gov/grca |
♦ GPS COORDINATES & ADDRESSES
♦ FORMS OF PAYMENT, TAXES, SURCHARGES, COMMISSION
| FORMS OF PAYMENT | TAXES | UTILITY SURCHARGE | TRAVEL AGENT COMMISSION | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit card Cash Travelers’ check | Rooms | 6.9% effective 1/1/15 | Included in room rate | 0% – non-commissionable Commission policy |
| Food | 6.9% effective 1/1/15 | |||
| Gifts | 6.9% effective 1/1/15 | |||
♦ PROPERTY INFORMATION
| 1 main lodge building 1 floor | Front desk, transportation desk, gift shop, history room, Arizona Room, Harvey House Cafe |
| 2 Standard motel buildings 1 floor | Guest rooms Located west of main lodge building |
| 1 Rim Cabin building 1 floor Mix of duplex/quadplex units | Guest rooms Located northwest of main lodge building |
| 15 Historic Cabin buildings 1 floor Mix of duplex/quadplex units | Guest rooms Located southwest of main lodge building |
| 1 Red Horse Cabin Suite building 1 floor | Guest room Located southwest of main lodge building |
| Total # of rooms | 90 rooms, made up of: 37 standard rooms No ADA rooms |
| Pet Policy | No pets allowed in any rooms, Service Dogs only. |
| Gun Policy | Guns are not allowed at Bright Angel Lodge. |
| Minimum Age for Check-in | Guest must be 18 years of age or older, or emancipated, to check in to a room. |
Where is Bright Angel Lodge?
Bright Angel Lodge History
Bright Angel Lodge is a complex of cabins and motel buildings surrounding a central lodge building. Although the majority of these buildings were designed by Mary Jane Colter, the first accommodation at the location was actually a cabin built in 1890 by Buckey O’Neill.
Around the same time, in 1896, James Thurber ran a stagecoach line from the Grandview area to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and built a small wood-frame hotel to accommodate guests. Thurber later acquired the O’Neill cabin and expanded the lodging operation, establishing a tent camp for tourists and calling the complex the Bright Angel Hotel and the Bright Angel Camps.
In September, 1901, Thurber sold the Bright Angel operation to Williams, Arizona hotelier Martin Buggeln, in time for the Grand Canyon Railroad to be completed to the South Rim. The railroad, which claimed most of the lands at the South Rim, including the Bright Angel site, cooperated with Buggeln while the railroad’s El Tovar Hotel was being built immediately to the east of the Bright Angel Hotel, then bought out Buggeln when the new hotel was completed in 1905. The railroad renovated the Bright Angel Hotel and built cabins to replace the tents at Bright Angel Camps. In contrast to the lodgings at the El Tovar, which were marketed as a destination hotel, the Bright Angel facilities were aimed at a middle-class market.
During this same time period, the Red Horse Station was built as a stage coach stop about 16 miles south of the South Rim. When the railroad was extended to the South Rim, Ralph Cameron disassembled the post and moved it to the South rim and rebuilt it just to the west of the Buckey O’Neill Cabin in 1902, adding a wood frame second floor to the log first floor and calling it Cameron’s Hotel. From 1907 to 1935, the Red Horse Cabin served as the Post Office for the newly termed Grand Canyon Village.
By the 1930s, the Bright Angel operation needed renovation. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which owned the Grand Canyon Railroad and the South Rim concessions, asked architect Mary Colter to design a replacement. Colter’s initial designs resembled her Hermit’s Rest and Lookout Studio structures, both located nearby. The Park Service did not approve of such extensive use of stone for the new lodgings, and Colter revised the design to wood frame construction. Colter kept the Buckey O’Neill Cabin and the Red Horse Cabin (removing its incongruous second floor) and replaced the tent cabins with new rustic cabins of log and local stone construction, completed in 1935. Colter took particular pains to integrate the new complex into the landscape.
Today’s Bright Angel Lodge opened to the public on July 22, 1935. An article in The Hotel Monthly in December 1936, mentions that:
… extraordinary pains were taken to preserve the trees and the native shrubs and flowers. Also that most of the buildings are linked with pergolas, or covered ways … The plat of Bright Angel Lodge and Cabins…has back of it a most unusual story. It was first designed to scale in toy form by Miss M.E.J. Colter, the toy covering a table over 6 feet long, every building shown on the plat fashioned in the particular style of architecture, and colored to show the stone, weathered logs or adobe of its construction; and every tree was also shown in the model.
Such attention to detail was a hallmark for Mary Colter’s work, one reason that no structure designed by Colter, erected by the Santa Fe, and managed by the Fred Harvey Company at Grand Canyon has ever been torn down. Several additions to the central services building (the soda fountain and Arizona Steak House to the east) were made in succeeding years in a style sympathetic to Colter’s, but the lodge’s main building and all of the eclectic cabins designed by Colter still complement the landscape in the heart of the Grand Canyon Village. The lodge, along with many of the village’s other early buildings, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.