Desert View Watchtower
— — a stone room that listens to the canyon.
Not only on a wall.
“A 70-foot stone tower at the eastern edge of Grand Canyon's South Rim, designed by Mary Colter and finished in 1932. Colter modelled it on the round towers of the ancestral Puebloan peoples — Hovenweep, Mesa Verde — and brought Hopi artist Fred Kabotie in to paint the second-floor murals. The view from the top looks down on the Colorado River where it turns north into Marble Canyon. Inside, the rough masonry climbs through three observation floors. Wind passes the small windows the way it passes the canyon itself. from the studio
Desert View Watchtower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Desert View Watchtower stands at the eastern end of Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim, about 25 miles east of Grand Canyon Village on Desert View Drive. The tower was designed by architect Mary Colter for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway, completed in 1932, and rises 70 feet above the canyon edge. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 as part of the Mary Colter Buildings group.
Colter studied round masonry towers across the Four Corners — Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, the Round Tower of the ancestral Puebloan peoples — and built her version with a steel skeleton sheathed in roughly coursed local sandstone, chinked and irregular by design. The first floor's Kiva Room imitates a Puebloan ceremonial chamber. The second floor, the Hopi Room, carries murals by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, painted in 1933, depicting the Snake Legend and other traditional narratives. Smaller floors above lead to the open observation deck.
Desert View is open daily, free with park entry, and reached by car or by the park's seasonal east-rim shuttle. The interior reopened in stages after a long restoration of the Kabotie murals; the tower now operates in part as an Inter-Tribal Heritage Site, with Native artisan demonstrations on weekends during the warm season. The rim elevation here is about 7,438 feet, and winter mornings can be sharp. The view east from the deck includes the confluence of the Little Colorado and the bend into Marble Canyon.