Mission 66 - Visitor Facilities

Visitor Facilities

In early parks, visitor orientation facilities were built on a relatively small scale, often in the form of "trailside museums" for visitor edification. With the development of the visitor center concept, the visitor center was to be the main point of contact between the Park Service and visitors, providing orientation, education, toilets, concessions, public safety and administrative services in one location. As a new feature, visitor centers had to be built quickly and in quantity. The National Park Service Rustic style that had previously been popular was suitable for the 1930s, when cheap and plentiful Civilian Conservation Corps labor was available, but was not practical on a large scale in a time of full employment. Managers such as Thomas Chalmers Vint, the Park Service director of design and construction, made a conscious decision to employ a more streamlined modern style of design for Mission 66 facilities. The simpler, cleaner design philosophy was faster and less expensive to implement, and its public image fitted with the idea of a "new era" in park services.

Mission 66 also involved substantial re-planning of entire park infrastructures, with entirely new developments reaching the proportions of new towns. Grant Village and Canyon Village, together with the never-built Firehole Village were intended to diminish the impact of visitor accommodations on sensitive areas close to park attractions in Yellowstone National Park, respectively replacing heavy development at West Thumb, the Canyon Hotel, and the Old Faithful Inn and Lodge. The similar Wuksachi Village in Sequoia National Park was planned to replace the Giant Forest and Camp Kaweah developments. Colter Bay Village in Grand Teton National Park included the relocation of cabins from guest ranches displaced by the expansion of the park into Jackson Hole.