Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. Two decades before Yosemite's elegant Ahwahnee Hotel opened it's doors to guests in 1927, there was another first class hotel just outside the National Park's western boundary. Today's snippet is about the long forgotten Hotel Del Portal........Bill
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THE HOTEL DEL PORTAL
Passengers debarking from newly completed Yosemite Valley Railroad (YVRR) in 1908 enjoyed dinner and a good nights rest at the plush Hotel Del Portal before traveling by horse drawn stage to Yosemite Valley the following day. The trains comfortable and scenic sixty seven mile trip from Southern Pacific and Santa Fe rail connections at Merced to the park boundary at El Portal was a far cry from the arduous and sometimes dangerous trip over the steep, rough and dusty roads of the late 1800’s.
The four story one hundred and thirty room Hotel Del Portal, replacing a temporary tent village erected during the hotels year long construction, was located a short distance above the YVRR El Portal train station. Promotional materials at the time proclaimed that “unlike any of the hotels inside the National Park, the Del Portal was “in all aspects modern and first class” with a “spacious
lobby, wide halls and large airy rooms” . Amenities included a full service dining room and bar (with year-round ice), convenient barber shop, pool room, tennis courts, and every room featured hot and cold running water, steam heat, and electric lights powered by the hotel’s own small hydroelectric plant. Business at the Hotel Del Portal began to wain as comfortable twenty five passenger auto stages replaced the dusty four hour trip into the valley by horse and wagon, and as lodging options improved in the valley. When an attic fire leveled the hotel in 1917 it was decided that the a smaller and less opulent hotel would be the replacement, The significantly downsized two story twenty room Del Portal Inn was completed the following year for railroad passengers electing to spend the night.
YVRR ridership peaked in the early 1920’s with nearly more than twenty thousand annual passengers, however with the completion of Highway 140, the “All Year Highway” in 1926, and Yosemite’s increased accessibility by automobile, both the railroad and hotel’s days were numbered. The railroad was able to hang on with logging and mineral freight business until 1944, but entertaining throngs of guests at the Del Portal Hotel was only a three decade old memory. -Bill 7/25
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