Family breathes new life into old way station

Wally Anker owns the Priest Station at the top of Old Priest Grade, which was established in 1849. Maggie Beck/Union Democrat, copyright 2009

This sentiment was shared by countless travelers during and after the Gold Rush.
 

A way station since its inception, Priest Station is perched atop Priest Grade, a few miles west of Groveland and Big Oak Flat.

 It was established as a stage and wagon stop on the route to Yosemite. Fire doomed the hamlet to obscurity, but one southern Tuolumne County family hopes to restore some of its old glory.

The Anker family has reopened Priest Station as a restaurant and store and will host a grand opening in early October.

The family’s history is firmly anchored in Priest’s history, but the way station dates back much further.

Before the construction of the two modern roads leading to Priest — Old Priest Grade, a perilous line carved into the hillside, and the meandering New Priest Grade, now Highway 120 — only a narrow wagon trail zigzagged across the mountains from Moccasin to the area now called Priest Station.

Travelers rode pack mules through the canyons to Big Oak Flat and Yosemite beyond.

The original road to the top of the mountain climbed directly up between the present Old Priest Grade and the penstocks carrying water to Hetch Hetchy’s Moccasin Powerhouse. It ended at John Wootton’s Rattlesnake House.

Wootton opened the Rattlesnake House in 1854. It was a small miners’ supply store named after a since-diverted creek. The Rattlesnake House offered food and drink to weary travelers.

Alexander Kirkwood later bought the business and then returned to Glasgow, Scotland, to marry his sweetheart, Margaret Dick, said Wally Anker, their descendant and modern-day Priest Station’s patriarch.

Kirkwood became deathly ill on the trip back around the Isthmus of Panama. He got to Chinese Camp and barely made it up the hill before he died In 1870, Anker said.

His bride, a wealthy young woman, wasn’t without prospects. Big Oak Flat had a population of 3,000 and only 10 of them were women, historian Jean McClish wrote in 1975 for the Pine Mountain Lake News.

An innkeeper’s daughter from Scotland, she was a “formidable businesswoman, very confident and ran this very well,” Anker said.

Attractive young Margaret was “besieged with proposals” and chose as her husband-to-be William C. Priest, a mining man and engineer from Kentucky, according to the Tuolumne County Historical Society’s publication, Chispa.

Priest was also one of the first Yosemite commissioners.

The Big Oak Flat Road to Groveland opened to Yosemite Valley in 1874 and brought an influx of people. The Priest Hotel expanded and the perch was called Priest Station.

A six-room annex to accommodate miners was constructed across the road near the modern-day turnoff to Spring Gulch and Coulterville.

A cottage also was built across the road on the bluff overlooking Priest Station, Anker said.

It had stables, a tack room, barns and sheds, a carriage house — 22 buildings in all stood in Priest Station’s heyday, Chispa reported.

“Horses spent the night, travelers got taken care of,” recounted Steven Anker, Wally Anker’s son and sixth-generation family member to live at Priest Station. “We always prided ourselves serving the best tables in the West.”

According to Steven Anker, at one time, the Priest Hotel was “a snazzy full-service operation.”

The hotel included a ladies’ parlor and an office and barroom where men played poker. It was popular and known for its elegance and hospitality, even boasting the first plumbing south of the Tuolumne River,  Chispa reported.

As the calendar turned to 1900, there was always a Chinese cook present who made cream puffs in the spring and creamed codfish on Fridays. Dinner meals usually included chicken, pork and beef, according to Chispa.

In the early days of the hotel, the Priests raised their own meat. They grew grain and vegetables and Dan Corcoran, who married Margaret Priest’s niece, Jessie Carlon, took over the way station. He sold vegetables and canned goods to Big Oak Flat families.

“Eventually electricity came to the hill and an electric washing machine made the work much easier,” Margaret Corcoran Anker, the daughter of Jessie and Dan Corcoran and third station matriarch, recalled in Chispa.

In 1926, a brush fire started in Deer Flat and spread down the canyon to Moccasin and back up the grade, leveling Priest Station, Wally Anker said.

The fire raged “out of control” for five days and all 22 buildings were destroyed within minutes, Corcoran Anker said.

“The Corcorans, by now in their 60s, hadn’t the heart nor the energy to start all over. They built the house that still stands at the crest of the hill at the site of the famous old hotel,” Corcoran Anker recalled.

The new start included a small store and a service station across the road, for all the cars now driving up Old Priest Grade.

After the fire, a black locust tree sprung up in front of the former hotel site and is still standing today, Wally Anker said.

The Corcorans ran Priest Station until 1936 and, in 1942, Joe and Margaret Corcoran Anker took over the business, which they expanded with a motel. They sold it in 1969, but the family always retained a ranch on the western bluff of Priest Hill, where Wally Anker, his wife Helga, and their children Denise and Steven live.

In 1878, Wards Ferry Road was constructed and Yosemite-bound travelers now had a direct route from Sonora to Big Oak Flat without having to go up Old Priest Grade. The road drew criticism from residents in Chinese Camp and William Priest, the owner of Priest Station and Hotel, Tuolumne County Historian Carlo De Ferrari wrote.

Adventurous drivers attempted to go up Grizzly Gulch, often problematic for vehicles of the time, De Ferrari wrote. One traveler, he said, drove up the 12 percent grade backwards.  

William and Margaret Priest lobbied for the construction of the Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Toll Road that eventually had headquarters at the Priest Hotel, the Southern Tuolumne County Historical Society reported.  

“As owners of the toll road, Mrs. (Margaret) Priest made weekly trips in horse and buggy to collect the road fees. For

 The era of stagecoach stops and tiny communities is long gone.   

“Their stories form a significant part of the historical heritage of the early days of the Mother Lode,” the Chispa said in 1977.

While to modern passersby, Priest is merely the top of a steep, windy road, its history is rich and filled with people who took history seriously.

Wally Anker said life for early area settlers was “an intense indoctrination in local history.”

“It was all anyone talked about,” he said.

Life on top of the mountain was quiet, with the road to Yosemite closed from Thanksgiving to Easter, said Wally Anker, a former international banker and world traveler.

"This was as small town as you could imagine. When I was 18, I couldn’t wait to get away. And when I was 58, I couldn’t wait to get back,” he said.

Life on the hill changed more after Hetch Hetchy was constructed and Pine Mountain Lake was created, bringing good things like doctors and dentists, Anker said.

Fire has always threatened the area, destroying the town of Big Oak Flat in 1863, the hotel in 1926 and Priest Station again in 1983. A fire in 1992 burned vegetation up and down both slopes of Grizzly Gulch, De Ferrari wrote.

“Fires tremendously affected us,” Wally Anker said.

Anker prides himself on his family’s connection to local history.

“Five generations have attended local schools,” he said.

Anker’s children — Steven, Denise, Kim and Conrad — are hoping to recapture the lost oasis at the top of the hill.    

Anker wistfully remarked his dream would be to rebuild the Priest Hotel or Station.

The Ankers have cleaned up the property, built a restaurant with a deck overlooking Grizzly Gulch and recently paved the parking lot. The Priest Station site still contains the original water well, which Anker hopes to restore, and the black locust tree that sprung up after the 1926 fire.

An old garage on site serves as their office. The Priest Station Restaurant and Store is expected to celebrate its grand opening Oct. 10. The station will be “soft opened,” until then, Anker said.

The business will be “as green as possible,” Wally Anker said.

Their personal home already has solar panels and, for the restaurant, they have installed solar panels across the road, where the old cottage stood. The inside of the restaurant features historic photos of old Priest.

“We’re sort of an outdoor family,” Wally Anker said of their plan to incorporate environmental features in the business, like selling outdoor and climbing equipment. Anker’s son, Conrad, is a world-famous rock climber, mountaineer and author famous for his challenging ascents in the Himalayas and Antarctica.

“We hope future generations (of Ankers) will be able to stay here and live and work in Tuolumne County,” Wally Anker said. “No one in the family has been able to do that since my grandfather, Dan Corcoran.”

The restaurant menu at first will be mostly hamburgers and vegetarian food, but the menu will be expanded with time.

“What we would really love to do is re-establish Priest Station as a prime stop on 120 into Yosemite,” Wally Anker said.