Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

In the morning we were on our way to the Big Trees. We decided to leave our car at a humble but very pleasant little forest inn called Fish Camp Hotel, presided over by some Maine people who long ago left the pines of Maine for the pines of California. They have a mountain ranch which they leave in the summer to come up into the higher forests and to keep a little hostel and grocery store. It is a long walk from Fish Camp Hotel to the boundary fence of the National Park where the famous Big Trees are. If one prefers to drive one's car over a somewhat rocky but perfectly passable mountain road and to leave it just outside the fence, one can do so. In this way, one's walking powers are kept fresh for the memorable expedition among the Big Trees. One needs a long day in which to see the Trees. We felt sorry for the tourists who were being driven about and who had only an allotted time in which to see the Trees. We had our luncheon with us and were independent. We walked miles along the Park drives. We stood under the Trees, of which there are some five hundred, gazing up at their distant tops. We amused ourselves by measuring their enormous girths with our arms. Most of the time we simply gazed at them from one vantage point and another, lost in wonder at their height, so much greater than we had dreamed, and at their bulk, so enormous as to be difficult to take in. The Big Trees were far bigger, far grander, far more beautiful in their coloring than we had been prepared for. When the afternoon sunlight struck their trunks and they glowed with the wonderful soft, deep red which is their color, we were enchanted. We felt awed, too, not only by their great size, but by their great age. We were in the presence of hoary old men, a detached little company of Ancients who were living long, long before our generation ever came upon the scene, and who had passed through much of the world's history. It was with a glowing sense of satisfaction and happiness and wonder that we came away from our leisurely day among the Trees. Some day we hope to go back and to repeat that experience.

1. Camp Ahwahnee, Yosemite Valley. 2. Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Big Trees. 3. Yosemite Falls. 4. Cabin in Mariposa Grove.

We met later a gentleman who said that he had spent such a day, had had a supper with the forest keeper who sells photographs and souvenirs in his little cottage, and then had lain down to sleep on the pine needles under the great Trees themselves. "I saw the stars pinnacled in their branches," said he.

We had a comfortable night at Fish Camp Hotel, our fellow guests at the next table being a party of Scotch stone-cutters who had come up for a holiday from the granite quarry at Raymond where they were quarrying and shaping stones for some Sacramento public buildings. Bagpipes came out in the evening and the air was full of Scotch music and Scotch jokes. The next morning we drove on to Wawona, passing over the height of the grade and descending a little to come into the lovely Wawona meadows, in whose midst stands the old white wooden hotel which has dispensed delightful hospitality under the same landlords for forty years past. Mr. Washburn is the only one left of the brothers who built up the Wawona Hotel, and his son now bears the burden of the hotel administration.

People are always coming and going at Wawona. They are either on their way to the Yosemite; or having seen the Yosemite they are on their way out with a look at the Big Trees, eight miles away, as they pass by. We left our machine at the Wawona garage and took the 12 o'clock stage drawn by four splendid horses, to drive through the meadow and along the mountain for thirty miles to the Yosemite Valley. Later, the Wawona road was to be opened to motor travel. But the leisurely way of approach by the stage was very agreeable. The drive ran through the forest. We saw a pheasant in the bracken by the roadside with her brood of little ones. She walked with her head high, affecting a careless dignity to hide her anxiety, while her babies crouched close to the ground and looked like little brown dots as they skimmed along.

In the late afternoon, we saw a coyote out for his supper. Our stage driver cracked his whip at him and shouted his contempt. We saw the beautiful deer cross and recross the road, coming down to their drinking places. They are protected by the State and come and go with only the mountain lion to frighten them. And at last after twenty miles of drive through tall pines we came to the famous Inspiration Point where the first view of the Valley burst upon us. We had been driving over a high plateau, and now we were to descend more than a thousand feet into the deep cut which forms the Yosemite. Our stage driver evidently took a genuine pleasure, the pleasure of the showman, in reining up his horses at the psychological moment and allowing us to drink in the view that burst dramatically upon us. There was the green level floor of the Valley far below us; there was El Capitan rising in massive grandeur, a sheer wall of rock, in evening greys and lavenders, above the Valley; there was the Bridal Veil—a silver thread of water falling six hundred feet. And beyond were the Valley walls rising in the distance. In my opinion everyone who wishes to have the most striking entrance to the Yosemite should come in by the Wawona road, and have the great view at Inspiration Point fire the imagination first. A little lower down, we came again on the winding road to the same view, only from a lower vantage point and therefore more intimate. This point is known as Artists' Point; and after this we were hurrying down the mountain slope, the eager horses well aware that they were approaching food and rest.

Soon we were on the Valley floor, walls rising to the left and right of us, and ahead of us. Behind us was the way out of the Valley and above us was the mountain road by which we had just come down. Tourists were dropped at various camps, and we drove on to Camp Curry, the last stopping point of the stage. The Yosemite Valley is somewhat like a blind alley. It has but one entrance on the level of the Valley floor. As you drive to the farther end of the Valley, you become aware that you are approaching nearer and nearer to mountain walls, and ere long you are literally against a barrier, all the way from a thousand to three or four thousand feet in height. Anyone who would leave the Yosemite by other than the entrance on the Valley level at its one end must climb. Camp Curry has the great advantage of being located in the closed end of the valley and thus very near to many of the mountain trails. Its proprietor and landlord has built up Camp Curry to be the big, cosmopolitan, happy, democratic settlement that it now is. The food in the dining pavilion is plain but well cooked, and abundantly served in family fashion. The little tents with their two single beds are very comfortable. The camp fire at night, around which almost the entire camp assembles in that intimacy and yet detachment, which belongs to those who dream before a camp fire, is the heart of the camp life, where Mr. Curry gives nightly a family talk on trees, rocks, flowers, and trails. Hot water is a plentiful luxury at Camp Curry, and the host often says, "Camp Curry is on the water wagon, but it is a hot water wagon."