The Hodgdon Homestead Cabin the only two-story pioneer log cabin in the Yosemite region. It was built in Aspen Valley in 1879 and moved to Wawona in 1960.

It is a two-story log structure measuring 22' x 30' with a rear shed addition which gives the building the appearance of a saltbox. The main portion of the cabin is built of peeled logs laid in alternating tiers and interlocked at the corners with a saddle notch joint. The horizontal spaces between the logs are chinked with split log wedges.

In May 1865 Jermiah Hodgdon, native of Vermont, homesteaded an area originally known as Bronsons - located just a few miles inside today's Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite National Park. He built two cabins for his family in the meadow that still bears his name. Several years later he located yet another homestead in previously unoccupied Aspen Valley where he built this two-storied log cabin.

During its extended lifetime the cabin has served as a temporary home for laborers on the Great Sierra Wagon Road (1883); shelter for Army troops patrolling the new National Park (1890s); and as a local curiosity for guests at the Aspen Valley resort during the 1920s and 1930s before the old Tioga Road was realigned.

Adapted from the NRHP nomination.

Buildings that Moved

It's not just that the people of the American West are restless, the buildings themselves sometimes pack up and move when - for one reason or another - the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer want them or opportunity waits down the road.

And when buildings remain in place, they are often searching for their identities.

Of the buildings and structures we have visited, the original Reno Arch holds the record for number of moves. It has been moved five times since it was built in 1926.

Jax Truckee Diner holds the distance title. The building moved from New Jersry to Pennsylvanis in 1948, then from Pennsylvania to Califonia in 1992.

Probably the most ambitious relocation occurred on July 4th 1904, when the Southern Pacific Railroad loaded most of the town of Wadsworth, Nevada, onto rail cars and transported the town thirty miles west to create a new town which became known as Sparks.