Indian Lodge is one of the outstanding works of New Deal architecture in Texas, expressing Texas regionalism. The original sixteen-room hotel was constructed by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) companies 879, 881, and 1856. Company members made forty-pound adobe blocks on site and harvested pine logs and river cane in Keesey Canyon. An initial design of 1934 by architects Roberts and Smith and landscape architect Ferguson included roads, park buildings, and a hillside Indian Village for overnight visitors. The facilities responded to a growing market of automobile tourists by providing both camping and lodge accommodations.
By mid-1934, National Park Service inspector George L. Nason found emerging construction lacked “character and atmosphere.” Austin architect Fehr, who had been working at Bastrop State Park, was brought in along with Caldwell to refine the design. After weeks scouring the region for design inspiration and historic precedents, Caldwell and Fehr developed a scheme, based on recently produced drawings of the Pueblo of Acoma in New Mexico, with rooms layered in irregular parallel rows along contour lines around a central lodge hall and patios. The lodge’s walls are eighteen-inch-thick adobe, originally with an earth-tone adobe finish. Cottonwood vigas and latillas form the roofs, and much of the original furniture was hand-built on site. In 1938, a water-resistant whitewash was applied. A second wing of twenty-four rooms was added in 1965 when the original section was rehabilitated. A restoration project (2006) returned the entire lodge to its 1937 character.