Camp Curry, Curry Village, Mariposa County, CA

See also HAER CA-95 for documentation of the Stoneman Bridge.
Significance: Curry Village, known as Camp Curry from the time of its establishment in 1899 through the 1960s, was historically and remains a highly significant development of guest accommodation within the Yosemite Valley. It holds significance within the history of the National Park Service as both one of the earliest tourist camps of its type in a national park as well as a place where the service's nascent design office implemented some of its first approaches to managing the automobile.

Educators David and Jennie Curry founded Camp Curry as a less expensive choice to the handful of hotels then existing in the valley and a more convenient one than traditional camping as it eliminated the need to travel with food, supplies, and tent equipment. They situated the camp among a stand of trees on the relatively flat ground between one of the main roads traversing the valley and the talus pile at the base of Glacier Point. It grew steadily in the 1900s and more explosively in the 1910s and 1920s as the initial scattering of tents gave way to more permanent structures and buildings arranged in precincts that pushed east, west, and south from the camp's core.

This rapid transformation of Camp Curry largely occurred in an unplanned manner; substantial buildings for guest services formed a core at the center and tent, and later bungalow and bungalette, accommodation extending in the flat area to the east and west of the core and pushing up the talus slope to the south. The Currys and their family-run concession steadily modernized Camp Curry during these first decades, balancing visitor expectations for comfort, entertainment, and leisure against the government's goals and policies. The latter were shaped by a changing cast of characters as oversight of the valley shifted from the State of California to the United States Army and ultimately, in 1916, to the National Park Service.

Camp Curry was reinvented as a modern and easily accessible vacation resort set within the grandeur of Yosemite Valley. It manifested as a complex composed of hundreds of structures and buildings having a rustic, even humble architectural presence and an informal arrangement under tall conifers. These character-defining features furnished a unique tourist experience within the valley, an experience that remains very much today as it was at the end of Camp Curry's period of vigorous expansion during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The constructed tourist landscape—partly through the low-key design of its buildings and structures and partly because of its history of piecemeal development—remains subservient to the astonishing beauty of the natural landscape.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N53
Survey number: HALS CA-65
Building/structure dates: 1899 Initial Construction
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 79000315