Gary-Summer: Place: CA-Wawona

Friday, January 23, 1970

Place: CA-Wawona

Wawona-3,999' (Wawona) (37.5368803, -119.6562684)
Wawona Dome-6,906' (Mariposa Grove) (37.5560462, -119.6129330)
Wawona Golf Course-3,986' (Wawona) (37.5354916, -119.6571017)
Wawona Point-6,535' (Mariposa Grove) (37.5188259, -119.6018190)
Wawona Tunnel-4,944' (El Capitan) (37.7157603, -119.6857243)
Description : Trips : References : Pictures

Description:

...Crane Flat--so named by us, as one of our party shot a large crane there while going over, but it is now known as Wawona. (Steven F. Grover's narrative, May 1852, in Russell, 100 Years, 57)

The Indians' name for the area was 'Pallahchun' (a good place to stop). (Sargent, Wawona, 11)

Galen Clark built a cabin in the meadow on the South Fork of the Merced in April 1857. This became known as Clark's Station. When Edwin Moore acquired a half interest in 1869 it got the name of Clark and Moore's. The Washburn brothers purchased the property in December 1874, and renamed it Big Tree Station. In 1882 Jean Bruce Washburn suggested a more appriopriate name--Wah-wo-nah. (Sargent, Wawona, 12-16, 39)

Galen Clark said that the word meant Big Tree. (Clark, 109) Stephen Powers was of the same opinion. The California Big Tree is also in a manner sacred to them, and they call it 'woh-woh-nau', a word formed in imitation of the hoot of the owl, which is the guardian spirit and deity of this great monarch of the forest. (Powers, 398)

Wawona Meadows themselves might be called the Sleepy Hollow of the West. It is the most peacful place that I know in America, and comes near being the most idyllic spot I have seen anywhere (which is considerable admission for an Englishman to make). (Chase, 165)

Wawona Point was first named on Lt. McClure's map of 1895, but the name was in use at least as early as the middle 1880's. (Hutchings, In the Heart, 262) Wawona Dome was named on McClure's 1896 map.

The Wawona Tunnel, completed in 1933, replaced a portion of the old Wawona Road that went high accross the shoulder of the hill. (YNP)

From Place Names of the Sierra Nevada

Wawona Dome: In Yosemite National Park, bound on the north by Chilnualna Creek and on the south by South Fork Merced River. (US-T121) From GNIS Database
Wawona Point: In Yosemite National Park, on the north end of Mariposa Grove and bound on the north by South Fork Merced River. (US-T121) From GNIS Database

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Wawona Arboretum (from the Yosemite History Facebook Group-Dean Wm Taylor):
:I visited the site, and this is what I wrote to Shelton Johnson in email 9/25/2010 this narrative distills my visit to the putative site of the Arboretum this am. First, there is a two track access road to the southerly bank of Big Creek. At Wawona, take the little bridge across the golf course creek at the site where the tourist buses normally park, directly across the road from the store entrance road. After passing Tee One or perhaps Tee Two, one comes to a little shack near a large burn pile, as yet unburnt. Bear to the south of the shack and there is a two track road through for the woods for about 1/4 mile which eventually you reach the confluence of Big Creek and the SF Merced
Here dry stone abutments testify to some edifice, past. I crossed Big Creek obtaining wet socks in the process.

Once across, I meandered about until I came to the first object, a galvanized pipe base with a non-galvanized flange which might have been a bridge abutment piece.

The site is now very badly overgrown, and is a classic non-fire-influenced cedar-white fir dog-hair stand (the Wawona controlled burns are uphill but do not overlap with the putative arboretum site)

I managed to find one of the two mapped "grinding rocks", which if you compare the map in the Sargent article, I conclude is the southerly most of the two. From this, the site of the arboretum appears to largely be on the historic floodplain of the river: the grinding rock is perched perhaps 50 ft elevation above the floodplain.

Because I did not locate the second grinding rock, I can not establish a relative scale for the site sketch map. However, that would be a reason for a second visit. Once a scale is known (although the sketch map might not be orthogonal), one might have better luck poking about looking for any tree marking signs that might have survived.

I saw no allotchtonous plants at the putative site of the arboretum.

Locations:
pipe base 37.54033 -119.66830
grinding rock 37.54127 -119.66965

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yose/wawona_garden.pdf

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Other names which have been used includes:

For Wawona: North Wawona, South Wawona,

Big Tree Station, and Wah-wo-na - from Browning, Peter. Yosemite Place Names
Clark's Station-unknown sitation
North Wawona from USGS Mapping Center Field Reports

Trips:

March 27, 2013 - Meetup group to Wawona Point
April 17, 2013 - Meetup group to Chilnualna Falls
April 18, 2012 - Alder Creek backpack trip
November 2, 2011 - Alder Creek Falls day hike
June 12, 2014 - Hike to Wawona Point
September 27, 2014 - Meetup hike from Wawona to Mariposa Grove
Sept 9, 2015 - Meetup hike to Chilnualna Falls
October 11, 2015 - Hike around Wawona Meadow and then towards Mariposa Grove
October 8, 2016 - Meetup hike around Wawona Meadow
November 19, 2016 - Walked the Mt Savage Road
April 4, 2017 - Wawona Meadow Loop
May 30, 2017 - Wawona Meadow Loop with one eye
June 14, 2017 - Wawona Meadow Loop with one eye and the meetup group
November 17, 2017 - Day hike with Sherri and Gary, exploring where the Wawona Arboretum is
January 17, 2018 - Walked over to Big Creek, then around Wawona Meadow, but on the upper road, then a connector road down to the Wawona Meadow Loop. Rose, Sherri and I ended the hike by walking a ditch.
January 11, 2020 - Walked our extended loop to Big Creek, up the Raymond Road down to the Meadow and back. Sherri and Gary.
March 4, 2020 - Meetup hike which I call A Different Wawona Meadow Hike
October 31, 2020 - Gary, Sherri, Steven and Korra did an extended Wawona Meadow Loop
November 28, 2021 - Andrea, Steven, Korra, Sherri and Gary did the basic Wawona Meadow Loop
December 24, 2022 - Family hike plus Moriah up the South Fork of the Merced past Swinging Bridge. Then on to Yosemite Valley
June 1, 2023 - Walked the Wawona Meadow Loop with Steven, Korra, Sherri and Gary.
September 29, 2023 - Steven, Korra, Sherri and Gary walked the Wawona Meadow Loop. Then went to Glacier Point to see about observing a full moon.