Grant, Garfield, and Roosevelt: Presidents at the Gateway
Near Wawona, California
The Wawona Hotel guest list over the decades reads like a roster of American history. Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and former president, visited in October of eighteen seventy nine with his family, arriving by stage.
He was among the most famous living Americans, and his visit drew national attention to Wawona as a destination for distinguished travelers. James Garfield, who would become president six years later, had passed through as a congressman in eighteen seventy five. The most consequential visit came in May of nineteen oh three, when President Theodore Roosevelt arrived to camp in the Yosemite high country with the naturalist John Muir.
Roosevelt traveled through Wawona on his way into and out of the park. The three nights he spent sleeping under the sequoias and listening to Muir speak about wilderness deepened his already strong conservation instincts. Within a few years Roosevelt had added vast acreage to the national forests and parks system, and historians have traced part of that commitment to this Yosemite trip with Muir.
The Wawona Hotel offered these presidents and statesmen something rare in that era: a comfortable, civilized hotel at the very edge of one of the grandest natural landscapes on Earth.
