Desert View Watchtower

Architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter designed six landmark buildings near the South Rim between 1905 and 1935. When you arrive from the east, the first Colter structure you see is the Desert View Watchtower. Stop to take in the panorama―one of the best in the canyon, with a long stretch of the Colorado River clearly visible 5,000 feet below. Inside the Watchtower, a re-creation of the kind of Ancestral Puebloan towers found at Mesa Verde and Hovenweep on the Utah-Colorado border―huge picture windows frame the landscape, turning the building into a gallery of canyon vistas.

• See Your best day in the Grand Canyon