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The Brooks Lake Lodge complex is situated on the western edge of the Shoshone National Forest in northwestern Wyoming, only two miles east of the Continental Divide. It sits one-quarter mile south of Brooks Lake, a relatively large natural body of water named after Casper pioneer and later Wyoming Governor Bryant B. Brooks who discovered it in 1899. The Lodge, built in 1922, is unpretentious and structurally expressive in the tradition of the Western Craftsman style, crafted using local labor and native materials. Western Craftsman combined the pared-back aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early twentieth century with the pragmatic simplicity of the frontier log cabin, resulting in often simply massed, usually austerely decorated structures.

The style is most commonly associated with the dude ranches and tourist lodges which had sprung up throughout the Rocky Mountain West during the first decades of the twentieth century. The guest cabins, barns, bunkhouse and other outbuildings, also constructed in 1922, share certain characteristics of the Western Craftsman style as well. The historical significance of the Lodge is based upon its association with the early-day recreation industry in Wyoming. Built at a time when dude ranches were beginning to flourish and the automobile was opening many areas to working class tourist trade, it typifies a distinct form of recreational retreat - a stopover along the road to Yellowstone National Park and a rustic resort hotel placed in a spectacular Rocky Mountain setting.