Implementation of Daniels’ recommendation for a village store to service rented tents or cabins took considerably longer to realize. A development plan worked out by NPS landscape architect Thomas Vint in 1925-26 called for the construction of housekeeping cabins and a building to house a cafeteria and store. Vint envisioned the cafeteria and store building as being one of a group of three structures set on a plaza. The other buildings were to be a photography studio and a kind of visitor center/museum/auditorium/dormitory called a “Government Contact Building.” [19]
Although Vint’s plan called for the removal of his studio, Kiser was reluctant to give up his location and pay for construction of a new building in the plaza development. He did have a small wing added to his studio during the summer of 1926, but subsequent business reversals forced Kiser to forfeit the building in 1929. It has remained under NPS control ever since, being known subsequently as the Information Building, the Exhibit Building, and the Rim Visitor Center.
The development plan also addressed how the public would view the lake from Rim Village. It called for:
a Rim-way walk with a dustless surface behind which would be the roadway and parking area. After designing all necessary road ways and walks the intervening unused ground can be provided with a ground cover or other plant growth to stabilize the dust. The Rim walk will be one of the most important units of the Rim Area development and its center of attraction will be at Victor Rock. [20]
The “Rim-way walk” was one way of tackling the problem of unrestricted automobile parking next to the Rim which had destabilized or destroyed much of the vegetation and had scarred the area with vehicle tracks. Construction of a new main access to Rim Village was in progress during 1926, a project that was to set the circulation pattern on the site for over six decades.
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