Leidig’s is the best place in the line of hotels. Mrs. L—— attends to the cooking in person; the results are that the food is well cooked and intelligently served. There is not the variety to be obtained here as in places more accessible to market. After traveling a few months in California, a person is liable to think less of variety and more of quality. At this place the beds are cleanly and wholesome, although consisting of pulu mattresses placed upon slat bedsteads. This house stands in the shadow of Sentinel Rock, and faces the great Yosemite Fall; is surrounded with porches, making a pleasant place to sit and contemplate the magnificence of the commanding scenery. (From Caroline M. Churchill, 1876.) When A. P. Vivian continued on to Yosemite in January of 1878, he found the Leidig family in the valley and commented as follows on his winter reception: Our host was glad enough to see us, for tourists are very scarce commodities at this time of the year, and he determined to celebrate our arrival by exploding a dynamite cartridge, that we might at the same time enjoy the grand echoes. These were doubtless extraordinary, but I am free to confess I would rather have gone away without hearing them than have experienced the anxiety of mind, and real risk to body, which preceded the pleasure. Leidig’s, with Black’s, was torn down after the Stoneman House provided more fitting accommodations. The little chapel which had been built near these old hotels in 1879 was moved to its present site in the Old Village. In 1928 the picturesque old well platform and crane, which had marked the Leidig site, was destroyed. Only a group of locust trees now indicates where this center of pioneer activity existed. The Cosmopolitan, 1872-1932 But the wonder—among the buildings of Yosemite—is the “Cosmopolitan,” containing saloon, billiard hall, bathing rooms, and barber-shop, established and kept by Mr. C. E. Smith. Everything in it was transported twenty miles on mules; mirrors full-length, pyramids of elaborate glassware, costly service, the finest of cues and tables, reading-room handsomely furnished and supplied with the latest from Eastern cities, and baths with unexceptionable surroundings, attest the nerve and energy of the projector. It is a perfect gem. The end of the wagon-road was twenty miles away when the enterprise began, and yet such skill was used in mule-packing that not an article was broken. I have not seen a finer place of resort, for its size. The arrangements for living are such that one could spend the summer there delightfully, and we found several tourists who remained for weeks.