In the Heart of the Sierras

Book excerpt: California's Yosemite Valley has always been a land of magnificent waterfalls, mountain peaks, towering sequoias. The 19th and 20th centuries brought to it promoters and hoteliers with talents to match the scenery. J.M. Hutchings was both promoter and hotel operator. In 1855, he formed the first tourist expedition to enter the Valley. He began publication of Hutchings' California Magazine the following year. In 1886 Hutchings published this book, describing himself on the title page as J.M. Hutchings of Yo Semite. Hutchings was an Englishman who first learned of Yosemite's wonders from the reports of the Mariposa Battalion. He conducted the first tourist forays into Yosemite in 1855, and worked as a tireless promoter of Yosemite through the 1860s and 1870s, playing host to visitors at Yosemite as the proprietor of "The Old Cabin."