Soda Springs Cabin

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. 10 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1901.

From the record

“The Soda Springs Cabin is a historic structure in Yosemite National Park in the US, built over Soda Springs. It was built around the year 1889 by John Baptist Lembert, the first white settler on the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite.”
Wikipedia article Soda Springs Cabin, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 32 National Register listings published here for Tuolumne County · listed in 1979 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. SW of Lee Vining, Lee Vining
When was it listed? April 1979
Category. building
Census division. Twain Harte-Tuolumne City
Architectural style. rustic architecture
National Register reference number. 79000282 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

50 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 50 fires within 5 miles of Soda Springs Cabin between 1992 and 2020, burning about 556 acres in total. 25 started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	25
Recreation and ceremony	18
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Smoking	2
Arson/incendiarism	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 1996	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	DINGLEY
6 September 1997	Natural	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	RAFFERTY
4 September 2003	Natural	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	JOHNSON
3 September 1993	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	GLEN AULIN
24 September 2001	Natural	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	POLLY
21 September 2018	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	RAFFERTY
2 September 2015	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	POTHOLE
19 September 1996	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Yosemite National Park	GLEN

Every fire recorded in Tuolumne County

Maps showing this location

10 surveys

United States Geological Survey topographic sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.

1901 USGS Mt. Lyell quadrangle1:125000 - 12 printings
1947 USGS Mariposa quadrangle1:250000 - 2 printings
1948 USGS Mariposa quadrangle1:250000
1956 USGS Tuolumne Meadows quadrangle1:62500 - 5 printings
1957 USGS Mariposa quadrangle1:250000 - 4 printings
1963 USGS Mariposa quadrangle1:250000
1976 USGS Yosemite Valley quadrangle1:100000 - 2 printings
1990 USGS Tioga Pass quadrangle1:24000
1992 USGS Tioga Pass quadrangle1:24000
1994 USGS Tioga Pass quadrangle1:24000 - 3 printings

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Parsons Memorial Lodge	under 500 feet	1979
McCauley Cabin	under 500 feet	1977
Tuolumne Meadows	0.6 miles	1978
Tuolumne Meadows Ranger Stations and Comfort Stations	0.7 miles	1978
Tuolumne Meadows High Sierra Camp	1.8 miles	2014
Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp	3.5 miles	2014

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 79000282 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Tuolumne County	All 32 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.