Book of lodges provides window on Western history.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

You won't find Internet service or televisions at Wallowa Lake Lodge, nor are there telephones in the rooms. But according to Bend resident Christine Barnes, author of a new coffee-table book called "Great Lodges of the National Parks, Volume Two," those minuses are pluses for those who take the trouble to get away to Oregon's far northeast corner.

The three-story lodge and its attendant cabins are one of 10 entries in Barnes' latest book, a lavishly illustrated volume that profiles 10 lodges in the western third of the nation, including - in addition to Oregon's entry - two each in Alaska, Washington and Wyoming and one each in Hawaii, California and Colorado.

Published by Graphic Arts Books in Portland, "Great Lodges" is a companion piece to a continuing television series on the Public Broadcasting System. In her author's note, Barnes describes the book as "an eclectic collection of buildings that reflect America's social changes. From neoclassical resorts to Spanish villas to contemporary concrete and glass lodges, each lodge is more than shelter; they are solid, functioning examples of American history."

Not surprisingly, Wallowa Lake Lodge is none of the above, although it is a functioning example of American history.

Opened in 1923 with an addition three years later, Barnes describes the lodge as "charming in a no-nonsense, Eastern Oregon kind of way." In other words, angular, wooden and functional.

But beautiful, too, tucked back from the south shore of Wallowa Lake, its dark brown wood-sided walls set against steep mountain faces covered in Ponderosa pine and red fir, and a deep-green lawn stretching out in front.

Fortunately, the section on Wallowa Lake Lodge doesn't gloss over the fact that its eventual popularity with relatively wealthy tourists came at the expense of the longtime residents of the area, the Nez Perce tribe, who camped along the banks of the lake in the summers until 1877, when the U.S. government forced them from their lands.

The name "Wallowa" comes from the Nez Perce word for its fish traps, which the tribe used to catch migrating salmon. By the early 1900s, when the area entered the tourist lexicon, "Folks tried other names: Spalding Lake, Arabella, Silver Lake and Joseph Lake, but the Native American Name, Wallowa, finally stuck," Barnes writes.

The privately owned lodge fell on tough times following the Great Depression, and in 1945 a recently divorced schoolteacher who loved the area, Irene Wiggins, used her divorce settlement as a down payment on the 250-acre property and its dilapidated buildings.

Wiggins and her three sons ran the place for 43 years, making most of the improvements to the property themselves and selling off parts of it through the years, before selling the lodge and eight surrounding acres in 1988.

The ownership has changed again since then, with significant financial and structural improvements made during those years.

The Wallowa Lake Lodge bears some resemblance to the Lake Crescent Lodge and even the much-larger Lake Quinault Lodge, both in Washington state and from the same era. But it's vastly different in appearance, feel and history - as Barnes' book describes - from others such as the adobe Furnace Creek Inn in California's Death Valley, the contemporary glassed-in Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming or the rustic log cabins at Alaska's Camp Denali.

"Great Lodges of the National Parks, Volume Two" may be purchased at local bookstores or online.