West of El Tovar, on the other side of the mid-century Thunderbird and Kachina Lodges, is Bright Angel Lodge. Mary Colter designed the lodge buildings to reflect the village’s past as a pioneer settlement, with scattered structures in log cabin, clapboard, and Spanish Colonial themes. This approach allowed her to incorporate two existing buildings with long canyon histories: Buckey O’Neill’s log cabin and the Red Horse Station.

Buckey O’Neill, an enterprising and handsome young man, helped shape Arizona Territory’s frontier communities, working as a newspaper editor, probate judge, supervisor of schools, and county sheriff. An investor in the Anita Mine south of the village, O’Neill was garnering support for a rail line to Grand Canyon when the Spanish-American War began. He was the first to volunteer for the regiment later known as Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughriders and was killed in Cuba in 1898. His log cabin, built in the 1890s, still stands on the rim and is used today as suite accommodations.

Red Horse Station, also built in the 1890s, once served as a station on the stagecoach line south of the village. In 1902, Ralph Cameron moved the station to the village, added a second story and veranda, and operated it as the Cameron Hotel. The building later served as the South Rim’s post office. Mary Colter saved it from demolition, and Red Horse Station was restored to its original single-story log structure as one of the lodge’s guest cabins.

Bright Angel Lodge, which opened in 1935, was meant to appeal to travelers on modest budgets. The main lodge has two large fireplaces designed by Colter. The inglenook fireplace in the lobby, with the Fred Harvey Company’s trademark thunderbird above, warms hikers on cold winter days.

The geologic fireplace, located in what is now the History Room, replicates canyon strata. Park naturalist Edwin McKee worked with Colter to find samples from rock layers in the canyon. The canyon’s basement rocks are represented by the Vishu schist at the base of the fireplace. Around its opening are the layers of the Grand Canyon Supergroup. Above that are narrow bands of the canyon’s Paleozoic layers. The fireplace chimney is Kaibab limestone, the layer that forms the canyon’s rim. The history room focuses on the Fred Harvey Company and the Harvey Girls, the efficient white-aproned waitresses who worked in lunchrooms, train stations, and hotels on the Santa Fe lines.