In April of his forty-third year (1857) Galen Clark settled on the South Fork of the Merced. He had visited Yosemite in 1855. Therefore, it was not without foresight that he staked out his claim beside the trail running from Mariposa to Yosemite in the year that the Mann brothers completed it. He selected a spot near the lovely expanse of the Wawona meadow which lies in a basin-like depression encircled by rolling mountains clad in forests of sugar pine that are no more. He built a crude log cabin, thus making the beginning of the white man’s Wawona. [Illustration: GALEN CLARK AT THE AGE OF NINETY-SIX Photo by A. C. Pillsbury] It was not long before his visions of a teeming traffic that would some day wend its steady way before his door en route to the Yosemite became a reality. At first small straggling parties came at lengthy intervals, then larger groups, and finally a steady stream of eager travelers who desired to see the glories of Yosemite began to pass his way. His establishment, too, kept pace with the increasing travel. It varied from canvas and log to tolerably pretentious buildings as the seasons went by. With the advent of the sixties it was known as Clark’s Station, and was the heart of activity in this backwoods country. By this time a trail connected Clark’s with the Mariposa Grove. So impressed had the discoverer become with the importance of his find that he had built a good horse trail of four miles in length, thereby making the wonder trees of the Mariposa Grove more accessible to the world. A trip to the Yosemite in these early days involved much of hardship without reward; much heat and dust and fatigue in the hope of enjoyment. A ninety-two mile stage ride was necessary before reaching Mariposa and an additional sixty miles on horseback. The first night of the horseback journey usually found the traveler at Clark’s, the second amid the solemn immensity of Yosemite’s granite cliff and domes at Black’s, the first structure in the Valley pretentious enough to be styled a hotel. Real enjoyment did not come until Clark’s was reached. Here the traveler had arrived at the outer edge of the civilized world and an atmosphere of romance surrounded the rest of the way. Europeans and New Yorkers were prone to class the trip in the same category as an expedition to little-known Tibet, and the friends of those who were determined on making it urged that such adventurers, before they left draw up their last wills and testaments. Nor is it to be wondered at that tourists returning from Yosemite after such a journey should speak vaguely of “obstacles and difficulties overcome and represent themselves as having a kind of undefinable claim to the character of heroes.”