The day the music stopped in the Grand Canyon Lodge

It was 1981 when Jan Balsom spent her 23rd birthday in the Grand Canyon Lodge.

The large stone and wood structure sat on the edge of Bright Angel Canyon, overlooking the red-rock ravine below. People came from all around the world to recline in its wooden deck chairs and rock gently as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.

It was in the lodge’s auditorium where Balsom learned how to country swing dance.

At the time, she was a graduate student at Arizona State University, unsure of what to do with her life. She came to the Grand Canyon for a project, and it changed her life.

“I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. How in the world could there be such a beautiful place?” she told the Deseret News on May 15, the North Rim’s opening day.

But the Grand Canyon’s North Rim was altered last summer, after two wildfires swept through the area. On July 10, 2025, the White Sage Fire prompted the evacuation of about 500 overnight visitors from the lodge and its surrounding cabins. Then on July 11, the Dragon Bravo Fire jumped containment lines and moved toward the developed area of the North Rim.

Ultimately, the Dragon Bravo Fire moved through about 150,000 acres of land and destroyed more than 100 structures.

The Grand Canyon Lodge was burned beyond saving.

Now serving as a Grand Canyon park manager, Balsom said it was “pretty sad” learning that the lodge had burned down.

“But I know that it’s just a thing,” she said. “The canyon is still here. And we’re going to love it. And it loves us.”

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Evacuating the lodge in one final goodbye

Warren Adams worked as deli manager in the Grand Canyon Lodge. He was on site when he was told to evacuate all employees.

Now working in the park’s general store as operations manager for the North Rim, Adams explained the evacuation to the Deseret News.

In the distance, he could see a plume of ash and smoke. Since fires happen regularly in the park, Adams wasn’t worried initially. He and the former operations manager took a selfie with the smoke in the background.

“My cabin was right there. That’s where we were doing the evacuations. You had a clear view of the smoke,” he recalled.

Getting employees out of the area “ran really smooth,” he said. “We got all 170 employees out of here in 45 minutes.”

Adams was one of the last people to leave the building on July 11.

“When we left, we were all thinking we’d be back in a couple days,” he said. “Then we got the word. It was that following night, that following Saturday night, when pictures started circulating. We all knew then.” The lodge had been destroyed.

When the smoke cleared after the Dragon Bravo Fire, firefighters found that the lodge’s porch chairs had been left untouched by the flames. Adams said he wants to put them on the deck of the general store, just several minutes up the road.

Wildfire destroys historic Grand Canyon lodge

A walk through the lodge’s ruins

Joëlle Baird, the public affairs officer for Grand Canyon National Park, walked members of the press through the remains of the lodge. She pointed to the broken outline of a large rectangular area.

It used to be the lodge’s ballroom, she said. “We used it for ranger programs, but people could rent out this room. A lot of people have stories of having weddings here.”

Baird pointed toward the west. “On the far side of the building, that’s where the dining room was. Very tall ceilings, constructed in the early 1930s — it was the same architect as the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley.” Baird used to work in Yosemite Valley; she said being in the Grand Canyon Lodge “almost felt like I was in the same lodge.”

The architect, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, designed many iconic buildings in the national parks of the West. All had the same rustic, earthy feel.

When visitors came to the North Rim’s lodge, they would sleep in adjacent cabins. For meals, the bar and good views, they’d congregate in the lodge. Sixty of the 114 surrounding cabins were also destroyed in the fire.

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The future of the lodge

When the lodge burned down the first time in 1932 — after having only been open for four years — those tasked with rebuilding kept original aspects of the design. They reconstructed its walls from the same regionally sourced Kaibab limestones; they kept the same rustic feel and rebuilt the central living room, looking out into the canyon.

A century later, the National Park Service and Aramark, the authorized concessioner of the Grand Canyon Lodge, are viewing the impending rebuild similarly.

“This is an opportunity for the lodge to be rebuilt using locally sourced materials, but also having some of the same historical elements that people have come to know,” Baird explained. She said the future lodge may be built using more fire-resistant materials, and it may be wheelchair accessible, which the previous lodge was not.

Through last fall and early this spring, the park selectively demolished some of the lodge’s remains to preserve its structural integrity.

Then last week, Baird said a contractor, engineers and architects inspected the area for a feasibility study. That study will determine where a future lodge should be constructed and whether any materials can be reused.

Baird referenced several sections of the remaining walls that were wrapped in protective sheets. “This is all work from the winter months,” she said. “A big part of stabilization efforts was to preserve some of the stone work.”

“This limestone rock you see here is very susceptible to damage from fire and freeze-thaw cycles. That’s why we had a lot of stone work wrapped completely over the winter months just to try to preserve what we can,” she said.

Beyond the lodge, the Dragon Bravo Fire has given the Grand Canyon an opportunity to revamp amenities on the North Rim.

“We’ve often been limited in our infrastructure,” Baird explained. “We have an operating season that’s only six months long — May 15-Oct. 15 — of any given year. This opportunity ahead of us really allows us to reimagine if the park could have an extended season also on the North Rim.”

Upgrades to infrastructure could “potentially support a season that’s year-round,” she said.