Yosemite and James Hutchings, Pt. 2

Because he saw himself as Yosemite's ambassador, Hutchings was surprised when the state of California told him his land claim was invalid. He fought the state for many years, and though he ultimately lost the battle, it didn't sever his ties to Yosemite.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy D. Wilson, and we
are entering into part two of our two part episode

(00:22):
on Yosemite and James Hutchings. And in part one of
this we talked about the park a little bit, at
the Park of Yosemite as we know it today. We
also talked about its history in terms of when white
men first saw it and how James Hutchings started to
really build an identity in a life completely around promoting
this piece of land. And we're going to jump right

(00:43):
in on this second part uh in in the continuity
of the story, So we highly recommend that you listen
to part one first or you might be a little
bit confused. You will not have context for what we
were talking about. So, and in addition to the periodical
that we talked about last time, Hutchings also wrote the
books Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California Tourists Guide

(01:04):
to the Yosemite Valley, which published in eighteen sixty two,
and then later In the Heart of the Sierras, which
was published in As with his magazine. These books features
some really fantastic illustrations, and one of the things that's
uh quite fun about Hutching's writing is that he really

(01:25):
was not shy about writing about how affecting this landscape
could be. So in scenes of wondering curiosity, he wrote
the following about the feeling that one would get at
the end of the day, At the end of a
day spent in Yosemite, and he says, quote, as we
sit in the stillness and twilight of evening, thinking over
and conversing about the wondrous scenes our eyes have looked

(01:46):
upon this day, or listen in silence to the deep
music of the distant waterfalls, our hearts seemed to be
full too, overflowing with a sense of the grandeur, wildness, beauty,
and profoundness to be felt and enjoy when communing with
the glorious works of nature. In the opening of In
the Heart of the Sierra's, Hutchings bars quotes from a

(02:08):
wide range of people about Yosemite to establish the case
that it's truly a marvel. Everyone from geologists to Ralph
Waldo Emerson weighs in on these introductory pages. They all
praise the astonishing nature of the beauty that can be
found there. The book then goes on to relate the
history of Yosemite and how it was quote discovered by

(02:28):
white men, how the gold rush planted the seed of
resentment with the native population, and how the Mariposta War began,
and Uh, you'll remember James Savage, who was the man
that led the Mariposa Battalion. Uh, and Hutchings writing about
him is really interesting indeed, because according to the Hutchings account,
Savage took wives yes that was plural, with an s

(02:51):
at the end, from the Native Americans in the hopes
that doing so would prevent attacks on his home and business.
And also, in the Hutching version, one of Savage's squaws
as they are called in this in this book, told
him ahead of time that an attack on the mining
town was being planned by a group of Native American men.

(03:12):
A few years into their marriage, in eighteen sixty four,
James and Alvira purchased the Upper Hotel for four hundred dollars.
Hutchings had been hoping to do this for a long
time beforehand because of issues that the hotel had had
from the beginning, but it took him a little while
to get the finances together to actually buy it. The
existing hotel was still pretty utilitarian at best, and when

(03:34):
we talked last time about how it's basically a frame
with some sheets, but permanent. But James and Elvirus bruced
it up a bit and opened it as the Hutchings House,
and James would later write of the hotel's issues and
his eventual acquisition of it, also in the Heart of
the Sierras, and in that he wrote quote owing to
a heavy indebtedness incurred in building the hotel and the

(03:58):
lack of success attending the first Fourth of July party
given for which extensive preparations had been made and from
which much had been expected, Its projectors and builders, unable
to meet their obligations, assigned it to creditors for their protection.
The following two years, it was least to Mr Charles Peck,
then to Mr p. Longhurst, after which it was either

(04:18):
let temporarily or remained closed until purchased by the writer
in eighteen sixty four. The couple eventually added on to
the existing structure, including a large common room known as
the Big Tree Room, so named because it had been
constructed around a cedar tree that was a hundred and
seventy five ft or fifty three meters tall. This had

(04:38):
started with as a sitting room with a dirt floor,
but it was later improved and floored and became this
dining room for people before it was eventually made into
a parlor. Yeah, there are some fantastic pictures of James
and Elvira sitting in this room and there on either
side of the tree trunk, and it's massive, so they

(04:59):
may as well sort of be very far apart in
different places. Um, But you can find pictures of those
online and we'll try to link some of the show notes.
The same year that the Hutchings purchased that hotel, they
also had their first child, Florence Hutchings. She would later
go by Flow, sometimes Floyd and even Flora, and Florence
was the first white child born in Yosemite on August

(05:21):
eighteen sixty four, and Flow love the outdoors. She was
quite a tomboy, and she often complained that she had
not been born a boy. While initially the whole family
was involved in running the hotel, eventually it was Elvira's mother,
flor Antha T. Sprote, who really kept things running as
James was really busy working to be basically the ambassador
of Yosemite, and Alvira immersed herself and her interests in

(05:45):
music and botany. Since Florentha had experience running a boarding house,
running a lodge came pretty naturally to her. It was
basically an extension of what she was already used to doing. Yeah,
if you'll recall from the first episode, it was it
was at her boarding house that James actually met Elvira,
so she had been doing that in San Francisco for
quite a time before they were at Yosemite, and from

(06:07):
the beginning of the hotel's life as Hutchings House there
were once again serious financial and legal problems. On June
eighteen sixty four, President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of
Congress that transferred ownership of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa
Grove of Giant Sequoias to the state of California. That

(06:27):
transfer was a land grant to the state that was
not to be settled, which meant that the property that
the Hutchings had purchased just two months before this was
not considered a legal claim. That had all come about
because California Senator John Conniss had introduced the land grant
to Congress with the goal of conserving the land. He

(06:47):
and like minded thinkers of the day didn't want Yosemite
to become like Niagara Falls, which had been overrun with
tourist development. Congress, quite busy at the time with the
Civil War, was rather quick to go forward at the
Yosemit Grant, probably so they could move on to the
more pressing business that they had at hand. The fact
that there were property owners in Yosemite already had not

(07:09):
really been disclosed by Conness when he was questioned about
this whole land grant, and that lack of disclosure is
going to play a big part in things coming up.
But before we get to all of that, let's pause
really quickly for a brief word from one of our
fantastic sponsors, so to get back into our story. Hutchings

(07:33):
initially was really pretty excited about the land grant. He
thought like, Yeah, we're going to preserve this land that
I love so much. But that was before it was
made plain to him that his hotel did not fit
into the state legislature's plans. It was seen instead by
some as a case of the Hutchings wanting to turn
a profit off of the natural beauty of the valley
rather than as the home base of Yosemite's ambassadors, which

(07:55):
is how Hutchings saw it. And in addition to the hotel,
James Hutchings had all so filed a preemption claim on
a large land parcel that up to that point was
just awaiting a survey team, and the state said that
that was invalid as well. For the next decade, a
bitter battle played out between Hutchings and the state government.
Initially after the land transfer, the state told James and

(08:17):
Elvira that they need to sign a lease for the
hotel since the state owned the land, but Hutchings fought
the state. And Hutchings was not the only person who
had a land claim in Yosemite. Another man, James C. Lemon,
had built a cabin there as well, and he was
in the same boat as Hutchings, and he also fought
the state. Lamon had actually helped build the Upper Hotel

(08:39):
when it was initially constructed, and the year after it
was completed, he made a claim on the upper end
of the valley and established a garden in an orchard.
In addition to constructing a little log cabin there. Both
Hutchings and Lemon were notified by the Board of Yosemite
Commissioners appointed by the state that they would need to
lease their property from the state by a given dead

(09:00):
one or that have to leave, and both men turned
down those options. And according to Hutchings, when he spoke
with a Senator Pomeroy of Kansas, who served on the
United States Committee of Public Lands, that is, when it
came to light that commis had claimed that the land
had no settlers, Hutchings felt that this really proved that
he should have had protected rights as a land claimant. Otherwise,

(09:23):
why would that information have been withheld Throughout all of
this legal wrangling There were, of course, huge gaps in
terms of anything happening. Committees would recess or other delays
would come up in the government schedule. And throughout it all,
Hutchings occupied his time by promoting Yosemite, both in writing
and in giving lectures. They claimed to give quote eight

(09:46):
seven illustrated lectures on Yosemite, sometimes to audiences of over
three thousand. He did so, he claimed for three reasons,
to keep himself busy, to make a little money, and
to bring more attention to quote the marvelous grandeur of scenery.
In July eight seventy one, the California Supreme Court issued
the following ruling in another land claim case. Quote. If

(10:09):
a qualified preemption or enter upon a portion of the
public domain with the intention to preempt the same, and
performs all the acts necessary to perfect his preemptive right,
except the payment of the purchase price, the government may, nevertheless,
at any time before the price is actually paid or tendered,
devote the land to another purpose, and thereby wholly defeat

(10:32):
the right of preemption. So basically, they're saying, even if
someone is trying to buy a piece of land. For example,
James Hutchings claimed uh big land parcel that had not
yet been surveyed, and so that deal was not yet done.
If they were making that claim but they hadn't paid
for it, and the state came in and wanted to
do something else, as long as the money hadn't changed hands,

(10:54):
there was nothing to be done for it. That judgment
was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, but ruling
was upheld. Hutchings suggests in his writing about all of
this that he that if he had made a land
claim in a less beautiful place, the government never would
have gone to all this trouble. Yeah, he really felt
like at the at the end of the day, because

(11:15):
Yosemite was so spectacular, it was of more interest to
the state than if it had been like a park
that was not so filled with wonders. Uh. And in
eighteen seventy four, the state of California finally paid out
a twenty four thousand dollars settlement to the Hutchings for
their land and hotel. Lamon received twelve thousand dollars. And
as this tale develops in Hutchings writing, he makes it

(11:38):
quite clear that he actually thinks that the state treated
him relatively well, but that the blame should sit squarely
with Senator John Connis and his deception that started all
of this trouble. The Hutchings family finally left their hotel
behind and moved to San Francisco. Not long after they
settled in San Francisco, James and Alvira divorced. James, however,

(11:59):
continue to live with Alvira's mother, as did the couple's children,
and four years later James remarried his new wife. Augustus
Sweetland had been their next our neighbor. Yeah, Elvira kind
of took off to do her own thing. Uh. That's
why James stayed with the family and her and Elvira's mother. Uh.
And during that decade of turmoil that they had been undergoing,

(12:21):
the Hutchings also became entwined with the life of a
man who also had a long term relationship with Yosemite Valley,
and in many ways he is more famous in that
in eighteen sixty nine, the pair hired a Scotsman named
John Weir to build and run a sawmill on their property,
and there was tension from the start between the two men.
Each of them felt as though he was the expert

(12:42):
and the spokesperson for Yosemite. And while Hutchings had at
that point two decades of writing on the matter as
his credentials, whereas Weir had only been in the United States,
I think like a year and a half at that point.
People really responded Tom Weir, and that's why he kind
of garnered a great deal of attention. He is in
most of the historical pictures of Yosemite that have people

(13:06):
that I found, like I was hoping to find a
picture of Hutchings or picture of Hutchings in Yosemite for
our podcasts on our website and all that. Nope, he's
never the one in the picture. There are some, but
they're not like the ones that are in always public domain.
But yeah, we're is is really like the one that
history has eventually made the Yosemite guy. Yeah, and he

(13:29):
could easily be a podcast subject on his own, probably
will at some point. But one of the things to
consider about this clash between the two men because their
fundamental differences and how they approached the subject of Yosemite.
Hutchings saw the beauty of the valley is a thing
that could be shared, like a shared experience that would
bring people together. We're sometimes touted as something of a

(13:51):
wilderness apostle, was a lot more about more personal, passionate
individual connection to the land rather than something to be
shared with a group. Yeah, and that that standpoint was
a little bit more in line with the modern thinking
of the time. So that's why he kind of had
a great appeal to a lot of people. Uh. Yosemite though,

(14:13):
would once again call Hutchings back. But before we talk
about that, we're gonna pause one more time and have
a word from one of our fantastic sponsors. In eighteen eighty,
James Hutchings returned once again to Yosemite. The administrators of

(14:34):
the Yosemite and Mariposa Grove Land Grant had been removed
from their position by the States eighteen seventy eighteen seventy
nine Constitutional Convention, as had the Guardian of Yosemite, and
James Hutchings was appointed to fill that empty guardian position.
But his time and the job didn't go very well.
He didn't get along with people and he could be
really tactless, so he was let go after four years. Yeah,

(14:57):
he was very direct, he did not hold anything back. Uh,
not the easiest person to get along with, even though
he felt he was very clear headed and just telling
things like they were. But early on in James Hutchings
time as administrator as Guardian of Yosemite, his daughter Flow
died there and the young woman was leading a group

(15:17):
of hikers in the area. But what happened to cause
her death has been accounted in pretty wildly different ways,
and John Ware's writing about the incident because she was
friends with him. She had climbed a rock to pick
firms for the group that she was leading. When she
slipped and fell into an adjacent stream and then caught
a chill and became ill and died soon after. But
other accounts say that she was struck by a boulder

(15:39):
on the ledge trail, but in either case she died
very young. She was only seventeen when she passed, and
she was buried in the Yosemite Cemetery, where people still
go and visit her grave site. James Hutchings died in
two He was in Yosemite at the time on vacation
with his third wife, Emily, when they were involved in
a wagon accident, and like Flow, Ames was buried in

(16:01):
Yosemite Cemetery. In a digitized scan of a copy of
In the Heart of the Sierras that I was looking at,
I stumbled across this tiny obituary clipping that some owner
of the book appears to have pasted onto one of
the early pages, And since it's a clipping, it doesn't
include the original sourcing. But it's interesting in that it

(16:22):
characterizes Hutchings is really a sort of father to Yosemite tourism.
It reads, discoverer of Yosemite Dead J M's Hutchings, who
found the famous valley, killed there by accident San Francisco,
November two in the year is handwritten in J. M. Hutchings,

(16:42):
who discovered the Yosemite Valley and opened it for tourists,
was killed on Friday night by his team going over
the grade on his way into the famous valley. Mr
Hutchings was nearly ninety years old and until recently spent
every winter in the Yosemite. He had kept this season
the Calabaris Big Trees Hotel. So this is interesting one

(17:03):
and that it it doesn't get all the facts right.
He didn't discover Yosemity. But while Hutchings today doesn't really
get recognition as Yosemite's ambassador on the level that John
Weir does, during his lifetime, he was clearly seen that
way by at least some people, certainly enough to make
his obituary seem like he was the guy everyone associated

(17:24):
with that area. That's for the sake of including a
lovely fine that came up in research below. That pasted
obituary is handwritten. I remember meeting and talking with Mr
Hutchings in the Yosemite Valley at the time of my
visit in Eine we had just arrived. My conversation with
him was in the Big Tree Room pictured opposite page
three forty nine. Holly couldn't quite make out the signature,

(17:46):
but it is dated November five, nine two, so it
seems like it's probably the person who cut out and
pasted that clipping into the book. Yeah, it was just
one of those wonderful things that you kind of stumble
across in research, and it it gives an interesting piece
of color to who James Hutchings wash. And as for
hutchings first wife, Elvira, her paintings of Yosemite actually gained

(18:09):
her a certain degree of fame and praise, and she
continued to paint images of the parks incredible landscapes even
after she and James split, although unfortunately most of her
work was lost in a fire in nineteen o six.
She eventually moved to Vermont to be with her daughter Gertrude,
and she died there in nineteen seventeen. So the Yosemite
Land grant to set aside the land and protected from

(18:32):
development was really the first of its kind in the
United States. Yosemite was not the first national park. Remember,
we got into this topic because it seemed like literally
everyone was asking us to talk about the founding of
the National parks. That honor actually goes to Yellowstone, which
was made a National Park in eighteen seventy two. Yosemite

(18:52):
wasn't made a National park until eighteen ninety. The Act
creating the National Park Service was signed by President Woodrow
Wilson on August nineteen sixteen, so much later than there
were actual parks established. Yep uh and Yosemite was made
a UNESCO World Heritage Site in four Today, the Hutchings

(19:14):
house is gone, as is the little village that kind
of grew up in the area. The allowed development actually
moved to another site. The base of the tree from
the Big Tree Room remains, though, and you can drive
right by it. There are also some markers on the
ground where the corners of the Big Tree Room used
to be, and visitors now have their choice of lodging
in the park. So not that that one kind of

(19:36):
jankie hotel that needed lots of help, but now there
are some really amazing places to stay there. Uh. The
park has eight hotels and four campgrounds, so a far
cry from that two story window lists sheets instead of
walls hotel that the Hutchings bought in eighteen sixty four.
So that is our our little response to the many

(19:56):
listener requests for a National Park Service episode. So happy
hundred b day National Park Service in We're so glad
you're here. Yeah, it's very very cool. There are actually
lots of National parks that that are related to various
podcasts that we talk about, uh, that we've done in
the past, Like we we don't always mention them because

(20:17):
there are a lot and if we try to mention
every single site that that goes along with something, it
will be this neverest never ending list of places to visit.
But the National Park Service website has information on so
many places you can visit. Yeah, and for listener mail,
I have a tie in postcard that is from uh
Fort Marion National Monument at St. Augustine, Florida, and it's

(20:39):
uh the United States Department of the Interior National Park
Service is a cute, cute thing, and it is from
our listener, Alice. She says, Hi, only and Tracy, I'm
a big fan of the show. I've been listening for
just a few months, but I love learning more every
day because of you. I'm chaperoning a group of teenage
girl scouts on a travel camp to St. Augustine. Oh, Alice,
bless you because that takes patients. I would not have Uh.

(21:02):
The city is deeped in history and celebrated its four
and fiftieth anniversary last year. When we visited the Castillo
de San Marcos, I saw this postcard and I thought
of you definitely worth a visit next time you're in
the Sunshine State. Thanks for the podcast. Thank you so much, Alice.
You accidentally timed such an absolutely perfect postcard for when

(21:23):
I was prepping this episode, so I appreciate it. And again,
I always say it, but I always want to say it.
I'm so grateful every time someone stops in the middle
of their vacation and mails us something that's amazing and
kind and it's so thoughtful. If you would like to
reach us, you can do so at History Podcast at
house to Works dot com. We're also at Facebook dot com,
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(21:46):
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in National Park Service in the search bar, you will
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If you would like to visit Tracy and Me online,

(22:08):
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(22:28):
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