[Illustration: _By Ralph Anderson, NPS_ Badger Pass Ski House] [Illustration: _By Ralph Anderson, NPS_ Ski Patrol at Work] [Illustration: _By D. R. Brower_ Winter in the Yosemite High Sierra: Clark Range] [Illustration: _By Ralph Anderson, NPS_ Snow Gaugers Entering Tuolumne Meadows] The Yosemite Park and Curry Company now owns and operates Wawona. It has become one of the largest and most favorably known family resorts in the Sierra Nevada and retains some of the flavor of its earlier years. Black’s Hotel A. G. Black was a pioneer of the Coulterville region. In the late ’fifties, he resided at Bull Creek on the Coulterville trail. Visitors who entered the valley from the north during the first years of tourist travel have left a few records of stops made at the “Black’s” of that place. The “Black’s” of Yosemite Valley did not come into existence until the advent of the ’sixties, when Mrs. Black is reported to have purchased the old Lower Hotel. In 1869 this first structure was torn down, and an elongated shedlike structure built on its site, near the foot of the present Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point. This was the “Black’s” that for nineteen years served a goodly number of Yosemite tourists. In 1888, after the opening of the Stoneman House, there was among the commissioners “a unanimity of feeling that the old shanties and other architectural bric-a-brac, that had long done service for hotels and stables, and the like, should be torn down.” Black’s Hotel was accordingly removed in the fall of 1888, and the lumber from its sagging walls went into the construction of the “Kenneyville” property, which stood on the present site of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Leidig’s The family of George F. Leidig arrived in Yosemite Valley in 1866. For a time the old Lower Hotel was in their charge, but, when its owner, A. G. Black, assumed its management personally, the Leidigs secured rights to build for themselves. They selected a site just west of the old establishment and constructed a two-story building to become known as Leidig’s. This was in 1869. Charles T. Leidig, the first white boy to be born in the valley, was born in the spring of that year. Mrs. Leidig’s ability as a cook was quickly noted by visitors, and, no doubt, the popularity of her table did much to draw patrons. Many are the printed comments in the contemporary publications of her guests. Here is an example: