Wawona, CA

Wawona is one of the rare places where you can live entirely inside Yosemite National Park. Set along the South Fork of the Merced River, this small mountain community has only about a hundred year-round residents, though summer brings a steady flow of cabin renters and park workers. At around 4,000 feet in elevation, the area gets four distinct seasons without the extreme winter conditions of the higher Sierra passes. For groceries, hardware stores, and everyday errands, locals make the twenty-mile drive down Highway 41 to Oakhurst, while Yosemite Valley sits about twenty-six miles to the north.

ATTRGuywelch2000 / CC BY 4.0

Long before Yosemite became a national park, Wawona was an early stagecoach stop, and that history is still visible around the Victorian-era Wawona Hotel and the wooden covered bridge. Today, the community is an easygoing mix of private homeowners, park employees, and hospitality staff. Living here requires comfort with mountain isolation, winter snowplows, and summer tourist traffic along Wawona Road. In exchange, residents get miles of quiet hiking trails, a swimming river down the street, and the giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove right in their backyard.