Wallace Pratt Lodge, historic stone house in McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, United States
Wallace Pratt Lodge is a one-story summer house of local limestone and heart pine, built in 1931–1932 in McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Houston architect John F. Staub designed it; Vance Phenix supervised construction, with carpenter Dean Phenix and stonemason Adolph May as craftsmen. The Pratt family called it the Stone Cabin.
An oil geologist named Wallace Pratt built this summer home between 1931 and 1932, following his discovery of the Guadalupe Mountains during a 1921 business trip. The house was later absorbed into protected lands that became today's national park.
Pratt's family called the lodge the Stone Cabin and spent summers there; he briefly retired to it before a flood trapped him inside, prompting him to build the Ship On The Desert outside the canyon. In 1945 the New York architect Newton Bevin and his wife Elizabeth stayed there during that second house's construction.
The lodge sits in a canyon with seasonal water flow that can affect access and visibility of the structure. Visitors should walk the designated paths and cross the terrain carefully, especially after rainfall.
Seasonal flooding in McKittrick Canyon was so problematic that Pratt built a second residence called Ship on the Desert to use during drier periods. This unusual arrangement shows how nature shaped the way the land was actually used.
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