AA-2026-DE7264
On the image
Sometime in the 1950s, someone built a visitor complex at the base of a basalt rimrock escarpment — the kind of flat-topped lava cliff that runs across the high desert of the American West — and planted an American flag out front on the theory that a flag makes any enterprise look official. The main building wears green board-and-batten siding with a stone entry feature, a design language that said 'rustic but serious' to the postwar tourist who had just driven a very long way on a two-lane highway expecting something. A cream-and-tan pickup truck from the early 1950s sits in the gravel turnout beside a darker vehicle, both of them parked with the casual permanence of trucks that belong to people who work here rather than people passing through. The whole compound — the low outbuildings, the corral fence climbing the hillside, the utility poles threading power up over the rim — has the look of a place that exists because the landscape itself drew people and someone decided to make a business of that fact. The rimrock above it will still be there in five hundred years; the green paint probably needed touching up by 1962.
Visually related — by likeness
Western Ranch or Park Visitor Facility Below Basalt Rimrock, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-DE7264. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/western-ranch-or-park-visitor-facility-below-basalt-rimrock-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026DE7264,
title = {Western Ranch or Park Visitor Facility Below Basalt Rimrock, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-DE7264},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/western-ranch-or-park-visitor-facility-below-basalt-rimrock-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Western Ranch or Park Visitor Facility Below Basalt Rimrock, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-DE7264 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/western-ranch-or-park-visitor-facility-below-basalt-rimrock-1950s ER -
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