Mccauley's Glacier Point Mountain House
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A JOURNAL FOR MEMBERS OF THE YOSEMITE ASSOCIATION Summer 2001 Volume 63 Number 3 lauley's Glacier Point ain House MCCAULEY'S GLACIER POINT BY HANK JOHNSTON MOUNTAIN HOUSE James McCauley (1840-1911), a roughhewn, Irish-born dent. Because he had already finished the survey to sailor, came to America at the age of seventeen as a stow- Glacier Point, trail work went on to completion without away on a British ship . After a brief stay in New York City, him in mid-1872. he stowed away again, this time on a vessel bound for McCauley then built a small combination tollhou South America . Disembarking at Panama, he journeyed and residence at the foot of the trail and set about satisfy overland to the Pacific Ocean and eventually found his ing his many debts. Fred McCauley, one of James' son: way to Portland, Oregon . He spent a half-dozen years said many years later that his father paid off his thirty-fix mining in Washington state and Montana before being hundred dollar investment and began showing a profit i lured to Hite's Cove in Mariposa County in 1865 by a fel- less than two years. low miner's exuberant tales of golden riches. Noted writer Helen Hunt Jackson described her jour In the spring of 1870, McCauley left his job at the Pine ney up and down the Four-Mile Trail, as it soon beta Tree Mine near Bear Valley and obtained employment in known, shortly after its completion : "It is a marvelo Yosemite Valley at James Hutchings ' water-powered piece of work. It is broad, smooth, and well-protected . sawmill, working with John Muir. When Hutchings the outer edge, in all dangerous places, by large rocks: packed in his two-horse stage in August, 1871, used to that, although it is by far the steepest out of the vall transport tourists from the foot of the Coulterville Trail zigzagging back and forth on a sheer granite wall, o to El Capitan to Hutchings Hotel, McCauley became the rides up it with little alarm or giddiness, and with such driver. Later the same year, he entered into a ten-year con- sense of gratitude to the builder that the dollar 's t Cover: The Glacier tract with the Yosemite Board of Commissioners to build seems too small." Point Mountain and operate a toll trail from the Valley floor near Leidig 's In the spring of 1872, with the new trail to Gla House is shown Hotel up to Glacier Point. It was reported that hotel own- Point about to become a reality, Charles Peregoy, pro here in June, 1888. ers and other businessmen within the Yosemite Grant had etor of Peregoy's Mountain View House, a rustic stop encouraged the commissioners to authorize the venture. McCauley hired John Conway, builder of many roads and trails in and around Yosemite, to survey the route. Beginning in the late fall of 1871, McCauley, working alone, completed about a half mile of trail before the first big snowstorm of the season halted his efforts . In the process he exhausted his capital of seven hundred dollars . During the winter of 1871-72, McCauley occupied himself obtaining loans totaling three thousand dollars from various friends as far away as Hite's Cove. The following spring he hired a crew of nine men and resumed work on the challenging project in earnest. When a scenic outlook named Union Point, two miles from the summit, was attained in early summer, McCauley received permission from the commissioners to begin charging tourists who wished to visit the new viewpoint. Conway was injured about this time in an acci- The view from Glacier Point toward Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon has long been a favorite of Yosemite tourists . This photograph was taken in the 1920s. 2 YOSEMITE ASSOCIATION, SUMMER 2001 place on the old trail between Clark's Station at Wawona and Yosemite Valley, decided to erect a small building at the renowned overlook. John Muir, in a letter to a friend HOTEL FOR SALE io lune, 1872, wrote: "I hear Peregoy intends building a betel at Glacier Point." Peregoy 's great-granddaughter OR LEASE. 9eatrice said that construction of a rough, one-story THE HOTEL KNOWN AS THE wilding "perched like an eagle 's nest on a very com- Glacier Point Hotel, located near manding crag" began that summer. The shack-like struc- TSemite Valley, on the most command- ing view of the valley and the Nevada and -1re was apparently completed in 1873, but never Vernal Falls, is now of&rvd for sale, or fur tarnished or utilized. lease, for a term of years . It is visited by After the State of California took over possession of all all tourists, and acknowledged to be the moat picturesque and beautiful spot in 'semite claims in the fall of 1874, the commissioners the region of Yo Semite Valley . The house la used Peregoy 's Glacier Point shanty to James McCauley just completed, and is two story high and .or ten years on condition that he build a suitable hotel contains fourteen bed-rooms, sitting room :r. the site. McCauley devoted the summers of dining room, kitchen, etc . It is furnished 1875 and in first class style, and Is a very desirable 76 to the construction of a greatly enlarged, two-story stand and a rare opportunity for and one ~etilding. "Peregoy's shack was in tumbledown condi- who wieches to engage in the hotel bcsaineu, .on," McCauley said a few years later. "I practically rebuilt For further pa :lieulFirs address, JAMES McAtLET, structure, spending $2,000 to do so." 7-tf Yo Semite Valley. All wood used in the hotel came from trees felled in me nearby forest . Timbers were hewed on the ground oo-th a broadax. Boards for flooring, doors, and window McCauley advertised his new hotel `for sale or lease " in the -wings were cut by a three-man crew using a primitive Mariposa Gazette on August 5, 1876. tat-saw. It required a long day of arduous labor to pro- Dace seventy-five to a hundred board feet of usable lum- used at the hotel in two ten-gallon kegs by wheelbarrow Everything else for the remote project was carried up from a spring a quarter of a mile away. A few years later, ~._ Four-Mile Trail from the Valley on the backs of mules. McCauley piped water directly to the premises from a McCauley completed his hotel after eleven months of better spring a half-mile distant . Naturally, all the heavy :.-enuous work and immediately offered it for sale or iron pipe required for the undertaking had to be packed rase to any interested party. It seems likely that up the steep trail on mules. 4(:Cauley, an uneducated, unmarried man, felt incapable On November 18, 1879, James McCauley, age erating the business himself, but had undertaken the thirty-nine, married Barbara Wenger, a thirty-seven-year- :ure to boost travel over his Glacier Point trail . On old German woman who was employed at Leidig 's Hotel. :ust 5, 1876, the Mariposa Gazette carried an adver- The new Mrs. McCauley had a four-year-old son named -nent listing McCauley's hotel "for sale or lease " Jules, whom McCauley adopted. The following summer roduced on these pages). the couple took over the operation of the Glacier Point In the spring of 1877, McCauley leased his new hotel, hotel themselves and remained in place for eighteen sea- mach was not nearly so grand as his advertisement sons (1880-1897) . Barbara, who was universally praised *plied, to Thomas and Elizabeth Glynn, a Massachusetts for her culinary skills, prepared all the meals and did the fw auple who had only recently come to Yosemite because housekeeping, assisted by a hired girl . James waited table, '•`.rs. Glynn's asthma ( "I can't breathe in any other tended bar, handled the chores, and entertained the . she often said) . Mrs. Glynn, an industrious, some- guests. ccentric woman, was an excellent purveyor of plain Twin boys were born to the McCauleys on November ppetizing food, which she served on her own 4, 1880, in their winter residence at the foot of the Four- gewood china . This ability served the couple well Mile Trail. In 1883, a year after the state purchased his toll .ease most of their income derived from meals sup- trail for twenty-five hundred dollars, McCauley bought =I'd to travelers who rode up the Four-Mile or the the ranch of John Hamilton, a deceased Yosemite guide. lama Trail to see the spectacular view. The property lay on a flank above the Merced River just Uring the Glynns ' three seasons of management west of present Foresta. He later homesteaded the sur- -79), few tourists elected to remain overnight in rounding 160 acres. uley's spartan building, which had no bathing facil- McCauley ran cattle in the El Portal area during the and whose interior partitions and ceilings consisted winter. Early each summer he drove his animals up the th and paper. Thomas Glynn transported all water Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point and turned them out to YOSEMITE ASSOCIATION . SUMMER 2001 3 Walter Dennison, the Yosemite Guardian at the time, complained vociferously to the commissioners without success. McCauley, a gregarious, fun-loving fellow, is generally credited with inadvertently originating the famous Firefall, which became a Yosemite institution in later years. "Father started the Firefall in 1872," son Fred McCauley said, "when he pushed his campfire over the Glacier Point cliff. He experimented with gunny sacks soaked in kerosene, fireworks, and even dynamite bombs for spectacular effects .