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Wawona’s Yesterdays (1961) by Shirley Sargent

FAMOUS VISITORS

President Theodore Roosevelt arriving at the Wawona Hotel, 1903.

George Washington didn’t sleep at the Wawona Hotel, but U. S. Grant and Rutherford Hayes did. ⁴⁶

James Garfield visited Yosemite and. Wawona as a congressman in 1875, six years before he became President of the United States.

Grant visited, as an ex-President, in 1879 at the end of a world tour. The Mariposa brass band accompanied him to the Wawona Hotel where he spent the night of October 7, 1879, before visiting the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees and Yosemite Valley. ⁴⁷

Rutherford Hayes visited Yosemite with a party of twelve in 1883, two years after his presidential term expired. ⁴⁶ He spent one night at the Wawona Hotel before visiting the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees.

Hattie Bruce Harris told an amusing story in connection with the visit of the William Jennings Bryan party to the Hotel. Mrs. Bryan wanted to go horseback riding but didn’t have the proper clothes. Jean Bruce Washburn (Mrs. A. H.) presented the problem to her sister-in-law, Azelia VanCampen Bruce, who took a new skirt of her daughter Hattie’s and seamed it up, making one of the first pair of culottes. ³⁶

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