The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a small building built in 1915 by the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the Pro ...

at the northern end of

Tuolumne Meadows Tuolumne Meadows () is a gentle, dome-studded, sub-alpine meadow area along the Tuolumne River in the eastern section of Yosemite National Park in the United States. Its approximate location is . Its approximate elevation is . The term ''Tuolumn ...

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The p ...

. It was one of the earliest structures built of stone in a

national park A national park is a nature park designated for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes because of unparalleled national natural, historic, or cultural significance. It is an area of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that is protecte ...

Memorial

The lodge is a memorial to Edward Taylor Parsons, a New Yorker who joined the Sierra Club about 1900, and who eventually became the club's director from 1905 to 1914. Parsons was heavily involved in the losing fight against the flooding of the

Hetch Hetchy Valley Hetch Hetchy is a valley, reservoir, and water system in California in the United States. The glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park and is drained by the Tuolumne River. For thousands of years before ...

to provide a municipal water source for San Francisco. Parsons died in 1914, and in memorial the Sierra Club established a fund to build a club meeting house, library and headquarters in Yosemite. The site at Tuolumne Meadows was chosen for its accessibility to park backcountry and its location near Soda Springs, a location that the Sierra Club wished to safeguard.

The lodge's design

It is not clear who designed the Lodge. Mark White, brother-in-law and partner in Maybeck and White to architect

Bernard Maybeck Bernard Ralph Maybeck (February 7, 1862 – October 3, 1957) was an American architect. He worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, designing public buildings, including the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and also private houses, ...

, was credited at the time of the lodge's completion. White was a Sierra Club member. Maybeck scholars Gray Brechln and Kenneth Cardwell have suggested that Maybeck was involved in the design, chiefly through similarities to Maybeck-designed buildings at

Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe (; Washo language, Washo: ''dáʔaw'') is a Fresh water, freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the Western United States, straddling the border between California and Nevada. Lying at above sea level, Lake Tahoe is the largest a ...

. Maybeck is alleged to have done the conceptual design, which was developed by White and White's brother John, who would go in to design the LeConte Memorial Lodge.

Description

The Parsons Memorial Lodge is a one story stone building, accessible only from June through October in most years. The walls are rubble masonry with a concrete core, using local pink feldspar and gray granite, bedded with deeply raked mortar joints, and tapering from three feet at their base to two feet at the top. The door is arched with heavy stonework. The low-pitched roof is framed with peeled log rafters, about in diameter with interior and exterior log braces resting on low buttresses projecting from the walls on the east and west sides. The rafters are similar to the vigas found in American Southwestern architecture. Smaller peeled logs analogous to ''latillas'' rest on top of the rafter logs, running perpendicular, topped by roofing paper and a galvanized metal top surface. The interior features a massive fireplace on the north wall opposite the entrance. There are two windows with benches below them in the east, west and south walls.

Modifications to the lodge

The lodge has been modified slightly. In 1935 a concrete floor was installed over what had apparently been a dirt surface. Wood surfaces were placed over the stone benches, and the windows and shutters were studded with nails to deter bears. The lodge is still in use today, though it is now managed by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

. It is representative of the Bay Area architectural influences adapted by

for the extreme weather variations on the high valley, and

National Park Service Rustic National Park Service rustic – sometimes colloquially called Parkitecture – is a style of architecture that developed in the early and middle 20th century in the United States National Park Service (NPS) through its efforts to create building ...

. Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction By Linda Flint McClelland

The lodge declared a National Historic Landmark

It was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

in 1987.

References

External links

Architecture in the Parks: A National Historic Landmark Theme Study: Parsons Memorial Lodge, by Laura Soullière Harrison, 1986
at National Park Service.

{{authority control Sierra Club Buildings and structures completed in 1915 National Historic Landmarks in California Bernard Maybeck buildings Rustic architecture in California National Register of Historic Places in Tuolumne County, California National Register of Historic Places in Yosemite National Park 1915 establishments in California