Wawona Visitor Center at Hill's Studio

The Wawona Visitor Center is in Thomas Hill's former studio beside Wawona Hotel, on Yosemite's south end. It's a compact stop for park information, wilderness-permit help, and the Yosemite Conservancy bookstore, with a small art exhibit that makes it more than a service desk. I'd save it for a Wawona or south-end day; from Yosemite Valley, it's about a 27-mile drive each way.

The staffed center usually operates from late May to early October. When it's closed, you can self-register for wilderness permits from the front porch, but you need to bring your own bear canister.

The Thomas Hill exhibit recreates a Victorian salon hanging, with paintings covering the walls rather than spaced out one at a time. The display uses reproductions arranged as they would have been in Hill's lifetime. It connects Yosemite landscape painting with the role art played in establishing and protecting national parks.

Hill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1829 and came to the United States as a teenager. He first visited Yosemite in 1865 with painter Virgil Williams and photographer Carleton Watkins, then returned to spend summers in Wawona from 1886. He sold 163 paintings there over three years. Yosemite landscapes became the work he was best known for.

The building was started in 1883 and finished by January 1884. Hill used it as a studio and showroom; it later served as a dance hall and an ice-cream parlor before becoming the visitor center in 2009. Outside, look for the long porch, five entrance steps, and the old round fountain in front, now inactive and partly filled with smooth stones.

For a photo, include the fountain in the foreground with the porch behind it. That gives the building a sense of place and shows the small detail that's easy to walk past.

The studio sits beside Wawona Hotel, and Pioneer Yosemite History Center is a separate nearby stop with its own historic buildings and covered bridge. The visitor center is small, so combining it with one of those makes the drive to Wawona feel more worthwhile.