During this era, the Groveland area went from boom to bust and back again.  The gold rush and then the San Francisco Hetch-Hetchy water project brought prosperity and notoriety to the Groveland and Big Oak Flat settlements.

Shortly after arriving in Groveland, Charlotte's father was killed in a mining accident at Hardin Flat, and young Charlotte took it upon herself to support and hold the family together.

She began cooking for work crews, ranch hands and several local settlers.  She then opened a restaurant in the building which is now the Iron Door Saloon, said to be the oldest continuously operating saloon in California.

In 1918, Charlotte built the hotel on the site of an old livery stable, and in 1921, she purchased the Gem Saloon, next door, annexing it to the Hotel Charlotte as a restaurant. Charlotte DeFerrari became a legend in her own time and it is rumored that she still roams the halls of her hotel.

We are working on re-building the history between the time that Charlotte no longer owned the hotel and today. Working backwards we can say the Hotel was recently purchased by the husband/wife team of Victor Niebylski & Lynn Upthagrove from Ruth & Jim Kraenzel who cared for the hotel for 19 years. Prior to the Kraenzel's the property was owned by Jennifer Norris & her husband for 7 years.

A visitor to the website has written us the following:

....... and I decided to look up the Charlotte Hotel. As I was pursuing the site I saw the recent change in ownership, and your effort to reconstruct the history of the hotel prior to 1978. As a small piece of that history, my parents (Kay and Wilbur Harms) operated the Charlotte Hotel and Restaurant from 1958-1962, and I lived in the hotel during that stage of my life. After leaving the Charlotte my parents owned and operated the Iron Door until approximately 1972.

Hope that is helpful in adding to your history of the Charlotte.

Ron Harms

Thanks for filling a gap for us Ron! Ron and his wife Cheryl are back in Groveland building their dream home and vineyard out on Ferretti Road.

We heard from Eric this summer and he has some very fond memories of the Hotel Charlotte from his youth:

I worked on a surveying crew for the Dept of Interior/Bureau of Land Management during a college summer break in 1968. We worked in the Groveland area for a month or so during that summer and I stayed at the Hotel. For what it is worth (and I realize that it is not much) – the Hotel was run by two wonderful older ladies (that the years have since lost their names to me). I was a VERY young, inexperienced 18 year old kid from North Carolina that had never been anywhere and they looked out for me. I distinctly remember watching the lobby television when Robert Kennedy was shot. The rooms themselves had no TVs or radios but the ladies allowed me to have a small record player. We were paid per diems for lodging, etc and the ladies would allow me to run a “tab” between per diem checks. I had always been a “large for his age” kid and the survey crewed nicknamed me “Huey” (from Baby Huey the cartoon) and of course the ladies called me that too.

Cannot remember too much else. Good luck.

Someday I dream of bringing my kids (waited late in life to have a family) to Groveland and to my favorite place on Earth – Yosemite.

Eric A. Taylor, Chattanooga, Tennessee

If anyone else has additional historical information for the period between 1962 and mid-1970's or prior to 1958, we would love to hear from you,  HotelCharlotte@aol.com.