Until the late seventies the Mariposa Grove was accessible only by foot or horse. The beginning of the seventies witnessed the completion of the Mariposa road to Clark’s. In 1874 Washburn, Coffman, Chapman and Company were granted permission to extend the Mariposa road to Yosemite, with the privilege of collecting a moderate toll as compensation for its construction. This road, which is now known as the Wawona Road, reached the Valley in July of 1875. Its completion was celebrated in Mariposa in the true holiday manner of the early Californian. Bands and bluster and bunting were the order of the day. One prominent citizen of the community delivered a flowery oration and with an air of great electrical effulgence heralded the event as the dawn of a new era. Indeed, returning travelers from Yosemite could no longer lay claim to the laurels of heroes, for the journey was now considerably shorn of its “terrors.” During the spring of ’78 or ’79 the present road from Wawona to and through the Big Trees was built. The opening through the Wawona Tree in the Grove was made in one of these years and vehicles began to carry the curious of the world through this living tree. Clark’s Station was purchased by the Washburn Company in May of 1875, and with the advent of the eighties the present-day Wawona had seen its birth. Clark’s had become but a memory. Contrary to popular opinion, the quaint Log Cabin which is so redolent with the breath of the fifties was not built shortly after the discovery of the Mariposa Grove. It was built much later, too late, in fact, to pose as “Galen’s Hospice” or to satisfy the lovely legend that it sheltered from the stormy blast wanderers who found themselves far from civilized habitation or human succor. Sentiment would fain preserve this myth. However, truth is firm and in all honor it must be stated that this cabin was not erected until 1885, and that it has never given shelter save to curios and their merchants. The report of the “Commissioners to manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees” of 1886 forever proves how palpably against the weight of authority this tale is. “Last year,” the report states, “a comfortable and artistic log cabin was erected at a central point in the Grove ... and ornamented by a shapely, massive chimney with a cavernous fireplace guarded by the traditional crane and pendant kettle.”