A TRIP TO YO-SEMITE IN 1874 - PART 4

So last week we left my great grandfather and his fellow Yo-Semite bound travelers in First Garrote drinking water from a fine roadside stream.

This week the party will reach the northern boundary of Yo-Semite and continue on toward the Valley. A quick reminder: J.K.’s words from his journal are in black; my remarks are in blue; and the remarks of Helen Hunt Jackson, who made the same trip two years before J.K. did, are in pink.  And away we go . . .

          A little on (from First Garrote) is the saw mill where we met two stages outward bound.  At 11:38, on rising a hill, first saw the Yo-Semite mountains with snow.  Passed the fork and canyon of the Tuolumne, which is grand indeed.  This would be the area of the current Rim of the World vista point.  

Next stop was Colfax Springs.  Beyond there, they would have crossed the south fork of the Tuolumne River through a covered bridge above what is now Rainbow Pool and then climbed Hardin Hill. 

Rim of the World vista then.

Rim of the World vista now with a part of the old wagon road just below.  Actually the view was and is much broader than these pictures allow.

The roads the stages, carriages, & etc. traveled on were narrow with steep drop-offs in places and one had to hope those roads were well shouldered and banked!

 

The covered bridge over the south fork of the Tuolumne River.

Rainbow Pool – a popular swimming hole – and the bridge that replaced the covered bridge.  J.K. not mentioning the pool is a little strange, but perhaps, having crossed the river through a covered bridge, he never saw it.

The current crossing of the south fork of the Tuolumne River.  Rainbow Pool is somewhere down below.  You can just see a portion of the old road on the left that used to circle round the pool, plus a spot of it on the right.

Climbing Hardin Hill.  Look at that dust!

          We arrived at Colfax Springs, the worst place on all the route, at 12PM and left at 2PM, arriving at Hodgen's (Hodgedon's) at 5:00. The hotel was full, so slept on a shake down.  Sutton slept in the corral.  Wouldn't sleep with anyone, and nearly froze to death in the haymow.

Hodgedon’s (not Hodgen’s) then.  Place names weren't always spelled correctly.  Most likely, guides simply said "this is such-and-such" and those keeping notes wrote them down as best they could.

Hodgedon’s now.  I’m assuming they ate supper at Hodgedon's, but J.K. doesn't mention anything about it.

Helen Hunt Jackson, however, who made this same trek two years earlier, had this to say about the "grovelling misery" of a night at “Hogdin's, 'G' soft, but not by rights!  It was only half-past 5 o'clock when we arrived. The two shanties of which Hogdin's consists were already filled.  Unhappy men and women, sitting on log steps with their knees drawn up, glared at us savagely as brigands might. They were wretched enough before.  Now we had come.  What would be done?  How many to a room would it make?  And where-withal were we to be fed? Three, four, five in a room; some on floors without even a blanket.  Women with tin pans for washbowls and one towel for six hands.  The men, with one tin basin in an open shed and if they had any towel or not, I do not know.  That was a night at Hogdin's.  Food? Yes.  Junks of beef floating in bowls of fat, junks of ham ditto, beans ditto, potatoes as hard as bullets and the whole set out in indescribable confusion and dirt in a narrow, unventilated room dimly lit by two reeking kerosene lamps.  Even brave and travelled souls could not help being appalled at the situation."

     In all fairness to the 'hotel' folk along the old route, they were only homesteaders living in cabins and raising sheep or cattle or whatever.  But when people began making the trek into the Valley, stage coach drivers and others would simply pull up to their doorsteps and beg food and lodging for the night and to their credit, they did the best they could, building lean-tos and sheds for extra lodging, and cooking up what food they could to feed travelers.

Sunday morn, the 24th and beautiful. Started for the Valley.  Saw a bear, but as we had not lost any, we let him go. (a joke of some sort, I guess?)  Passed the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees, and into Crane's Flat.  Arrived at Cabin's (Gobin's).  Took saddle animals.  Sutton in trouble again – had the poorest animal in the party.

I was surprised J.K. didn’t elaborate on the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees. They were every bit as huge as those in the Calaveras Big Trees grove, but perhaps having seen the big trees in the Calaveras Grove, the Tuolumne Grove was simply a repeat so ho-hum.  Doesn’t sound like J.K., but he didn’t say much about them other than that they’d passed them. Oh well.

Gobin’s back in the day.  A saloon Is on the right.  This is where they took horses to go the rest of the way to the Valley.  The elevation here is 6000 feet so they were definitely in snow by now.

The area of Gobin’s today.  Buildings all gone including the saloon.  The lay of the land doesn’t change, however, so I knew, from the old photo, this is where it all was.

Now comes the snow - plunge we go, pack animals get down and up again.  Arrived at Tamarack Flat, 12:30 for lunch which most cabbaged (procured) at old Mother Hodgen's. (?) From Yosemite Park’s historical archives, this would have been a rude hotel at Tamarack Flat called Tamarack House maintained by Alva Hamilton starting in 1870, before completion of the Big Oak Flat Road to the floor of Yosemite Valley, where tourists and pack train handlers obtained meals.  Business at Tamarack House fell off drastically in the mid-1870s as soon as stages could go on through to the Valley on the Big Oak Flat Road.

Tamarack Flat then.

Tamarack Flat now.

Now comes the snow - plunge we go, pack animals get down and up again.  Arrived at Tamarack Flat, 12:30 for lunch which most cabbaged (procured) at old Mother Hodgen's.  From Yosemite Park’s historical archives, this would have been a rude hotel at Tamarack Flat called Tamarack House maintained by Alva Hamilton starting in 1870, before completion of the Big Oak Flat Road to the floor of Yosemite Valley, where tourists and pack train handlers obtained meals.  Business at Tamarack House fell off drastically in the mid-1870s as soon as stages could go on through to the Valley on the Big Oak Flat Road.

A typical saddle train making their way down to the Valley.

          His description of their trek down the cliff is good.  But Helen Hunt Jackson went a bit further, saying even having seen how steep it looked when other horses and riders disappeared over the crest of the hill, it felt steeper.  “To an unaccustomed rider it is not pleasant to sit on a horse whose heels are much higher than his head. The first two and a half miles of the path down the wall of the cliff are steep - so steep that it is best not to try to say how steep. It is a narrow path, zigzagging down on ledges, among boulders, through thickets.  It is dusty and stony and comes out suddenly on opens from which you look over and down thousands, yes, thousands of feet. It plunges into tangles of trees where a rider must lay his head on the horse's neck to get through, for oaks and firs and pines grow on this precipice.  In some places the rocks are bright with flowers and ferns which look as if they are holding on for dear life.”

Just beyond Gentry’s as they started down the saddle trail to the Valley floor, they would have come upon this scene called “Inspiration” or “Oh my!” point with El Capitan on the left and “Half Dome” in the center.

Had J.K. waited until mid July that year to make his trip, not only would he and his party been able to take their carriage all the way down to the Valley instead of having to go the rest of the way from Gobin’s by saddle train, but they would have missed the snow.  Here’s a sample of the wagon road they would have taken . . .

The Big Oak Flat toll road to the Valley floor zig-zagged back and forth from Gentry’s 2500 feet down the side of a sheer granite cliff. Traffic was allowed one way only.  Downhill on the odd hour.  Uphill on the even hour (or vice versa?).  That’s Bridal Veil Fall in the background.  J.K. didn’t wait, however, so he missed this excitement.  Seems they had their own excitement when they reached the Valley, however.

Arrived at Hutchings' at 5:30 PM.  Passed Bridal Veil and Inspiration Falls and El Capitan.  Beautiful rainbows at Bridal Veil.  Passed Virgin's Tears (Ribbon?) Falls the highest falls direct into the Valley – they take their name from the manner the water drops in clusters-like.  Beautiful indeed!  El Capitan Falls were misty, never reaching the bottom of the canyon.

We had some fun crossing the Merced River.  The water had risen several feet and the bridge was floating.  The pack animals were shoved into the stream, while our saddle animals were urged to move on.  Old Comanche took me through safely, while Pixley mule gave my friend, Clark, a ducking.

Hutchings Hotel with the Merced River running high.  The Cottage in the Rocks is to the right of the main hotel.  The Cottage by the River is behind the bridge.

Area of Hutchings Hotel now.

It's not clear which building J.K. stayed in.  There were three: the original hotel, and two cottages built in 1870-71 by, among others, a young man by the name of John Muir who was in the valley at that time working for Mr. Hutchings.  They built the Cottage by the River, and the Cottage by the Rocks to accommodate more lodgers, and also upgraded the rooms in the main building which had originally been nothing more than spaces divided by wooden framing covered in muslin with a curtain for a door.  From things J.K. mentions later, he seems to have stayed in the Cottage by the Rocks.  Rooms at Hutchings' were $3.00 to $3.50 a night, or $20.00 for the week.   The food, according to Helen Hunt Jackson, was quite excellent.  A breakfast might consist of fresh trout, venison, and great pans of garden strawberries.

In the evening we all met at Smith's where we had a jolly chat over our mint juleps (a tall cool drink of bourbon whiskey with sugar, crushed mint leaves, & shaved ice).  Then Clark and I took a stroll down the river – it presented a lovely mirror view, the mountains west and Yo-Semite Falls being plainly reflected.  It was arranged to visit Vernal and Nevada Falls next day, the 25th.

Smith’s then.  Smith's Cosmopolitan House boasted a saloon, a billiard hall, five bathing rooms, a barbershop, a reading and writing room, and a small comfortably furnished sitting room exclusively for the use of ladies.  J.K. never mentions anything about Smith's except for chatting over mint juleps, so it's not certain if he made use of any of its other facilities?  Our friend Helen Hunt Jackson, however, was particularly impressed with the bathing rooms.  “The tubs shone and the floors were carpeted. Turkish towels hung on the racks with soaps, bottles of cologne and bay rum kept in each room along with sewing accessories such as needles and thread and scissors and buttons.”

Smith’s Cosmopolitan House now but a memory like the hotel.

And here we shall leave J.K. and traveling companions with their mint juleps and evening strolls along the river, contemplating their trip to Vernal and Nevada Falls the next day.

To be continued

:->

La Nightingail