The Old Faithful Inn is a hotel in Yellowstone National Park with a view of the Old Faithful Geyser. The Inn has a six story open log lobby, flanked by long frame wings with guest rooms. The massive log and broken limb lobby together with the massive rhyolite stone fireplace, serves this inn an example of the Golden Age of rustic resort architecture, also know as National Park Service Rustic.

The Old Faithful Inn is a National Historic Landmark, honored as the inspiration for a rustic style of architecture popular throughout the western United States. The rustic style is sometimes considered a branch of the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasized fine, hand-hewn details and harmony with the surrounding environment.

What is so rare about this Inn, is that it was the first of the great park lodges built in the western American continent and is one of the few log hotels still standing in the United States. Furthermore, it is the largest log hotel on earth.

The architect, Reamer, carefully placed windows to mimic light filtering through a canopy of pine trees. Furniture was provided by the Old Hickory Furniture Company of Indiana, whose 100-year-old dining room chairs are still in use today. At the Old Faithful Inn, the pitched roof is covered in yard-long redwood shingles and the roof line and shape echoes the shape of surrounding mountains. Inside, a spectacular, six-story lobby features native lodgepole pine balconies, and the entire inn is anchored by a 500-ton rhyolite chimney and fireplace.

The rhyolite stone fireplace has a square base of sixteen feet by sixteen feet and supports four main hearths with smaller hearths in the corners. The stone extends eighty-five feet to the roof with a total weight of five hundred tons.

As the one of the first and most notable examples of the National Park Service Rustic style, the Old Faithful Inn influenced subsequent work at other parks throughout the American West.

Robert Reamer was an American architect who is most noted for the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. He spent his childhood in Ohio, left home at thirteen to work in an architect′s office as a draftsman. By the age of twenty-one, Reamer had moved to San Diego and opened an architectural office.

Reamer was 29 when he was commissioned to design the inn. The initial building, called the old building included the lobby and the connected wings on either side, which was build in just thirteen month during May 1903 to June 1904, with much of the interior being completed during the long winter months, after which, the inn was opened in June of 1904.

On August 17, 1959 the Old Faithful Inn was shaken by the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake which collapsed the dining room fireplace chimney and damaged the huge lobby fireplace, reducing the number of usable hearths from eight to two. The building was partially shaken loose from its foundations, and access to some of the upper levels had to be restricted due to safety concerns. The other damages were repaired by 1985.

In 1988, the inn was in dire treat by the North Fork Fire, but was saved by the actions of firefighters, volunteers, and a sprinkler system which was installed just before the fire.

Celebrating the centennial of the inn, a major multimillion-dollar renovation project of the original Old House begin in 2004 with the final completion of upgrades in June 2008. The infrastructure upgrade includes new electrical, plumbing, and heating systems as well as major structural upgrades to bring the building up to the current building codes.

Old Faithful Inn was the first of the Grand Lodges to open.

Access, Military, Senior pass holders enter free

It is not long before I arrive at the Yellowstone entrance station and to my surprise, even this early, there is a ranger in the fee collection booth. I show her my senior pass, she gives me a map and I drive in to Yellowstone.

The first place I stop at is Old Faithful Inn, and in total disbelief, I find the Inn closed and the parking lot empty.