J. H. Neal and S. M. Cunningham. It was situated
directly opposite the Yosemite Fall. A little
over half a mile farther up the Valley a canvas house
was put up in 1858 by G. A. Hite. Next year a
frame house was built and kept as a hotel by Mr. Peck,
afterward by Mr. Longhurst and since 1864 by Mr. Hutchings.
All these hotels have vanished except the frame house
built in 1859, which has been changed beyond recognition.
A large hotel built on the brink of the river in front
of the old one is now the only hotel in the Valley.
A large hotel built by the State and located farther
up the Valley was burned. To provide for the
overflow of visitors there are three camps with board
floors, wood frame, and covered with canvas, well
furnished, some of them with electric light. A
large first-class hotel is very much needed.
Travel of late years has been rapidly increasing,
especially after the establishment, by Act of Congress
in 1890, of the Yosemite National Park and the recession
in 1905 of the original reservation to the Federal
Government by the State. The greatest increase,
of course, was caused by the construction of the Yosemite
Valley railroad from Merced to the border of the Park,
eight miles below the Valley.
It is eighty miles long, and the entire distance,
except the first twenty-four miles from the town of
Merced, is built through the precipitous Merced River
Canyon. The roadbed was virtually blasted out
of the solid rock for the entire distance in the canyon.
Work was begun in September, 1905, and the first train
entered El Portal, the terminus, April 15, 1907.
Many miles of the road cost as much as $100,000 per
mile. Its business has increased from 4000 tourists
in the first year it was operated to 15,000 in 1910.
Lamon
The good old pioneer, Lamon, was the first of all
the early Yosemite settlers who cordially and unreservedly
adopted the Valley as his home.
He was born in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, May
10, 1817, emigrated to Illinois with his father, John
Lamon, at the age of nineteen; afterwards went to
Texas and settled on the Brazos, where he raised melons
and hunted alligators for a living. “Right
interestin’ business,” he said; “especially
the alligator part of it.” From the Brazos
he went to the Comanche Indian country between Gonzales
and Austin, twenty miles from his nearest neighbor.
During the first summer, the only bread he had was
the breast meat of wild turkeys. When the formidable
Comanche Indians were on the war-path he left his
cabin after dark and slept in the woods. From
Texas he crossed the plains to California and worked
In the Calaveras and Mariposa gold-fields.
