While in Yosemite Valley a few weeks ago, we road our bikes to the Ahwahnee Hotel…oops, I mean the Majestic Yosemite Hotel…huh? No doubt you may have heard of the naming rights and trademark dispute that has led to the renaming of Yosemite’s landmark spots.
The Ahwahnee Hotel opened July 14, 1927. The hotel was the brainchild of the National Park Service’s first director Stephen T. Mather who envisioned building a hotel to attract the wealthier class of visitors.
The Yosemite people (Miwok tribes) called Yosemite Valley “Awooni” for its resemblance to a bear’s gaping mouth. The Yosemite people called themselves as Ah-wah-ne-chee, or “dwellers of Ahwahnee.” The spelling was later modernized to “Ahwahnee.”
Despite the plaque designating the Ahwahnee Hotel as a national historic landmark in 1987, the new signs dub it “The Majestic Yosemite Hotel.”
I had always wanted to spend one night there to say I did (price is upwards to $500 a night for a standard room), but now if I did so, I would technically NOT be sleeping in the Ahwahnee.
After 24 visits to Yosemite since 1970, I will always remember and refer to it as The Ahwahnee Hotel. …sigh.
The featured photo is submitted for Norm 2.0’s Thursday Doors photography challenge.
Second Wind Leisure Perspectives 
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