Painted Desert Community Complex

This cluster of low, flat-roofed buildings looks nothing like the park's pueblo-revival landmarks, and that is the point. Built in the early 1960s under the Park Service's Mission 66 program, the Painted Desert Community Complex brought crisp modernism to the high desert, its visitor center and concessions designed by the firm of Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander. It gathered services near the new interstate interchange as Route 66 gave way to I-40. Listed as a historic district in 2005, it stands as a rare, intact example of midcentury national-park modernism in the Southwest.

What the plaque says

Historic District. This property has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior, 2005.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petrified Forest National Park — 7.7 mi
  Two hundred million years turned to stone — and a Route 66 ghost
• Holbrook — 24 mi
  A Santa Fe railroad town once too tough for women and churches, now the seat of Navajo County, gateway to the Petrified Forest, and home to the concrete teepees of the Wigwam Motel.

More markers nearby

• Painted Desert Inn — 1.2 mi
• The Painted Desert — 1.2 mi
• Summer Solstice Marker — 6.5 mi
• Newspaper Rock Petroglyphs — 7.4 mi