The lodge first opened in 1961. Utah State Sen. Rue Clegg acquired the land in a 1929 tax sale "for some obscene amount, like $50," said Wyatt Grow, 27, David's son and spokesman for the family company, Waterfall Consultants. Clegg and his wife, Margaret, worked for years to make the site ready. But following its first operating season, on a celebratory jaunt to Mexico, Clegg died of a sudden heart attack.
Control of the resort fell to Margaret, who sold it and bought it back several years later. She sold it again in the late '60s to a Colorado group that had made its fortune in oil. From there, "it changed hands a bunch of times," according to Wyatt, before the Grow family purchased it in 1971.
The lodge operated as a full-service restaurant for the next five years, but business was spotty, David Grow said. He recalled the routine experience of greeting large groups of customers at the base of the mountain, only to watch them turn back for one or two apprehensive members.
"It was the tram that made everyone nervous," he said. "We used to have people that would crawl out of that tram [at the top]."
So in 1976, the restaurant became exclusively a special-event venue for weddings, receptions, class reunions and the like. It hosted countless celebrants and weathered high winds and several avalanches over the years, but closed its doors -- at the time, only temporarily -- in 1996.
After the fire, the Utah County Sheriff's Office ordered the Grows to pull down the remaining cable, fearing adventurers would use it to scale the rocky face by the waterfall.
"When it was disconnected from the building, it was just dangling down those cliffs," David said.
Thus formally ended any hope of renovating the existing structure: The same lines that had spanned the mountainside for nearly 50 years were rolled up at the base and unceremoniously cut for recycling.
But there may be another chapter to the story: A group calling itself Bridal Veil Falls is in discussions with the Grow family about the future of the site. They declined to offer details, but said there will be an announcement in the coming week. Wyatt Grow suggested he plans to sell the resort if things go well.
"If they can come up with the money and make something beautiful, they'll have our complete support," he said.