Groveland Hotel

Two buildings, seventy years apart, and each one was put up for a different gold rush.

The older half is adobe, built in 1849 by George Reid for the men coming into the Sierra after the gold. It is the only example of Monterey Colonial architecture in the range: thick adobe walls under a metal roof, a style that came up the coast from the Mexican period and did not take hold inland. That it survived at all is the unusual part, because adobe needs its roof maintained and most of these were let go.

The second building is a Queen Anne Victorian added in 1914, and it went up for water rather than gold. San Francisco was damming the Hetch Hetchy valley inside Yosemite, and the officials overseeing the work needed somewhere to stay. The men doing the actual work were not in the hotel. There was a 112 tent encampment behind it for them, which tells you the shape of that project fairly precisely.

Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places, and the adobe is a California Cultural Landmark as well. The hotel was bought in 1990 and restored at a cost of around a million dollars.

The ghost has a name and a trade. Lyle is said to have been a blasting expert who died in room 15, and guests report cigar smoke, moved belongings and lights that dim. A blaster is a very Hetch Hetchy sort of ghost to end up with.

It is a working hotel a short drive from the park's Big Oak Flat entrance, so this is one you can book rather than admire from the road.