easure travel began and a trail on the Mariposa side of the Valley was
opened by Mann Brothers. This trail was afterwards purchased by the
citizens of the county and made free to the public. The first house
built in the Yosemite Valley was erected in the autumn of 1856 and was
kept as a hotel the next year by G. A. Hite and later by 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.

Chapter 14

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