The early public interest manifested in the scenic beauties of Yosemite prompted a few far-sighted local men of the mountains to prepare for the influx of travelers that they felt was bound to occur. J. M. Hutchings had no more than related his experiences of his first visit in 1855 before Milton and Huston Mann undertook the improvement of the old Mariposa Indian trail leading to the valley. The next year Bunnell developed a trail from the north side of the gorge. The first visitors were from the camps of the Southern Mines, chiefly, but there were a few from San Francisco and interior towns, as well. During those first years of travel the few visitors expected to “rough it”; they were men and women accustomed to the wilds, and comforts were hardly required. Yet those pioneer hotelkeepers who had provided crude shelters found that their establishments were patronized. Hotelkeeping takes a place very near the beginning of the Yosemite story. The valley was then public domain. Although unsurveyed, it was generally conceded that homesteads within it might be claimed by whosoever persevered in establishing rights. The prospect of great activity in developing Frémont’s “Mariposa Estate” caused certain citizens of Mariposa to turn their attention to Yosemite Valley as the source of a much-needed water supply. Bunnell reveals that commercial interests had designs upon the valley as early as 1855. A survey of the valley and the canyon below was made in that year by L. H. Bunnell and George K. Peterson with the idea of making a reservoir. [Illustration: The Cosmopolitan, 1870-1932] [Illustration: The Lower Hotel, 1856-1869] The first house to be constructed there was built in 1856 by the company interested in this water project. Bunnell states: “It was of white cedar ‘puncheons,’ plank split out of logs. The builders of it supposed that a claim in the valley would doubly secure the water privileges. We made this building our headquarters, covering the roof with our tents.” The first permanent hotel structure was also started that year. It became known as the “Lower Hotel.” During the next decade it and the Upper Hotel found no competitors. At the close of the ’sixties, however, the hotel business of Yosemite Valley flashed rather prominently in the commerce of the state. A volume might be written on the efforts of honest proprietors to serve the early tourist; on the scheming of less scrupulous claimants to capitalize on their Yosemite holdings; on the humorous reaction of unsuspecting visitors within the early hostelries; and, finally, on the story of later-day developments which now care for the throng that, annually, partakes of Yosemite offerings. The full history of Yosemite hotels is eminently worth the telling, but the present work will be content in pointing to interesting recorded incidents in the story. The Lower Hotel