The first curio dealer to occupy the Log Cabin was “Old Cunningham.” This quaint character made his curios in a hollow tree with the aid of a jig-saw and tourists prized his wares the more knowing that they were made on the spot. When his purse was fat “Old Cunningham” would ride to Wawona to a saloon called the “Snow Plant,” where he was wont to present the bottle and spin yarns. Hutchings left posterity a delightful penciling of this old fellow. “The coach generally halts at a large and deliciously cool spring near the Cabin, where those who have come to spend the day will probably take lunch. Here, too, we shall have the pleasure of meeting Mr. S. M. Cunningham, who knows every tree by heart, its history, size, and name, and can tell you more about them in ten minutes than any man could in an hour (as is the usual case with such wags). I can see his bright and genial look, watch his wiry form and supple movements while I write. There is one thing especially noticeable about Mr. Cunningham—he is never discouraged and sees always the bright side of things, so that when a storm is swaying the tops of the trees until they bend together, he can listen interestedly and tell you laughable incidents until your sides ache.” With the waning of the gold excitement and the waxing of a stable Statehood, those who were laying the foundations of the State began to turn their faces toward the future. Gradually they came to see the need of treasuring some of its natural heritages. They recognized the fact that California had been lavishly favored with great natural wonders. Nevertheless, they came to realize also that she was not so rich in these as to be careless or neglectful of their preservation. They likewise perceived, these far-seeing ones, that although California possessed all of the Giant Sequoias, they were the most perishable of all her treasures if left without protection. Destructive humanity can little change the sublime granite forms of Yosemite. They will always remain unspoiled, and mankind can hardly mar them more than could the clouds that hover about their summits or the butterflies that flit about their bases. It is true that man may plow Yosemite’s meadows and cut down wildflower gardens that have never known a mower. He can destroy its clusters of trees, rob Mirror Lake of its reflective charm, stop the flow of its waterfalls. All this he can do. But however much he tries he can but little alter or disturb the majestic repose of its rocks. Yet he can lay low in a single day a Sequoia that waved its arms to Sierran winds when the Carpenter of Nazareth was born. In one short season he can reduce a hallowed Sequoian grove to an expanse of blackened stubble where only charred stumps remain to mark where trees once stood and “looked at God all day.”