Old Faithful Inn

The inn was Robert Reamer's first important building, and he was twenty-nine when he took the commission. Some forty craftsmen built most of it in the winter of 1903 and 1904, cutting lodgepole pine about four miles south of the site and using volcanic rhyolite for the great chimney, and it opened on June 1, 1904, within sight of the geyser it was named for. Reamer meant the lobby to feel like the forest the logs came from. It rises seventy-six and a half feet to the ceiling, about the height of a grown lodgepole, ringed by balconies with railings of gnarled branches, and he had the electric lights made to look like candlesticks. Wings were added in 1913 and 1927.

The building has been tested twice. The Hebgen Lake earthquake of August 1959 shook the original section, the Old House, off its foundation and damaged its chimneys; the inn closed early that season and reopened the next summer. On September 7, 1988, the North Fork fire reached the Upper Geyser Basin and burned cabins and smaller buildings nearby. Firefighters, roof sprinklers installed the year before and a shift in the wind saved the inn.

It was made a National Historic Landmark in 1987, and a restoration begun in 2004 brought the lobby closer to Reamer's original design. The lobby is open to anyone, guest or not, during the summer season.