Maria Teresa Longworth, known as Therese Yelverton, Viscountess Avonmore, visited Yosemite in 1870, where she wrote Zanita: A Tale of the Yosemite, published in 1872. She made the Hutchings’ entourage a part of her melodrama, and Florence, eldest daughter of the Hutchingses, was the heroine, “Zanita.” John Muir, of whom in real life the Viscountess was enamored, was the hero, “Kenmuir.” A good analysis of Yelverton’s relationships, actual and fictional, with the Hutchings family and the other pioneer residents of the valley is contained in Linnie Marsh Wolfe’s great book, Son of the Wilderness.
Not all of the Hutchings House features were within its walls. J. D. Caton, who availed himself of the Hutchings hospitality in 1870, “walked over to the foot of the Yosemite Falls and lingered by the way to pick a market basket full of enormous strawberries in Hutchings’ garden.” One of the first acts of the homesteaders was to plant an orchard and cultivate the above-mentioned strawberry patch. The strawberries long ago disappeared, but many of the one hundred and fifty apple trees still thrive and provide fruit for permanent Yosemite residents.
During his regime of ownership, Hutchings added Rock Cottage, Oak Cottage, and River Cottage to his caravansary. In 1874 the state legislature appropriated $60,000 to extinguish all private claims in Yosemite Valley, and the Hutchings interests were adjudged to be entitled to $24,000.
Coulter and Murphy then became the proprietors of the old Hutchings group and in 1876 they built the Sentinel Hotel. Their period of management was brief, and the entire property passed to J. K. Barnard in 1877, who for seventeen years maintained it as the Yosemite Falls Hotel.[6] This unit among the pioneer hostelries was torn down in 1938-1940.
Clark’s Ranch, Now Wawona
Galen Clark accompanied one of the 1855 Yosemite-bound parties that had been inspired by Hutchings, when that pioneer related his experiences in Mariposa. Upon his first trip to the valley over the old Indian trail from Mariposa, he recognized in the meadows on the South Fork of the Merced a most promising place of abode. His health had been impaired in the gold camps; he had, in fact, been told by a physician that he could live but a short time. The lovely vale of the Nuchu Indians offered solace, and in April of 1857 he settled there on the site of the camp occupied by the Mariposa Battalion in 1851. Nowhere in his writings does Clark intimate that he expected to be overtaken by early death at the time of his homesteading. Rather we may believe that it was with foresight and careful plan that he erected his cabin beside the new trail of the sight-seer and prepared to accommodate those saddle-weary pilgrims who mounted horses at Mariposa and made their first stop with him en route to the new mecca.
His first cabin was crude. A rough pine table surrounded by three-legged stools facilitated his homely service. As the number of visitors increased, Clark enlarged his ranch house. When ten years of his pioneer hotel keeping had passed, Charles Loring Brace was among his visitors. Brace writes:
After fourteen miles—an easy ride—we all reached Clark’s Ranch at a late hour, ready for supper and bed.
This ranch is a long, rambling, low house, built under enormous sugar-pines, where travelers find excellent quarters and rest in their journey to the Valley. Clark himself is evidently a character; one of those men one frequently meets in California—the modern anchorite—a hater of civilization and a lover of the forest—handsome, thoughtful, interesting, and slovenly. In his cabin were some of the choicest modern books and scientific surveys; the walls were lined with beautiful photographs of the Yosemite; he knew more than any of his guests of the fauna, flora, and geology of the State; he conversed well on any subject, and was at once philosopher, savant, chambermaid, cook, and landlord.
From the scores of books written by early Yosemite visitors, one might extract a great compendium of remarks on Clark and his ranch. The proprietor, like the Grizzly Giant, was impressive. He was invariably remembered by his guests. They wrote of his generous hospitality, his simplicity, kindness, honesty, wit, wisdom, and unselfish devotion to the mountains he loved. Had they known, they might have written that he gave too freely of all his mental and physical assets and that as a businessman he was not a success. The season of 1870 found the ownership of his ranch divided with Edwin Moore.
Moore assumed general management, and Clark’s became known as “Clark and Moore’s.” The ladies of Moore’s family introduced a new element in the hospitality of the place, and for a few years it assumed an aspect of new ambition. Extensive improvements, however, resulted in foreclosure of mortgages, and the firm of Washburn, Coffman, and Chapman secured ownership in 1875 and changed the name to “Wawona.”