Union Pacific Dining Hall

As tourism blossomed during the first decades of the twentieth century, the Union Pacific Railroad sought better ways to accommodate travelers by building restaurants and pavilions architecturally similar to the monumental lodges rising in national parks. Acclaimed architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, whose mastery of the Rustic style set the standard for national park architecture, designed this dining lodge for Union Pacific. Completed in 1926 as an intermediate project while Underwood was designing the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, the lodge used wood and welded tuff in grand harmony with the landscape, with a Rustic style that echoed the famed hotel. Its multi-level interior and mammoth walk-in fireplaces were characteristic of Underwood’s designs, and it is significant as part of a national collection of his work and as a rare surviving railroad dining hall built to mimic park architecture.

West Yellowstone, Montana · United States