A party with N. H. Davis, United States Inspector General, commented upon their destination and added: “This party defers further remarks until some further examinations are made.” Under the date of the original entry is a significant second autograph by a member of the General’s party: “A preliminary examination develops an abundance of mountain dew.” A great pile of broken containers, which had once held the “mountain dew,” is about the only remnant of La Casa Nevada which may be viewed by present-day visitors, for the chalet was destroyed by fire in the early ’nineties. Peregoy’s Another pioneer hotel is represented in the Yosemite Museum collections by a register.[8] It was known as the Mountain View House and occupied a strategic spot on the old horse trail from Clark’s to Yosemite Valley. Its site is known to present-day visitors as Peregoy Meadows, and the remains of the log building now repose quite as they fell many years ago. The hospitality of its keepers, Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Peregoy, was utilized by those travelers who, coming from Clark’s, took lunch there, or by those who departed from the valley via Glacier Point and made it an overnight stopping place. The Mountain View House register indicates that guests were entertained as early as the fall of 1869. It was not, however, until the spring of 1870 that the little resort made a bid for patronage. Its capacity for overnight accommodation was sixteen; so it is not surprising that a number of writers of the ’seventies were forced to record, in their published Yosemite memoirs, that they arrived late and sat around the kitchen stove all night. In June of 1872, fifty-six tourists were overtaken by a snowstorm in the neighborhood of Peregoy’s. It is to be surmised that on that night even the little kitchen did not accommodate the overflow. The construction of the Wawona road in 1875 revised the route of all Yosemite travel south of the Merced. Peregoy’s was left far from the line of travel and no longer functioned in the scheme of Yosemite resorts. The Harris Camp Grounds By 1878, the demand for recognition of private camping parties introduced the idea of public camp grounds in Yosemite. Large numbers of visitors were bringing their own conveyances and camping equipment so as to be independent of the hostelries. The commissioners set aside a part of the old Lamon property in the vicinity of the present Ahwahnee Hotel as the grounds upon which to accommodate the new class of visitors. Mr. A. Harris was granted the right to administer to the wants of the campers. He grew fodder for their animals, offered stable facilities, sold provisions, and rented equipment. The Harris Camp Ground was the forerunner of the present-day housekeeping camps and public auto camps, which accommodate, by far, the greater number of Yosemite visitors.