Wilsonia Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Wilsonia is a village of about 212 primary buildings, mostly rustic summer cabins, on roughly 100 acres inside Kings Canyon National Park's General Grant Grove section. It is a mostly private inholding wholly surrounded by the park. San Joaquin Valley families built the cabins from 1919 onward to escape valley heat, dust and pollen and to enjoy the outdoors. Three tracts subdivided between 1918 and 1921 are laid out irregularly along more than 30 narrow roads, and most cabins sit on one-tenth-acre lots without fences. Typical cabins are one or one-and-a-half stories, clad in wood siding, with porches, pitched roofs and stone or brick chimneys. Many began as simple one- or two-room shelters and were later enlarged. The setting is a mixed conifer forest with planted giant sequoias. The district covers 1918 to 1945, and 139 of the 212 primary buildings are counted as contributing because they date from that period and retain integrity. Its character has changed little since the 1930s.