The Norris, Madison, and Fishing Bridge Museums are three "trailside museums" within Yellowstone National Park in the western United States. Built in 1929 to designs by Herbert Maier, they are preeminent early examples of the National Park Service Rustic style of architecture, and served as models for the construction of park buildings elsewhere in the park system in the 1930s. They were collectively designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.[2]
The three surviving museums, along with the now-demolished Faithful Museum of Thermal Activity, were designed by Herbert Maier, an architect employed by the American Association of Museums and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation. In addition to designing the Yosemite museums, he also designed buildings at the Grand Canyon, and the National Park Service Southwest Regional Office, also a National Historic Landmark. Maier was influential, both personally and through these early works, in spreading this type of architecture throughout national and state parks and forests, particularly in works created by Depression-era jobs of the 1930s.[5]