California’s Yosemite National Park announced on September 11 that the historic Wawona Hotel, the oldest hotel within any national park in the United States, is closing — potentially forever.
The hotel will “close to allow the National Park Service (NPS) to conduct a comprehensive condition assessment on the hotel complex,” wrote a Facebook post from Yosemite National Park announcing the closure. The closure will go into effect on December 2, 2024, and was deemed necessary following a roof replacement that revealed significant structural weaknesses throughout the building. It’s not the first closure for the hotel, which also closed in 2020 for a hotel-wide replacement of the electrical system.