It was built around the year 1889 by John Baptist Lembert, the first white settler on the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite.

Lembert had filed a claim to 160 acres (65 ha) in Tuolumne Meadows in 1885 after spending three summers in the area with a flock of angora goats.

He built a log cabin directly over the largest soda spring in the area.

[2] Lembert had spent his early life in New York and received a classical education reading Latin.

The Soda Springs property was inherited by Lembert's brothers who sold it to J.J McCauley in 1898.