By Thomas Hill Sentinel Hotel (left background), 1867 to 1938
By D. R. Brower The Ahwahnee Hotel, 1927 to date
By Ansel Adams Saddle Trip on a High Sierra Trail
By Ansel Adams Merced Lake High Sierra Camp, 1916 to date
Hutchings brought his family to the Upper Hotel in 1864 and assumed a proprietorship that awakened lengthy comments from many of his journalistic guests. Being well educated, a great lover of nature, a journalist himself, and blessed with a generous share of sentiment, it can be understood why some of his guests felt that “there are better things which he could do better.” Testimonies agree that if he was not a huge success as a resort manager, his rich fund of information and hospitable enthusiasm more than compensated for his defects.
Charles Loring Brace visited Yosemite a few years after Hutchings became a local character there. He stopped at the Hutchings House and later wrote about his experience:
One of the jokes current in the Valley is to carefully warn the traveler, before coming to this hotel, “not to leave his bed-room door unlocked, as there are thieves about!” On retiring to his room for the night, he discovers to his amazement, that his door is a sheet, and his partition from the adjoining sleeping-chamber also a cotton cloth. The curtain-lectures and bed-room conversations conducted under these circumstances, it may be judged, are discreet. The house, however, is clean, and the table excellent; and Hutchings himself, enough of a character alone to make up for innumerable deficiencies. He is one of the original pioneers of the Valley, and at the same time is a man of considerable literary abilities, and a poet. He has written a very creditable guidebook on the Canyon. No one could have a finer appreciation of the points of beauty, and the most characteristic scenes of the Valley. He is a “Guide” in the highest sense, and loves the wonderful region which he shows yearly to strangers from every quarter of the world. But, unfortunately, he is also hotel-keeper, waiter, and cook—employments requiring a good deal of close, practical attention, as earthly life is arranged. Thus we come down, very hungry, to a delicious breakfast of fresh trout, venison, and great pans of garden strawberries; but, unfortunately, there are no knives and forks. A romantic young lady asks, in an unlucky moment, about the best point of view for the Yosemite Fall. “Madam, there is but one; you must get close to the Upper Fall, just above the mist of the lower, and there you will see a horizontal rainbow beneath your feet, and the most exquisite—”
Here a strong-minded lady, whose politeness is at an end, “But here, Hutchings, we have no knives and forks!” “Oh, beg a thousand pardons, madam!” and he rushes off; but meeting his wife on the way, she gives him coffee for the English party, and he forgets us entirely, and we get up good-naturedly and search out the implements ourselves. Again, from an amiable lady, “Please, Mr. Hutchings, another cup of coffee!” “Certainly, Madam!” When the English lady from Calcutta asks him about some wild flowers, he goes off in a botanical and poetical disquisition, and in his abstraction brings the other lady, with great eagerness, a glass of water. Sometimes sugar is handed you instead of salt for the trout, or cold water is poured into your coffee; but none of the ladies mind, for our landlord is as handsome as he is obliging, and really full of information.