_TOURISTS IN THE SADDLE_
Hutchings and his first sight-seers “spent five glorious days in
luxurious scenic banqueting” in the newly discovered valley and then
followed their Indian guides over the return trail to Mariposa. Upon
their arrival in that mountain city, they were besieged with eager
questioners, among whom was L. A. Holmes, the editor of the _Mariposa
Gazette_, which had recently been established. Mr. Holmes begged that
his paper be given opportunity to publish the first account from the pen
of Mr. Hutchings. His request was complied with, and in the _Gazette_ of
July 12, 1855, appears the first printed description of Yosemite Valley,
prepared by one uninfluenced by Indian troubles or gold fever.
Journalists the country over copied the description, and so started the
Hutchings Yosemite publicity, which was to continue through a period of
forty-seven years. Parties from Mariposa and other mining camps, and
from San Francisco, interested by Hutchings’ oral and printed accounts,
organized, secured the same Indian guides, and inaugurated tourist
travel to the Yosemite wonder spot.
Milton and Houston Mann, who had accompanied one of these sight-seeing
expeditions, were so imbued with the possibilities of serving the hordes
of visitors soon to come that they set to work immediately to construct
a horse toll trail from the South Fork of the Merced to the Yosemite
Valley. Galen Clark, who also had been a member of one of the 1855
parties, was prompted to establish a camp on the South Fork where
travelers could be accommodated. This camp was situated on the Mann
Brothers’ Trail and later became known as Clark’s Station. It is known
as Wawona now. The Mann brothers finished their trail in 1856.
Old Indian trails were followed by much of the Mariposa-Yosemite Valley
route. The toll was collected at White and Hatch’s, approximately twelve
miles from Mariposa. At Clark’s Station (Wawona), the trail detached
itself from the Indian route and ascended Alder Creek to its headwaters.
Here it crossed to the Bridalveil Creek drainage and passed through
several fine meadows, gradually ascending to the highest point on the
route above Old Inspiration Point on the south rim of Yosemite Valley.
From this point it dropped sharply to the floor of the valley near the
foot of Bridalveil Fall. The present-day Alder Creek and Pohono trails
traverse much of the old route.
Several years after the pioneer trail was built, sheep camps were
established on two of the lush meadows through which it passed. They
were known as Westfall’s and Ostrander’s. The rough shelters existing
here were frequently used by tired travelers who preferred to make an
overnight stop on the trail rather than exhaust themselves in completing
the saddle trip to the valley in one day. Usually, however, Westfall’s
or Ostrander’s were convenient lunch stops for the saddle parties.
In 1869, Charles Peregoy built a hotel, “The Mountain View House,” at
what had been known as Westfall Meadow and with the help of his wife
operated a much-praised hospice every summer until 1875, when the coming
of the stage road between Wawona and Yosemite Valley did away with the
greater part of the travel on the trail.
The Mann Brothers’ Trail, which was some fifty miles in length, was
purchased by Mariposa County and made available to public use without
charge before construction of the stage road from Mariposa had been
completed.
In 1856, the year that witnessed the completion of the Mariposa-Yosemite
Valley Trail, L. H. Bunnell, George W. Coulter, and others united in the
construction of the “Coulterville Free Trail.” Very little, if any, of
this route followed existing Indian trails. The Coulterville Trail
started at Bull Creek, to which point a wagon road already had been
constructed, and passed through Deer Flat, Hazel Green, Crane Flat, and
Tamarack Flat to the point now known as Gentry, and thence to the
valley. Its total length was forty-eight miles, of which seventeen miles
could be traveled in a carriage.
A second pioneer horse trail on the north side of the Merced began at
the village of Big Oak Flat, six miles north of Coulterville, and
followed a route north of the Coulterville Free Trail through Garrote to
Harden’s Ranch on the South Fork of the Tuolumne River, thence to its
junction with the Coulterville Trail between Crane Flat and Tamarack
Flat.
Sections of all of these early routes passed over high terrain where
deep snow persisted well into the spring. Early fall snow storms in
these vicinities sometimes contributed to the hazards of travel. The
trails found use during a relatively short season. The Merced Canyon
offered opportunity to establish a route at lower elevation, but the
difficulties of construction in the narrow gorge deterred all would-be
builders until a short time prior to the wagon-road era. The Hite’s Cove
route, which came into use in the early ’seventies, partly answered the
need for a snow-free canyon trail. Hite’s Cove, where the John Hite Mine
was located in 1861, is on the South Fork of the Merced some distance
above its confluence with the Merced River. A wagon road eighteen miles
in length made it accessible from Mariposa. Tourists using this route
stopped overnight in Hite’s Cove and then traveled twenty miles in the
saddle up the Merced Canyon to the valley.
Another means of reaching the valley on horseback via the Merced Canyon
was developed soon after wagon roads had been built. Some Yosemite
visitors, perhaps because of the poor condition of the roads at certain
seasons, elected to leave the Coulterville stage route at Dudley’s, from
where they went to Jenkins Hill on the rim of the steep walls of the
Merced gorge. Here a horse trail enabled them to descend to the bottom
of the canyon, thence up the Merced to the valley. This thirty-mile
saddle trip involved an overnight stop at Hennesey’s, situated a short
distance below the present El Portal.
Travel in the saddle, of course, was regarded by the California pioneer
with few qualms. Likewise, the conveyance of freight on the backs of
mules was looked upon as commonplace, and the success attained by those
early packers is, in this day and age, wonderful to contemplate. In
Hutchings’ _California Magazine_ for December, 1859, appears a most
interesting essay on the business of packing as then practiced among the
mountaineers of the gold camps.
Pack animals and packers have not yet passed from the Yosemite scene,
for much of the back country is, and always will be, we hope, accessible
by trail only. Government trail gangs are dependent for weeks at a time
upon the supplies brought to them upon the backs of mules. Likewise,
those who avail themselves of High Sierra Camp facilities are served by
pack trains. Present-day packing differs in no essential way from the
mode of the ’fifties, except that it is often done by Indians instead of
the old-time Mexican _mulatero_.
What one visitor of the pre-wagon days thought of the saddle trip into
Yosemite Valley may be gathered from J. H. Beadle in his _Undeveloped
West_. Beadle visited the Sierra in 1871 and approached the valley from
the north.
Thirty-seven miles from Garrote bring us to Tamarack Flat, the highest
point on the road, the end of staging, and no wonder. The remaining
five miles down into the valley must be made on horseback.
While transferring baggage—very little is allowed—to pack mules, the
guide and driver amuse us with accounts of former tourists,
particularly of Anna Dickinson, who rode astride into the valley, and
thereby demonstrated her right to vote, drink “cocktails,” bear arms,
and work the roads, without regard to age, sex, or previous condition
of servitude. They tell us with great glee of Olive Logan, who, when
told she must ride thus into the valley, tried practising on the back
of the coach seats, and when laughed at for her pains, took her
revenge by savagely abusing everything on the road. When Mrs. Cady
Stanton was here a few weeks since, she found it impossible to fit
herself to the saddle, averring she had not been in one for thirty
years. Our accomplished guide, Mr. F. A. Brightman, saddled seven
different mules for her (she admits the fact in her report), and still
she would not risk it, and “while the guides laughed behind their
horses, and even the mules winked knowingly and shook their long ears
comically, still she stood a spectacle for men and donkeys.” In vain
the skillful Brightman assured her he had piloted five thousand
persons down that fearful incline, and not an accident. She would not
be persuaded, and walked the entire distance, equal to twenty miles on
level ground. And shall this much-enduring woman still be denied a
voice in the government of the country? Perish the thought. With all
these anecdotes I began to feel nervous myself, for I am but an
indifferent rider, and when I observed the careful strapping and saw
that my horse was enveloped in a perfect network of girths, cruppers
and circingles, I inquired diffidently, “Is there no danger that this
horse will turn a somerset with me over some steep point?” “Oh, no,
sir,” rejoined the cheerful Brightman, “he is bitterly opposed to it.”
We turn again to the left into a sort of stairway in the mountain
side, and cautiously tread the stony defile downward; at places over
loose boulders, at others around or over the points of shelving rock,
where one false step would send horse and rider a mangled mass two
thousand feet below, and more rarely over ground covered with bushes
and grade moderate enough to afford a brief rest. It is impossible to
repress fear. Every nerve is tense; the muscles involuntarily make
ready for a spring, and even the bravest lean timorously toward the
mountain side and away from the cliff, with foot loose in stirrup and
eye alert, ready for a spring in case of peril. The thought is vain;
should the horse go, the rider would infallibly go with him. And the
poor brutes seem to fully realize their danger and ours, as with wary
steps and tremulous ears, emitting almost human signs, with more than
brute caution they deliberately place one foot before the other,
calculating seemingly at each step the desperate chances and intensely
conscious of our mutual peril. Mutual danger creates mutual
sympathy—everything animal, everything that can feel pain, is
naturally cowardly—and while we feel a strange animal kinship with our
horses, they seem to express a half-human earnestness to assure us
that their interest is our interest, and their self-preservative
instinct in full accord with our intellectual dread. We learn with
wonder that of all the five thousand who have made this perilous
passage not one has been injured—if injured be the word, for the only
injury here would be certain death. One false step and we are gone
bounding over rocks, ricocheting from cliffs, till all semblance of
humanity is lost upon the flat rock below. Such a route would be
impossible to any but those mountain-trained mustangs, to whom a
broken stone staircase seems as safe as an ordinary macadamized road.
At length we reach a point where the most hardy generally dismount and
walk—two hundred feet descent in five hundred feet progress. Indeed
half the route will average the descent of an ordinary staircase. Then
comes a passage of only moderate descent and terror, then another and
more terrible stairway—a descent of four hundred feet in a thousand. I
will not walk before and lead my horse, as does our guide, but trail
my long rope halter and keep him before,—always careful to keep on the
upper side of him, springing from rock to rock, and hugging the cliff
with all the ardor of a young lover. For now I am scared. All pretense
of pride is gone, and just the last thing I intend to risk is for that
horse to stumble, and in falling strike me over that fearful cliff. At
last comes a gentler slope, then a crystal spring, dense grove and
grass-covered plat, and we are down into the valley. Gladly we take
the stage, and are whirled along in the gathering twilight.
The vehicle that whirled Beadle over the flat of the valley floor was
brought to Yosemite before roads were constructed and is now exhibited
at the Yosemite Museum as “the first wagon in Yosemite Valley.”
The arrival of visitors prompted the building of shelters. The first
habitation to be constructed by white men in Yosemite was a rough shack
put up in 1855 by a party of surveyors, of which Bunnell was a member. A
company had been organized to bring water from the foot of the valley
into the dry diggings of the Mariposa estate. It was supposed that a
claim in the valley would doubly secure the water privileges.
The first permanent structure was built in 1856 by Walworth and Hite. It
was constructed of pine boards that were rived out by hand, and occupied
the site of the 1851 camp of Boling’s party (near the foot of the
present Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point). It was known as the Lower
Hotel until 1869, when it was pulled down, and Black’s Hotel was
constructed on the spot.
In the spring of 1857, Beardsley and Hite put up a canvas-covered house
in the old village. The next year this was replaced by a wooden
structure, the planks for which had been whipsawed by hand. J. M.
Hutchings was again in the valley in 1859, and his _California Magazine_
for December of that year tells of the first photographs to be made in
Yosemite. C. L. Weed, a pioneer photographer apparently working for R.
H. Vance, packed a great instrument and its bulky equipment through the
mountains to the Yosemite scenes. Photography was just then taking its
place in American life. Mr. Weed’s first Yosemite subject was this Upper
Hotel of Beardsley and Hite. Hutchings and Weed decided on this occasion
that they must visit the fall now called Illilouette, and Hutchings
wrote:
The reader would have laughed could he have seen us ready for the
start. Mr. Beardsley, who had volunteered to carry the camera, had it
inverted and strapped at his back, when it looked more like an Italian
“hurdy gurdy” than a photographic instrument, and he like the
“grinder.” Another carried the stereoscopic instrument and the lunch;
another, the plate-holders and gun, etcetera; and as the bushes had
previously somewhat damaged our broadcloth unmentionables, we
presented a very queer and picturesque appearance truly.
Hutchings published a woodcut made from the first photograph of the
Yosemite hostelry in November of 1859; his book, _In the Heart of the
Sierras_, again alludes to his presence in the valley when this first
photograph was taken. Naturally, students of California history have
been interested in learning more about the work of Weed, but in spite of
serious attempts to procure more information on this photographer of
1859, nothing was brought to light. It was then something of a thrill to
me to find myself in possession of an original print from the earliest
Yosemite negative. That the print is genuine seems to be a fact, and the
incidents relative to its discovery are worth the telling here.
Its donor, Arthur Rosenblatt, resided as a small boy within a few blocks
of the Hutchings San Francisco home on Pine Street. Mr. Rosenblatt and
his brothers played with the Hutchings children. In 1880 the Hutchings
home was destroyed by fire. The small boys of the neighborhood searched
the debris for objects worth saving, and Irving and Wallace Rosenblatt
salvaged a pack of large water-stained photographs. Arthur Rosenblatt
with forethought mounted these pictures in an old scrapbook. He has
cherished them through the years that have passed. In June, 1929, he
visited the Yosemite Museum and was interested in the historical
exhibits. In his study of the displayed materials, he came upon a
photographic copy of the old drawing of the “Hutchings House,” which has
been taken from _In the Heart of the Sierras_. He recognized its subject
as identical with one of the old photographs which he had preserved
since 1880. He made his find known to the park naturalist, and
immediately phoned to his San Francisco home and requested that the
scrapbook be mailed at once to the Yosemite Museum. Upon its receipt,
the old hotel photograph was segregated from the others, and comparisons
were made with the drawing in the old Hutchings book and with the
building itself. The print is obviously from the original Weed negative.
Hutchings’ visit of 1859 apparently convinced him of the desirability of
residing in Yosemite Valley. During the next few years he spared no
effort in making its wonders known to the world through his _California
Magazine_. The spirited etchings of Yosemite wonders that were
reproduced in the magazine from Weed’s photos and from Ayres’s drawings
did much to convince travelers of the magnificence of Yosemite scenery.
The stream of tourists who entered the valley grew apace in spite of the
hardships to be endured on the long journey in the saddle. Horace
Greeley was one of those who braved the discomforts in 1859 and gave his
description of the place to hundreds of thousands in the East. Greeley,
foolishly, determined to make the 57-mile saddle trip via the Mariposa
route in one day. He arrived at the Upper Hotel in Yosemite Valley at
1:00 A.M., more dead than alive, yet shortly afterward he wrote, “I know
no single wonder of Nature on earth which can claim a superiority over
the Yosemite.” His visit was made at a season when Yosemite Falls
contained but little water, and he dubbed them a “humbug,” but his
hearty praise of the general wonders played a significant part in
turning the interest of Easterners upon the new mecca of scenic beauty.
In 1864 J. M. Hutchings came to the Upper Hotel (Cedar Cottage) in the
role of proprietor. The mirth and discomfiture engendered among
Hutchings’ guests by the cheesecloth partitions between bedrooms
prompted him to build a sawmill near the foot of Yosemite Falls in order
to produce sufficient lumber to “hard finish” his hostelry. It was in
this mill that John Muir found employment for a time. The hotel was
embellished with lean-tos and porches, and an addition was constructed
at the rear in which was completely enclosed the trunk of a large
growing cedar tree. Hutchings built a great fireplace in this sitting
room and proceeded to make the novel gathering place famous as the “Big
Tree Room.”
A winter spent in the frigid shade of the south wall of Yosemite Valley
convinced the Hutchings family that their “Big Tree Room” was not a
pleasant winter habitation. They built anew and moved into the warm
sunshine of the north side of the valley. With their own hands members
of the family constructed a snug cabin among giant black oaks near the
foot of Yosemite Falls and there spent the remainder of their Yosemite
days.
Papers, letters, and photographs relating to the Yosemite experiences of
the Hutchings family have been preserved by J. M. Hutchings’ daughter,
Mrs. Gertrude Hutchings Mills, and by the family of his wife, the
Walkingtons of England. Materials generously donated from these sources
take important places in the collections of the Yosemite Museum and have
greatly aided in the preparation of this volume.
J. M. Hutchings invested heavily in the construction of the Sentinel
group of buildings and continued to be identified with the Yosemite as
publicity agent, hotel proprietor, resident, official guardian, and
unofficial champion until 1902. In that year, he met his death on the
zigzags of the Big Oak Flat Road. In the 1902 register of the hotel,
which was once the Hutchings House, is the following entry made by Mrs.
Hutchings, the second wife of J. M. Hutchings:
November 8, 1902
Today leaving Yo Semite and all I love best.
Emily A. Hutchings
Thinking that some who come here may wish to know a little about the
sad tragedy of Mr. J. Hutchings’ death, I would like to write a few
words.
Because I had never seen Yo Semite in the autumn, my dear husband
brought me here for a short holiday, on our way to San Francisco. We
started from the Calaveras Big Trees and came via Parrots Ferry, and
its beautiful gorge—the wonderful old mining center of Columbia, and
its hitherto only surface-skimmed Gold Fields—Sonora and its good
approaches, in its oiled and well graded roads—and thence to Chaffee
and Chamberlains and to Crockers and their hearty hospitality. It has
been a very pleasant experience, to see many friends on the way—most
of them honored “Old Timers,” who have been the thews and sinews of
the State, and who still hold their own in the rugged strength, which
has brought them through to 1902.
From Crockers, we started on the last day of our journey [Oct. 31,
1902], continuing through the glorious Forests of the Sierras, the
autumnal tints of which this year, have been of unusual grandeur—these
beauties all being intensified in Yo Semite.
Coming down the Grade we were impressed beyond expression, and, when
we reached the point where El Capitan first presents itself, my
Husband said, “It is like Heaven.”
There was no apparent danger near but one of the horses took fright
(probably a wild animal was at hand) and dashed away. When the Angel
of Death reached Mr. Hutchings a few moments later—under the massive
towering heights of that sun-illumined Cliff—“He” found him in the
full vigour of life and high energetic purpose—but his grief-stricken
wife prayed in vain that the ebbing tide would stay.
From the moment the sad accident was known, the greatest sympathy and
kindness were shown, loving hands gave reverent aid—and on Sunday,
Nov. 2, 1902, my dear husband was borne from the Big Tree Room and its
time honored memories. The residents of the Valley and many of the
Indians, who had long known him, followed. We laid him to rest,
surrounded by nature in Her most glorious garb, and under the peaks
and domes he had loved so well and had explored so fearlessly.
Emily A. Hutchings
Nov. 8, 1902
In 1941 and for several years thereafter, Yosemite Valley was visited by
Cosie Hutchings Mills, daughter of J. M. Hutchings, born October 5,
1867, the second white child born in the valley. Elizabeth H. Godfrey,
of the Yosemite Museum, obtained from Mrs. Mills both written and oral
statements regarding the pioneer experiences of the Hutchings family in
Yosemite. The interviews with Mrs. Mills were recorded by Mrs. Godfrey.
Her manuscript, “Chronicles of Cosie Hutchings Mills,” and Mrs. Mills’
written reminiscences are preserved in the Yosemite Museum.
[Illustration: _By C. L. Weed, 1859_
First Yosemite Photograph—“Upper Hotel”]
[Illustration: The Big Tree Room]
[Illustration: _By J. T. Boysen_
The Big Oak Flat Route]
[Illustration: _By J. T. Boysen_
The First Automobile—July, 1900]
[Illustration: Early Yosemite Buses]
[Illustration: Old Tioga Road]
[Illustration: New Tioga Road]