Next: Preface

Yosemite: the Park and its Resources (1987) by Linda W. Greene

- Volume 1: Historical Narrative

- Preface

- Contents

- Illustrations

- Chronologies

- Chapter 1: Early Habitation and Exploration in the Yosemite Region

- Chapter 2: Yosemite Valley as a State Grant and Establishment of Yosemite National Park, 1864-1890

- Chapter 3: Administration of The Yosemite Grant and Yosemite National Park, 1890-1905

- Chapter 4: Administration of Yosemite National Park, 1905-1915

- Volume 2: Historical Narrative (continued)

- Chapter 5: National Park Service Administration of Yosemite National Park, 1916-1930: The Mather Years

- Chapter 6: National Park Service Administration, 1931 to Ca. 1960

- Volume 3: Discussion of Historical Resources, Appendixes, Historical Base Maps, Bibliography

- Chapter 7: Historical Resources of Yosemite National Park

- Chapter 8: Additional Notes on Certain Sites

- Chapter 9: Recommendations for Interpretation, Cultural Resources Management, and Further Research

- Chapter 10: Significant Historical Properties in Yosemite National Park

- Appendixes

- Historical Base Maps

- Bibliography

About the Author

Linda Wedel Greene was born 1947. She received a BA in History and went to work for the National Park Service (NPS) around 1972. She wrote this resource study while working for the NPS Branch of Cultural Resources, Denver Service Center. She has also written similar historical resource studies for several other western National Park units. Greene is now Chief of Resource Management at Death Valley National Park, California.

Greene’s husband, Jerome A. Greene, is a retired NPS Research Historian and has written several U. S. military histories. He received a MA from University of South Dakota in 1969. They live in Arvada, Colorado.

Bibliographical Information

Linda Wedel Greene (1947-), Yosemite: the Park and its Resources; a History of the Discovery, Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California (Denver: National Park Service, 1987). Historic Resource Study series. Printed by Government Printing Office, Denver. 3 volumes, 1267 pages. Illustrated. 28 cm. Perfect-bound in heavy paper. U. S. Government Document Call Number: I 29.58/3:Y 8/2. LCCN 88600862. Library of Congress Call Number: F868.Y6 G74 1987.

Digitized by Dan Anderson, October 2006, from copies at University of California San Diego and the Yosemite National Park NPS website (the latter is missing pp. 762-763 and sheet 2 of Base Map #2). These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice is left intact.
—Dan Anderson, www.yosemite.ca.us

Next: Preface

historic resource study
VOLUME 1 OF 3
historical narrative

YOSEMITE

NATIONAL PARK / CALIFORNIA

Historic Resource Study

YOSEMITE: THE PARK AND ITS RESOURCES

A History of the Discovery, Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California

Volume 1 of 3
Historical Narrative

by
Linda Wedel Greene
September 1987

U. S. Department of the Interior / National Park Service

[click to enlarge]

PREFACE

This Historic Resource Study had been prepared in accordance with the approved task directive for Package No. 806, Yosemite National Park. It accomplishes the inventory, identification, and evaluation of historical resources within the park to comply with Executive Order 11593, “Protection and Enhancement of the Cultural Environment,” and with the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. It is also intended as a complete narrative history of the park, providing basic reference material for planners, resource managers, and interpreters to facilitate the proper care, interpretation, and management of cultural properties within Yosemite National Park.

Almost ten years ago a preliminary investigation and evaluation of historical resources in Yosemite took place in connection with the park’s general management plan. As a result of that work, a number of properties were placed in the National Register of Historic Places. Several other structures and sites proved ineligible for listing in that register, and another large group of properties required further evaluation.

The purpose of this historic resource study is to evaluate those sites and structures not studied previously and resolve their status in terms of National Register criteria. Those structures are primarily at Wawona, in Section 35, at the park’s south entrance station, in El Portal, and in the backcountry. The writer also addressed those park structures identified in earlier studies as needing additional historical data for evaluation purposes. In addition, the study attempts to provide a thematic framework, or contextual background, within which any additional potentially significant sites in the backcountry or on private landholdings can be evaluated.

This project turned out to be much more complex and time-consuming than originally anticipated. Yosemite National Park contains a multitude of geological, biological, cultural, and scenic resources exceptional in quality, research value, and visitor interest. Since 1851 when the first non-Indians entered Yosemite Valley, visitation to the park has increased steadily each year and now numbers in the millions. Although many people, especially first-time visitors, imagine that the park’s scenic resources appear much as they did 135 years ago, the National Park Service realizes that man’s effect on these park lands has been major and in some cases unfortunate and irreversible.

Under California state commissioners, U. S. Army officers, civilian rangers, and finally National Park Service superintendents, Yosemite Valley and its environs have alternately experienced both unsound and progressive management practices. From the time of its establishment as a state grant—to be used for public recreation and enjoyment—Yosemite became a pioneer experiment, a proving ground for conservation practices, interpretive efforts, and park administrative techniques. Trial-and-error management tactics in the earliest years, coupled with misguided ones later, resulted in a variety of adverse conditions: a reduction in the number and size of meadows in Yosemite Valley; the suppression of natural fires; the introduction of exotic plants and animals; stock grazing on park lands; the alteration of river channels; hunting of predators; the concentration and development of visitor and administrative facilities near prime scenic attractions; and significant development on private inholdings within the park. All those activities brought about gradual changes in the park ecosystem and in its cultural environment.

Most National Park Service policies and techniques of administration, resource protection, and interpretation evolved in Yosemite. In recent years those policies have undergone appropriate changes in interpretation and implementation to conform to current tenets of wildlife management, cultural resource preservation, and natural resource protection. They are still, however, based on the ideals and standards set by the first National Park Service Director, Stephen Mather. The establishment of wilderness areas, the implementation of sound management policies, better park planning, and widespread interpretive efforts are helping to ensure a better distribution of activities, visitor awareness of man’s responsibilities to the environment, and a reduction of the impact of man’s enjoyment of the park on both cultural and natural resources.

The author found it virtually impossible to detail extensively the evolution of Yosemite park management in a single document, especially one restricted by time and monetary considerations. Complicating the problem is the amount of literature on Yosemite, comprising books, government reports, private studies, pamphlets, magazine and newspaper articles, maps, correspondence, interviews, and assorted ephemera on a myriad of topics including glaciation, history and discovery, Indian and pioneer life, transportation, campground development, recreational activities, visitor accommodations, interpretive programs, private landholdings, and natural resource protection. Because of limited time, only those sources directly relevant to a discussion of the park’s discovery, constructional history, management, and interpretation could be read exhaustively, while others were perused and summarized as time permitted. In the course of this research, a variety of intriguing questions tempted digression into other areas of extreme interest. With great regret these were passed over, some to be recommended as topics for administrative histories and the rest to await other researchers with different priorities. Selectivity became ever more necessary as time advanced, but it is hoped that will not interfere with the study’s use as a research tool.

A few other remarks are necessary regarding the organization of this report. The author describes the history of the park chronologically rather than topically in an effort to enable study of various facets of park development in relation to regional and national events of the same time period. Such an arrangement, though helpful in understanding interrelationships between events, programs, and policies on a broader scale, necessitates those interested in a particular topic to peruse each chapter in order to follow its development. Although I tried to faithfully restrict discussion of a topic within a chapter to the specific years covered by that chapter, occasionally it was necessary for coherence to overlap slightly in order to complete the discussion of a particular aspect of the story. The author tried to do this as infrequently as possible, however.

Because of the mass of information, the writer chose a cut-off date of 1960 for this study. This enables a discussion of the MISSION 66 planning for Yosemite, but does not permit further detailed analysis of that program or the master plan era of the 1960s and 1970s. Those topics will be among those recommended for additional study as administrative histories. A number of important proposals, therefore, addressed in later years by park management, such as elimination of vehicle use in prime resource areas, the encouragement of mass transportation in Yosemite Valley, the transfer of administrative and concession facilities to El Portal, and the designation of wilderness areas are not being addressed, at least in detail, at this time.

Another fact to be noted is that the preponderance of data on human activity in the Yosemite region concerns Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove. Thus the attentive reader will note gaps in the information base on outlying areas of the park. The backcountry remains basically ignored by the literature on Yosemite. The author has been able to acquire information on its resources only as they have been described, albeit scantily, in the literature or been reported on by park staff; primarily trail crews, backcountry rangers, and archeologists. The fact that the reports of the California state commissioners, of the acting army superintendents, and of early Park Service personnel only contained information on certain major trails and facilities does not mean others did not exist. Those reports tend to expound only on resources of immediate interest or use to the writers. Although as a consequence the main emphasis of this report is on buildings and trails in developed areas, a wealth of resources are known to exist in the backcountry. Another of the recommendations of this study is a comprehensive survey of backcountry cultural resources. Park personnel have already proposed such a project, and in the interests of cultural resource management and historic preservation, it should be subsidized and implemented as soon as possible.

It has been nearly impossible to inventory and precisely describe every road, trail, bridge, concession facility, and government building even in developed areas of the park. Some of those structures have already been described in detail by other historians, in other government reports and surveys, and in National Register nomination forms. With the references provided in this study, the interested reader should be able to find that type of detailed information with little problem. For those structures not described elsewhere, it is hoped that the basic historical documentation provided in this study will enable the reader to pursue further research with some ease.

Finally, an agreement has been reached between the Yosemite Park and Curry Company and the National Park Service for the transfer of the Curry Company archives to the Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. This action will ensure the careful use and professional preservation of a vast body of important data relative to the park and its concession operations. As the material is accessioned and catalogued, it is possible that heretofore unknown information on park buildings and sites will surface. The prospects for enlightenment on several aspects of concession-related activities is exciting.

This is not a definitive historical study of Yosemite National Park and its environs, if such is even possible concerning one of the oldest, most controversial, but best-loved units of our National Park System. A multitude of historical, political, environmental, geological, and archeological questions are open to different interpretations and merit further research and discussion. Gaps in the historical record still exist, to be filled in by future researchers on the basis of new physical and documentary investigations. Studies such as this seem to pose new questions as often as they resolve old ones. Perhaps this is as it should be, for the more scholars and other learned individuals analyze past administrative, interpretive, constructional, and natural and cultural resource management policies of parks such as Yosemite, the better our planning for the future will be in ensuring that mistakes are not repeated and that enlightened progress continues.

The amount of material to be covered during the research process was staggering, and credit for enabling the writer to get through that amount of data is due in large part to the untiring efforts of two special individuals. The writer was tirelessly aided in the research for this report by Robert C. Pavlik, a graduate student in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, now a historian at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Bob’s love of Yosemite, extensive knowledge of its history, and concern for its resources, combined with an enthusiasm for research and a capacity for endless patience while constantly “on call” as a research assistant, were invaluable to the completion of this study. On several field trips together, during which we sifted through books and ephemera in the park library, plodded through archival data in the records center, interviewed persons knowledgeable in various facets of the park’s management, and hiked to breathtakingly beautiful historical sites in the valley and high country, we engaged in stimulating and fruitful discussions on the park, its history, its future, and the National Park Service in general. Those times will be remembered as some of the pleasantest of my Park Service career.

The staff and researchers at Yosemite National Park are blessed to have at their disposal one of the finest research libraries and record centers in the National Park System. Practically everything pertinent to the history of the park’s establishment, its development under various administrations, its educational and interpretive programs, and its efforts in cultural and natural resource management can be found there. Hundreds of photographs and a large number of maps round out this outstanding collection of Yosemite materials. Much of the credit for the facility’s fine holdings and for its usefulness to researchers is due to the professional expertise of its librarian, Mary Vocelka, who is always on the lookout for pertinent additions. Mary never flinched at procuring a myriad of documents for our use or at reproducing necessary data for our convenience, and was especially helpful in providing leads on other useful sources of information, including both documents and individuals. I have seen her spend a great deal of time with park visitors who wander into the library in hopes of finding interesting tidbits of information on some particular aspect of the park that has interested them and listen intently to the reminiscences of old-timers who stop to pass a few moments in her hospitable presence. Mary is an invaluable asset to the park’s public image as well as to Park Service personnel who are dependent upon her knowledge of the literature related to Yosemite. Probably the bulk of research material that went into this study came from the facility she so ably oversees.

Other park personnel also proved generous with their time and expertise. Michael Dixon developed a large group of photographs taken by Bob Pavlik in connection with our parkwide inventory of historical sites and structures, while Dave Forgang, park curator, and Scott Carpenter, park archeologist, frequently came to the author’s assistance with useful information relative to the status of historical and archeological resources. A variety of park rangers and other staff members, including Jim Snyder, backcountry trails foreman, and Al Thorpe, property management officer, provided important information on cultural resources in their respective areas. Jim’s detailed and perceptive review of the original draft study provided valuable suggestions that added greatly to any merit the final document may have. Former Superintendent Robert C. Binnewies extended cooperation and support whenever called upon and will, I hope, enjoy perusing the final document. To all Yosemite park personnel, and to Shirley Sargent, whose many books on Yosemite history have been a constant source of pleasure and valuable information, I extend heartfelt thanks for all help and encouragement extended.

Gary Higgins and Paul Cloyd, historical architects, and Judy Rosen, a former environmental specialist, at the Denver Service Center of the National Park Service helped in data acquisition and periodic problem-solving, which is hereby gratefully acknowledged. Paul, Jo Wahbeh, and Craig Kenkel also accomplished numerous on-site inspections of park structures, occasionally involving some strenuous hiking, which greatly aided the inventory work for this study. The Graphics Division in Denver is also to be commended for its timely production of maps and typed copies of the report.

The writer also conducted research at the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.; at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley; at the Federal Archives and Records Center in San Bruno, California; at the California State Library in Sacramento; and at the California Historical Society and the Society of California Pioneers in San Francisco. The staffs of all those institutions were helpful as always, and I thank them for their time and efforts.

Finally, I would like to thank Section Chief John Latschar of the Western Team Branch of Planning, Denver Service Center, and Regional Historian Gordon Chappell and Chief of Park Historic Preservation Tom Mulhern of the Western Regional Office of the National Park Service for their advice, critical expertise, and support in the completion of this study. I hope they and park management will find in it what they need to better care for the incomparable resources of Yosemite National Park.

Linda Wedel Greene
Denver, Colorado
16 September 1986

Note: A current map of Yosemite National Park is provided in the rear cover of this document to facilitate locating sites and structures mentioned in the report in relation to today’s boundaries, road systems, and structural developments. It should also be noted that the writer uses the terms “historic” and “historical” as defined in Wilson Follett, Modern American Usage; A Guide, edited and completed by Jacques Barzun et al., published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., 1966. According to Follett, historic structures, sites, personalities, or events are significant in American history, although they are also historical in that they are associated with our past. Most historical events, personalities, structures, and sites, however, are not historic; that is, they do not hold an important place in history. According to those definitions this is, in reality, a Historical Resource Study, because it addresses all park resources. The National Park Service’s formal title for such reports, however, is Historic Resource Study.

Table of Contents

Volume 1: Historical Narrative

Location Map iii
Preface v
Chronologies xxxiii
Yosemite Valley xxxv
Cascades/Arch Rock xlvix
El Portal li
Carlon, Hodgdon Meadow, Foresta/Big Meadows, Aspen Valley, Crane Flat, Gin Flat, and Tamarack Flat liii
Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor lix
White Wolf lxiii
Tuolumne Meadows lxv
Chinquapin, Badger Pass, and Glacier Point lxxi
Wawona, South entrance, and Mariposa Grove lxxv

Chapter I: Early Habitation and Explorations in the Yosemite region 1
A. The First Inhabitants 1
B. The Joseph Walker Party Skirts Yosemite Valley 13
C. Gold Discoveries Generate Indian-White Conflicts 15
1. Effects of Euro-American Settlement on the northern California Indians 15
2. Formation of the Mariposa Battalion 17
3. Captain John Boling Enters Yosemite Valley 24
4. Lieutenant Tredwell Moore Enters Yosemite Valley 25
D. Decline in Strength of the Yosemites 26
E. Historical Indian Occupation of Yosemite Valley 26
F. Historical Indian Occupation of El Portal 29
G. Remains of Indian Occupation in Yosemite National Park 29
H. Remains of White Exploration in Yosemite Valley 31
I. Tourism to Yosemite Valley Begins 32
1. A Three-Year Lull 32
2. James M. Hutchings inspects Yosemite Valley 32
3. Publicity on Yosemite Valley Reaches the East Coast 33
4. Publicity Encourages Visitation 35
a) Trails and Tourist Facilities on the Way to Yosemite Valley 35
b) Early Hotels in Yosemite Valley 44
5. Discovery of Giant Sequoia Groves 46
a) Tuolumne Grove 46
b) Mariposa Grove 47
c) Merced Grove 49

Chapter II: Yosemite Valley as a State Grant and Establishment of Yosemite National Park, 1864-1890 51
A. Interest Mounts Toward Preserving the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove 51
1. Yosemite Act of 1864 51
a. Steps Leading to the Preservation of Yosemite Valley 51
b) Frederick Olmsted‘s Treatise on Parks 55
c) Significance of the Yosemite Grant 59

B. State Management of the Yosemite Grant 65
1. Land Surveys 65
2. Immediate Problems Facing the State 66
3. Settlers‘ Claims 69
4. Trails 77
a) Early Survey Work 77
b) Routes To and Around Yosemite Valley 78
c) Tourist Trails in the Valley 79
(1) Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point 80
(2) Indian Canyon Trail 82
(3) Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak Trail 83
(4) Rim Trail, Pohono Trail 83
(5) Clouds Rest and Half (South) Dome Trails 84
(6) Vernal Fall and Mist Trails 85
(7) Snow Trail 87
(8) Anderson Trail 88
(9) Panorama Trail 88
(10) Ledge Trail 89

5. Improvement of Trails 89
a) Hardships Attending Travel to Yosemite Valley 89
b) Yosemite Commissioners Encourage Road Construction 91
c) Work Begins on the Big Oak Flat and Coulterville Roads 92
d) Improved Roads and Railroad Service increase Visitation 94
e) The Coulterville Road Reaches the Valley floor 95
1) A New Transportation Era Begins 95
2) Later History 99
f) The Big Oak Flat Road Reaches the Valley Floor 100
g) Antagonism Between Road Companies increases 103
h) The Wawona Road Reaches the Valley floor 106
i) Roads with in the Reservation boundary 110
6. Development of Concession Operations 114
a) Hotels and Recreational Establishments 114
(1) Upper Hotel 115
(2) Lower Hotel/Black‘s Hotel 122
(3) Leidig‘s Hotel 122
(4) Mountain View House 123
(5) Wawona Hotel 126
(6) La Casa Nevada 133
(7) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon 135
(8) Mountain House 138
(9) Stoneman House 139
b) Stores, Studios, and Other Services 145
(1) Harris Campground 145
(2) Degnan Bakery 146
(3) Fiske Studio 147
(4) Bolton and Westfall Butcher shop 147
(5) Flores Laundry 148
(6) Cavagnaro Store 148 (7) Stables 148
(8) Sinning Woodworking shop 148
(9) Stegman Seed Store 149
(10) Reilly Picture Gallery 149
(11) Wells Fargo office 150
(12) Folsom bridge and Ferry 151
(13) Chapel 151
c) Transportation in the Valley 154
d) Staging and Hauling to Yosemite Valley 155
7. Schools 159
8. Private Lands 164
a) Bronson Meadows (Hodgdon Meadow) area 167
(1) Crocker station 167
(2) Hodgdon ranch 167
b) Ackerson Meadow 171
c) Carlon or Carl Inn 171
d) Hazel Green 171
e) Crane Flat 174
f) Gin Flat 175
g) Tamarack Flat 176
h) Foresta/Big Meadow 177
(1) McCauley barn 180
(2) Meyer barn No. 1 (Saltbox) 181
(3) Meyer barn No. 2 (Cribwork interior) 181
(4) Big Meadow Cemetery 181
i) Gentry station 188
j) Aspen Valley 189
(1) Hodgdon cabin 189
(2) East Meadow Cache 192
k) Hetch Hetchy Valley/Lake Eleanor area 192
(1) Miguel Meadow cabin 193
(2) Kibbe cabin 196
(3) Elwell cabins 196
(4) Tiltill Mountain 197
(5) Lake Vernon cabin 197
(6) Rancheria Mountain cabin 197
(7) Smith Meadow cabin 198
l) White Wolf 198
m) Soda Springs and Tuolumne Meadows 199
(1) Lembert cabin 201
(2) Tuolumne Meadows cabin 206
(3) Murphy cabin 206
(4) Snow Flat cabin 207
n) Tioga pass 207
(1) Dana fork cabin 207
(2) Mono pass cabins 210
o) Little Yosemite Valley 210
(1) Washburn/Leonard cabin 210
p) Yosemite Valley 211
(1) Pioneer Cemetery 211
(a) White Graves 212
(b) Indian Graves 218
(2) Lamon cabin 222
(3) Hutchings cabin 222
(4) Muir cabin 224
(5) Leidig cabin and barn 225
(6) Howard cabin 226
(7) Happy Isles cabin 227
(8) Clark cabin 227
(9) Four-Mile Trail cabin 228
(10) Mail Carrier Shelter cabins 228
(11) Stegman cabin 228
(12) Hamilton cabin 228
(13) Shepperd cabin 229
(14) Manette cabin 229
(15) Whorton cabin 229
(16) Boston cabin 229
q) Glacier Point 232
(1) McGurk cabin 232
(2) Mono Meadow cabin 233
(3) Ostrander cabin 233
(4) Westfall Meadows cabin 234
r) Wawona 234
(1) Pioneer Cemetery 234
(2) Crescent Meadows cabin 235
(3) Turner Meadow cabin 235
(4) Buck Camp 235
(5) Mariposa Grove cabins 236
(6) Chilnualna Fall 237
(7) Galen Clark Homestead Historic site 237
(8) Cunningham cabin 240
(9) West Woods (Eleven-Mile station) 240
(10) Other Homesteaders 241
s) El Portal area 242
(1) Hennessey ranch 242
(2) Rutherford Mine 243

9. The Tioga Mine and Great Sierra Wagon Road 243
a) Early activity in the Tuolumne Meadows area 243
b) Formation of the Tioga Mining district 244
c) The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company Commences Operations 246
d) Construction of the Great Sierra Wagon Road 250
e) The Tioga Mine Plays Out 256
10. Management of the Grant by the Yosemite Commissioners 258
a) Replacement of the Board of Commissioners, 1880 258
b) Report of the State Engineer, 1881 259
(1) Protecting Yosemite Valley from Defacement 260
(a) Preservation of the Water shed 260
(b) Regulation of Use of the Valley Floor 261
(c) Treatment of the Valley Streams 262
(2) Promoting Tourism 262
(a) Improving Approaches to the Valley 263
(b) Improvements to Travel In and About Yosemite Valley 263
(c) Trails 264
(d) Footpaths 264
(e) Bridges 265
(f) Drainage and Guard Walls 265
(g) Hotels, Stores, Houses 266
(3) Lands caping 266
(4) Agricultural Development 267
(5) River overflow 267
c) Remarks on Hall‘s Report 268
(1) Yosemite Valley River Drainage and Erosion Control 269
(2) Yosemite Valley Vegetative Changes 273

(a) Fire Suppression 273
(b) Drainage of Meadows 276
(c) Introduction of Exotics 277
(3) Mariposa Grove Management Problems 277
d) Report of the Commissioners, 1885-86 279
e) Report of the Commissioners, 1887-88 282
f) Report of the Commissioners, 1889-90 288
11. Establishment of Yosemite National Park 289
a) Accusations of Mismanagement of the State Grant 289
b) Arrival of John Muir in California 296
c) John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson Join forces 298
d) Response of the Commissioners to Charges of Mismanagement 300
e) Comments on the Controversy 301
f) The Yosemite National Park Bill Passes Congress 304
g) Comments on the Preservation Movement and Establishment of Yosemite National Park 305

Chapter III: Administration of the Yosemite Grant and Yosemite National Park, 1890-1905 311
A. The U. S. Army Enters Yosemite 311
1. The U. S. Army Becomes the Regulatory force in the New California Parks 311
2. Aspects of Military Management 312
3. Contributions of the U. S. Army to the Present National Park System 318
B. Trails, bridges, and Roads 320
1. Trails and bridges 320
a) Pre-Army Trail System 320
b) Blazes 321
c) Army Troops Begin Improving routes 325
2. Toll Roads 341
C. Construction and Development 349
1. State of California 349
a) Pavilion 349
b) Powerhouse 349
2. Concession Operations 349
a) Wawona Hotel 349
b) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon 350
c) Camp Curry 351
d) Degnan Bakery 352
e) Fiske Studio 352
f) Foley Studio 352
g) Jorgensen Studio 353
h) Boysen Studio 353
i) Best Studio 354
j) Studio of the Three Arrows 354
3. Sierra Club 354
a) Creation of Club 354
b) LeConte Lodge 357
4. U. S. Army 359
a) New Camp buildings 359
b) Arboretum 360

D. Natural Resource Management 365
1. Continuing Charges of Spoliation of Yosemite Valley 365
2. The Sheep Problem 368
a) The Sheep industry in the 1890s 368
b) Army Measures to Combat Trespassing 370
3. Grazing on Park Lands 372
4. Poaching 373
5. Fish Planting 374
6. Forest Management 377
7. Stream Flow Measurements in Yosemite Valley 377
8. Origins of a Major Conservation Battle 380
a) Initiation of the Hetch Hetchy Project 380
b) The Secretary of the interior Denies Mayor Phelan‘s Applications 385

E. A New Transportation Era Begins 388
1. Railroad Lines to Yosemite 388
a) Yosemite Short Line Railway Company 388
b) Yosemite Valley Railroad 389

F. Private Lands and boundary Changes 391
G. Recession of the Yosemite Grant 402
H. Refocus of Park Administration 412

Chapter IV: Administration of Yosemite National Park, 1906-1915 413
A. The Army Moves Its Headquarters to Yosemite Valley 413
B. Trails, bridges, and Roads 414
1. Trails and bridges 414
a) General Trail and bridge Work 414
b) John Muir Trail 419
2. Roads 425
a) El Portal Road 425
b) Status of Roads in 1913 430
c) Road and Trail Construction Required of the City of San Francisco 431
d) Initiation of Auto Travel in Yosemite 433
e) Effects of Auto Travel in the Park 437
f) The Federal Government Acquires the Tioga Road. 439
g) The Big Oak Flat Road Becomes Toll Free 443

C. Buildings and Construction 443
1. Army Camp 443
2. Yosemite Village 446
3. Park General 451
a) Schools 451
b) Powerhouse 456
c) Miscellaneous 456
d) Wood-Splitting plant 457
e) Fire Lookouts and Patrol cabins 457
D. Campgrounds 458
E. Visitor Service Operations Expand 461
1. The U. S. Army Becomes involved in Business Concessions 461
2. Concession Permits in Operation During That Time 462
3. Camp Curry Continues to Grow 470
4. The Camp Idea Expands to Other areas 472
5. The Washburn interests 472
6. The Yosemite Transportation Company 477
7. The Yosemite Valley Railroad Company 478
8. The Shaffer and Lounsbury garage 479
9. The Desmond Park Service Company 479
F. Patented Lands Again Pose a Problem 481
1. Timberlands 481
a) Lumber interests Eye Park Timber Stands 481
b) Congress Authorizes Land Exchanges 483
c) The Yosemite Lumber Company 484
d) The Madera Sugar Pine Company 488
2. Private Properties 488
a) Foresta 488
b) McCauley ranch 489
c) The Cascades (Gentry Tract) 490
d) Tuolumne Meadows (Soda Springs) 490

G. Insect and Blister Rust Control 494
1. Beetle Depredations 494
2. White Pine Blister Rust 495
H. The Hetch Hetchy Water Project Plan Proceeds 496
1. The Garfield Permit 496
2. Antagonism to the Project Continues 497
3. The City of San Francisco Begins Acquiring Land 498
4. A New Secretary of the Interior Questions His Predecessor‘s Actions 500
5. The Raker Act 501
6. Construction Begins 505
7. General Character of the System 506
8. Elements of the Hetchy Hetchy System 507
a) Hetch Hetchy Railroad 507
b) Sawmills 509
c) Lake Eleanor Dam 512
d) Hetch Hetchy Dam 512

I. Completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad 513
J. Growth of El Portal 516
K. Growth of interest in National Parks and Need for Better Organization Leads to Establishment of National Park Service 518
1. Change in Administration of the Parks 518
2. Proposal for a Bureau of National Parks and Resorts 519
3. Establishment of the National Park Service 521

Volume 2: Historical Narrative (Continued)

Chapter V: National Park Service Administration of Yosemite National Park, 1916-1930: the Mather Years 523
A. Overview 523
B. Roads, Trails, and bridges 531
1. Season of 1916 531
a) Existing Roads and Trails 531
(1) Government-Owned Roads 532
(2) Non-Government-Owned Roads 533
(3) Government-Owned Trails 533
b) Anticipated Visitation Requires New Construction 537
c) John Muir Trail 541
2. Season of 1917 542
3. Seasons of 1918-19 547
4. The 1920s Period 548
a) Improvement of Roads and Trails Continues 548
b) Hetch Hetchy area 550
c) Auxiliary Valley Roads 551
d) The Park Service Initiates a Road-building Program 552
e) Improvement of Wawona Road and Relocation of Big Oak Flat Road Contemplated 554
f) Reconstruction of Wawona Road Begins 555
g) Valley Stone bridges Constructed 560
h) Trail Work Continues 560
5. Some Valley Naturalization Begins 565
C. Construction and Development 568
1. The Park Service Slowly Builds Needed structures 568
2. A New Village site is Considered 577
3. The 1920s Period involves a Variety of Construction Jobs 581
4. The New Hospital and Superintendent‘s residence 585
5. The Indian Village in Yosemite Valley 590
6. More Construction and Removal of Some older structures 591
D. Educational and interpretive Programs 595
1. Nature Guide Service 595
2. LeConte Lectures 597
3. Yosemite Museum Association 597
4. Zoo 603
5. Indian Field Days 605
6. Interpretive Publications 606
7. Yosemite School of Field Natural History 606
8. Research Preserves 607
9. Development and Importance of Educational Work at Yosemite 607
E. Concession Operations 612
1. The Desmond Park Service Company (Yosemite National Park Company) 612
a) The Desmond Company Receives a Concession Permit 612
b) Desmond Constructs forerunners of High Sierra Camps 615
c) Yosemite National Park Company formed 618
d) Bear Feeding Expands 624
e) High Sierra Camps Reestablished 626
f) Yosemite National Park Company Holdings, 1924 630
2. The Curry Camping Company 652
a) The Company Continues to Grow 652
b) Mrs. Curry Has the LeConte Lodge Moved 652
c) New Construction activity 653
d) Yosemite Park and Curry Company formed 658
e) The Company initiates a Winter Sports Program 663
f) Concession Atmosphere Changes with Increased Tourism 671
3. The Wawona Hotel Company 671
4. Best Studio 675
5. Pillsbury Studio 676
6. Fiske Studio 676
7. Baxter Studio 676
F. Patented Lands 677
1. Yosemite Lumber Company 677
2. Foresta Subdivision 684
3. Big Meadow 687
4. Aspen Valley Homesites 687
5. Cascade Tract 688
6. Gin Flat and Crane Flat 688
7. The Cascades (Gentry Tract) 688
8. Hazel Green 688
9. White Wolf Lodge 689
G. Hetch Hetchy 695
H. El Portal Mining 699
I. Yosemite Valley Railroad 713
J. Natural Resource Management 715
1. Stream Control 715
2. Meadows 717
3. Fire Control 718
4. grazing 720
K. Fish Hatcheries 721
L. Stream Flow Measurements 723
M. Snow Survey 728
N. Establishment of Yosemite Advisory Board 729

Chapter VI: National Park Service Administration, 1931 to Ca. 1960 731
A. Overview 731
1. Stephen Mather Steps Down 731
2. Public Works Programs Aid Completion of Park Projects 732
3. The Dissolution of Emergency Relief Projects Severely Impacts Park Conditions 750
4. MISSION 66 Revives Park Development 752
B. Roads, Trails, and bridges 758
1. Trail Construction in the early 1930s Results in Completion of John Muir Trail 758
2. Reconstruction of Park Roads Begins in early 1930s 762
a) Paving and Tunnel and bridge building Commence 762
b) Tioga Road 762
c) Wawona Road and Tunnel 763
d) Yosemite Valley bridges 769
e) Glacier Point Road 769
f) Big Oak Flat Road 771
g) Trail and Road Signs 771
h) Bridge Work Precedes Flood of 1937 778
i) North Valley Road Realignment Considered 784
j) Completion of New Big Oak Flat Road 785
k) Bridge Work Continues in the 1940s 785
I) Flood of 1950 795
m) Completion of the Tioga Road 796
n) Flood Reconstruction Work Continues 797
o) MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for New Big Oak Flat Entrance Road 802

C. Construction and Development 802
1. Season of 1931 803
2. Season of 1932 811
3. Season of 1933 815
4. Season of 1934 824
5. Season of 1935 839
6. Season of 1936 850
7. Season of 1937 851
a) General Construction 851
b) Flood Damage 852
c) New CCC Cascades Camp Constructed 853
8. Season of 1938 855
9. Seasons of 1939-40 859
10. Period of the Late 1940s 871
11. The 1950s Period Encompasses Many Changes 872
D. Concession Operations 884
1. The National Park Service Acquires Wawona Basing 884
2. Big Trees Lodge 894
3. Chronology of Later Yosemite Park and Curry Company Development 895
a) Company Facilities Need Improvement 895
b) Winter Sports Move to Badger Pass 901
c) Limited Construction Occurs 902
d) High Sierra Camps Continue 903
e) the U. S. Navy Takes over the Ahwahnee Hotel 904
f) The Curry Company Begins a New Building Program 905

E. Patented Lands 917
1. Remaining in 1931 917
2. Yosemite Lumber Company 922
3. Section 35, Wawona 923
4. Camp Hoyle 931
5. Hazel Green 931
6. Carl Inn 932
7. Foresta 932
8. Big Meadow 937
9. White Wolf 938
10. Soda Springs 939
11. Tioga Mine 944
a) Renewal of activity 944
b) Mine ruins 946
12. MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for Land Acquisition 947
F. Hetch Hetchy 948
1. O’Shaughnessy Dam Raised 948
2. Hetch Hetchy Railroad Revived 949
3. Construction and Security, 1930s-1950s 961
G. Yosemite Valley Railway 961
H. Research and Park Management 966
I. Natural Resource Management 967
1. River and Stream Control 967
2. Fire Control 974
3. Grazing 975
4. Insect Control 977
5. Blister Rust Control 979
J. Fish and Game 981
K. Water Monitoring 985
L. Snow Survey 985
M. El Portal 987
N. Summary 994

Volume 3: Discussion of Historical Resources, Appendixes, Historical Base Maps, Bibliography

Chapter VII: Historical Resources of Yosemite National Park 1013

Chapter VIII: Additional Notes on Certain Sites 1021
A. In the Backcountry 1021
B. Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor Dams 1023
C. Foresta Subdivision and McCauley-Meyer Sawmill 1025
1. Foresta 1025
2. McCauley-Meyer Sawmill 1025
D. Emergency Relief Projects 1026
E. Yosemite Valley 1027
1. Hydroelectric Power Plant 1027
2. Ahwahnee Row Houses 1028
3. Yosemite Village Historic District 1030
4. Camp Curry Historic District 1032
5. Yosemite Lodge 1033
6. Yosemite Village Garage 1034
7. Yosemite Village Gas Station 1034
F. Wawona 1034
1. Pioneer Yosemite History Center 1034
2. Section 35 1036
G. El Portal 1037
1. Hotel and Market 1038
2. Other Resources 1038

Chapter IX: Recommendations for Interpretation, Cultural Resources Management, and Further Research 1041
A. Interpretation and Cultural Resources Management 1041
B. Further Research 1042

Chapter X: Significant Historical Properties in Yosemite National Park 1045
A. The National Register of Historic Places 1045
1. Properties Listed in the National Register 1046
2. Properties Determined Eligible for Listing in the National Register 1048
3. Properties Nominated to the National Register, Status Uncertain 1048
4. Properties Nominated to the National Register by the National Park Service, Concurred in by State Historic Preservation officer, Returned by National Register for Additional Data or Revisions Potential National Register Properties 1049
5. Properties to be Nominated to the National Register, 1987 1049
a) Architecture 1050
b) Transportation and Landscape Architecture 1051
c) Conservation/Commerce 1052
d) Conservation/Parks and Recreation 1052

B. The Historic American Buildings Survey 1054
C. The National Historic Landmarks Program 1055
D. The List of Classified structures for Yosemite National Park as of 12 December 1984 1057

Appendixes 1061
A: C. Hart Merriam, “Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley,” Sierra Club Bulletin 10, No. 2 (January 1917) 1063
B: Chronological Overview of Archeological Investigation in Yosemite National Park 1069
C: Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove 1075
D: Legislation Pertaining to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove 1081
E: Administrators of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1866-1960 1087
F: Historical Components of Concession Operations, June-July 1923 1089
G: building Inventory, Yosemite National Park 1105

Historical Base Maps 1149
Historical Maps of Yosemite National Park and Yosemite Valley, 1850 to 1915, by William and Mary Hood, ca. 1964 1150
Historical Base Map No. 1. Early Trails, Yosemite National Park, DSC, 1987 1192
No. 2. Early Roads in Yosemite National Park (5 sheets), DSC, 1987 1201
No. 3. Old Yosemite Village area, Development from 1859 to 1959, DSC, 1987 1212
No. 4. Yosemite National Park, showing roads, structures, sites, and archeological and historic districts, DSC, 1987 1214
No. 5. National Register sites and potential nominations, Yosemite Valley 1216

Bibliography 1219

List of Illustrations

1. Location of Indian tribes in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park 4
2. Indian villages and sweathouses in Yosemite Valley, 1851 10
3. Route of Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley, March 1851 20
4. Early trails in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park 38
5. Rock wall cribbing on old Coulterville Road 104
6. Rock retaining wall, old Big Oak Flat Road 104
7. Map of Yosemite Valley, 1878-79 112
8. Barnard‘s Hotel and cottages, 1890 118
9. Sentinel Hotel, late 1890s 118
10. Wawona Hotel, ca. 1886 124
11. Hill’s Studio, 1984 124
12-14. Wawona Hotel, Annex building, and Little Brown (Moore cottage), 1984 128
15. Stoneman House, ca. 1886 140
16. Sketch of area in front of Stoneman House in Yosemite Valley 142
17. Yosemite Valley chapel, photo by George Fiske 152
18. Notching and chinking techniques in pioneer log cabins 168
19. Cuneo residence, Carl Inn, 1984 172
20. Hazel Green ranch, 1984 172
21. Shed ruins, McCauley ranch, 1984 182
22. Cabin ruins, McCauley ranch, 1984 182
23. Barn, McCauley ranch, 1984 184
24. Sawmill, McCauley ranch, 1984 184
25. Meyer saltbox and crib barns, 1984 186
26. Hodgdon Aspen Valley homestead cabin at Pioneer Yosemite History Center 190
27. Anderson cabin at Pioneer Yosemite History Center 190
28. Kibbe cabin, 1896 194
29. Soda Springs enclosure, 1984 202
30. Tuolumne Meadows cabin, 1950s 204
31. Leonard cabin, Little Yosemite Valley, 1984 208
32. Yosemite Valley cemetery plan 214
33. Lamon cabin, 1950s 220
34. McGurk Meadow cabin, 1984 230
35. Trail to Chilnualna Fall, 1985 238
36-37. Great Sierra Mine cabin ruins 248
38. Lifting winch, Great Sierra Mine, 1985 252
39. Old Tioga Road through Tuolumne Meadows, 1984 252
40. Yosemite Valley roads and structures map, 1887-88 284
41. Areas of activity and those under cultivation in Yosemite Valley, 1883-1890 292
42. Map of Yosemite Valley, 1890 306
43. Map of Yosemite Valley, 1892 314
44. Outline map of Yosemite Valley, 1894 322
45. Diamond and T blazes, Ostrander Lake Trail 326
46-48. Map of Yosemite National Park by Lt. N. F. McClure, 1896 Three copies showing patrol posts, patrol routes, and grazing areas 330
49. Yosemite Valley floor, ca. 1900 346
50. First automobile in Yosemite Valley, 1900 346
51. Wawona arboretum, 1904. Footbridge over Big Creek and bench 362
52. Wawona arboretum, 1904. interpretive sign 362
53. Staff water gauge at Pohono bridge, 1985 378
54. McCauley cabin, Tuolumne Meadows, 1984 398
55. Major changes to boundaries, Yosemite National Park, 1864-1979 406
56. Sketch map of the High Mountain Route from Yosemite to the King’s River Canyon, 1908 422
57. Map of Yosemite Valley showing roads and projected revisions, 1912-13 426
58. Map of portion of Yosemite Valley showing location of ca. 1909 schoolhouse and 1912 Army residence 5 452
59. Crane Flat ranger patrol cabin, Yosemite Pioneer History Center 454
60. Plat of land leased to J. B. Cook, Chris Jorgensen, and Coffman and Kenney, 1906 464
61. Map of Wawona Hotel and vicinity, ca. 1909-1912 474
62. Collapsed trestle at top of north side incline above El Portal 486
63. Parsons Memorial Lodge, Tuolumne Meadows, 1984 492
64. Lake Eleanor Dam, 1984 510
65. Map showing routes of Yosemite Lumber Company and Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company railroads 514
66. Automobile map of Yosemite National Park, 1917 526
67. Automobile guide map of roads in Yosemite Valley, 1917 528
68. Map of Yosemite Valley and adjacent region, 1920 544
69. Happy Isles bridge, 1984. 558
70. Map showing roads in Yosemite Valley, ca. 1929 562
71. Map of Yosemite National Park, 1929 566
72-73. Examples of early structures in Yosemite Valley maintenance yard, 1984 570
74-76. Water intake and penstock of Yosemite Valley power plant, 1984 572
77-79. Interior of power house and Cascade residence and garage, 1984 574
80. Map of Yosemite Village, 1920 578
81. Lewis Memorial Hospital, 1984 586
82. Paint shop in Yosemite Valley maintenance yard (former Indian Village residence), 1984 588
83. El Portal entrance boundary marker, 1984 592
84. Glacier Point overlook, 1984 600
85. Old log cabin at Mariposa Grove, date unknown 608
86. Barracks moved from Owens Valley to Yosemite Lodge, 1984 616
87. Glacier Point Hotel, date unknown 616
88. Map of Big Trees Lodge site, 1923 620
89. May Lake High Sierra camp cookhouse and dining room, 1986 628
90. Merced Lake High Sierra camp barn, 1984 628
91. Merced Lake High Sierra camp ice house, 1984 628
92. Plat of Group A, Yosemite Village, Yosemite National Park Company operations, 1924 632
93. Plat of Group B, Yosemite Lodge wood section, YNPCo., 1924 634
94. Plat of Group C, Yosemite Lodge annex, YNPCo., 1924 636
95. Plat of Group D and E, Camp Tecoya and Camp Tecoya Annex, YNPCo., 1924 638
96. Plat of Group F, Construction and Equipment Warehouses, YNPCo., 1924 640
97. Plat of Group G, Garage Group, YNPCo., 1924 642
98. Plat of Group H, Housekeeping Camp #17, YNPCo., 1924 644
99. Plat of Group J, Stables, YNPCo., 1924 646
100. Plat of Group Q, Glacier Point Hotel site, YNPCo., 1924 648
101-104. Ahwahnee row houses, 1986 650
105. Sites occupied by permittees in Yosemite Village, 1924 654
106. Plat, Camp Curry, 1925 660
107. Tecoya employee housing area, 1930 664
108. Plat, Camp Curry, 1930 666
109. Snow Creek cabin, 1984 668
110. Snow Creek cabin, 1984 668
111. Wawona slaughterhouse, 1985 672
112. Yosemite Lumber Company holdings, 1923 678
113. Map of timber stands acquired in 1930 Rockefeller purchase 682
114-16. White Wolf Lodge, guest cabin, and storage shed, 1984 690
117. Map of Hetch Hetchy water supply, 1925 692
118. Plat of O’Shaughnessey Dam camp site, showing roads and buildings, 1925 696
119. O’Shaughnessey Dam, 1984 700
120. Mess hall and dormitory, Hetch Hetchy, 1984 700
121. Damkeeper’s residence, Hetch Hetchy, 1984 702
122. Assistant damkeeper’s residence, Hetch Hetchy, 1984 702
123-24. Residences, Hetch Hetchy, 1984 704
125. Ranger station / residence, Lake Eleanor, 1984 706
126. Storage building, Lake Eleanor, 1984 706
127-28. Rancheria Flat houses built by National Lead Company, 1985 708
129-30. Murchison house and assay office, El Portal, 1984 710
131-34. Water gauging stations at Pohono bridge and Happy Isles, 1984-85 724
135. Map of CCC camp no. 1, Wawona, 1934 738
136. Map of CCC camp no. 2, Wawona, 1934 742
137. Sketch of Merced Grove CCC camp, 1935 746
138. Map of Yosemite National Park, 1931 760
139. Automobile guide map showing roads in Yosemite Valley, 1931 764
140. Stone steps on Mist Trail, 1985 766
141. Happy Isles bridge, 1985 766
142. Wawona tunnel, east portal, 1985 772
143. Wawona tunnel, interior, 1986 772
144. Stone wall on State Highway 140, 1984 772
145. Map of Yosemite Valley floor, ca. 1935 774
146. Metal trail sign 776
147. Corduroy road along north side of Johnson Lake 776
148. Arch Rock office, 1984 780
149. Arch Rock comfort station, 1984 780
150. Arch Rock residence #106, 1984 780
151. Wooden truss bridge over Yosemite Creek, 1986 782
152. Cascade Creek bridge, old Big Oak Flat Road, 1985 782
153. Tunnel No. 1, east portal, new Big Oak Flat Road, 1986 786
154. Stone wall along new Big Oak Flat Road, 1986 786
155-57. bridges, new Big Oak Flat Road, 1986 788
158. Road bridge over Tuolumne River, 1985 790
159. South Fork of the Tuolumne River bridge abutment, 1985 790
160. Map of Yosemite National Park, 1948 792
161. Road bridge over the South Fork of the Merced River, Wawona, 1985 798
162. Controversial section of Tioga Road 1984 798
163. Ruins of Chilnualna Fall ranger patrol cabin, 1985 800
164. Log and plank bridge on Chain Lakes - Chiquito Pass Trail, 1985 800
165-66. Crane Flat fire lookout, 1984, 1986 804
167. Tioga Pass ranger station, 1984 806
168. Tioga Pass comfort station, 1984 806
169. Buck Camp cabin, 1985 808
170. Buck Camp cabin, shed, and privy, 1985 808
171. Glacier Point residence, 1984 812
172. Glacier Point naturalist’s cabin, 1984 812
173. Chinquapin comfort station, 1984 816
174. Chinquapin ranger station, 1986 816
175. Chinquapin garage, 1984 816
176. Chinquapin gas station, 1984 818
177. Chinquapin barn, 1984 818
178. Chinquapin barn, 1984 818
179. Hetch Hetchy comfort station, 1984 820
180-81. Mather ranger station / residence, 1984 820
182. Mather barn, 1984 822
183. Old cookhouse / residence, Mather, 1984 822
184. Tuolumne Meadows visitor center (old CCC mess hall), 1984 826
185. Employee housing (former bunkhouses) Tuolumne Meadows, 1984 826
186. Merced Lake ranger station, 1984 828
187. Miguel Meadow barn, 1984 828
188. Miguel Meadow guard station, 1984 828
189. Henness Ridge fire lookout, 1984 828
190. Wawona ranger station / residence #4000, 1984 830
191. Wawona residence #4003, 1984 830
192. Wawona ranger station / residence #4001, 1984 830
193. Wawona equipment shed #4052, 1984 830
194. Wawona equipment shed #4052, 1984 832
195. Wawona barn, utility area, 1984 832
196. Wawona blister rust camp repair garage, 1984 832
197. Wawona maintenance yard, 1984 832
198. Wawona district ranger office #4027, 1984 834
199. Wawona ranger office #4002, 1984 834
200. Wawona teacherage and school, 1984 834
201. Wawona barn, 1984 836
202. Wawona residence occupied by Curry Company employee, 1984 836
203. Wawona wagon shop, 1984 836
204. Wawona store and post office, 1984 836
205-206. Eight-Mile insect control laboratory, 1984 840
207. South Entrance kiosk and office, 1984 842
208. South Entrance office, 1984 842
209. South Entrance comfort station, 1984 842
210-211. South Entrance ranger station / residence, 1984 844
212-14. Utility building, Yosemite Valley maintenance yard, and valley power plant, 1984 846
215. Frog Creek cabin, 1984 848
216. Remnants of dam, Frog Creek, 1984 848
217. Map of Yosemite National Park, 1939 856
218-19. Rear of Sentinel Hotel, 1934 862
220. Sentinel Hotel in Old Village, 1935 864
221. Front of Rock Cottage, Old Village, ca. 1935 864
222-23. Ivy Cottage, Old Village, ca. 1935 866
224. Mariposa Grove comfort station, 1984 868
225. Ostrander Lake ski hut, 1984 868
226. Map of flood damage in Yosemite Valley, 1955 874
227. Map of Indian Village - Arch Rock entrance station, 1952 878
228. Map of boundary changes, Wawona Basin 886
229. Map of Wawona Hotel and vicinity 888
230. Map of Wawona area, showing concession operations and park facilities, 1974 890
231. Remains of Big Trees Lodge, Mariposa Grove, 1984 896
232. Empire Meadow building foundation ruins, 1984 896
233. Map of Tecoya group and warehouse area, Yosemite Valley, 1972 898
234. Map of High Sierra camps, 1975 906
235. Map of Ahwahnee Hotel grounds, Yosemite Valley, 1970 910
236. Map of Yosemite Lodge area, 1972 914
237. Map of Camp Curry, 1956 918
238. Railroad ties at top of north side incline of Yosemite Lumber Company, 1984 924
239. Map of Wawona area, showing Section 35, 1967 928
240. Map of Foresta 934
241. Tent cabins, White Wolf Lodge, 1984 940
242. Wrangler’s cabin, White Wolf Lodge, 1986 940
243. Guide map of Yosemite National Park, ca. 1968 942
244. Map of Hetch Hetchy Railroad, 1947 950
245. Bunkhouses and boarding house, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s 952
246. Engineers’ quarters and portable bunkhouses, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s 954
247. Office guest house and residences, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s 956
248. Map of Hetch Hetchy village with 1935 additions 958
249. Guest cottage, Hetch Hetchy, 1984 962
250. Lake Eleanor dormitory, 1984 962
251. Hetch Hetchy covered water line, 1984 964
252. Packer’s shack, Lake Eleanor Road - Jack Main Canyon Trail junction, 1984 964
253. Crane Flat blister rust camp mess hall, 1984 982
254. Crane Flat blister rust camp barracks and office, 1984 982
255. Lake Vernon snow survey/patrol cabin, 1986 988
256. Interior of Lake Vernon cabin, 1986 988
257. Snow Flat snow survey/patrol cabin, 1984 990
258. Ruins of Lake Wilmer snow survey/patrol cabin, 1986 990
259. Sachse Springs snow survey/patrol cabin, 1986 992
260. Interior of Sachse Springs cabin, 1986 992
261. County library and residence (former post office), El Portal, 1985 996
262. El Portal post office, 1985 996
263. El Portal chapel (former school), 1984 998
264. El Portal elementary school, 1985 998
265. El Portal fire department, 1985 1000
266. Carroll Clark Community Center, El Portal, 1985 1000
267. El Portal Hotel, rear, 1984 1002
268. El Portal Hotel, front and side, 1984 1002
269. El Portal Market, 1984 1004
270. El Portal Motor Inn, 1984 1004
271. Rancheria Flat MISSION 66 housing, El Portal, 1985 1006
272. Chevron building, El Portal, 1985 1006
273. Old sewage treatment plant, El Portal, 1985 1008
274. New wastewater treatment plant, El Portal, 1985 1008
275. Ruins of Cuneo mill, El Portal, n.d. 1010

Chronologies

Yosemite Valley xxxv
Cascades/Arch Rock xlvix
El Portal li
Carlon, Hodgdon Meadow, Foresta/Big Meadows, Aspen Valley, Crane Flat, Gin Flat, and Tamarack Flat liii
Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor lix
White Wolf lxiii
Tuolumne Meadows lxv
Chinquapin, Badger Pass, and Glacier Point lxxi
Wawona, South entrance, and Mariposa Grove lxxv

The following chronologies for various areas of Yosemite National Park are presented as an aid to understanding the complex history of the area. Occasionally they go beyond the report’s 1960 ending date in order to provide information of interest. Robert C. Pavlik compiled the original information, to which the author added additional data. A variety of books, government records, and park reports served as source documents unless otherwise stated.

Yosemite Valley

1833:

Joseph Walker party crosses the Sierra Nevada from east to west, along the divide of the Tuolumne and Merced River drainages, and may have been the first whites to see Yosemite Valley.
[Editor’s note: today historians generally believe the Walker party looked down The Cascades, which are just west of Yosemite Valley, instead of Yosemite Valley itself.—dea]

1848:

James Marshall discovers gold on the American River, and the subsequent gold rush to California in 1849 and 1850 precipitated the skirmishes between whites and Indians that eventually led to the discovery and entry of Yosemite Valley by whites.

1849:

William Penn Abrams and U. N. Reamer gaze into Yosemite Valley while lost on a hunting expedition from their camp on the South Fork of the Merced River.

1851:

Major James D. Savage leads the Mariposa Battallion into Yosemite Valley, in search of renegade Indians. Bunnell, the battallion surgeon, suggests the name “Yosemite” for the area after the name of a group of Indians living there (the Uzemati, or Grizzly Bear clan).
[Editor’s note: Bunnell was not the battalion surgeon and received a M. D. degree from a sham medical school several years later. For the correct origin of the word Yosemite see “Origin of the Word Yosemite.”—dea.]

Second entry to Yosemite Valley by Capt. John Boling’s company; captured Indians at Tenaya Lake.

1852:

Skirmishes continue between Indians and miners, with two prospectors killed in Yosemite Valley. Lt. Tredwell Moore enters valley with detachment. The Yosemites flee the valley to take refuge with the Mono Lake Paiutes east of the Sierra.

1853:

The Yosemites return to Yosemite Valley. A horse-stealing incident precipitates a fight between the Paiutes and Yosemites, with six of the latter, including Chief Tenaya, killed.

1854:

James Capen “Grizzly” Adams visits Yosemite to hunt and trap grizzlies to train for entertainment purposes.

1855:

James M. Hutchings, publisher of California Magazine, leads the first tourist party into Yosemite. Artist Thomas Ayres is included in the party and renders the first illustrations of Yosemite’s natural features.

1856:

Mann brothers’ toll trail from Clark’s Station (Wawona) to Yosemite Valley completed.

Coulterville Free Trail blazed from Bull Creek through Deer Flat, Hazel Green, Crane Flat, Tamarack Flat, and Gentry’s to the valley floor. First permanent structure, the Lower Hotel, built in Yosemite Valley.

1857:

Bearsley and Hite erect the Upper Hotel, later Cedar Cottage.

1859:

James Lamon arrives in Yosemite Valley, establishes the first permanent, year-round occupancy, and develops the first homestead.

Charles L. Weed produces the first photographs of Yosemite Valley.
[Editor’s note: Charles Leander Weed’s first photograph, taken June 18, 1859 was of Yosemite Falls—dea.]

1863:

Artist Albert Bierstadt visits Yosemite Valley.

1864:

J. M. Hutchings takes over control of the Upper Hotel, changing the name to “Hutchings House.”

Florence Hutchings becomes the first white child born in Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia deeded to the state from the federal government as a grant to be held for the public “in perpetuity.” Grant consists of 48.6 square miles. A Board of Commissioners established with Frederick Law Olmsted as the first chairman.

1866:

Galen Clark appointed Guardian of Yosemite Grant. Yosemite commissioners disallow private claims on Yosemite lands.

1868:

John Muir makes his first trip to Yosemite Valley.

1869:

George F. Leidig builds hotel near the Lower Hotel.

Lower Hotel removed; A. G. Black builds Black’s Hotel on its site.

Central Pacific Railroad completed from Sacramento to Stockton.

1870:

Albert Snow builds La Casa Nevada after construction of horse trail to the area between Nevada and Vernal falls. Copperopolis branch of Central Pacific Railroad built. J. C. Smith builds Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon.

1871:

John Conway builds a trail from La Casa Nevada to Little Yosemite Valley. Conway also begins work on the Four-Mile

Central Pacific Railroad built to Berenda.

1872:

Conway builds a stage road on the north side of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley.

James McCauley begins the firefall from Glacier Point. Central Pacific Railroad built to Merced.

1873:

Conway builds Eagle Peak Trail to the base of the upper Yosemite Fall.

1874:

Coulterville Road reaches floor of Yosemite Valley in June; Big Oak Flat Road is completed in July.

Hutchings has a wooden boardwalk/roadway built from Hutchings House up the valley floor (to the east); Hutchings also has a horse trail built up Indian Canyon, but it quickly falls into disrepair because of the difficulty of maintaining the trail.

Private claims in valley purchased by state. Thereafter commissioners control business concessions.

1875:

Wawona Road completed to Yosemite Valley.

George Anderson successfully completes the first ascent of Half Dome.

School provided for Yosemite Valley.

1876:

Sentinel Hotel built by George W. Coulter and A. J. Murphy.

1877:

J. K. Barnard takes over Sentinel Hotel, also known as Yosemite Falls Hotel.

1878:

A. Harris establishes first public campgrounds in Yosemite Valley.

1879:

Yosemite Chapel constructed with funds raised by the Sunday School Union.

1880:

California state legislature creates new Board of Yosemite Commissioners.

J. M. Hutchings appointed Guardian of Yosemite Grant.

1882:

State legislature appropriates money to purchase and maintain trails and roads within the grant constructed and operated by private parties. The Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point is the first acquisition.

Anderson Trail from Happy Isles to bridge below Vernal Fall built.

1884:

John Degnans establish a bakery and store. Hutchings removed as Guardian and replaced by W. E. Dennison.

George Fiske opens photographic studio.

1885:

State legislature appropriates $40,000 to build the Stoneman House, in honor of the California governor.

Echo Wall Trail from Nevada Fall to Glacier Point built.

1886:

All private trails and roads within the grant purchased by 1886 and made available to the public at no cost.

1887:

Mark L. McCord becomes Guardian of the grant.

Stoneman House completed.

1888:

Black’s and Leidig’s hotels removed by order of the state commissioners.

1889:

Galen Clark reappointed Guardian of the grant. Dam constructed at the outflow of Mirror Lake to raise its water level. This strategy repeated numerous times, along with dredging, to maintain lake’s reflective qualities and to acquire sand for the roads in winter.

1890:

Yosemite National Park (reserved forest lands) created, 1 October.

D. J. Foley establishes print shop and studio.

1891:

U. S. Army cavalry unit arrives in park, headquartered at Wawona. The army is empowered to patrol and protect the park from poachers, stockmen, sheepherders, fires, mining, and other threats. Capt. A. E. Wood is first acting superintendent.

1892:

Sierra Club formed, with John Muir as president.

1893:

Sierra Forest Reserve established 15 February.

1894:

Capt. H. Gale made acting superintendent.

1895:

Capt. Alexander Rodgers becomes acting superintendent.

1896:

Stoneman House, located near present-day Curry garage burns.

Lt. Col. S. B. M. Young becomes acting superintendent. First effort made to keep firearms out of park.

1897:

Rock stairway replaces wooden ladders on Vernal Fall Mist Trail.

Abandoned stage office converted to schoolhouse.

David Curry continues McCauley’s tradition of the firefall. Miles Wallace becomes Guardian of grant. Rodgers continues as acting superintendent.

La Casa Nevada destroyed by fire.

1898:

Archie Leonard appointed first civilian park ranger.

1899:

W. Zevely and Capt. J. E. Caine function as acting superintendents. Curry Camping Company established.

Artist Chris Jorgensen maintains a studio in Yosemite Valley from 1899 to 1918.

Lt. William Forse and Capt. E. F. Willcox are acting superintendents.

1900:

First auto enters Yosemite.

Maj. L. J. Rucker becomes acting superintendent.

J. T. Boysen establishes studio.

1901:

Camp Yosemite (Camp Lost Arrow) established near foot of Yosemite Fall. Geology professor Joseph LeConte dies in his tent at Camp Curry, 6 July.

Maj. L. A. Craig is acting superintendent.

1902:

Happy Isles power plant built by state.

Hutchings killed in accident on the Big Oak Flat Road. Harry Best opens studio.

Maj. O. L. Hein serves as acting superintendent.

1903:

Hallet-Taylor Company builds photographic studio. LeConte Memorial Lodge built by the Sierra Club.

President Theodore Roosevelt visits Yosemite.

Lt. Col. Jos. Garrard serves as acting superintendent.

1904:

Maj. John Bigelow serves as acting superintendent.

USGS and Yosemite Valley commissioners begin water gauging activities on Merced River.

1905:

Boundary adjustment of Yosemite National Park, reducing its size by 430 square miles.

Capt. Harry C. Benson serves as acting superintendent.

1906:

Congress accepts recession of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove, which become part of Yosemite National Park. Camp A. E. Wood, army administrative headquarters, moves from Wawona to the valley and becomes Camp Yosemite.

Maj. Harry Benson continues as acting superintendent.

1907:

Yosemite Valley Railroad begins operations.

Arthur C. Pillsbury purchases interests of Hallett-Taylor Co.

1908:

Camp Ahwahnee built at foot of Sentinel Rock by W. M. Sell.

Old stage office/schoolhouse moved to north side of Merced River, near present “ranger Y” and the foundation of the Grizzly Hotel.

Supervisor Gabriel Sovulewski serves as acting superintendent from October 1908 to April 1909.

1909:

Maj. W. W. Forsyth serves as acting superintendent. President William H. Taft visits Yosemite.

1910:

Galen Clark dies.

1911:

Galen Clark Memorial Bench constructed.

1912:

Hospital built by U. S. Army at Camp Yosemite.

1913:

Automobiles permitted to enter Yosemite National Park over Coulterville Road.

Last year that army responsible for administration of the park.

Assistant Secretary of the Interior Adolph Miller cancels the firefall.

Maj. William T. Littebrant serves as acting superintendent.

1914:

First year that park managed and patrolled by civilian rangers.

Mark Daniels appointed first civilian superintendent. John Muir dies.

Wawona and Big Oak Flat roads open to auto traffic.

1915:

Stephen T. Mather becomes assistant to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. He and Horace Albright take charge of national parks and monuments.

R. B. Marshall becomes superintendent of national parks.

D. J. Desmond Company receives permit to operate hotel and camp (Camp Yosemite).

Joe Desmond buys the old army camp and converts it to concession (later to be known as Yosemite Falls Camp and Yosemite Lodge).

Beginnings of park museum in government building in Old Village.

Camp Yosemite (Camp Lost Arrow) discontinued. Yosemite horse-drawn stages replaced by motor stages.

Temporary water gauges established on Merced River above Illilouette Creek and at its mouth.

1916:

National Park Service Act passes 25 August; Stephen Mather appointed first director of the NPS; W. B. Lewis made superintendent of Yosemite National Park.

Desmond Company granted twenty-year concession to build and operate visitor facilities. Desmond begins work on foundation of Grizzly Hotel.

Automatic water stage recorders set up on Merced River at Happy Isles and Pohono Bridge.

Warehouse, storage, and other buildings constructed in valley maintenance area.

1917:

Glacier Point firefall reinstated. Parts of park opened to grazing.

Desmond Park Service Company becomes Yosemite National Park Company.

David A. Curry dies.

1918:

New schoolhouse replaces old stage office/schoolhouse. That building converted to residence and used until 1956, when razed.

Cascade power plant completed at cost of $215,000.

Ledge Trail to Glacier Point built. This trail may have first been blazed by Hutchings, who led parties of tourists up the steep incline to Glacier Point prior to construction of Four-Mile Trail.

George Fiske dies.

1919:

Sierra Club members replace worn ropes and eyebolts on Half Dome with first set of cables.

LeConte Memorial Lectures instituted.

First airplane lands in valley.

Happy Isles powerhouse removed.

1920:

Rangers’ Clubhouse constructed.

Yosemite National Park Company reorganized.

Yosemite Nature Guide Service begins.

1921:

Tule elk placed in paddock in Yosemite Valley in hopes they will multiply and eventually be released in park. Checking station constructed at Gentry’s on Big Oak Flat Road.

Water system developed in Yosemite Valley. Prior to this time people depended on spring box at Happy Isles or drew their water directly from Merced River.

First Yosemite museum installations made.

1922:

Visitation to park passes 100,000 mark for the year. In 1919 visitation only reached 50,000 mark. Yosemite Educational Department created. Yosemite Nature Notes published.

1923:

Final plans for new Yosemite Village completed. Yosemite Museum Association organized. Educational Department for all national parks created.

1924:

New park administration building completed in November. Development of new Administrative Center and village begins. Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation makes grant for construction of Yosemite Museum.

1925:

Building constructed by NPS as post office for leasing to U. S. Postal Service opens. Pillsbury, Best, Boysen, and Foley studios constructed in New Village area. Government Center completed. Plaque unveiled commemorating John Muir cabin site, 30 May. Yosemite Park and Curry Company formed through consolidation of Curry Camping Company and Yosemite National Park Company. Yosemite School of Field Natural History organized.

1926:

All-Year Highway dedicated 31 July. Dedication of fish hatchery site at Happy Isles. Yosemite Museum opens 29 May. Construction begins on new Yosemite hotel.

1927:

Ahwahnee Hotel opens. Happy Isles fish hatchery opened by California State Fish and Game Commission. Pillsbury’s theatre burns.

1928:

Board of Expert Advisors appointed to assist in study of Yosemite’s problems.

E. P. Leavitt designated acting superintendent.

Five stone-faced concrete arch bridges built.

1929:

Rock barriers placed and ditches dug along roads to prevent driving of autos onto meadows.

Hospital opens in 1929, later named in honor of W. B. Lewis. Charles Goff Thomson becomes superintendent.

Camp Curry’s new cafeteria and dining room open. Stephen Mather resigns as director of NPS, succeeded by Horace Albright.

1930:

Stephen T. Mather dies 22 January.

W. B. Lewis dies 28 August.

Interpretive signing program begins in Yosemite Valley and sequoia groves.

“Live Indian Exhibit” established on grounds of Yosemite Museum.

1931:

Indian Village constructed during 1931 and 1932 west of present Sunnyside campground.

Living exhibit of native flowers established behind Yosemite Museum.

1932:

Cosmopolitan Saloon destroyed by fire, 8 December.

1933:

Tule elk removed from Yosemite Valley to Owens Valley. Ruins of Cosmopolitan Saloon razed. Wawona Road and tunnel dedicated 10 June.

ECW programs begin; five CCC camps established in Yosemite National Park.

Arno B. Cammerer becomes NPS director after Albright resigns.

CCC, CWA, and PWA advance construction and resource management projects in park.

1934:

CCC crews replace and upgrade cables on backside of Half Dome.

1936:

Use of diamond blazes by NPS personnel for marking trails discontinued.

Harry Best dies. Daughter Virginia and husband Ansel Adams continue business.

1937:

Yosemite Valley structures, roads, and bridges sustain tremendous damage during flood of 9-12 December.

Lawrence C. Merriam becomes superintendent, succeeding Thomson (deceased).

1938:

Sentinel Hotel, River Cottage, and Ivy Cottage torn down in December.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt visits park.

Gabriel Sovulewski dies.

1940:

Cedar Cottage (also known as Upper Hotel, Hutchings House) and Oak Cottage razed.

Newton B. Drury appointed NPS director.

Mrs. John Degnan dies.

1941:

Bear-feeding programs discontinued.

Frank A. Kittredge becomes superintendent.

1942:

CCC discontinued in July. Yosemite School of Field Natural History abandoned for duration of war.

1943:

Ahwahnee Hotel converted to hospital by U. S. Navy 23 June. Yosemite Park and Curry Company acquires Boysen Studio. John Degnan dies.

1945:

U. S. Naval Special Hospital decommissioned 15 December.

Consideration given to removal of some of physical developments in Yosemite Valley and establishment of new centers of operation in other locatities.

Yosemite Valley Railroad abandoned 27 August.

1947:

Meadow and vista restoration program begun.

Carl P. Russell becomes superintendent.

1948:

Donald B. Tresidder, president, Yosemite Park and Curry Company, dies.

Mrs. David A. Curry dies.

Yosemite Field School for naturalist training resumes.

1950:

Floods of 19 November, 3 December, and 8 December cause $454,000 damage to roads, buildings, utilities, and trails.

1951:

Yosemite Centennial observance held.

Arthur E. Demaray appointed NPS director.

Conrad L. Wirth succeeds Demaray.

1952:

John C. Preston becomes superintendent.

1953:

Indian Village discontinued in accordance with Indian Housing Policy of NPS.

Yosemite Field School suspended by NPS director.

1955:

Flood of 23 December causes $767,000 damage to park facilities.

MISSION 66 prospectus for park prepared.

1956:

New Yosemite Lodge completed and old one razed.

1957:

Happy Isles fish hatchery donated to park by California Department of Fish and Game; hatchery converted to nature center.

1959:

Old Village store, Degnan’s old restaurant, Yosemite Park and Curry Company maintenance warehouse razed.

Curry Company’s new store and restaurant dedicated 9 May. Happy Isles residence destroyed by fire.

1962:

President John F. Kennedy visits park.

1963:

Flood in valley 29 January to 1 February.

1964:

Flood in valley 23-24 December.

1966:

Old Yosemite Museum closes.

Construction begins on new valley visitor center.

1968:

Glacier Point firefall discontinued as being contrary to NPS standards and because of traffic congestion on roads.

1969:

Remaining structures in Indian Village razed.

1970:

Free shuttle bus service begins operation. Stoneman Meadow, riot 3-4 July. One-way road system established with roads to Happy Isles and Mirror Lake closed to use by private vehicles.

Mirror Lake dredging operations discontinued.

1971:

First bank in Yosemite Valley opens.

Yosemite Institute created.

1972:

Yosemite Village parking plaza converted to nonvehicular mall. NPS stables, outbuildings, and horses destroyed by fire, 31 July.

1973:

Fire destroys cafeteria and kitchen at Camp Curry.

Roundhouse constructed in Indian Village behind the visitor center.

Music Corporation of America (MCA, Inc.) acquires control of Yosemite Park and Curry Company.

Cascades/Arch Rock

1833:

Joseph R. Walker crosses the Sierra Nevada through present-day Yosemite National Park.

1851:

Lafayette Bunnell gives the name “Cascades” to the waterfall in that area of the Merced River canyon.

1864:

The Cascades area lies just outside (west of) the state grant providing protection of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove.

1874:

The Coulterville Road into Yosemite Valley is completed in June, running from the town of Coulterville through Hazel Green, Big Meadow (Foresta), down the canyon wall to the Merced River, and through the Cascades area into Yosemite Valley.

1890:

Yosemite National Park created, encompassing Cascades valley.

1906:

Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove re-ceded to federal government by the state of California.

1907:

The Yosemite Valley Railroad completed and operational to El Portal. A wagon road from El Portal to the Coulterville Road junction used to transport visitors to the valley from the railhead.

1913:

Automobiles allowed to enter the national park, replacing horse-drawn wagons.

1916:

National Park Service is created.

Construction begins on the diversion dam, penstock, and powerhouse in the Merced River canyon.

1917:

Three residences completed at Cascades for powerhouse employees.

1918:

Diversion dam, penstock, and powerhouse completed at cost of $215,000.

1920:

Construction begins on All-Year Highway from Merced.

1926:

All-Year Highway completed to Yosemite Valley, up Merced canyon, and through Arch Rock and Cascades. Entrance stations and ranger residence constructed in Arch Rock area.

1933:

CCC camp established at Cascades for all-year occupation.

1937:

Flooding occurs in Yosemite Valley, Wawona, Cascades, Arch Rock, El Portal. CCC camp at Cascades destroyed as are roadbed and bridges. At Arch Rock, ranger residence and duplex washed off foundation.

1940:

Between the end of 1937 and 1939, extensive repairs and building projects take place at The Cascades, powerhouse, and Arch Rock.

1950:

Floods of 19 November, 3 December, and 8 December wash out road bridges at Cascades.

El Portal

1849-50:

James Savage establishes trading post at the confluence of the South Fork and main fork of the Merced River. Post attacked by Indians in 1850, and Savage follows his attackers up the river canyon, probably entering into the area of present-day El Portal before turning back.

1861:

Hite’s Cove Mine discovered, named for John R. Hite.

1873:

James Hennessy establishes farm on the Merced River, now the site of the El Portal trailer park. Hennessy’s trail to the valley crossed the Merced to the south side of the river and climbed the canyon wall to intersect with the Mann brothers’ trail from Wawona to Yosemite Valley. Hennessy raised fruits and vegetables for the mines on the east side of the Sierra, as far away as Bodie.

1860s-1870s:

Horse and foot trail follows the Merced River upstream to Yosemite Valley.

1887:

John R. Hite acquires Hennessy Ranch; later sold to A. H Ward.

1884-85:

Leonidas Whorton acquires eighty acres in El Portal west of Crane Creek. This area encompassed a large portion of present “old El Portal.”

1879:

Whorton listed as locator of Potosi Mine on north side of Merced River and in 1887 as locator of Southside Mine, on south side of Merced. They were described as “quartz veins.” However, the descriptions and locations indicate that they may have been barite deposits.

1887:

Whorton shot by Abel Mann during family quarrel.

1897:

John B. Lembert murdered in his cabin below El Portal near Rancheria Flat.

Early 1900s:

A. H. Ward acquires properties of Whorton and Hennessy.

1902:

Yosemite Valley Railroad incorporated.

1905:

Survey work begins for construction of Yosemite Valley Railroad.

1907:

Yosemite Valley Railroad begins operation. It ran from Merced to its terminus at El Portal, where a wagon road led up the Merced Canyon to intersect with the Coulterville Road. D. K. Stoddard held the contract to transport passengers via stage from El Portal to Yosemite Valley.

First hotel to serve tourists in El Portal consists of tent structure.

1908-1909:

Bob Halstead and Bill Grenfels begin mining barium in El Portal area, possibly Whorton’s former claims on the Southside.

Hotel Del Portal constructed.

1912:

Incline for Yosemite Lumber Company constructed on south side of Merced River.

1913:

Road from Foresta to El Portal completed.

First year autos allowed to enter Yosemite National Park.

1917-18:

Hotel Del Portal destroyed by fire 27 October 1917. Another, smaller hotel—the El Portal lnn—constructed.

1920:

Construction begins on All-Year Highway from Merced to Yosemite Valley via Merced River canyon.

1923-24:

Yosemite Lumber Company relocates incline to north side of Merced.

1925:

Portland Cement Company of Emory begins operations.

1926:

All-Year Highway dedicated 31 July.

1929:

National Lead Company takes over barium mines in El Portal. A mine superintendent’s residence and houses for mine workers constructed.

1932:

Fire of July 1932 destroys third El Portal hotel. Managers Ben and Dolly Gardner rebuild hotel on new location near highway.

1937:

Flood of 11 December wreaks havoc in El Portal, washing away bridges, portions of the highway, and thirty miles of Yosemite Valley Railroad track.

1944:

Portland Cement Company disbands.

1945:

Last run of Yosemite Valley Railroad, 24 August. Operations abandoned.

1950:

November flood.

1951:

Barium mines close.

1955:

Flood.

1958:

NPS acquires 2,000+ acres in El Portal as administrative site.

Carlon, Hodgdon Meadow/ Foresta/Big Meadow/ Aspen Valley, Crane Flat, Gin Flat, and Tamarack Flat

Prehistory -

Native peoples living in Yosemite region followed animal paths as a means of traveling through the Sierra. The Mono Trail comprised one such footpath that evolved as a major trade route from Big Meadow through Gin and Tamarack flats, past Tenaya Lake, through Tuolumne Meadows, and down Bloody anyon to the Mono Lake country.

1833:

The Joseph Walker party may have followed the Mono Trail in their east-west crossing of the Sierra on their way to the San Joaquin Valley. They are believed to have been the first white men to see Yosemite Valley and the giant sequoias.

1856:

George W. Coulter, Lafayette Bunnell, and a small party of men from Coulterville pass through Crane Flat, naming the area for the sandhill cranes that were abundant at that time. Tamarack Flat was also named on that excursion to blaze a route—the “Coulterville Free Trail”—to Yosemite Valley.

1865:

Hodgdon Meadow originally known as Bronson Meadows; Jeremiah Hodgdon established a homestead there in May 1865. He built his cabins and barns at Hodgdon Meadow and later a two-story cabin at Aspen Valley in 1879.

1868:

J. D. Whitney, state geologist, writes of a deserted cabin in the Crane Flat area, believed to have belonged to shepherd Hugh Mundy. Mundy tended flocks during the summer at Crane and Gin flats. Earliest non-Indian habitation.

1869:

Builders of Big Oak Flat Road granted exclusive franchise to construct a road into Yosemite Valley from north side of Merced River.

Yosemite Turnpike Road Company incorporated 15 April.

1870:

Alva Hamilton credited with being first white settler at Tamarack Flat, operating stage stop called Tamarack House. In mid-1870s Tamarack House burned and was rebuilt by David Woods, who also built a barn, store, and saloon at Tamarack Flat. The Woods family abandoned Tamarack Flat in 1891.

1870s:

Louis D. Gobin and son “Ed” ran sheep and cattle in Crane Flat area during the summer months. They supplied travelers to Yosemite Valley with room and board, soon expanding their business into a comfortable stage station. Gobin’s place burned in 1886 and rebuilt in 1888. According to Paden and Schlichtmann, Gobin’s stopping place stood about one hundred feet east of present buildings at Crane Flat (blister rust camp). Immediately across the road stood Billy Hurst’s saloon. Hurst was also a proprietor at Crane Flat, operating a saloon for stockmen, shepherds, and Indians. Hurst was marooned at Crane Flat in winter of 1889-90 and after his rescue died as a result of the ordeal.

1870s:

Gentry’s settled by Colonel E. S. Gentry, who established a hotel for travelers to Yosemite Valley making the trip on horseback, prior to the completion of the Big Oak Flat Road. The road that Gentry championed actually led to his failure, enabling tourists traveling by coach to continue on into Yosemite Valley or toward Crane Flat.

George Meyer takes over brother Henry’s homestead in Big Meadow. Ranch becomes stage stop on Coulterville Road.

1870:

Big Oak Flat Road reaches Crane Flat. Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company incorporated.

1871:

Builders of Big Oak Flat Road incorporate as Yosemite Turnpike Road Company.

1872:

Due to difficulties encountered by Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, builders of the Big Oak Flat Road, the company forfeited their exclusive franchise to construct a road into Yosemite Valley from the north side. The Yosemite Valley commissioners then granted the exclusive franchise to builders of the Coulterville Road in July 1872. The builders of the Big Oak Flat Road once again appealed to the commissioners for the right to finish their road, but were denied because of possible conflict with the Coulterville Road builders. However, Galen Clark, Guardian of the grant and one of the Yosemite commissioners, granted the Big Oak Flat Road builders permission to complete an improved saddle trail from the road terminus at Gentry’s to the floor of Yosemite Valley. In February 1874 the state legislature granted, permission to the Big Oak Flat Road builders to complete the road, on the basis that the Yosemite commissioners had no right to issue an exclusive franchise. The two companies of road builders worked feverishly to completion.

During construction of the Coulterville Road, the surveying crew discovered the Merced Grove of Giant Sequoias. The route for the Coulterville Road was redesigned to pass through the grove, bypassing Crane Flat and the Big Oak Flat Road on its way to Yosemite Valley. Instead, the road wound past Big Meadow and down to the Merced canyon, where it followed the river into Yosemite Valley. Six miles of road were abandoned between Hazel Green and Crane Flat for the new route and many more miles of road constructed.

1874:

Coulterville Road completed in June; Big Oak Flat Road in July. The Big Oak Flat Road originally ran through what is now the blister rust camp at Crane Flat; it was rerouted in 1940 to meet with the new sections of the Tioga and Big Oak Flat roads.

1876:

George Anderson builds cabin near Big Meadow.

1878:

David and James Lumsden cut a tunnel through the Dead Giant Tree in the Tuolumne Grove.

Title to Yosemite Turnpike Road Company road conveyed to J. M. Hutchings 16 May.

1879:

Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company incorporates to purchase Big Oak Flat Road. On 19 November Hutchings conveys road to new company.

Jeremiah Hodgdon builds two-story log cabin in Aspen Valley.

1882:

John B. Curtin, California state senator, files for government patent on land at Gin Flat.

Gin Flat named, as story goes, from barrel of gin that fell off a wagon. Some laborers working in the area spied the errant keg and proceeded to attempt draining the container of its contents. When the work party failed to return a day or so later, a search party was organized to either rescue the victims or bury them. The laborers were discovered alive, albeit intoxicated.

1883:

James McCauley purchases land for ranch in Foresta area.

1885:

Joseph Hutchins claims Gentry’s abandoned homestead and erects sawmill where he mills lumber for the Stoneman House, constructed in Yosemite Valley by the state in 1886-87.

1890:

Yosemite National Park created 1 October.

1891:

U. S. Army cavalry unit arrives in Yosemite National Park for the purpose of protecting it from stockmen, sheepherders, poachers, fires, and other threats to the environment. In order to impress upon stockmen the seriousness of the situation, stock was not allowed to graze on lands (even patented lands) within the park boundary. The cavalry threatened to drive cattle through the park to Mono Pass, then down Bloody Canyon into the Mono Lake country, which they did with some limited success.

1897:

James McCauley becomes year-round resident of ranch in Foresta area.

1905:

Drastic boundary changes occur, reducing size of Yosemite National Park by 430 square miles.

Big Meadow placed within Yosemite National Park.

The problem of grazing on patented lands within the park boundary becomes more volatile with the appointment of Capt. Harry C. Benson as acting park superintendent in 1905. His zeal for protecting park lands leads to court battle with Senator J. B. Curtin, who was denied the right to graze his cattle on his own property or to use public roadways for access, the property and roads being within the park boundary. The Supreme Court of the United States found in Curtin’s favor in 1911.

1906:

Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove re-ceded to federal government to become a part of the national park.

1911:

James McCauley dies in accident on Coulterville Road.

1912:

Foresta Land Company incorporated.

1913:

The U. S. Army cavalry patrols the park for the last year. The first automobile enters Yosemite National Park 16 August via Coulterville Road.

Fred McCauley sells 200 acres of McCauley ranch to C. P. Snell. Wagon road built from Foresta to El Portal.

1914:

Automobiles allowed to enter the park via Big Oak Flat Road.

Tamarack House moved from Tamarack Flat to Gin Flat and placed next to Curtin’s cabin, where it proceeds to fall into ruin.

Civilian rangers assume responsibility for patrol and protection of park.

1915:

Three ranger/patrol cabins built in Yosemite:one at the Merced Grove on Coulterville Road, one at Crane Flat on Big Oak Flat Road, one at Hog Ranch (Mather). Merced Grove cabin replaced 1934; Hog Ranch cabin replaced by Mather ranger station/residence in 1935.

In July Tuolumne County buys Big Oak Flat Road for $10,000 and donates it to state of California, which begins improvements. Shortly thereafter the national park became responsible for all roads within its boundary.

1916:

Carl Inn erected by Dan and Donna Carlon. Burned 1920; rebuilt and again burned (date unknown).

1917:

George Meyer dies in San Francisco.

1918:

Fire destroys structures at Foresta.

1922:

Robert Bright begins erecting structures at Aspen Valley.

1923:

Fred McCauley sells remainder of McCauley ranch to Horace Meyer.

1930:

7,000 acres of land in South Fork of Tuolomne River watershed, including land at Crane Flat, Gin Flat, Sugar Pine Pass, and Carlon added to park. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donates $1.7 million matched by congressional funds to purchase private lands in Crane Flat area. The Yosemite Lumber Company actively logging in this area when stopped in August 1929 with passage of Albright-Fleming agreement. Final paperwork signed May 1930. Dr. Don Tresidder of Yosemite Park and Curry Company donates $10,500 to be matched by congressional funds to buy 520 acres of private inholdings at Crane Flat and Gin Flat. Total property added to park in 1930 equaled 8,681.19 acres.

1931:

First fire lookout constructed in park at Crane Flat.

1933:

CCC camps established in Yosemite National Park for reforestation efforts, including clearing of fire roads and of giant sequoia groves of debris; control of bark beetle and blister rust; and fire-fighting duties. Two camps established in Crane Flat area in 1933, with one there from 1934 to 1942, when the CCC was discontinued.

1940:

Official dedication of the Big Oak Flat Road from Crane Flat to El Portal road (Highway 140) and of new section of Tioga Road from Crane Flat to McSwain Meadows (at intersection of White Wolf road and present Yosemite Creek campground road) on 23 June. A ranger duplex and checking kiosk at Crane Flat also erected. The old Big Oak Flat Road converted to one-way (downhill) scenic route into the valley. Closed permanently by rockslide in 1943.

1942-45:

Ribes eradication continues at reduced manpower, employing mostly high school students.

1946:

With decommissioning of U. S. Naval Special Hospital and transfer of buildings from DOD to DOI, the buildings constructed on the grounds of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley were dismantled and reconstructed at Crane Flat and Carl Inn for use as blister rust camps.

1951:

In the winter of 1951 there were twenty-four feet of snow at Crane Flat; only the peaks of the buildings showed through. NPS acquired private inholdings at Gentry.

1952:

Acquisition of private land in Aspen Valley.

1955:

Accelerated land acquisition at Foresta.

1960:

Crane Flat ranger cabin moved to Pioneer Yosemite History Center at Wawona. Building occupied until early 1950s, then stood empty and in terrible state of repair. The building was dismantled, the floor cut into pieces, and transported to the new site. The chimney was dismantled and reconstructed using the original building materials, with new mortar. According to Mike Adams, the mason that was reconstructing the chimney built it in too “neat” a fashion and had to tear it down and rebuild it in a more rustic fashion. Reconstruction completed in 1961 at cost of $81,054.65.

1961:

The Pioneer Yosemite History Center opens to the public, with a formal dedication 11 September. Jeremiah Hodgdon’s two-story cabin is also at the history center.

1965:

Crane Flat campground opens with 160 sites. Crane Flat checking station razed.

1966:

Residence area at Hodgdon Meadow constructed.

Section of new Big Oak Flat Road from Crane Flat to Hodgdon Meadow completed. New employee housing, entrance station, and utility building also finished.

1973:

Yosemite Institute acquires special-use permit for Crane Flat blister rust camp.

1974:

Coulterville and Big Oak Flat roads celebrate centennials. NPS acquires McCauley ranch in Foresta/Big Meadow area.

1982:

The Leaning Giant, a sequoia in the Tuolomne Grove, topples during snowstorm.

Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor

1850:

Joseph (Nathan?) Screech discovers Hetch Hetchy Valley.

1858:

San Francisco’s first water supply system put into use by San Francisco Water Works.

1860:

Spring Valley Water Works begins operation; later consolidates with San Francisco Water Works.

1871:

First investigations with view to municipal control of water supply.

1900:

New city charter in effect, 8 January.

1901:

Appropriation made on water at Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor by Jas. D. Phelan, recorded 6 August.

City engineer recommends upper Tuolumne River as source of future water supply for San Francisco. Filing of same at Stockton land office 16 October.

1903:

Phelan’s applications denied by Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock, 20 January. Petition for rehearing by Franklin K. Lane, city attorney, in February. Filings assigned to city 20 February. Application again denied by Secretary of the Interior on 22 December.

1908:

Original applications approved by Secretary of the Interior Garfield on 11 May. Gives city rights of development of Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy.

Special election authorized construction of Tuolumne System and issuance of $600,000 in bonds to buy lands and water rights, 12 November.

1910:

Bond election, $45,000,000 in bonds authorized by vote of 20 to 1, 14 January.

Secretary of the Interior Ballinger orders city to show cause why Garfield permit should not be revoked, 25 February. Board of Army Engineers appointed to act as advisory board.

1912:

“Freeman Plan” (John R. Freeman) of Hetch Hetchy development published and submitted to army board in July. M. M. O’Shaughnessy appointed city engineer 1 September. Hearings before Secretary of the Interior Fisher, attended by mayor, city engineer, city attorney, and consulting engineers, 25 to 30 November.

1913:

Army board report upholds selection of Tuolumne River as $20,000,000 cheaper than any other system and having greatest power possibilities, 9 February.

Hearings by committee on Public Lands, House of Representatives, 25 June to 7 July. Hetch Hetchy Grant, or “Raker Act,” signed by President Wilson 19 December.

1914:

Report of Consulting Engineers, W. F. Durand, J. D. Galloway and F. G. Baum received in July. Bids received by Board of Public Works for Contract No. 1, for constructing road from Hog Ranch (now Mather) to Hetch Hetchy, 8 July. Contract awarded to Utah Construction Company.

1915:

Begin manufacture of lumber at Canyon Ranch 21 July. Begin construction of camp buildings at Hetch Hetchy, clearing of Hetch Hetchy reservoir site, and construction of diversion tunnel in September.

Bids received for construction of Hetch Hetchy Railroad 24 November. Contract for Hetch Hetchy Railroad awarded 6 December.

1916:

Bids received for “Drifting Tunnels, Lower Cherry Aqueduct,” already begun by day labor, 9 August.

1917:

Hetchy Hetchy Railroad operation begins in October.

1918:

Lower Cherry power house begins operations (Early Intake plant) 6 May. Begin commercial sale of power from Cherry power house 21 September.

1919:

Contract awarded for construction of Hetch Hetchy dam to Utah Construction Company 1 August.

1920:

Contract awarded for construction of aqueduct tunnels in mountain division 3 May, this work having been carried on to this point by day labor.

1921:

Pouring of concrete on Hetch Hetchy dam commences in August.

Work begins on Priest dam in fall.

Work begins on Moccasin power house in fall.

1922:

Contract awarded for construction of Pulgas tunnel 23 June.

1923:

Contract awarded for construction of Bay Crossing pipe line 18 May. O’Shaughnessy Dam dedicated 7 July.

1924:

Special election $10,000,000 in bonds authorized to construct foothill tunnels and begin Coast Range tunnels, 7 October, vote 20 to 1.

1925:

Delivery of power begins 14 August from Moccasin power plant.

1926:

Bay Crossing aqueduct begins full operation 21 May.

Contracts awarded for driving portion of foothill tunnels 20 September. Remainder done by day labor.

1927:

Coast Range tunnel construction begins at Mocho shaft in April. Sinking begins in May.

1928:

Bond election, $24,000,000, to construct Coast Range tunnel and San Joaquin pipe, and $41,000,000 to purchase Spring Valley Water Company system.

Tunnel driving begins at Tesla portal of Coast Range tunnel 6 September.

Foothill tunnel-driving completed 6 December. Frog Creek trout egg-taking operations begin.

1930:

San Francisco Water Department takes over operation of system bought from Spring Valley Water Company on 3 March.

1931:

Tunnel 4.4 miles long “holed through” from Tesla portal to Thomas shaft in Coast Range.

Contract awarded for construction of San Joaquin pipe line 22 May.

Tunnel 3.4 miles long “holed through” from Alameda Creek to Irvington portal.

1932:

New charter in effect. Public Utilities Commission takes over management of Hetch Hetchy and San Francisco Water Department from Board of Public Works on 8 January.

Bond issue of $6,500,000 for completion of Hetch Hetchy aqueduct authorized on 3 May.

Water brought to Tesla portal of Coast Range tunnel in September.

1933:

Bond issue of $3,500,000 for enlargement of O’Shaughnessy Dam authorized 7 November by vote of 3 to 1.

Fish trap built at Frog Creek.

1934:

Last section of Coast Range tunnel “holed through” from Mocho shaft to Mitchell shaft. Hetch Hetchy water brought to Crystal Springs reservoir 28 October.

1936:

Cabin built at Frog Creek.

1937:

Flora severely damages Frog Creek egg-taking facilities.

1938:

O’Shaughnessy Dam raised to increase storage capacity.

1949:

Frog Creek trout egg-taking operations resume at Lake Eleanor.

1956:

Frog Creek trout egg-taking operations close along with Yosemite Valley fish hatchery.

Sources:

City and County of San Francisco, “O’Shaughnessy Dam Dedication Number,” Municipal Record 16, no. 29 (19 July 1923): 229-35.

__________, Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco Water and Power, September 1967, in Box 85 (Hetch Hetchy), Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park, California.

White Wolf

1850s:

Deidrich, Heinrich, and John Meyer leave Germany for California goldfields. Instead of mining, they take up cattle ranching in Tuolumne County.

1870s:

Indians steal some of the Meyers’ horses, and John Meyer goes in pursuit. He never recovers the horses, but discovers an alpine meadow at 8,000 feet elevation that he names for a headman of the Indians, “White Wolf.”

1882:

Survey work begins on Great Sierra Wagon Road through White Wolf on its way to Tioga Mining District.

1883:

Mining road completed on 4 September.

1884:

On 6 November John D. Meyer acquires 120 acres of land, including White Wolf meadow, for $200 in gold from Johnson Ridley, a stage driver on construction crew of mining road.

1890:

Yosemite National Park created, encompassing many private parcels of land within its boundary, including White Wolf.

1915:

Stephen T. Mather, with the assistance of interested friends, buys Great Sierra Wagon Road for $15,500 and donates it to federal government.

1926:

Gabriel Sovulewski completes rehabilitation of Tioga Road.

1927:

John D. Meyer, Jr., and wife, Alice Wilson Meyer, convert their modest home at White Wolf into lodge consisting of dining room, sitting room, and kitchen. Two cabins and twelve tent cabins erected. Across road from lodge is gas pump and soda fountain. That building still stands today behind lodge and used as storage.

The National Park Service maintains a small campground north of White Wolf Lodge, on Tioga Road, adjacent to Middle Fork of Tuolumne River.

1931:

NPS survey concludes that Meyer family willing sellers of their property in Yosemite; unfortunately, the government does not have funds at this time to purchase the land.

1930s:

Cabins 5 and 6 added to lodge area.

1937:

Realignment of Tioga Road begins, from Crane Flat to McSwain Meadows. The Meyers enjoy the increased business from road construction crews.

1940:

23 June dedication of new sections of Big Oak Flat Road and Tioga Road. Old section of Tioga Road from park line to White Wolf closed.

John D. Meyer dies.

1941:

With advent of World War II, Alice W. Meyer no longer able to cook for guests, but continues to rent cabins to long-time patrons, who supply their own meals.

1945:

Alice W. Meyer dies 1 July.

1951:

Henry Wilson “Bill” Meyer, son of John D. Meyer, Jr., and Alice W. Meyer, sells White Wolf property to federal government for $26,500, with assurance that structures will be maintained as lodge.

1952:

Yosemite Park and Curry Company acquires concession rights to White Wolf Lodge and opens it as unit of High Sierra camps in 1953.

1961:

NPS upgrades its campground facilities at White Wolf.

Curry Company begins improvements at White Wolf, including consolidation of cabins 5 and 6 into a duplex as well as improved restroom and shower facilities.

1968-69:

Heavy winter snows destroy the lodge and cabins 5 and 6.

1969:

Repairs to lodge include rebuilding of the fireplace and chimney and replacing walls and roof. Cabins 5 and 6 are removed.

Tuolumne Meadows

3,500 B. P. -

Evidence in excavations in El Portal reveal that trans-Sierran trade may have occurred as early as 3500 to 4000 years before present.

1833:

Joseph R. Walker crosses Sierra, through present Yosemite National Park. Party follows divide between the drainages of the Tuolumne and Merced rivers but does not cross through Tuolumne Meadows.

1851:

James Savage and Mariposa Battalion enter Yosemite Valley in pursuit of Indians.

Capt. John Boling’s company enters Yosemite for the second time, 9 May, and captures Yosemite Indians at Tenaya Lake 22 May. Indians escorted to Fresno Reservation but later to return to Yosemite. Lafayette Bunnell christens Tenaya Lake.

1852:

A party of eight prospectors enters Yosemite Valley and Indians kill two. Lt. Tredwell Moore and unit of troops dispatched in June to punish the Indians and return them to the reservation. Five Indians are killed in Yosemite Valley and the remaining band flees over the Mono Trail, through Tuolumne Meadows and Mono Pass, down Bloody Canyon to the Mono Lake country, to take refuge with the Paiutes. While Moore’s infantrymen are exploring the east side of the Sierra, they discover some promising mineral deposits and return to Mariposa without the Indians but with ore samples.

Leroy Vining leads group of prospectors through Tuolumne Meadows and down Bloody Canyon to explore the country that Lieutenant Moore described. 16 August James D. Savage murdered by Walter H. Harvey at King’s River Reservation.

1853:

A skirmish between the Mono Lake Paiutes and the Yosemite Indians results in the death of six of the Yosemites, including Chief Tenaya. Later remnants of Tenaya’s band return to Yosemite Valley.

1857:

Tom McGee clears and blazes the western part of the Mono Trail, following very closely the original Indian route. Miners flock to the east side of the Sierra near Mono Lake.

1860:

California State Geological Survey established, headed by Josiah Whitney. “The Sheepherder” Mine located.

1863:

California State Geological Survey begins work in Yosemite area and continues through 1867.

1865:

J. D. Whitney publishes description of the headwaters of the Tuolumne River and describes Tioga Pass (he referred to it as “MacLane’s”) as a better route of trans-Sierran travel than Mono Pass, at that time the route of travel and 600 feet higher in elevation.

1869:

John Muir’s first summer in the Sierra and in Tuolumne Meadows with a band of sheep.

1874:

William Brusky discovers the Sheepherder claim staked in 1860 by George W. “Doc” Chase (later Tioga Mine).

1878:

Nine claims established and Tioga Mining District organized.

1 August John L. Murphy homesteads the meadows on the south end of Tenaya Lake, plants trout, and establishes a hospice for visitors to the high country as well as construction workers on the Great Sierra Wagon Road.

1879:

Golden Crown Mine site established by Orlando Fuller.

1880:

Dana City granted a post office.

1881:

Mining operations begin at Great Sierra Mine.

Silver discovered on Mt. Hoffmann and Mt. Hoffmann Mining District established. No further activity mentioned.

Sierra Telegraph Company builds line from Lundy to Yosemite Valley via Bennettville.

1882:

Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company incorporated.

Construction on Tioga Road begins.

13 March, post office established at Bennettville. 16,000 tons of mining equipment sledded from Lundy to Great Sierra Mine, a distance of nine miles.

1883:

Tioga Road completed at cost of $62,000.

1884:

Tioga Mine closes and Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company folds, after an expenditure of $300,000 and no production.

1885:

John B. Lembert homesteads Soda Springs area of Tuolumne Meadows where he raises Angora goats.

1886:

John L. Murphy preempts 160 acres at Tenaya Lake.

1890:

Professor George Davidson of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey occupies summit of Mt. Conness and erects small (8'x8') wooden observatory on concrete piers for completing survey work.

1 October, Yosemite National Park created.

Lembert loses his Angora goats in snowstorm; begins collecting natural history specimens for scientific collections.

1892:

Sierra Club formed.

1896:

John Lembert murdered in his cabin below El Portal.

1898:

McCauley brothers buy Lembert’s Soda Springs property.

1901:

First of Sierra Club’s Annual Outings based in Tuolumne Meadows.

1902:

McCauleys construct cabin on their Soda Springs property.

1911:

Tenaya Lake Trail from Yosemite Valley completed.

1912:

Sierra Club purchases Soda Springs property.

1915:

January, Stephen T. Mather accepts post of assistant to the Secretary of the Interior. Mather enlists assistance of friends and, using his own money along with their donations, purchases the Tioga Road for $15,500 and donates it to the federal government. First appropriation for construction of the John Muir Trail approved by California Governor Hiram Johnson.

Sierra Cub constructs Parsons Memorial Lodge on their property at Soda Springs in Tuolumne Meadows.

1916:

Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and Tenaya Lake and Merced Lake camps opened by Desmond Park Service Company.

National Park Service Organic Act passed 25 August, and Mather becomes first director.

1918:

World War I and bankruptcy of the Desmond Company force closure of High Sierra camps opened in 1916.

Entrance stations established on Tioga Road at Aspen Valley and Tuolumne Meadows.

1922:

Merced Lake camp opens as sports-oriented boys’ camp.

1923:

Through encouragement of the NPS, the Hikers’ Camps reopen (Tuolumne Meadows, Tenaya Lake), and in September Naturalist Carl P. Russell chooses five additional sites for camps, of which three are chosen by the Yosemite National Park Company in 1924 for operation as High Sierra camps.

1924:

Glen Aulin and Boothe Lake (later known as Vogelsang) High Sierra camps established.

Building constructed as a ranger station, visitor contact station, and entrance station for the east entrance over Tioga Pass via the Tioga Road through Tuolumne Meadows. Its use later superceded by construction of Tioga Pass ranger station in 1931 and realignment of road through the meadows in the early 1930s, but the building continues to serve as a ranger residence and office.

1925:

Yosemite Park and Curry Company formed.

1930:

California Cooperative Snow Survey Program begins in Yosemite.

1931:

Work begins on Tioga Pass ranger station.

Early 1930s:

With realignment and improvement of Tioga Road from Tioga Pass to Tuolumne Meadows area, several rustic buildings removed and new structures built to replace them along the realigned route of the road.

1932:

Preliminary field survey made of proposed rerouting of Tioga Road.

Contracts awarded for new Tioga Road section from Cathedral Creek to Tioga Pass.

Tioga Pass ranger station completed. First stone building of rustic architectural style built by NPS in Tuolumne Meadows/Tioga Pass area.

1933:

NPS restricts camping in Tuolumne Meadows region in order to protect the water quality within watershed of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, whose waters due to arrive in San Francisco in 1934.

1934:

Mess hall and kitchen, bunk houses, toilet and shower room constructed at Tuolumne Meadows by Civilian Conservation Corps.

Three comfort stations constructed in Tuolumne Meadows campground area.

Comfort station and entrance gates constructed at Tioga Pass.

1936:

Visitor contact station erected at entrance of Tuolumne Meadows campground.

Tuolumne Meadows campground of 300 sites opens.

1937:

Section of road realignment from Cathedral Creek to Tioga Pass completed.

1938:

Section of old Tioga Road from McSwain Meadows to Cathedral Creek oiled for first time in its history. This twenty-one-mile section would later be bypassed.

Tenaya Lake High Sierra camp removed and replaced by one at May Lake.

Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Center built by CCC.

1940:

23 June, dedication of new section of Tioga Road from Crane Flat to McSwain Meadows and of new Big Oak Flat Road from Highway 140 to Crane Flat. The old section of the Tioga Road from the west park line to White Wolf through Aspen Valley was closed.

Entrance station kiosk erected at Tioga Pass.

Vogelsang High Sierra camp moves from its second location to its present location on Fletcher Creek.

1942:

CCC is discontinued.

1947:

Infestation of lodgepole needleminer moth approaches epidemic stage in Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows region.

1952:

Yosemite Park and Curry Company acquires concession rights to White Wolf Lodge and opens it as unit of High Sierra camps in 1953.

1953:

First large-scale control effort against lodgepole pine needleminer epidemic involves airplane spraying of 11,000 acres of the 45,000 acres of infested area with DDT.

1957:

Construction begins on final twenty-one-mile section of Tioga Road, from McSwain Meadows to Cathedral Creek, including controversial section around Olmsted Point.

1958:

Ansel Adams brings road realignment to a temporary halt to investigate the threat to the domes at Tenaya Lake and Olmsted Point. Work resumes.

1961:

24 June, the last twenty-one-mile section of Tioga Road officially dedicated and opened to public. High Sierra camp established at Sunrise Lake.

1963:

Caltrans begins work on Tioga Road from Tioga Pass to Lee Vining.

1964:

Tioga Pass Road from Tioga Pass to Lee Vining opens.

1973:

National Park Service purchases Sierra Club property at Soda Springs.

1974:

NPS closes Sierra Club walk-in campground at Soda Springs.

1980:

Old visitor center at Tuolumne Meadows closes and new one established in CCC mess hall.

Chinquapin, Badger Pass, and Glacier Point

1851:

Mariposa Battalion enters Yosemite Valley following approximately present route of Wawona Road.

1855:

Mann brothers begin construction of toll trail to Yosemite Valley, following established Indian trails. According to Carl Russell, the present-day Alder Creek and Pohono trails follow the Mann brothers’ original tourist route completed in 1856.

1869:

Charles Peregoy’s Mountain View House constructed as hotel for visitors traveling the Wawona-to-Yosemite Valley trail. It operated until 1878, although bypassed by the Wawona wagon road completed in 1875.

1870:

The Mariposa-to-Wawona stage road (Chowchilla Mountain Road) completed.

1871:

John Conway, working for James McCauley, begins work on the Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point, finishing in 1872.

1872:

McCauley begins the practice of the firefall from Glacier Point.

1874:

Washburn, Chapman, Coffman and Company of Mariposa petition the Yosemite Valley commissioners to extend their stage road from Wawona to Yosemite Valley, thus completing the Mariposa route.

1875:

22 July, road completed from Wawona to Yosemite Valley via Chinquapin.

1878:

James McCauley builds Glacier Point Mountain House.

1882:

State legislature appropriates funds to buy trails in Yosemite Grant; the Four-Mile Trail is first to be purchased.

Conway builds original Glacier Point Road from Chinquapin Station.

1886:

Section of the Wawona-to-Yosemite Valley road from Ft. Monroe (on boundary of the grant) to valley floor purchased by state.

1890:

Yosemite National Park created 1 October.

1895:

Cabin and property sold to Jack McGurk by Hugh Davanay. McGurk lost the property in 1897 when evicted by the U. S. Army over a title dispute. Cabin stabilized in 1958 and still stands by the meadow bearing McGurk’s name.

1897:

David Curry continues McCauley’s tradition of the firefall.

1905:

Boundaries of park redrawn, with net loss of 430 square miles.

1912:

Act of Congress of 9 April 1912: land exchange between Yosemite National Park and Sierra and Stanislaus national forests involving land owned in Yosemite National Park by the Yosemite Lumber Company.

1913:

Adolph Miller, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, discontinues firefall as a method of punishing David Curry for his effrontery in dealing with the national park administration.

1913-23:

Yosemite Lumber Company logs approximately 6,000 acres of privately owned land in the national park. However, a land exchange between the park and neighboring national forests, along with an agreement with the lumber company, ensures that a corridor of virgin timber will remain along the Wawona Road (including the proposed new road) so that tourists will be spared the view of cutover lands enroute to Yosemite Valley or Wawona.

1917:

Desmond Park Service Company completes Glacier Point Hotel.

Glacier Point firefall reinstituted.

1918:

Ledge Trail to Glacier Point constructed.

1925:

Geology exhibit at Glacier Point constructed as a branch of Yosemite Museum.

1929:

Work begins on new road from Wawona to Yosemite Valley.

1930:

Comfort station at Glacier Point campground constructed; converted into quarters, 1979

1931:

Ranger residence and naturalist’s residence constructed at Glacier Point. Old buildings of Yosemite Lumber Company at Deer Camp renovated for use in snow surveys.

1932:

Comfort station at Glacier Point constructed. Fire destroys structures at Chinquapin.

1933:

Wawona Road and tunnel dedicated 10 June. Ranger station/residence and comfort station constructed at Chinquapin.

1934:

Henness Ridge fire lookout constructed.

Realignment of Glacier Point Road.

1935:

Yosemite Park and Curry Company constructs ski lodge and lift at Monroe Meadows, in operation by 15 December. Eight-Mile Insect Control lab constructed at Eight-Mile on Wawona Road.

1936:

New Glacier Point Road finished.

1940:

Ostrander ski hut constructed at Ostrander Lake.

1942:

U. S. Army Signal Corps units utilize Park Service facilities at Wawona and Badger Pass as special summer training schools.

1946:

Blister rust camp established one-half mile south of Chinquapin ranger station/residence on old Wawona Road.

1958:

Campground at Bridalveil improved; parking lots at Badger Pass, Washburn Point, and Glacier Point enlarged.

1968:

Firefall discontinued.

1969:

9 August, Glacier Point Hotel, Mountain House, and comfort station destroyed by fire.

Wawona, South Entrance; and Mariposa Grove

1851:

Major James D. Savage and the Mariposa Battalion of volunteer Indian fighters camp on South Fork of the Merced River enroute to their discovery of Yosemite Valley.

1852:

Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias discovered by a party of prospectors.

1855:

Mann brothers begin construction of a toll trail to Yosemite Valley, completed in 1856.

1856:

Galen Clark settles in the area of Wawona, homesteads 160 acres, and calls place “Clark’s Crossing” or “Clark’s Station.”

1857:

Clark builds bridge over the South Fork of the Merced River.

Clark and Milton Mann explore and publicize Mariposa Grove.

1864:

Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove deeded to state of California to be held in trust for the people in perpetuity. Total size of the grant is 48.6 square miles. Galen Clark later appointed Guardian of the grant and builds crude, one-room cabin in the grove.

1869:

Edwin Moore acquires half-interest in Clark’s Station, renaming it “Clark and Moore’s”.

1870:

Road from Mariposa to Wawona completed; work begins on road from Wawona to Yosemite Valley.

1874-75:

Washburn brothers purchase Clark and Moore’s and name it “Wawona,” the word used by the Miwoks to describe the giant sequoias. They derived the word from the sound of the great horned owl, deity and protector of the great trees.

1875:

Washburn brothers complete the road between Wawona and Yosemite Valley.

1878:

Wagon road constructed into Mariposa Grove. Clark’s original hotel burns and is replaced.

1879:

Present Wawona Hotel building constructed.

1881:

Wawona Tunnel Tree cut. State of California replaces “Galen’s Hospice,” the cabin in the Mariposa Grove with another one-room structure.

1884:

Clark Cottage constructed, as is the building used today as the manager’s cottage.

1886:

Thomas Hill establishes a summer studio adjacent to the Wawona Hotel, where he paints and displays his works until his death in 1908.

Seven-mile section of Wawona Road within boundaries of Yosemite Grant purchased by state.

1890:

Yosemite National Park created.

1891:

Yosemite’s first acting superintendent, Captain A. E. Wood, arrives in Yosemite with a contingent of troops and establishes headquarters on the South Fork of the Merced River at Wawona.

1892:

First plant of trout (rainbow) made in Yosemite by California Fish and Game Commission.

1895:

Fish hatchery at Wawona constructed, and operated by the state.

1896:

Moore Cottage (Small Brown) constructed as part of the Wawona Hotel complex.

1900:

Washburn Cottage (Long Brown) constructed as part of the Wawona Hotel complex.

1902:

State adds an additional room to the Mariposa Grove cabin to serve as an office for the Guardian.

1904:

Arboretum established at Wawona.

1905:

Boundaries of Yosemite National Park redrawn.

1906:

Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove re-ceded to federal government from the state, to become a part of the national park.

Camp A. E. Wood moves from Wawona to Yosemite Valley.

1913:

Automobiles legally enter Yosemite National Park for the first time.

This is also the last year that U. S. Army cavalry units took responsibility for the patrol and protection of the national park.

1914:

Civilian rangers replace U. S. Army units in Yosemite. Wawona and Big Oak Flat roads open to auto traffic.

1915:

Motor stages replace horse-drawn stages used in transporting tourists from Wawona to Glacier Point, the Yosemite Valley, and the Mariposa Grove.

1916:

National Park Service Act passed 25 August; Stephen Mather becomes first director. W. B. Lewis appointed first superintendent of Yosemite.

1917:

Wawona Hotel Company constructs Annex.

Balance of Wawona Road and Glacier Point branch turned over to National Park Service.

Chinese laundry building, later the plumbing shop and today the carriage shop, constructed.

1920:

Wawona Hotel Company constructs Sequoia Hotel. Wawona wagon shop constructed.

Big Trees Lodge built at Mariposa Grove by Desmond Park Service Company.

1929:

Work begins on new Wawona Road to Yosemite Valley.

1930:

Old log cabin in Mariposa Grove replaced with new structure, standing today as the Mariposa Grove Museum.

1931:

Mariposa Grove comfort station constructed.

1932:

Big Trees Lodge constructed at Sunset Point in Mariposa Grove, replacing the tent cabins built earlier. Washburns sell Wawona interests to Park Service and facilities leased to Yosemite Park and Curry Company.

Wawona Basin acquired through donated funds of $180,300, matched by congressional appropriation. Presidential proclamation of 13 August adds 8,785 acres to national park.

Barn constructed at Wawona to replace one removed for a road right-of-way prior to the acquisition.

1933:

Work on Wawona Road and tunnel completed, and structures dedicated 10 June.

Five CCC camps established in park, two at Wawona.

1934:

South Entrance construction: ranger residence-duplex, restroom, and office.

Residence #4000 at Wawona constructed and major construction at CCC camp.

New road completed in Mariposa Grove.

1935:

South entrance garage constructed.

1936:

Wawona residence #4003 originally constructed as mess hall; altered in 1940 to living quarters.

1937:

School and teacherage constructed at Wawona.

1938:

Residence #4001 constructed at Wawona.

1942:

CCC activities discontinued in Yosemite in July. U. S. Army Signal Corps units utilize Park Service facilities at Wawona and Badger Pass as special summer training schools.

1951:

Continued acquisition of lands in Wawona Basin.

1954:

First scientific study conducted to assess human impact on giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove.

1955:

Flood.

1958:

Wawona covered bridge restored following flood damage of late 1955. Campground at Wawona enlarged and improved, including new facilities.

Plans developed for Yosemite Pioneer History Center at Wawona, a part of the MISSION 66 plan to reduce crowding and congestion in Yosemite Valley by establishing other centers of interest in outlying areas of the park.

1961:

Yosemite Pioneer History Center dedicated 11 September and opened to public.

1969:

During a record year for precipitation, the Wawona Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove falls.

1970:

Mariposa Grove road closed to private cars and tram system instituted.

1983:

California Conservation Corps workers tear down Big Trees Lodge, unoccupied since the early 1970s and only used since that time by trail and maintenance crews.

CHAPTER 1: EARLY HABITATION AND EXPLORATION OF THE YOSEMITE REGION

A. The First Inhabitants 1
B. The Joseph Walker Party Skirts Yosemite Valley 13
C. Gold Discoveries Generate Indian-White Conflicts 15
1. Effects of Euro-American Settlement on the northern California Indians 15
2. Formation of the Mariposa Battalion 17
3. Captain John Boling Enters Yosemite Valley 24
4. Lieutenant Tredwell Moore Enters Yosemite Valley 25
D. Decline in Strength of the Yosemites 26
E. Historical Indian Occupation of Yosemite Valley 26
F. Historical Indian Occupation of El Portal 29
G. Remains of Indian Occupation in Yosemite National Park 29
H. Remains of White Exploration in Yosemite Valley 31
I. Tourism to Yosemite Valley Begins 32
1. A Three-Year Lull 32
2. James M. Hutchings inspects Yosemite Valley 32
3. Publicity on Yosemite Valley Reaches the East Coast 33
4. Publicity Encourages Visitation 35
a) Trails and Tourist Facilities on the Way to Yosemite Valley 35
b) Early Hotels in Yosemite Valley 44
5. Discovery of Giant Sequoia Groves 46
a) Tuolumne Grove 46
b) Mariposa Grove 47
c) Merced Grove 49

A. The First Inhabitants

Yosemite National Park lies on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in central California, between the San Joaquin Valley to the west and the Great Basin to the east. Pleistocene glaciers cut deep gorges and formed broad, U-shaped valleys in the area, which, later filled by stream-deposited sediment, became level and attractive habitation sites. The approximately 1,176 square miles of mountains and meadows included in the park contain an abundance of water sources, including lakes, springs, and the tributaries of two major westward-flowing streams of the Sierra—the Tuolumne and Merced rivers. The five life zones represented in the park, ranging from Upper Sonoran to Arctic-Alpine, support a diversity of flora and fauna that provided the earliest native inhabitants with foodstuffs and trade goods within a relatively small area.

Differences in altitude, temperature, and precipitation produce varied environments in the Sierra, and those variables have determined the duration and extent of human occupancy of the region. Carbon-14 analyses of samples from recent archeological projects in the park indicate occupancy of the Yosemite area between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago.1 Ancestors of the historic Sierra Miwoks probably began entering the foothills and higher elevations of the Sierra from the Central Valley about 2,000 years ago, probably to escape the summer heat and spring floods; to exploit montane resources such as nuts, berries, and large game animals; and to trade with tribes east of the mountains for goods unavailable in the foothills or along the Pacific Coast. Although they probably resulted in some early permanent occupancy of the Sierra, those movements primarily entailed seasonal occupancy of sites such as Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy valleys, Wawona, Crane Flat, and the High Sierra meadows.2 Later population increases in the Sierra may be attributable in some degree to native population displacement as the first Europeans began to exploit the lowlands formerly held by the Indians. The mountains also became a place of refuge from periodic Mexican raiding for slaves and from disease.

[1. Scott L. Carpenter, archeologist, Yosemite National Park, “Review of Historic Resource Study,” 24 September 1986, 2.]

[2. Michael J. Moratto, An Archeological Research Design for Yosemite National Park, Publications in Anthropology No. 19 (Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981), 32; L. Kyle Napton, Archeological Overview of Yosemite National Park, California (Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological Center, 1978), 65.]

Within late prehistoric and early historic times, the Central and Southern Sierra Miwoks constituted the primary inhabitants of the Yosemite National Park area and of the foothills and valleys west of the park, extending their influence over both sides of the mountain range. The Central Sierra Miwoks resided in the foothill and mountain portions of the Stanislaus and Tuolumne river drainages, while the Southern Sierra Miwoks held the upper drainages of the Merced and Chowchilla rivers.3 Within historic times, a tribelet of the Southern Sierra Miwoks, the Ahwahneeches, lived in and around Yosemite Valley. They called their home “Ahwahnee,” from the Indian word for “mouth,” likening the valley’s shape to a huge, gaping mouth. Historical accounts usually refer to them as the Yosemite Indians.

[3. Richard Levy, “Eastern Miwok,” in Robert F. Heizer, ed., California, vol. 8 of William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), 398.]

According to Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, one of the members of the Mariposa Battalion that “discovered” Yosemite Valley in 1851, in the year 1800 a terrible disease inflicted Yosemite Valley’s early residents, perhaps contracted through contact with coastal Indians who had been infected by whites. The Ahwahneeches abandoned their villages and lived with neighboring tribes. The valley remained uninhabited for several years thereafter until Tenaya, the son of a headman of the Ahwahneeches, who had grown up among the Monos along the eastern base of the Sierra, decided to return to the deep, grassy valley that had been his family’s home. Collecting the remnants of his father’s people and some scattered members of other tribes, he reoccupied Yosemite Valley with this group about 1821. Tenaya’s band lived peacefully in Ahwahnee for several years. Bunnell is apparently the only source for this story.4 If accurate, it implies that a very mixed group of Indians occupied Yosemite Valley immediately prior to white penetration.

[Editor’s note: the correct meaning of Ahwahnee is “(gaping) mouth,” not “deep, grassy valley.” See “Origin of the Place Name Yosemite”—dea.]

[4. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to That Event (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 64. First published in 1880 in Chicago by Fleming H. Revell.]

The Yosemite area’s isolation, beauty, and abundance of game, fish, plant foods, and water made it an ideal haven for early peoples. There the Miwok hunted grizzly and black bears, deer, and elk, and smaller mammals such as rabbits and grey squirrels. They also utilized several bird species and trout. The Miwoks underwent elaborate ceremonies prior to the hunt, purifying themselves in sweatlodges such as those Bunnell noted in the valley in 1851. The native population gathered clover and bulbs in the spring; seeds and fruits in the summer; acorns, nuts, and manzanita berries in the fall; and mushrooms in the late winter and early spring. Black oak acorns, the preferred starch of the California Indian’s diet, occurred in the Yosemite region in abundance. Each spring and summer the Miwoks journeyed into the high country to hunt deer and to trade. They also moved seasonally up and down the Merced River, frequently passing through the present El Portal area.

Other tribes also occupied and regularly visited the Central Sierra, including the Yosemite region, primarily the Washo, who occupied High Sierran mountain meadows and ranged east and west from Lake Tahoe and Washo Lake, and the Mono Paiutes, living immediately east of Yosemite in

Illustration 1.
Location of Indian tribes in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park.
From James A. Bennyhoff, An Appraisal of the Archaeological Resources of Yosemite National Park, 1956.

[click to enlarge]

the western Great Basin in an area including Mono Lake. The Paiutes claimed that occasionally they hunted in Little Yosemite Valley and spent the winter in Yosemite Valley and also inhabited Hetch Hetchy Valley. The Central Sierra Miwoks occupying the higher altitudes of Yosemite had a village in Hetch Hetchy Valley and evidently quarreled over the area with the Paiutes. Most of this Paiute settlement probably occurred after dissemination of the Ahwahneeche population following white penetration and the death of their leader.5 Both the Washos and the Paiutes traded and intermarried with the Miwoks, transmitting Great Basin influences into the Central Sierra and beyond. Yokuts, a stock occupying the San Joaquin Valley and the foothills south of the Fresno River, also traded with the Miwok and extended some Central Valley influence over them.

[5. James A. Bennyhoff, An Appraisal of the Archaeological Resources of Yosemite National Park, Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, No. 34 (Berkeley: The University of California Archaeological Survey, Department of Anthropology, 1956), 3, 7.]

These Indian groups jointly visited the Yosemite uplands, such as Tuolumne Meadows, to escape the heat and aridity of the lowlands while at the same time exploiting new food resources and trading while the passes remained free of snow. From the Paiutes the Miwoks obtained baskets, obsidian, finished projectile points, salt “loaves,” rabbitskin blankets, pinon nuts, sinew-backed bows, red and white pigments, buffalo robes, and fly pupae. In return the Paiutes received baskets, clamshell disk beads, arrows, and manzanita berries. The Washos provided the Miwoks with pinon nuts and rabbitskin blankets in addition to dried fish and buffalo skins, in return for acorns, shell disks, soaproot fibers, redbud bark, and manzanita berries. The Miwoks supplied the Yokuts with baskets and bows and arrows in return for shell beads and dog pups. The various Miwok groups also exchanged among themselves. This aboriginal trade across the Sierra constituted an ancient and important part of the subsistence patterns of the Indian groups involved.6

[6. Moratto, Archeological Research Design, 37-38.]

The Miwoks were loosely organized politically. Their foremost political unit was the tribelet, which functioned as an independent nation and lived within a defined territory. Habitation sites within Yosemite Valley consisted of permanent villages, occupied throughout the year although depleted in winter; summer villages, occupied from May to October, after which the Miwoks moved down to the milder climate of the Merced River canyon; and seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering camps.7 Occupational patterns in those villages depended on the season, the year, and the number of Indians present in the valley at any particular time. Dr. Clinton Hart Merriam noted two classes of villages among the Miwoks, those of the families of the chiefs and those inhabited by commoners. Several of the latter surrounded each of the former. The inhabitants of the adjacent minor villages used the names of the larger villages to designate themselves and the place they lived.8

[7. C. Hart Merriam, “Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley,” Sierra Club Bulletin 10, no. 2 (January 1917): 202.]

[8. C. Hart Merriam, Ethnographic Notes on California Indian Tribes, comp. and ed. by Robert F. Heizer, in Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, No. 68, Part III (Berkeley: University of California Archaeological Research Facility, Department of Anthropology, 1966, 1967), 340.]

Actual population figures for the Yosemite Indians are uncertain. In the disrupted period immediately prior to white contact, there may have been only about 200 Ahwahneeches, less than the prehistoric population. The population of the Yosemite uplands can best be estimated on the basis of aboriginal population densities in the Central Sierra.9 As stated earlier, an epidemic around 1800 might have severely impacted the tribelet. By the contact period, the Ahwahneechees had declined, undoubtedly through a combination of factors including disease, warfare, and the disruption of cultural and subsistence patterns. By 1855 the
[9. Napton, Archeological Overview, 95; Moratto, Archeological Research Design, 51-52.]
James Hutchings tourist party found no Indians in the valley, and indeed Ahwahneechees were rarely seen for several years after that time.

The limited accessibility of the High Sierra region resulted in discovery of the Miwok villages in Yosemite Valley late in the contact period, after mining in the Sierran foothills had led to conflicts between Indians and whites. The Yosemite Valley is one of the few Sierra areas where historic and protohistoric villages have been identified ethnographically. Extant narratives of early visits by whites contain accounts of Miwok lifestyles in the park and the locations and names of some of the village sites. Stephen Powers made the earliest report on Miwok habitation in 1877, identifying nine villages along the Merced River.10 Dr. Bunnell, on a map accompanying his 1880 narrative of the discovery of Yosemite Valley, located five villages and a group of sweathouses in use when the Mariposa Battalion entered the valley in March 1851. The 1878-79 George Wheeler topographical survey recorded only one village. In 1917 Dr. Merriam conducted a pioneer study in Yosemite National Park consisting of fieldwork for ethnographic data. Aided by resident Indians, he located thirty-six Indian habitation sites on the valley floor both north and south of the Merced River and another in Little Yosemite Valley beyond the head of Nevada Fall. Few of the sites were occupied at that time, however. At least six of those sites were occupied in 1898. Merriam located sixteen more sites on the Merced River below El Portal (see Appendix A).11 The variation in the number of village sites recorded in each instance might reflect differing definitions of a “village” and/or difficulties in distinguishing between village and camp sites. Bunnell saw the valley in the winter and thus his description does not include summer villages. Merriam’s study comprises the first accurate, detailed study of pre-white Indian settlements of the area.

[10. Stephen Powers, Tribes of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 365. Also published as “Tribes of California,” in Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. III, U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Washington, D. C., 1877.]

[11. Napton, Archeological Overview, 88. See Merriam, “Indian Village and Camp Sites In Yosemite Valley.” Merriam devoted his early years to ornithology and the practice of medicine. Later he turned to mammals, but primarily devoted himself to studies of California Indians in an attempt to record information on their lifeways before primary informers passed away. He pursued those studies from 1910 to 1937.]

The largest and most important village in Yosemite Valley, containing a large, earth-covered ceremonial house, stood on the north side of the Merced River just below Yosemite Fall and stretched southwest for three-fourths of a mile. The U. S. Army took possession of that village, known as Koomine, for use as a camp in 1907 and forced out its inhabitants. To the east stood the village of Ahwahne. Because it comprised the largest tract of open, level ground in the area outside Indians applied its name to the entire valley. Another large village, Yowatchke, occupied into the 1930s, stood at the mouth of Indian Canyon.12

[12. Merriam, “Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley,” 205.]

The Miwoks built several kinds of structures in the Yosemite region. They framed umachas, conical-shaped winter dwellings, with several long poles covered with slabs of incense cedar or pine bark. As late as the 1920s, a few of those structures could still be found in use in Yosemite. Impermanent conical brush shelters sufficed in summer. In association with Miwok dwellings, villages contained large, semi-subterranean dance or assembly houses, forty to fifty feet in diameter, dug to a depth of three or four feet. One of the last Miwok dance houses is located near Mariposa, California, and another is near the town of Ahwahnee, southwest of the park. The most recent example of this type of structure was erected by Miwoks and other Indians on the grounds of the park interpretive center. Sweathouses—circular, earth-covered, and between six and fifteen feet in diametei—also commonly appeared in village areas. Bunnell reported several in the Happy Isles locality. Chukahs, granaries for acorn storage, consisted of four tall incense cedar

Illustration 2.
Indian villages and sweathouses in Yosemite Valley noted by Lafayette Houghton Bunnell in 1851.
Frontispiece in Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, and The Indian War of 1851, Which Led to that Event.

[click to enlarge]

poles supporting elevated basket-like structures that held the acorns. Remains of small, conical grinding houses made of bark slabs are also found. The principal Miwok settlements in Yosemite National Park existed at Wawona and in Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy valleys. Big Meadow, Crane Flat, Mather, and the present Lake Eleanor area also comprised favored activity and habitation sites. The Eleanor Creek valley became a popular summer and fall home for Central Sierra Miwoks and Owens Valley Paiutes.13 Because of Wawona’s high elevation, it might not have been occupied the entire year, but only as a summer camp for a tribelet from the foothills. On the other hand, the availability of resources might have occasionally permitted winter occupancy. It is unclear to what extent the Indian population remained in the present park area throughout the year, but the fact that some of the village sites in Yosemite Valley stood closer to the north wall than to the river, enabling them to take full advantage of the sunshine, indicates possible occupation during at least part of the winter months. The fact that members of the Mariposa Battalion found Indians in Yosemite Valley in March is inconclusive evidence of winter occupation of the area, because by that time the Ahwahneeches used the valley on a full-time basis as a refuge from white reprisals.14

[13. Scott L. Carpenter and Laura A. Kirn, “New ‘Underwater’ Archeological Discoveries at Lake Eleanor,” Yosemite Association (Summer 1986): 8. University of California (Berkeley) archeologists conducted a survey at Lake Eleanor in 1956 and recorded sixteen prehistoric Indian sites. A more extensive 1985 survey found twenty-nine prehistoric and historic cultural sites. These included a large village site as well as numerous small village or large camp sites, most with bedrock mortar outcrops and stone tools. Historic resources found included the site of one of the sawmills used by the city of San Francisco during clear-cutting of the reservoir basin prior to construction of the dam, cabin foundations and a rock-lined well from early homesteading activity, and the original log dam (ca. 1917) at the mouth of Lake Eleanor. Ibid., 9.]

[14. Moratto, Archeological Research Design, 41-42; Napton, Archeological Overview, 91.]

Permanent villages near El Portal received additional people from Yosemite when cold weather came and heavy snows made the higher elevations untenable. In the pre-contact period, the Miwoks may have occupied sites near El Portal and other lowland areas west of the park during the winter and then, as the snow melted, worked their way back into the valleys and high country of Yosemite. The old Indian trails from El Portal and the lower end of Yosemite Valley leading toward the Foresta/Big Meadow area would have intersected the Mono Trail there and provided quick and easy access to Tuolumne Meadows. El Portal, because of its location on the Merced River, its habitable land area, and its proximity to higher elevations such as Crane Flat and Big Meadow, was widely used by prehistoric as well as later historic populations, both Indian and Anglo.

B. The Joseph Walker Party Skirts Yosemite Valley

The Joseph Rutherford Walker expedition became the first party of white explorers to approach Yosemite Valley. Walker had been engaged by Capt. Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, a frontier U. S. Army officer who had applied to the War Department for leave to explore the country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast. Allegedly he would be collecting geographical information, mapping the area, gathering data on the disposition of Indian tribes, observing the British Hudson’s Bay Company operations in Oregon Territory and the Mexicans in the Southwest, and determining ways America could best utilize that frontier. To finance the expedition, Bonneville entered the Western fur trade and outfitted a party of trappers and hunters in Missouri. Because most of the streams in the Rocky Mountains had already been exhaustively trapped for beaver, Bonneville decided to push his men further afield in search of virgin streams.

As one of Bonneville’s assistants, Walker took a company of men to California and the Pacific Coast in July 1833 to trap beaver and report on the fur trade potential there. According to Bill Gilbert, Walker’s biographer, from the Green River in Utah the party reached the Sierra’s main crest northeast of Tuolumne Canyon. Turning south, they moved west along the crest between the Merced and Tuolumne rivers. After grueling days in the cold with insufficient food and after floundering through snowdrifts and over rough granite ridges, the company finally made its way across the Sierra Nevada into the San Joaquin Valley. Although impressed by the scenery, especially by the “Big Trees” (giant sequoias) they passed through and described as incredibly large specimens of the redwood species, Walker’s party did not immediately make their probable discovery of the valley known, but turned their attention to the primary task of setting traps and hunting for food. As a consequence, the valley’s existence remained generally unknown yet in 1851 when the Mariposa Battalion entered it, although Indians had long hinted of a formidable mountain fortress in that area.15

[15. See Bil Gilbert, Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker (New York: Atheneum, 1983), for information on the Walker expedition. Gilbert also discusses the activities of Captain Bonneville, whose fur-trading operations may have masked a covert assignment to gather military and commercial intelligence.]

Although one of the members of the Walker expedition, Zenas Leonard, published an account of the group’s difficult experience crossing the Sierra in 1839, which proves that the party traveled extensively in the mountains north of Yosemite Valley, it is unclear whether they actually gazed down into it.16 At one point Leonard described encountering several small streams that ran through deep chasms before eventually flinging themselves over a precipice into a valley below. The description of that abyss appears to fit Yosemite Valley. Walker also later recounted how he and his men had gazed in amazement from the rim of a huge valley at its towering cliffs and waterfalls. This fatigued group probably also saw the canyon of the Tuolumne River, in addition to being the first white men to see the giant sequoias of the Sierra, in either the Tuolumne or Merced grove.

[Editor’s note: today historians generally believe the Walker party looked down The Cascades, which are just west of Yosemite Valley, instead of Yosemite Valley itself.—dea]

[16. See Milo M. Quaife, ed., Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1934). Originally printed and published by D. W. Moore, Clearfield, Pennsylvania, in 1839, as “Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard.” Two independent researchers in Yosemite National Park—Linda Lee and Steve Spohn—have been actively studying all available Walker party information in an attempt to document their precise route.]

C. Gold Discoveries Generate Indian-White Conflicts

1. Effects of Euro-American Settlement on the Northern California Indians

The Spanish and Mexican occupations of California wreaked havoc on the culture and subsistence patterns of the California Indians. The Spanish mission system of Alta California, beginning in 1769, served several purposes. Although the twenty-one missions supported the Spanish presidios, or military forts, they also proved instrumental in controlling Indian populations, such as the Miwoks, through forced assimilation and conversion to Catholicism. Initially the coastal tribes were most intimately affected by the Spanish presence, which resulted in relocation of Indian families to missions, where the spread of contagious diseases and changes in diet and nutritional standards resulted in a rapid decline of native populations. The initial mission Indian response to Spanish atrocities involved escape into the interior, but occasionally violent, rebellion ensued. By the 1820s the people of the interior valleys, having heard the horrors of mission life, had embarked on a policy of physical resistance, aided as time went on by the acquisition of the horse.

The secularization of the missions in 1834-36 during the Mexican occupation did not lessen the growing conflict. It only resulted in more exploitation of native labor on the large estates created for wealthy Mexican landowners. Many of those Indians formerly under mission influence sought refuge in white settlements, where they quickly suffered a loss of cultural identity and tribal organization. Others became laborers on the private ranchos where they suffered greatly from the forced labor and ill treatment inherent in the peonage system. Others fled to the mountains seeking refuge in their tribal homelands.

The increased settlement of the Sacramento Valley by Mexican colonists in the 1840s exerted more pressure on the Northern California Indians, who suffered periodically from virulent diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever, cholera, diptheria, and tuberculosis. Conflicts continued as small parties of Mexican soldiers made occasional forays against the Indians to wreak reprisals for stock stealing or to acquire slaves. These raids frequently disturbed the Miwoks, who also began to feel pressure from American colonists entering the Central Valley in the mid-1840s.

The American settlement period proved even more disastrous to the Indians after 1848, when a vast horde of settlers and miners invaded California seeking land and mineral riches. This period marks the most serious penetration of the Miwoks’ mountain territory. Before the Gold Rush of 1849, the Sierra Nevada had been largely undisturbed except for occasional Spanish raids into the foothills after captured horses or fleeing mission fugitives. The Spanish had no interest in the mountain areas and did not even stay long in the interior. During Spanish colonization, the Indian had to a certain extent been able to retain his lifeways and social order and had even appropriated a few features of white civilization and incorporated them into his own system.

Although the Spanish and Mexicans had valued the Indian as a source of cheap labor, the new American settlers considered the Indian population worthless unless assimilated to the ways of the white man. Two centuries of conflict had imbued Americans with a hatred of Indians that made no distinction between tribes or individuals. From the late 1840s on, the Miwoks suffered greatly, both because of the low esteem in which the white man held them and because the principal gold-bearing regions of California lay within their ancestral territory. When the Americans arrived they took over the Indian habitat, penetrating their foothill and mountain retreats in their search for gold. Indians had no civil or legal rights, and their cultural and subsistence activities fell into disarray as miners and settlers burned their villages, felled oak groves, fenced land, slaughtered game, and depleted meadows of grasses and acorns by overgrazing their cattle and hogs. Native economies faltered as mining operations and farming and ranching activities disrupted the Indians’ balanced relationship with their environment.

Many incoming whites found money not only in mining but also in providing food for miners, and the raising of cattle and horses became an important business enterprise. With their own food supplies dwindling, the Miwoks began focusing their food-gathering activities on those herds. Increased frustration due to continuing deprivation of their rights and confiscation of their lands led to more intense raiding.17 That in turn fostered strong resentment on the part of the mining camps, trading posts, and ranches in the area.

[17. Edward D. Castillo, “The Impact of Euro-American Exploration and Settlement,” in Robert F. Heizer, ed., California, vol. 8 of William C. Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), 102-9.]

2. Formation of the Mariposa Battalion

Trader James D. Savage, who became a central figure in the history of the Mariposa region from 1849 to 1852, and in the Mariposa Indian War, had come to California in 1846 and served in the Mexican War before becoming a miner and trader. He knew the Indians well, recruiting many of the Southern Sierra Miwok and Yokut tribelets to work for him in his mining operations. He learned their languages, adopted their customs, and, by marrying several of their women, became a powerful man in the Mariposa area, although many Indians resented his exploitive techniques.

By 1849 Savage had established trading posts at Big Oak Flat, at the mouth of Piney Creek on the Merced River, and at the mouth of the South Fork of the Merced River a few miles below Yosemite Valley. In May 1850 Indians attacked his post on the Merced River and then in December destroyed his Fresno River post southwest of Yosemite and killed three clerks. Later, at his Mariposa Creek station, near Agua Fria, another raid took place and more men were murdered in a general outbreak in the Mariposa country and the region to the south. The open conflict of the Mariposa Indian War, centering in the mining district of Mariposa County, consisted primarily of a series of skirmishes in which both sides displayed their anger. The Indians battled dispossession, near-starvation, and exploitation, while the whites protested stock raiding and vented racial animosities.

Following the assaults at Savage’s Fresno post in December 1850, appeals were made to the state government of California and to the U. S. Army for help in preventing a general outbreak of hostilities. The army pleaded lack of authority, while Governor John McDougal, who at one time spoke to the state legislature of the inevitability of the extermination of the Indian race, authorized formation of a local militia to protect property and lives in Mariposa County.18 Composed of 200 mounted men, the Mariposa Battalion was mustered into service 24 January 1851. The governor commissioned Savage major of the battalion, with John J. Kuykendall, John Boling, and William Dill named as captains of the three companies composing the unit. Savage hoped to retaliate for Indian attacks on his trading posts, in which he assumed the Yosemite Indians had played a major role. Others in the battalion had also lost property and friends to the “hostile” Indians. Just as the battalion prepared to commence operations, Governor McDougal ordered the men to suspend their activities momentarily due to the arrival of federal Indian commissioners.

[18. Ibid., 109.]

In 1851 three U. S. Indian commissioners—Redick McKee, George W. Barbour, and O. M. Wozencraft—arrived in California from Washington, D. C., to study California Indian problems, obtain information on tribal customs and manners, and make treaties with the various California tribes as appropriate. The commissioners urged moderation in Indian treatment and had come to the Mariposa region first to try and prevent further bloodshed. A number of tribes in the area sent representatives to talk to the commissioners and sign an agreement to live on designated reservations. Others, including the Ahwahneeches in the mountain fastness of Yosemite Valley, refused to consider leaving their homeland and hoped to stave off invaders from what they considered to be an impregnable stronghold. In response, the state legislature authorized the governor to proceed with local action.

The battalion immediately left for the head of the Merced River to subdue the Yosemites and Nutchus who had not appeared at the camp of the commissioners. Crossing the Chowchilla Mountains via an old Indian trail, along approximately the same route as the present Chowchilla Mountain road, the volunteers surprised and captured a Nutchu rancheria on the South Fork of the Merced River near present-day Wawona. Establishing headquarters probably near Alder Creek or Bishop Creek above the South Fork, Savage sent a messenger ahead demanding the peaceful surrender of Chief Tenaya of the Ahwahneeches and relocation to a reservation on the Fresno River. Tenaya himself came to the camp, arguing unsuccessfully that his people would die on the plains and preferred to stay in the valley where they could protect themselves against their enemies. Savage sent him back to bring in his people, threatening to annihilate the tribe if they resisted further.

On Tenaya’s advice, the Yosemites agreed to make a treaty, and the old chief himself traveled ahead to report to Savage that his people were coming in. After three days with no sign of new Indian arrivals, Savage took part of the battalion and set out for Yosemite Valley with Tenaya as guide. Following an Indian trail, about halfway to the valley they came upon a straggling line of seventy-two Yosemites leaving the valley, mostly old women, mothers, and children, struggling with great difficulty through the snow. Suspicious because there were no young men present, Savage sent Tenaya back to the South Fork camp with the women and children while he and his soldiers continued on in search of the rest of the Yosemites. They probably ascended via Alder Creek, through Peregoy Meadow, to Old Inspiration Point, basically along the route of the later Yosemite Valley-Wawona trail.

Illustration 3.
Route of Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley, first expedition, March 1851.
From Elizabeth Godfrey, Yosemite Indians, Yesterday and Today.

[click to enlarge]

From a clearing there, Savage’s small band first viewed the incomparable valley. On 27 March 1851, they became the first white man to descend to the valley floor, successfully negotiating the heretofore unchallenged cliffs. Although the grandeur of the valley must have been overwhelming, only one of the party, Dr. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, battalion surgeon, seems to have been deeply moved by the overpowering beauty. He suggested that the valley be called “Yosemity,” after its native inhabitants. His companions agreed, too intent on capturing Indians to belabor the point.19

[19. For many years the accepted date for the first view of Yosemite Valley by whites remained 25 March 1851, the date recorded by Dr. Bunnell. The discovery date later became 27 March on the strength of a diary entry of Pvt. Robert Eccleston, another member of the battalion. A final surprise came with discovery of a diary kept by William Penn Abrams, a millwright, who stated that sometime between 7 and 17 October 1849, he and a friend gazed into Yosemite Valley from a spot probably near Old Inspiration Point. Abrams and U. N. Reamer, both of whom worked at Savage’s trading post on the South Fork of the Merced, became lost while hunting and suddenly emerged from the woods to face the amazing vista of Bridalveil Fall, El Capitan, and Half Dome. Despite the belief of some historians that members of the Walker party first viewed the valley, this 1849 date has been accepted by most as the first sighting. Shirley Sargent, Wawona’s Yesterdays, rev. 1973 (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1961), 4.

The precise derivation of the word “Yosemite” is uncertain. (Lieutenant Tredwell Moore, in his report of the 1852 expedition, substituted an “e” as the final letter in the name of the valley, and that spelling was adopted. In 1855 James Hutchings tried to popularize “Yo-Hamite,” which he thought was a more accurate phonetic rendition of the Indian word for grizzly. Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, 63, 67.) Bunnell applied the name to the valley spread” out before him in honor of the Indian tribe who lived there, known to neighboring whites as the Yosemites and to other tribes and among themselves as Ahwahneeches. The exact derivation of the word will probably never be known, for few present-day native Miwok speakers are familiar with the source of many early tribal words. The noted California anthropologist A. L. Kroeber believed that the word Yosemite was derived from uzumati or uhumati, meaning grizzly bear. This seemed to tie in with the tribal ‘ clan system, under which members were divided into either the land or water moiety—social and sometimes ceremonial divisions, with various animals linked to each. The grizzly bear was identified with members of the land moiety. Linguistically, however, the pronunciation of the word becomes Yohemiteh, meaning “they are killers,” and would tend to suggest a warlike attitude on the part of that particular tribe.

Some additional theories have been advanced regarding the choice of the word Yosemite to designate this group of Indians: that the word referred to the fact that the tribe inhabited the mountains and valleys that were favorite haunts of the grizzly bear, which Tenaya’s people reputedly became expert in hunting; that the tribe adopted the name to instill fear in the hearts of its enemies; and that it is associated with an old legend in which a chief of the tribe distinguished himself in combat with an enormous grizzly bear. James E. Cole, “Origin of Name Yosemite,” 1936, typescript, 7 pages, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park, California; Elizabeth Godfrey, Yosemite Indians, rev. 1977 (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1973), 35; Craig Bates, “Names and Meanings for Yosemite Valley,” Yosemite Nature Notes 47, no. 3 (1978): 42-43. ]

[Editor’s note: Bunnell was not the battalion surgeon and received a M. D. degree from a sham medical school several years later. For the correct origin of the word Yosemite see “Origin of the Word Yosemite.”—dea.]

The next day Savage and his men searched the valley floor on both sides of the Merced River, finally scouting up the Tenaya Creek canyon beyond Mirror Lake and ascending the Merced River canyon above Nevada Fall to Little Yosemite Valley, but their search went mostly unrewarded. They found only an old Indian woman, who, unable to keep up with her tribesmen, had been left behind. With supplies running low, Savage and his men remained in the valley only long enough to fire the Indian dwellings and food caches that had been left behind, hoping to starve out the inhabitants and thereby compel them to move to reservations. After Savage’s departure, the Indians returned to salvage what they could from the smoldering ruins of food and clothing.

The Yosemite campaign of the Mariposa Battalion was notably unsuccessful in its primary mission. Not only did it not find the young men of the tribe, but before the troops reached the Indian commissioners’ encampment on Mariposa Creek with those Indians who had agreed to settle on the reservation, Tenaya and the Ahwahneeches and Nutchus who had followed him escaped into the night. The main achievement of the battalion—the discovery of Yosemite Valley—went unheralded.20

[20. See C. Gregory Crampton, ed., The Mariposa Indian War 1850-1851, Diaries of Robert Eccleston: The California Gold Rush, Yosemite, and the High Sierra (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1957) for information on the Mariposa Battalion provided in the personal records of one of its volunteer members and by extensive editorial notes.]

3. Captain John Boling Enters Yosemite Valley

A company of the Mariposa Battalion under the command of Capt. John Boling made a second attempt to surprise and thoroughly subdue the elusive inhabitants of Yosemite Valley in May 1851. Following the same route into the valley pioneered by Savage, Boling established his first camp near the site of present Sentinel Bridge. Initially his men captured five Indians. They subsequently released one son of Tenaya and a son-in-law upon their promise to bring in the elderly chief and all his people. Meanwhile another hostage managed to escape; when the remaining two also worked free of their bonds, they were shot as they tried to break away. Upon his arrival in the camp as a captive, Tenaya was grief-stricken to find his youngest son among the dead. When his band failed to join him in surrendering, Tenaya also attempted unsuccessfully to escape.

Pursuing the rest of the band, numbering some thirty-five people, who seemed to be heading for the land of the Mono Lake Paiutes, Boling and his men surprised them encamped on the shores of present Tenaya Lake. Hungry and exhausted, the Yosemites surrendered. The first expedition into the high country from the west, it was on this occasion that Bunnell applied the name Tenaya to the lake, despite the old chief’s protestations that it already had a name, Py we' ack, “Lake of the Shining Rocks.”21 Tenaya and his people were subsequently assigned to the Fresno River reservation in company with other bands, and the battalion was mustered out of service on 1 July 1851. Unhappy with the lowland humidity, the forced cohabitation with traditional enemies, and the lack of traditional food stuffs, Tenaya repeatedly appealed to return to Yosemite Valley. His wish was granted upon his promise to remain peaceful. Other Indians of the band who managed to quietly leave the reservation later joined him there.

[21. Carl P. Russell, 100 Years in Yosemite: The Story of a Great National Park (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1957), 39.]

4. Lieutenant Tredwell Moore Enters Yosemite Valley

Peace continued until May 1852 when a party of eight prospectors from Coarse Gold Gulch in Mariposa County entered Yosemite Valley. While five of the group were absent from their camp on the Merced River west of Bridalveil Fall hunting and prospecting, the Yosemites attacked and killed two men, the others barely escaping with their lives. The exact cause of the Indian attack is unclear. One version states that an Indian child was murdered shortly after the miners left their camp and that the Indians attacked in retaliation. Another states that the Yosemites had been incited by one of the prospectors who had lured his partners into the valley so that they would be killed and he could take possession of their mine. The two incidents could somehow be related.22

[22. Margaret Sanborn, Yosemite: Its Discovery, Its Wonders, and Its People (New York: Random House, 1981), 57-58; Godfrey, Yosemite Indians, 10.]

Fearing a general Indian outbreak, a detachment of regular army troops under Lt. Tredwell Moore journeyed to the valley from Fort Miller, on the south bank of the San Joaquin River, in June 1852. They shot five Indians found in the valley in possession of. white men’s clothing, suspected to be those of the murdered prospectors. Tenaya and the rest of his band, who might have witnessed the executions, apparently escaped across the Sierra Nevada and took refuge with the Paiutes near Mono Lake. The army unit in pursuit explored around Mono Lake and collected ore samples before returning west again, via Bloody Canyon and Mono Pass, to Tuolumne Meadows and ultimately back to the post through Little Yosemite Valley. Moore’s expedition effectively ended Indian depredations in the area and concluded the “Mariposa Indian War” of the previous three years. Tenaya and his band remained with the Paiutes until late summer 1853, when they again established themselves in their old valley home.

D. Decline in Strength of the Yosemites

Stories differ concerning the breakup of the Yosemites around 1853. According to a member of the original band, it resulted from a hand game between the Yosemites and the Paiutes at Mono Lake. In the excitement of the game, a quarrel developed. In the ensuing fight, the Paiutes stoned to death the old chief and five of his braves. After Tenaya’s death, the remnants of the Yosemite band dispersed. Some stayed on the east side of the Sierra Nevada with the Mono Lake Paiutes, while others joined the Miwok bands along the Tuolumne River. Some possibly moved to Tuolumne Meadows or Pate Valley.23

[23. Different explanations exist for the absence of the Ahwahneeches from Yosemite Valley over the next several years. Another story relates that shortly after the tribe had reestablished itself in the valley, a group of young braves raided the camp of their former protectors, the Mono Lake Paiutes, and stole some horses. In retaliation, a war party descended on the Yosemite camp, attacking with stones. One of the victims was Tenaya. A few of the braves escaped and the older men and women who survived the onslaught were allowed their freedom. The young women and children, however, were enslaved and taken back to Mono Lake. This version was told to Doctor Bunnell by some members of the tribe years later, but was disputed by others. Russell, 100 Years in Yosemite, 46-47, and Sanborn, Yosemite, 59-60.]

E. Historical Indian Occupation of Yosemite Valley

The only known direct ethnographic observations of Yosemite’s early Indian villages come from Bunnell, who described one as it appeared at the moment of white contact, and from James Hutchings, who described a village and Indian daily life in 1886. Throughout the early white period in Yosemite Valley, references appear to its Indian inhabitants, the Central and Southern Miwok, the Paiute, and the mixed-blood descendants of the early Ahwahneeches who had maintained villages in the park area in the pre-contact period. No aboveground remains of the first Indian settlements and sweathouses reported by Bunnell exist. The Indians living in Yosemite Valley during its early settlement by whites occupied three main villages off and on up until the 1930s. One stood near the present Lewis Hospital at the mouth of Indian Canyon, one near the National Park Service maintenance yard, and one near Sentinel Rock, used by visiting Indians from Mariposa and Mono Lake.24

[24. Craig Bates, “A History of the Indian People of Mariposa County,” ms. no. 10937, 1975, 30, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park. See Bennyhoff, Appraisal of the Archaeological Resources of Yosemite National Park, 8-9, for a discussion of valley village sites.]

During the pioneer period, Indians were part of the daily life of Yosemite, working for concessioners and later the federal government. The control of Yosemite Valley and its resources by the whites meant the end of the traditional Indian way of life. The native population, once able to roam the valley at will, harvesting acorns and hunting game, became dependent on the white man for food and money to support themselves. The women served as maids and cooks and sold baskets to tourists, while the men worked on trail and road crews and at small jobs such as woodcutting and fishing. Two shacks inhabited by Indian woodcutters existed at Wawona and an Indian camp of shacks and more traditional dwellings lay across the South Fork from the Wawona Hotel in the 1800s.25

[ 25. John C. Whittaker, Archeology in Yosemite National Park: The Wawona Testing Project, Publications in Anthropology, No. 18 (Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981), 67.]

Acting Superintendent A. E. Wood reported that about thirty-five Indians lived within the park in 1891. In summer they fished, chopped wood, harvested hay, washed clothes, and worked about the hotels for a living. In winter they hunted, placer mined, and performed whatever odd jobs they could find. In that year the chiefs and headmen of the existing members of the Yosemite tribe sent a petition to the President of the United States declaring that they had been unfairly deprived of their land and compelled to witness the daily encroachment of white men on their valley. They complained that the state of California was turning the valley into a hay farm and cattle range rather than a park, and that a few whites who desired only to make money controlled the lands. The destruction of trees and the extensive grazing by large herds of horses and cattle restricted the gathering of acorns and nuts and the hunting of game. These conditions, plus the decimation of fish in the river, were slowly driving the small Indian population away. The Indians petitioned the U. S. Government for one million dollars, for which amount they would convey all their natural right and title to Yosemite Valley and its environs. (It should be remembered that the Ahwahneeches had never signed a treaty giving up their tribal lands.) Not surprisingly, the Indians proved unsuccessful in this attempt at reimbursement for the loss of tribal lands.26

[26. “Petition to the Senators and Representatives of the Congress of the United States. In behalf of the remnants of the Former Tribes of the Yosemite Indians Praying for Aid and Assistance,” in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), Record Group (RG) 79, National Archives (NA), Washington, D. C.]

By the 1920s, most of the Indian population in Yosemite Valley had settled in the village at the mouth of Indian Canyon in semi-aboriginal houses with boards and canvas added. Their children attended boarding school in Nevada to learn English, and many of the old customs, such as dancing, acorn harvesting, and basketry, began to die out. At that time the Park Service attempted to recreate Indian culture and crafts by encouraging basket making and through such means as the short-lived Indian Field Days. In 1933 the Park Service established a new Indian Village in the valley, just west of Camp Sunnyside—the last village of Indian people in the Yosemite region. As the older members died, their children were not allowed to take over the homes and ultimately moved away. In 1969 the Park Serviced moved the one remaining family in the Indian Village to a residential section and burned the village.27

[27. Bates, “History of the Indian People of Mariposa County,” 30-33.]

F. Historical Indian Occupation of El Portal

It is known that Indians occupied Rancheria Flat at El Portal, north of the Merced River, during the 1850s and 1880s.28 Little information exists on Indians in the area until the early 1900s, when several Indian people lived at scattered sites in the Merced River canyon. A few individuals stayed at El Portal Rancheria south of the Merced, mostly in tents. They earned money during this time in a variety of ways. The native women sold traditional basketry and beadwork and did laundry, while the men worked in the former Hennessey ranch garden or cultivated their own orchards. Occasionally the El Portal native population hosted Indian celebrations of two to three days’ duration, attracting people from as far away as Mono Lake.

[28. Craig D. Bates and Karen P. Wells, Late Aboriginal and Early Anglo Occupation of El Portal, Yosemite National Park, California (Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981), 5.]

In the late 1920s, Indians from Yosemite Valley still came to El Portal in the winter, although some journeyed east across the mountains to the Paiute camps. By the 1930s, most of the Indian population of El Portal lived near Crane Creek. Other individuals briefly occupied Indian Flat in the 1930s, though later some moved to Yosemite Valley on a permanent or part-time basis, many to find employment, returning to El Portal in the winter. After World War II, a few people still lived on Crane Creek, but by the late 1940s the last Indian village in El Portal had been abandoned.29

[29. Ibid., 6-12.]

G. Remains of Indian Occupation in Yosemite National Park

Recent archeological work in Yosemite National Park during 1985-86 has revealed over 100 sites in Yosemite Valley alone. Archeological’ remains there, at El Portal, at Wawona, and in other park areas consist of habitation sites; bedrock mortars, hammerstones, manos, and pestles for grinding acorns and vegetable materials into meal; midden deposits, containing artifacts and food by-products; rock shelters; lithic scatters; petroglyphs; and pictographs. Some isolated burials have been found. The Yosemite Valley Archeological District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, comprising 8,100 acres of valley floor and ninety-eight sites. Other significant cultural areas listed in the register are: Wawona Archeological District, forty-two sites; Foresta-Big Meadow Archeological District, twenty-two sites; Tuolumne Meadows Archeological District, fifty-nine sites; and the El Portal Archeological District, eleven sites. Determinations of eligibility have been acquired for archeological districts at Aspen Valley, five sites; Crane Flat, seven sites; Eagle Peak, three sites; Hetch Hetchy, two sites; Mariposa Grove, three sites; Snow Creek/Mt. Watkins, four sites; White Wolf, four sites; and Yosemite Creek, five sites.

El Portal contains settlement sites at Rancheria Flat and El Portal Rancheria, where a few historic frame Indian houses stood until the 1930s. Upslope from the latter site is a Native American cemetery used during the early twentieth century. It contains an undetermined number of unmarked graves and one marked grave (1930). The historic and prehistoric settlement at Rancheria Flat is important for the data it provides on both aboriginal and early Anglo occupation.

Many of the known archeological resources in Yosemite have been damaged or destroyed by visitor pothunting; by construction of roads, trails, parking lots, sewage treatment facilities, and buildings; by excavations for utility trenches; by the digging of borrow pits; and by landscaping activities. These impede the detailed recordation of features, the collection and analysis of artifacts, and the professional excavation work necessary to acquire valuable information for archeological and environmental studies. The importance of archeological and historical archeological resources in Yosemite National Park is in providing data on the prehistoric and early historic environment and occupation of the Yosemite region. Information in aboveground remains and subsurface deposits can aid in the formulation of a cultural chronology of tribal development in the Central Sierra and can serve as a comparative base for regional studies dealing with Central Valley, Great Basin, and Sierra populations, environment, settlement and trading patterns, and other interrelationships. A more immediate management need is a continuing basic inventory of archeological resources to facilitate the cultural resources management process. (See Appendix B for a chronological overview of archeological investigations in Yosemite National Park.)

H. Remains of White Exploration in Yosemite Valley

No tangible remains exist from the Mariposa Battalion passage through Yosemite Valley or from the expeditions under Captain Boling or Lieutenant Moore. The old Indian trail troops followed over Chowchilla Mountain approximated the later route of the Chowchilla Mountain road to Wawona. Their route into Yosemite Valley became the saddle trail used by early tourists and eventually evolved into the Wawona-Yosemite Valley wagon road. It met the present road above Bridalveil Fall. Savage’s overlook into the valley, Old Inspiration Point, can be reached by a hike up the Pohono Trail from the new road.

On entering Yosemite Valley, the members of the first expedition of the Mariposa Battalion camped near the foot of Bridalveil Fall, probably in Bridalveil Meadow; they pitched their second camp at the mouth of Indian Canyon. According to Bunnell, their longest encampment occupied an area near the later site of Barnard’s Hotel.30 Captain John Boling and his company followed Savage’s route, establishing their first camp near present Sentinel Bridge. The site of the 1852 prospector’s camp lay probably on or near Bridalveil Meadow. The marked graves of the two murdered miners—Sherburn (Shurbon, according to Bunnell) and Rose—lay close to Bridalveil Fall.31 An early valley resident stated that one of the men, however, possibly fled as far east as the terminal moraine at El Capitan, upon which he was buried. A large stone and crude marker, both later removed, marked that site.32

[30. L. H. Bunnell, in Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1889-90 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890), 12.]

[31. Carl P. Russell, “The Geography of the Mariposa Indian War (No. 3),” Yosemite Nature Notes 30, no. 6 (June 1951): 54.]

[32. E. Beatty, “Early Historical Sites and Information Obtained from a Personal Tour with Charles Leidig,” 21 July 1933, in Separates File, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park, 2.]

I. Tourism to Yosemite Valley Begins

1. A Three-Year Lull

In the fall of 1853 more prospectors entered Yosemite Valley, but, despite finding some promising ore along the Merced River, did not attempt to stay and explore further for fear of Indian attack. The next year James Capen Adams, a hunter and wild animal trainer, visited the valley to capture grizzly bears. Despite those occasional visits and the resulting brief allusions to the valley’s stupendous rock formations, impressive waterfalls, and magnificent forest scenery, general knowledge of the valley did not spread quickly. Gold deposits held more interest for Californians of that day than scenery, and so the spectacular valley remained practically undisturbed.

2. James M. Hutchings Inspects Yosemite Valley

By 1855 several accounts written by members of the three military expeditions to Yosemite had been published in San Francisco newspapers. One entry by the only other member of the Mariposa Battalion who felt compelled to mention the amazing sights he had seen, including a 1,000-foot-high waterfall, caught the attention of James Mason Hutchings. Hutchings had come to America from England and gradually worked his way across the plains to the California mines during the Gold Rush. At that time a magazine publisher, Hutchings remained always on the lookout for new material, and besides, his curiosity to see such a marvel was piqued.

In 1855, therefore, he organized the first tourist party to journey to the mysterious valley. The group comprised Hutchings, the pioneer artist/illustrator Thomas A. Ayres, Wesley Millard, and Alexander Stair. Some difficulty arose in finding reliable guides, but finally two Yosemite Indians living on the Fresno River agreed to perform that service. They followed the route of the earlier Mariposa Battalion, from Mariposa, over the Chowchilla Mountains to present Wawona, and then along the Alder Creek Indian trail to Yosemite Valley via Old Inspiration Point. Thrilled almost beyond words by the panorama of peaks, meadows, creeks, and waterfalls spread out below him, Hutchings became an instant Yosemite devotee. He gathered copious notes on the scenery while Ayers tried to capture on paper the cliffs, domes, and falls—the first sketches ever made in Yosemite—and Millard and Stair hunted and fished to sustain the expedition.

After five days of glorious vistas and frantic note-taking, Hutchings’s party turned back toward San Francisco, stopping briefly in Mariposa. As a result of his description of the trip to the editor of the Mariposa Gazette, on 12 July 1855 [Editor’s note: the correct publication date is 9 August 1855 —dea.] the first printed description of Yosemite Valley appeared, written by an enthusiastic sightseer not the least concerned with looking for gold or hunting for elusive Yosemites. Additional articles illustrated with Ayres’s lithographs appeared in Hutchings’s California Magazine, which were copied and republished by papers throughout California and the rest of the country. It may fairly be said that public knowledge and appreciation of Yosemite Valley began with the 1855 Hutchings visit.

3. Publicity on Yosemite Valley Reaches the East Coast

During the ten years after Hutchings’s first descriptions of Yosemite Valley appeared, both local and national interest in the area and the nearby Big Tree Grove grew rapidly. Only a year after Hutchings’s introductory article appeared in the Mariposa Gazette, the East was provocatively informed of the striking natural wonder on the Pacific Coast through an article in the California Christian Advocate republished in Country Gentleman.33 In the summer of 1859 Horace Greeley, owner and editor of the New York Tribune visited Yosemite, unfortunately on a very hurried trip. Exhausted and saddlesore from a sixty-mile nonstop mule ride from Bear Valley, Greeley was in a foul mood by the time he reached Yosemite Valley. He stayed only one day, grumbling most of the time, but wrote later that Yosemite was truly the most amazing of nature’s marvels.

[33. Hans Huth, “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea,” reprinted by Yosemite Natural History Association from the Sierra Club Bulletin (March 1948): 26.]

The first descriptions of Yosemite to reach the East were sketchy, written by people without particular literary abilities. Easterners read the articles, therefore, with interest, but also with a grain of salt. The best descriptions of Yosemite, and those which carried the most weight with Eastern readers, comprised those submitted by Thomas Starr King, the noted Unitarian minister and lecturer and author of several books on the American landscape. The series of eight articles that he sent to the Boston Evening Transcript, from 1 December 1860 to 9 February 1861, acquainted Eastern readers with the beauties of Yosemite as nothing had previously. Because he was widely respected, the East took King’s comments seriously. His eight letters printed in the Transcript “constituted the first thorough description of the Yosemite Valley to obtain widespread national circulation.”34 Yosemite’s attributes were finally nationally accepted as scenically outstanding when praised by writers of the repute of King and Greeley.

[34. Stanford E. Demars, “The Triumph of Tradition: A Study of Tourism in Yosemite National Park, California” (Ph. D. diss., University of Oregon, 1970), 32.]

Publicists also helped arouse national support for preservation of Yosemite Valley by introducing readers to the wonders of the West in popular works that enjoyed tremendous followings. Samuel Bowles, editor and publisher of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican and one of the most influential newspaper editors of his time, published important essays in Across the Continent (Springfield, Mass.: Samuel Bowles & Co., 1865) and Our New West (Hartford, Conn., 1869), while Albert D. Richardson, correspondent for the New York Tribune, produced Beyond the Mississippi in 1867. Each of these publications helped promote fascination with the American West.

In addition to written reports, landscape painters and photographers produced pictures that were equally important in arousing public interest in America’s scenic values by showing visually what was being written about and dramatizing what would be lost without proper concern for natural resources. Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran stimulated the public appreciation of Yosemite with their beautiful if somewhat exaggerated replications of its grandeur. The photos of C. L. Weed displayed in California in 1859 and others taken by Carleton E. Watkins in 1863 and constantly exhibited in New York galleries also helped spread the word of the beauties of the valley and the Big Trees and contributed to an understanding and appreciation of their values in Congress. These photographic efforts seem especially superb when viewed in light of the tremendous difficulties involved in hauling cumbersome equipment around on pack animals. Israel W. Raymond, one of the proponents of the Yosemite Grant, wisely supplied Sen. John Conness of California with a collection of Watkins’s Yosemite views to use when he submitted his draft for the Yosemite Act.

4. Publicity Encourages Visitation

a) Trails and Tourist Facilities on the Way to Yosemite Valley

Not surprisingly, Hutchings’s accounts of the wonders of Yosemite Valley stimulated excited interest in nearby mining camps, such as Mariposa, and even farther away in the larger cities of San Francisco, Stockton, and Sacramento. Tourist travel to Yosemite began as those readers became Interested in viewing such extraordinary grandeur for themselves. A few crude trails worn by the Indians as they followed game into the mountain wilderness, pursued trade, or visited neighboring tribes constituted the only means of entering the valley, and the way was long and arduous. Regularly used Indian paths were not initially recorded but memorized by all who needed them and rerouted periodically as conditions dictated. Gradually extended use “improved” the footpaths, which became passable horse trails for visitors. These did not form a trail system as we know it today, but were merely direct routes running up and down hills. Seldom marked other than with sticks or pine needles, and therefore difficult to discern, those rough trails served early travelers well, although they often required Indian guides. By the time the first tourist parties entered the valley, most of the trails earlier white explorers had followed had been almost obliterated due to lack of use.

In the foothills regions west and south of the park a number of ancient Indian paths provided a network through the hills over which miners and packers threaded their way east across the Sierra Nevada. Sheepherders driving their flocks into the high country during the summer also followed some of those trails as well as pioneering their own. All Indian trails leading over the mountains from the south toward Yosemite Valley converged at the South Fork of the Merced near the former Nutchu camp at present Wawona. From there two routes went north. The easier trail followed Alder Creek to its source on the plateau and led from there across to the rim of Yosemite Valley. The other trail, more passable in winter but also more difficult, followed further down the South Fork before cutting over to the predecessor of the later Hennessey trail into Yosemite Valley, which cut south from El Portal and then ran east toward Grouse Creek.35

[35. Hazel M. Whedon, “The History of the Roads, Trails, and Hotels in and Near Yosemite National Park” (M. A. thesis, University of Southern California, 1934), 10-11.]

The Ahwahneeches could climb up out of Yosemite Valley through Indian Canyon, possibly by following Yosemite Creek, or via the Vernal and Nevada falls’ gorge of the Merced River. The Foresta/Big Meadow area and the Mono Trail could be reached from near El Portal via Crane Creek. The Old Inspiration Point-Wawona-Fresno Flats (Oakhurst)-Coarse Gold route gave access to the foothills to the west. The Merced River gorge seldom served as access to the valley. Other ancient routes in and around Yosemite Valley were probably only periodically used by Indians and were inaccessible to the average white tourist.

One of the primary prehistoric lanes of travel across the Sierra Nevada north of Yosemite Valley was the Mono Trail, which, on its way west from the Mono Lake area, passed up present Bloody Canyon, over Mono Pass, down the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River, through Tuolumne Meadows to Cathedral Pass, and past Tenaya Lake. It left the present Tioga Road corridor near Porcupine Flat, headed west-southwest to Yosemite Creek, then south to Bluejay Creek, which it followed west to Ribbon and Big meadows. There, at a major Indian settlement, it connected with routes to Big Oak Flat, the Merced River, and other points in the San Joaquin Valley. Current archeological and historical data indicates that this is one of the oldest continuously used trails in the Sierra Nevada and possibly the western United States, having been used first probably by game animals and then successively by Indians, explorers, sheepherders, miners, poachers, the U. S. Army, early High Sierra tourists, and finally by trans-Sierra auto travelers. As mentioned previously, Walker probably followed portions of this route, as did Lieutenant Moore in his pursuit of the fleeing band of Yosemites in 1852. Later, around 1857, Tom McGee, a businessman of Big Oak Flat, further blazed the trail, joining it to the Big Oak Flat Trail to facilitate passage by miners and packers to the mining towns east of the Sierra.

The main Mono Trail had several branches to Yosemite Valley and other parts of the high country. In addition to taking travelers west, the trail divided at Cathedral Pass, with one branch

Illustration 4. Historical Base Map No. 1. Early trails, Yosemite National Park (compiled by author). DSC, #104 25013, May 1987.

[click to enlarge]

passing Tenaya Lake and entering Yosemite Valley near Mirror Lake. The other branch came down north of Cathedral Peak and south of Half Dome to Little Yosemite Valley and continued southwest across Illilouette and Bridalveil creeks. There the trail forked again, one branch dropping via Old Inspiration Point to the lower end of the valley floor while the other crossed the divide to Alder Creek and continued south.

Although miners, who comprised most of the early visitors, were not deterred by the hardships involved in following barely discernible Indian trails, few less hardy individuals were likely to attempt the journey. Two participants in an early sightseeing trip, Milton and Houston Mann, began to envision the large number of tourists that might be attracted if an easier way into Yosemite Valley existed. In 1856 Andrew A., Houston, and Milton Mann, livery stable owners from Mariposa, obtained permission from the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors to construct a trail or toll road for horse and foot traffic
commencing near the Mormon Bar on the Mariposa Creek, and thence eastwardly and to the left of the ranch known as the ranch of McVicar & Co. continuing thence in the same general direction to an intersection with the wagon road leading to the Saw Mill of McNeil & Co. Thence to a Ranch on the middle fork of the Chowchilla—known as the Potato Ranch. Thence eastwardly to the south fork of the Chowchilla, then northwardly, crossing the divide between the Chowchilla and the South Fork of the Merced River. Thence crossing the heads of Alder Creek to the lower end of the YoHamite Valley, thence through the said Valley to the upper end thereof near the great Natural Falls. The entire distance being about Forty miles. . . .36

[ 36. Court of Sessions, Mariposa County, C:129, in Separates file, Yosemite—Roads, #20, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, ]

The Mann brothers obtained authority to collect toll on this route for twenty years and immediately commenced building. Upon completion of the trail in 1856, at a cost of $700.00, foot travelers paid $1.00 and horseback riders $2.00 each way. The trail ran east of the Yosemite National Park. present Wawona highway. Midway along the trail, travelers arrived at a scenic meadow at the South Fork of the Merced River. There another early visitor, Galen Clark, settled and established a simple hotel. A Canadian by birth, and plagued by tuberculosis most of his life, Clark had resided in New Hampshire, Missouri, and Pennsylvania before journeying to the California goldfields in 1853, where he mined and surveyed. In 1855 he accompanied a tourist party to Yosemite Valley, and still in poor health and believing that he had only a short time to live, in 1856 filed a claim on the site of the 1851 camp of the Mariposa Battalion at the South Fork of the Merced River. By 1857 he had built a twelve-by-sixteen-foot cabin on the west end of the meadow, an area that is now part of the Wawona Hotel golf course. His rude hostelry became known as Clark’s Station or Clark’s Crossing and functioned as a rest stop for travelers journeying from Mariposa to Yosemite Valley. In 1857, or perhaps 1858, Clark constructed a bridge across the South Fork of the Merced River as part of an early road to the valley. Originally an open frame structure, it consisted of heavy handhewn logs.37

[ 37. The Wawona covered bridge measures 15 feet wide and 125 feet long. After the Washburn brothers purchased Clark’s interests in 1875, they roofed the bridge and enclosed the sides to keep water and snow off the trestles. Lumber for the covering came from their nearby sawmill. In 1900 approach spans were added to each end of this bridge. It was used until 1931 and then replaced by a modern concrete bridge on the new Wawona Road. The Civilian Conservation Corps completed general repair work, including the addition of stone masonry to the substructure, in 1937. The flood of December 1955 damaged the bridge, and, as a result, Superintendent John Preston received an order from National Park Service Director Conrad Wirth to pull the structure ashore pending a decision as to whether money could be found to reconstruct it. MISSION 66 envisioned developing an interpretive center at Wawona, and the Park Service determined that the bridge could be an important part of that endeavor. A crew built a trestle beneath the bridge, raised it and placed it on rollers, and pulled it ashore with cables from a bulldozer-powered winch. The Park Service dismantled and reconstructed the bridge in 1956-57 utilizing many original members. Some timbers were replaced in 1961 and again in 1983 when the Park Service corrected structural safety hazards following an inspection of the structure. The Wawona covered bridge is the only one in the Yosemite region and one of the few in the West. It is used daily by horses and visitors as a central feature of the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. Such structures are uncommon now in California, most having burned, rotted, or been swept away by floods. Lonnie E. Moss, Western Inspection Unit Coordinator, “Summary of Findings, Bridge Safety Inspection Report, S. F. Merced River Bridge (Wawona Service Road), Structure No. 8800-015T,” inspected 16 October 1977, in Maintenance Office files, Valley Administration Building, Yosemite National Park. ]

Sometime prior to June 1859, Clark relocated to the eastern side of the meadow, where the present Wawona Hotel stands. He began his small hotel as a tent tavern, where guests slept around an open fire. He later built a log cabin as a dining facility and used tents as dormitories. A simple and kindly host, although never much of a businessman, Clark became an expert on the geography, geology, and botany of the Yosemite region and an influential advocate of the preservation of Yosemite Valley as well as its state Guardian for many years.

The toll for the Mann brothers’ trail was collected at White and Hatch’s, a farm and sawmill about twelve miles from Mariposa that later became an inn. Those miles were rough, and the track on to Clark’s Station even more difficult. From there, the scenic trail ascended Alder Creek to its headwaters in Westfall Meadows, crossed over to the Bridalveil Creek drainage, and ultimately reached Old Inspiration Point on the south rim of Yosemite Valley. From that summit it dropped abruptly to the valley floor near the foot of Bridalveil Fall. The Mann brothers were forced in 1859 to sell their trail at one-third its original cost to Mariposa County, which made it a free route. Sometime during the next few years sheepherders established camps in the lush meadows crossed by the Mann brothers’ trail. Westfall Meadows contained two rough shelters, Westfall’s and Ostrander’s cabins, that were sometimes used by travelers who did not wish to complete the exhausting trip to Yosemite Valley in one day. Harvey J. Ostrander settled near Bridalveil Creek in the early 1860s.

From the 1850s to the early 1870s, Stockton served as a major point of departure for Yosemite tourists, so that routes entering the valley from the north appeared more convenient and highly desirable. In addition, the amount of business that had been generated along the Mariposa route for hotelkeepers and liverymen prompted the businessmen of Coulterville and Big Oak Flat to seek similar patronage. In 1857 Lafayette Bunnell, George W. Coulter, and others began construction of the Coulterville Free Trail, which ran to Bull Creek, and passed through Deer Flat, Hazel Green, Crane Flat, and Tamarack Flat to Gentry, before descending to the valley floor. The route stretched for forty-eight miles, only seventeen of which could be traveled by carriage.38

[38. A Belgian miner, Jean-Nicolas Perlot, stated later that because of his familiarity with the approaches to Yosemite Valley, Coulter and his associates hired him to open the trail from Coulterville to Yosemite. Perlot claimed he directed ten Indians in hacking out the trail for pack mules. See his interesting account of the opening of the Coulterville Free Trail in Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut during the Gold Rush Years, trans, by Helen Harding Bretnor, ed. by Howard R. Lamar (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 292-300, and compare to that of Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite, 315-16.]

Another early free horse trail entering Yosemite Valley from the north began at the village of Big Oak Flat, six miles north of Coulterville, and followed a thirty-two-mile-long route north of the Coulterville Trail through Garrote in Tuolumne County, via Sprague’s and Hardin’s ranches on the South Fork of the Tuolumne River, to a junction with the Coulterville Trail between Crane and Tamarack flats.

According to J. D. Whitney’s guidebook of 1868, the Hetch Hetchy Valley could be reached from Big Oak Flat via the trail to Yosemite, passing by Sprague’s ranch and continuing on to that of Hardin, where, about eighteen miles from Big Oak Flat, the trail ran to the north, crossing the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne to Hog Ranch, then following up the divide between the Middle Fork and main river to another small ranch called “the Canon.” From there the trail wound d9wn for six miles to the Tuolumne River.39

[39. Irene D. Paden and Margaret E. Schlictmann, The Big Oak Flat Road: An Account of Freighting from Stockton to Yosemite Valley (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1959), 309-10.]

b) Early Hotels in Yosemite Valley

According to James Hutchings, between 1855 and 1864 the number of visitors to Yosemite Valley totalled 653. By 1874, with the completion of the first stage roads into the valley, travel had increased to more than 2,700 visitors annually. Because of the vast distances involved and the slow progress of the journey due to the ruggedness of the terrain, early travelers to Yosemite did not just come for a one-day visit. The necessity for tourist accommodations in the valley became obvious. Most early visitors expected to rough it and, because they were hardy frontiersmen, could accept the crude accommodations so hurriedly provided. Hotel keeping played an important part in Yosemite’s history from the very beginning.

The first shelter constructed by white men in Yosemite Valley consisted of a flimsy plank shack erected in 1855 by a party of surveyors. Interested in the valley as a supplementary source of water for Mariposa and for the huge Mexican grant known as the Mariposa Estate, being developed by John C. Fremont, the survey party probably assumed that a claim in the valley would ensure water privileges.

The first permanent hotel structure in the valley, begun in 1856 by Messrs. Anderson, Ramsdell, Coward, and Walsworth, and finished by Buck Beardsley and Stephen M. Cunningham, stood on the south side of the Merced River near the foot of the later Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point. The hewn-pine-board structure known as the Lower Hotel functioned more as a saloon until crushed by snow during the winter of 1857-58. It reopened the next year as an inn, run by John H. Neal and his wife Jean for Cunningham, who had ended his business association with Beardsley in the fall of 1857. The structure
looked like a barn, and its “rooms” resembled stalls. Windows were glassless, floors of dirt or pine boughs, and beds springless. Mattresses were ticking stuffed with hay, bracken, or some other soft material, and sanitary facilities consisted of a wash pan and a path. Chickens and cows outnumbered wild animals, and meadows had been planted to hay and grain. Comforts were at a minimum—but surrounding beauty so great that few lodgers complained.40
Cunningham kept the lodge himself during the 1859-60 season. In 1861 he sold the Lower Hotel to Mrs. Alex G. Black, who rented it to Peter Longhurst, and to others; eventually G. F. Leidig took it over in 1866.

[ 40. Shirley Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1975), 12. ]

Prior to their interest in the Lower Hotel, Cunningham and Beardsley had attempted to start a store and tent shelter on the site of the later Cedar Cottage. After Cunningham dropped the venture, Buck Beardsley and his new partner, Gustavus Adolphus Hite, older brother of the millionaire miner John R. Hite of Hite’s Cove, erected a canvas-covered hostelry a mile east of Neal’s hotel in the later Old Village area in the fall of 1857. They replaced it in 1859 with a two-story wooden structure whose timbers, rafters, joists, and siding were hewn and whipsawed from local timber. The first photograph in Yosemite Valley, of Beardsley and Hite’s new Upper Hotel, was taken that year by pioneer photographer Charles L. Weed. [Editor’s note: Charles Leander Weed’s first photograph, taken June 18, 1859 was of Yosemite Falls, not Beardsley and Hite’s new Upper Hotel, which was photographed 3 days later—dea.] The business did not prosper, however, and ultimately Sullivan and Cashman, creditors in San Francisco, took it over. Charles Peck leased the hotel from 1860 to 1861 and then Peter Longhurst took over before James Hutchings finally purchased it.41

[41. It is interesting to note that each new hotel on the valley floor took form upriver from the previous ones. This undoubtedly was due largely to the fact that those hotels dumped their sewage directly into the Merced River. The only clean water after development began existed upstream.]

5. Discovery of Giant Sequoia Groves

a) Tuolumne Grove

As mentioned earlier, Joseph Rutherford Walker may have seen the Tuolumne Grove in 1833 as he made his way over the Sierra Nevada into the San Joaquin Valley. Whether the giant “Red-wood species” he and his men noted stood in the Tuolumne or Merced groves is uncertain. This particular grove consists of some twenty-five Big Trees beside the present Big Oak Flat Road. The grove remained unknown and unvisited for years.

Dr. J. L. Cogswell stated in 1910 that he and eight others discovered the grove on 10 May 1858. Their party had left Garrote, near Big Oak Flat, for a sightseeing trip to Yosemite Valley. While encamped at Crane Flat, one of the party shot a deer, but the wounded animal ran away. The next day the party set out on the trail of the deer and came by accident upon a group of magnificent trees. So overawed were they that they forgot the deer and spent the day exploring the area.

They particularly noted a giant tree with its interior hollowed out by fire. They named it King Solomon’s Temple, although it later came to be called the Dead Giant. Cogswell immediately reported his discovery to the San Francisco, Daily Evening Bulletin, and the grove quickly became a regular stop for tourists on their way to the valley.42

[42. John Adam Hussey, “Discovery of the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees,” Yosemite Nature Notes, 16, no. 8 (August 1937): 60-63.]

William McCarthy, Dave Lumsden, and James J. Lumsden carved out the Dead Giant Tree in 1878, creating a tunnel through which stages passed for many years.43 According to Hutchings, this was the first giant sequoia tree cut through. W. G. Marshall, who visited the Big Tree groves and Yosemite Valley in June of that year, related:
We came to the Tuolumne Big Tree Grove, [and came upon] . . . a tunnel through the stump of one of the largest sequoias in the grove, through which the road passes, and the stagecoach is driven. . . . The tunnel measures 12 feet, and it is 10 1/2 feet wide at the top. . . . The tunnel had only been completed a week before our visit to the grove, the first coachful having passed through the stump on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 18.44

[43. J. B. DeMartini to Carl P. Russell, 20 January 1950, in Separates File, Y-4b, #18, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park.]

[44. W. G. Marshall, Through America, or Nine Months in the United States, cited in William C. Godfrey, “Tunnelled Big Trees,” Yosemite Nature Notes 10, no. 6 (June 1931): 54.]

At Crane Flat, Yosemite visitors have a chance to drive not only one of the original sections of the old Big Oak Flat Road, but also through a tunnel tree. A 0.1-mile spur leads into the Tuolumne Grove and passes through the Dead Giant, returning to the old Big Oak Flat Road just below that point. This is the only tree in Yosemite that one can still drive through and has special interest because it contains several carved signatures of early visitors.

b) Mariposa Grove

Several hundred giant sequoias were discovered possibly as early as 1849 in this famous grove of Big Trees. L. H. Bunnell recorded that in 1851 a laborer declared he had seen Big Trees in the vicinity of the Mariposa Grove two years earlier. Stephen F. Grover, a member of the prospecting party that entered Yosemite Valley in 1852, wrote of passing through the grove in that year. In 1857 Galen Clark and Milton Mann explored the grove of giant sequoias six miles southeast of Wawona, whose size and age made them an additional highlight of a sightseeing tour to Yosemite Valley, especially after Mann built a horse trail to the site.45
[45. Grover’s manuscript states that the prospectors followed up Coarse Gold Gulch into the Sierra Nevada and took an Indian trail through the Mariposa Big Tree Grove and on along the South Fork of the Merced into the valley. Those men probably comprised the first party of whites to enter the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. Russell, 100 Years in Yosemite, 40. According to James Hutchings, a Mr. Hogg first discovered the Mariposa Grove in late summer 1855. He passed by the trees but did not stop to thoroughly investigate them. On hearing of his discovery, Clark and Mann determined in 1856 to visit and explore the grove; they were definitely the first to publicize the area. James M. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras (Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press Publishing Co., 1886), 256.]

At first few visited the grove because no wagon road reached it or continued on from there to Yosemite Valley. After the Washburns constructed those roads, the grove became a popular stopping place on the way to the valley. It is almost two groves within one, because there is a lower section containing the Grizzly Giant and an upper one with the Wawona Tunnel Tree and the scenic overlook at Wawona Point. Altogether the grove contains about 500 mature giant sequoias spread over 250 acres.

The grove came under state protection in 1864 along with Yosemite Valley. The giant sequoias are not as tall as the coast redwood, but are older and more massive. Some are more than 3,500 years old. In the late 1800s, thousands of sequoias were logged in the Sierra, even though their lumber is brittle. This activity continued until 1890 when the expansion of Yosemite and the creation of Sequoia National Park protected some of the remaining groves.

When Caroline Churchill visited the Mariposa Grove in 1881, she noted that many of the Big Trees bore the names of various states, e. g., Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois. At that time, any person could name a tree. Parties desiring a permanent designation were required to donate a sign with the name painted on it. Some people sent white marble name plates and others metal ones. Most were jappaned tin and placed high on the tree to avoid vandalism.46

[46. Caroline M. Churchill, Over the Purple Hills, or Sketches of Travel in California (Denver: Mrs. C M. Churchill, publ., 1884), 203. By 1930 it was no longer park practice to identify trees by tablets or signs. All of those remaining were removed in 1929. ]

The Wawona Tree was tunnelled in 1881. Again according to W. G. Marshall:
The Wawona tree is the most conspicuous of all the big trees. . . . the tunnel was cut . . . by two brothers named Scribner, who were paid $75, for their labor by the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company shortly after completion of the first road into the Mariposa Grove.47

[47. Marshall, cited in Godfrey, “Tunnelled Big Trees,” 54.]

The Scribner brothers enlarged an old burn scar to a tunnel size of 6 1/2 to 8 feet wide, 9 feet high, and 26 feet long. The Wawona Tunnel Tree fell in 1969 under a heavy snow load in its upper branches.

About 100 yards along the path beyond the Grizzly Giant is the California Tree, the other of the two sequoias in Mariposa Grove that have been tunnelled. Cut through in 1895, it served as a substitute during periods when heavy snows made the Wawona Tunnel Tree inaccessible. The Park Service abandoned the access through the California Tree in 1932 during realignment of the grove road.

c) Merced Grove

As stated, this small grove of Big Trees might have been seen by the Joseph Walker expedition in 1833. During survey work for the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Road in 1871-72, Dr. John T. McLean discovered the grove and named it for its proximity to the Merced River.

CHAPTER II: YOSEMITE VALLEY AS A STATE GRANT, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, 1864-1890

A. Interest Mounts Toward Preserving the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove 51
1. Yosemite Act of 1864 51
a. Steps Leading to the Preservation of Yosemite Valley 51
b) Frederick Olmsted‘s Treatise on Parks 55
c) Significance of the Yosemite Grant 59

B. State Management of the Yosemite Grant 65
1. Land Surveys 65
2. Immediate Problems Facing the State 66
3. Settlers‘ Claims 69
4. Trails 77
a) Early Survey Work 77
b) Routes To and Around Yosemite Valley 78
c) Tourist Trails in the Valley 79
(1) Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point 80
(2) Indian Canyon Trail 82
(3) Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak Trail 83
(4) Rim Trail, Pohono Trail 83
(5) Clouds Rest and Half (South) Dome Trails 84
(6) Vernal Fall and Mist Trails 85
(7) Snow Trail 87
(8) Anderson Trail 88
(9) Panorama Trail 88
(10) Ledge Trail 89

5. Improvement of Trails 89
a) Hardships Attending Travel to Yosemite Valley 89
b) Yosemite Commissioners Encourage Road Construction 91
c) Work Begins on the Big Oak Flat and Coulterville Roads 92
d) Improved Roads and Railroad Service increase Visitation 94
e) The Coulterville Road Reaches the Valley floor 95
1) A New Transportation Era Begins 95
2) Later History 99
f) The Big Oak Flat Road Reaches the Valley Floor 100
g) Antagonism Between Road Companies increases 103
h) The Wawona Road Reaches the Valley floor 106
i) Roads with in the Reservation boundary 110
6. Development of Concession Operations 114
a) Hotels and Recreational Establishments 114
(1) Upper Hotel 115
(2) Lower Hotel/Black‘s Hotel 122
(3) Leidig‘s Hotel 122
(4) Mountain View House 123
(5) Wawona Hotel 126
(6) La Casa Nevada 133
(7) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon 135
(8) Mountain House 138
(9) Stoneman House 139
b) Stores, Studios, and Other Services 145
(1) Harris Campground 145
(2) Degnan Bakery 146
(3) Fiske Studio 147
(4) Bolton and Westfall Butcher shop 147
(5) Flores Laundry 148
(6) Cavagnaro Store 148 (7) Stables 148
(8) Sinning Woodworking shop 148
(9) Stegman Seed Store 149
(10) Reilly Picture Gallery 149
(11) Wells Fargo office 150
(12) Folsom bridge and Ferry 151
(13) Chapel 151
c) Transportation in the Valley 154
d) Staging and Hauling to Yosemite Valley 155
7. Schools 159
8. Private Lands 164
a) Bronson Meadows (Hodgdon Meadow) area 167
(1) Crocker station 167
(2) Hodgdon ranch 167
b) Ackerson Meadow 171
c) Carlon or Carl Inn 171
d) Hazel Green 171
e) Crane Flat 174
f) Gin Flat 175
g) Tamarack Flat 176
h) Foresta/Big Meadow 177
(1) McCauley barn 180
(2) Meyer barn No. 1 (Saltbox) 181
(3) Meyer barn No. 2 (Cribwork interior) 181
(4) Big Meadow Cemetery 181
i) Gentry station 188
j) Aspen Valley 189
(1) Hodgdon cabin 189
(2) East Meadow Cache 192
k) Hetch Hetchy Valley/Lake Eleanor area 192
(1) Miguel Meadow cabin 193
(2) Kibbe cabin 196
(3) Elwell cabins 196
(4) Tiltill Mountain 197
(5) Lake Vernon cabin 197
(6) Rancheria Mountain cabin 197
(7) Smith Meadow cabin 198
l) White Wolf 198
m) Soda Springs and Tuolumne Meadows 199
(1) Lembert cabin 201
(2) Tuolumne Meadows cabin 206
(3) Murphy cabin 206
(4) Snow Flat cabin 207
n) Tioga pass 207
(1) Dana fork cabin 207
(2) Mono pass cabins 210
o) Little Yosemite Valley 210
(1) Washburn/Leonard cabin 210
p) Yosemite Valley 211
(1) Pioneer Cemetery 211
(a) White Graves 212
(b) Indian Graves 218
(2) Lamon cabin 222
(3) Hutchings cabin 222
(4) Muir cabin 224
(5) Leidig cabin and barn 225
(6) Howard cabin 226
(7) Happy Isles cabin 227
(8) Clark cabin 227
(9) Four-Mile Trail cabin 228
(10) Mail Carrier Shelter cabins 228
(11) Stegman cabin 228
(12) Hamilton cabin 228
(13) Shepperd cabin 229
(14) Manette cabin 229
(15) Whorton cabin 229
(16) Boston cabin 229
q) Glacier Point 232
(1) McGurk cabin 232
(2) Mono Meadow cabin 233
(3) Ostrander cabin 233
(4) Westfall Meadows cabin 234
r) Wawona 234
(1) Pioneer Cemetery 234
(2) Crescent Meadows cabin 235
(3) Turner Meadow cabin 235
(4) Buck Camp 235
(5) Mariposa Grove cabins 236
(6) Chilnualna Fall 237
(7) Galen Clark Homestead Historic site 237
(8) Cunningham cabin 240
(9) West Woods (Eleven-Mile station) 240
(10) Other Homesteaders 241
s) El Portal area 242
(1) Hennessey ranch 242
(2) Rutherford Mine 243

9. The Tioga Mine and Great Sierra Wagon Road 243
a) Early activity in the Tuolumne Meadows area 243
b) Formation of the Tioga Mining district 244
c) The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company Commences Operations 246
d) Construction of the Great Sierra Wagon Road 250
e) The Tioga Mine Plays Out 256
10. Management of the Grant by the Yosemite Commissioners 258
a) Replacement of the Board of Commissioners, 1880 258
b) Report of the State Engineer, 1881 259
(1) Protecting Yosemite Valley from Defacement 260
(a) Preservation of the Water shed 260
(b) Regulation of Use of the Valley Floor 261
(c) Treatment of the Valley Streams 262
(2) Promoting Tourism 262
(a) Improving Approaches to the Valley 263
(b) Improvements to Travel In and About Yosemite Valley 263
(c) Trails 264
(d) Footpaths 264
(e) Bridges 265
(f) Drainage and Guard Walls 265
(g) Hotels, Stores, Houses 266
(3) Lands caping 266
(4) Agricultural Development 267
(5) River overflow 267
c) Remarks on Hall‘s Report 268
(1) Yosemite Valley River Drainage and Erosion Control 269

(2) Yosemite Valley Vegetative Changes 273
(a) Fire Suppression 273
(b) Drainage of Meadows 276
(c) Introduction of Exotics 277
(3) Mariposa Grove Management Problems 277
d) Report of the Commissioners, 1885-86 279
e) Report of the Commissioners, 1887-88 282
f) Report of the Commissioners, 1889-90 288
11. Establishment of Yosemite National Park 289
a) Accusations of Mismanagement of the State Grant 289
b) Arrival of John Muir in California 296
c) John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson Join forces 298
d) Response of the Commissioners to Charges of Mismanagement 300
e) Comments on the Controversy 301
f) The Yosemite National Park Bill Passes Congress 304
g) Comments on the Preservation Movement and Establishment of Yosemite National Park 305

A. Interest Mounts Toward Preserving the Yosemite Valley and

Mariposa Grove

1. Yosemite Act of 1864

a) Steps Leading to the Preservation of Yosemite Valley

The widespread publicity on Yosemite Valley, coupled with a nascent thrust toward scenic preservation, prompted a few respected far-seeing California residents to push for passage of a law to protect Yosemite’s outstanding features for all time. The conviction that man was destined to use and unreservedly exploit the country’s wilderness prevailed by the mid-1850s. The westward-moving pioneers had ruthlessly conquered both the Indian populations they met and the land acquired from their dispossession. As farms and towns appeared, settlers overplowered fields, overgrazed grasslands, ravaged forests for building materials and firewood, and exterminated wildlife for food and profit. It was then that a countermovement began, spearheaded by such respected authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and by important painters such as George Catlin, who saw the need to preserve some of America’s landscapes. The discovery of Yosemite Valley provided the first believable evidence that the United States had a valid claim to cultural recognition through scenic wonders. Yosemite became the object of scenic nationalism and was popularized as such in the press of the time.

At the same time, during the 1850s and 1860s, many in California lamented the loss of rare giant trees to lumber interests, of alpine meadows to sheepmen, and the misuse of lands in Yosemite Valley for commercial exploitation and economic gain. Foremost among those individuals were Starr King, who became one of the leaders in the effort to save Yosemite Valley; Judge Stephen Field, who early visualized the site’s need for a geological survey and who had much to do with its accomplishment by Josiah Dwight Whitney, assisted by William H. Brewer and Clarence King; Frederick Law Olmsted, regarded as the founder of landscape architecture in America, who had designed Central Park in New York City—a revolutionary attempt to develop a natural landscape in the heart of a large city. Immediately after his arrival in California in September 1863 to manage the famed Mariposa Estate grant formerly owned by John Charles Fremont, Olmsted became enthusiastic about Yosemite Valley and worked tirelessly for its conservation; Jessie Benton Fremont, wife of John; Israel W. Raymond, one of the most active workers on the Yosemite park proposal; Dr. John F. Morse, a San Francisco physician; Josiah D. Whitney, California’s state geologist; and William Ashburner of the Whitney survey party.

Those individuals were astute and practical enough to realize that political action was required to permanently save the natural wonders of Yosemite from destruction. Israel Raymond, the California representative of the Central American Steamship Transit Company of New York, addressed a letter to California’s junior senator John Conness, urging him to present a bill to Congress on the preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. That important missive of 20 February 1864 stated: “I think it important to obtain the proprietorship soon, to prevent occupation and especially to preserve the trees in the valley from destruction. . .”1 Conness in turn sent a letter to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, J. W. Edmonds, in March requesting that he prepare the final draft of the bill and send it on using Raymond’s language and boundary descriptions of Yosemite and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. In introducing the bill on 28 March 1864, Conness made it clear that the bill had come to him from various gentlemen in California of taste and refinement and that the General Land Office also favored it.

[1. Huth, “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea,” 29.]

Aiding passage of the proposal were memories of an unfortunate incident in 1852 that had greatly advanced the idea of preservation of the giant sequoias—the stripping of one-third of the bark of one of the trees in the Calaveras Grove of Big Trees by two businessmen, who shipped it East for display and then put it on exhibition in London in 1854. That act of vandalism created furor in California/ especially when the tree began to decay, and aroused an overpowering preservationist sentiment in both the East and the West that forced people to ponder their responsibilities in regard to the protection of nature. The publicity accorded the sacrifice of that tree advanced the idea of conservation of giant sequoias by making their plight known.

On 30 June 1864, Congress passed an act segregating for preservation and recreational purposes the
“Cleft” or “Gorge” in the Granite Peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, situated in the county of Mariposa . . . and the head-waters of the Merced River, and known as the Yosemite Valley, with its branches and spurs, in estimated length fifteen miles, and in average width one mile back from the main edge of the precipice, on each side of the Valley, with the stipulation, nevertheless, that the said State shall accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public us£, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time. . . .2

[2. The Yosemite Guide-Book (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1870), 2. Conness further stated in the Senate hearing that the grant areas
are for all public purposes worthless, but . . . constitute, perhaps, some of the greatest wonders of the world. The object and purpose is to make a grant to the State, on the stipulations contained in the bill, that the property shall be inalienable forever, and preserved and improved as a place of public resort. . . .

Ibid. According to the Yosemite Valley commissioners, the area’s governing body, although the Yosemite Grant covered fifty-six square miles, only about three percent of the tract could be made useful for any other purpose than that to which the act of Congress devoted it—namely, as a place for public resort and recreation. The section of the grant along the foot of the bluffs was either too high, very rocky, or covered with such a thick growth of heavy timber that it was rendered “entirely unfit for purposes of cultivation.” On the valley floor, only 745 acres were meadowlands, while the rest were fern lands requiring clearing and cultivation before they could be farmed. Obviously, agricultural pursuits were being considered from the beginning. Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa _Big Tree Grove For the Years 1887-88 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1888), 8.]

The Yosemite Grant included 36,111 acres and was entrusted to the state of California with certain stipulations. The act also granted, under similar conditions, four sections of public land, or 2,500 acres, containing the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees (see Appendix D). The grove was included in the grant to protect it from logging and other commercial exploitation. The purpose of the grant, as indicated by the stringent boundaries that ignored the ecological framework of the region, was to preserve monumental scenic qualities rather than an ecosystem. Although the words “national park” were not used in the legislation, in effect the Yosemite Grant embodied that concept, although neither Congress nor the federal government accepted any responsibility for the valley’s preservation or improvement. The act clearly stipulated that the valley and grove were to be managed by the governor of California and eight commissioners appointed by him and serving without pay, although the state would fund their traveling expenses. On 28 September 1864, Gov. Frederick F. Low of California proclaimed the grant to the state, and, in accordance with the act’s stipulations, appointed eight commissioners to manage the area: Frederick Law Olmsted, J. D. Whitney, William Ashburner, I. W. Raymond, E. S. Holden, Alexander Deering, George W. Coulter, and Galen Clark.

As chairman of the first board of commissioners to manage Yosemite Valley and the Big Tree Grove, Olmsted took the lead in efforts to organize management of the grant. Because he established a permanent camp in the valley and directed protection of the area prior to the state’s formal acceptance of the grant, he has been referred to as its first administrative officer. The commissioners agreed to hire one of their number as an on-the-scene employee, or Guardian, of the grant. Galen Clark initially served in that capacity, from 1866 to 1880. (See Appendix E for a list of the state Guardians of Yosemite Valley.) The Guardian’s duties were to patrol the grant and prevent depredations; build roads, trails, and bridges; bestow and regulate leases for the erection of hotels and other improvements; use the incomes from those leases to preserve and improve the valley; and serve as the commission’s liaison with the residents of the valley. The commissioners believed that the Guardian and/or a sub-Guardian should always be present in or about the valley and Big Tree Grove, at least during the visitor season, and that they should have police authority to arrest offenders on the spot.3
[3. Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1866-7 (San Francisco: Towne and Bacon, 1868), 7. Ultimately the lack of authority in the Guardian position led to the continuance of activities detrminental to the welfare of the valley and grove.]

b) Frederick Olmsted’s Treatise on Parks

At this point, note should be taken of an important document authored by Frederick Law Olmsted in response to a request by the Board of Yosemite Commissioners. That body asked Olmsted to prepare a report for the California legislature defining the policy that should govern management of the grant and making recommendations for its implementation.

Throughout 1865 Olmsted worked on this statement in which he presented a set of reasons for the establishment of parks and a detailed plan of management for Yosemite Valley in particular. The plan conformed with his belief that Congress, by setting aside this area, had recognized the ideal of free enjoyment of scenic areas by all classes of people and the state’s duty to preserve Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for that purpose forever. This document, finished in August 1865, never received widespread exposure or the critical acclaim due it. Its significance lies in its philosophical arguments for the creation of state and national parks, in the sweeping scope of its political and moral justifications for establishing pleasure grounds for the masses.

Olmsted believed two factors had influenced Congress to set aside the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove. One, interestingly enough, in terms of the “worthless lands” theory of park establishment, involved Congress’s belief that a direct pecuniary advantage would accrue to the country in terms of tourist dollars as the valley became more accessible. 4 Olmsted regarded this as only an incidental factor in establishment of the grant, however.

[4. Frederick Law Olmsted, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees: A Preliminary Report,” 1865, with an introductory note by Laura Wood Roper, repr. from Landscape Architecture 43, no. 1 (October 1952): 17.]

More importantly, he felt the government recognized a duty to protect its citizens in their pursuit of happiness against any obstacle presented by the actions of selfish individuals, such as the aggrandizement of land for personal gain:
It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men and especially to the health and vigor of their intellect beyond any other conditions which can be offered them, that it not only gives pleasure for the time being but increases the subsequent capacity for happiness and the means of securing happiness. . . .

If we analyze the operation of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. Few persons can see such scenery as that of the Yosemite, and not be impressed by it in some slight degree. . . .5

[5. Ibid., 17, 20.]
Olmstead noted that although the rich could afford to provide recreational opportunities for themselves, the government had to provide them for others, often by withholding scenic places from the grasp of individuals and opening them to all persons for recreation of the mind and body: “The establishment by government of great public grounds for the free enjoyment of the people under certain circumstances, is thus justified and enforced as a political duty.6 The Yosemite legislation had been enacted, Olmsted perceived, in realization of the fact that the humble masses could appreciate beauty and art as much as the privileged classes did.

[6. Ibid., 21]

Olmsted believed the main duty of the commissioners entailed enabling the masses to benefit from the major attribute for which the valley and grove had been set aside—their natural scenery:
The first point to be kept in mind then is the preservation and maintenance as exactly as is possible of the natural scenery; the restriction, that is to say, within the narrowest limits consistent with the necessary accommodation of visitors, of all artificial constructions and the prevention of all constructions markedly inharmonious with the scenery or which would unnecessarily obscure, distort or detract from the dignity of the scenery.7

[7. Ibid., 22]

Olmsted warned the state to use care to protect the values of the area as a museum of natural science and not permit the sacrifice of anything of value to future visitors:
. . . it is important that it should be remembered that in permitting the sacrifice of anything that would be of the slightest value to future visitors to the convenience, bad taste, playfulness, carelessness, or wanton destructiveness of present visitors, we probably yield in each case the interest of uncounted millions to the selfishness of a few individuals. . . .

An injury to the scenery so slight that it may be unheeded by any visitor now, will be one of deplorable magnitude when its effect upon each visitor’s enjoyment is multiplied by these millions. But again, the slight harm which the few hundred visitors of this year might do, if no care were taken to prevent it, would not be slight if it should be repeated by millions.8

[8. Ibid.]

Olmsted recommended laws to prevent the unjust use of this public property, to prevent carelessness of the rights of posterity as well as of contemporary visitors. In addition to its preservation duty, the state had an obligation to make the park accessible to the masses, including provision of transportation facilities, camping accommodations, and a good access road to the park to shorten the trip and lessen its cost. Such a road would also enable bringing in supplies and provisions so that trees would not have to be cut down in the grant or the valley floor farmed.

Olmsted noted that the commission also proposed a road to and around the Mariposa Grove as a fire barrier, a road around the valley floor with turnouts, footpaths from that trail to outstanding scenic points, and construction of five cabins in the valley to be used as free resting places for visitors and to rent camp equipment and sell provisions. Finally Olmsted recommended that because of the beautiful scenery, natural scientists and artists be represented on the board of commissioners.

It is unfortunate that Olmsted’s views did not gain a wider audience in the state legislature and elsewhere. Certainly if his recommendations had been followed, at least some of the later problems in park administration might have been avoided and the park values have suffered less. Obviously Olmsted was philosophically years ahead of his time and voiced thoughts whose significance the majority of people were as yet unable to comprehend.

The California legislature met every two years, and that of 1864 had already adjourned when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant into law. Therefore not until 2 April 1866 did the state legislature pass an act accepting the grant from Congress, confirming the appointment of the commissioners, and conferring on that body full power to manage and administer the trust by making all rules, regulations, and by-laws for the government, improvement, and preservation of the area. The act also contained provisions making it a penal offense to commit injurious acts on the premises and other sections relative to further survey work, while appropriating $2,000 for carrying out the above actions.

c. Significance of the Yosemite Grant

At the time the legislation setting aside the Yosemite Grant passed Congress, it caused little stir across the nation, despite the fact that it set an important national precedent. It constituted the first instance of a central government anywhere in the world preserving an area strictly for a nonutilitarian purpose—the protection of scenic values for the enjoyment of the people as a whole:
This was not an ordinary gift of land, to be sold and the proceeds used as desired; but a trust imposed on the State, of the nature of a sotemn compact, forever binding after having been once accepted.9

[9. Quoted by Douglass Hubbard, “Olmsted - Prophet,” in Yosemite, Saga of a Century: 1864-1964 (Oakhurst, Calif.: The Sierra Star Press, 1964), 9.]

Additionally, many have expressed their belief that the Yosemite Grant marked the beginning of the national park movement in America and in the world and should be regarded as the first unit of the later National Park System. Finally, the Yosemite act constituted the first establishment of a state park and was thus the beginning not only of the California State Park System but of state parks nationwide.10

[10. Frederick A. Meyer, “Yosemite - The First State Park,” in Yosemite, Saga of a Century, 16. To bolster the argument that Yosemite was the point of departure from which a new theory of conservation evolved, the following quotations are presented that predate the establishment of Yosemite National Park:
Most fittingly has Congress set the Yosemite apart from the public domain, and consecrated it to mankind, as a National Park and pleasure-ground forever, (p. 458)

. . . the Mariposa Grove being also included in the Congressional grant which set aside the Yosemite as a National Park. . . . (p. 462)

From notes made on a trip in May 1867 by Gen. James F. Riesling, Across America, 1874. And,
. . . the Yosemite Valley is a unique and wonderful locality: it is an exceptional creation, and as such has been exceptionally provided for jointly by the Nation and State - it has been made a National public park and placed under the charge of the State of California, (p. 22)

This, the first application in print of the term “national park” in reference to Yosemite, is from J. D. Whitney, The Yosemite Book, 1868. Memorandum, Granville B. Liles, Actg. Supt., Yosemite National Park, to Regional Director, Western Region, NPS, 7 November 1963.]

In 1864 George P. Marsh published Man and Nature, the first treatise to approach the theme of conservation in a scholarly fashion. A widely read author, Marsh’s ideas probably influenced the men responsible for the Yosemite Grant. As early as 1865 a group of dignitaries from the East Coast, representing the nation’s press, visited the new Yosemite state park as guests of Mr. Olmstead. Among those important people were Schuyler Colfax, speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives; Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican; Charles Allen, the attorney-general of Massachusetts; and Albert D. Richardson, war correspondent of the New York Tribune. In a travel account published later, Bowles stated that
This wise cession and dedication [of the Yosemite Valley] by Congress, and proposed improvement by California . . . furnishes an admirable example for other objects of natural curiosity and popular interest all over the Union. New York should preserve for popular use both Niagara Falls and its neighborhood and a generous section of her famous Adirondacks, and Maine one of her lakes and its surrounding woods.11

[11. Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent (Springfield, Mass.: Samuel Bowles & Company, 1865), 231. - Albert Richardson referred to Yosemite as “A Grand National Summer Resort” in Beyond the Mississippi, published in 1867 but based on his trip to the valley two years earlier, quoted in William R. Jones, “Our First National Park: Yellowstone? . . . or Yosemite?” Audubon Magazine 67, no. 6 (November-December 1965): 383-84.]

The national scope, permanence, and importance to future generations attributed to the Yosemite grant were also apparent in a Saturday. Evening Post editorial in 1868:
The Great American Park of the Yosemite. With the early completion of the Pacific Railway there can be no doubt that the Park established by the recent Act of Congress as a place of free recreation is for? all the people of the United States and their guests forever.12

[12. New York Evening Post, quoted in Sacramento (Calif.) Daily Union, 29 July 1868, 3.]

The preceding statements indicate that from the beginning the true significance of the Yosemite Grant was perceived as being not simply preservation of one particular local scenic area, but the possible initial step in a precedent-setting systematic approach to a national program of preservation of areas of unique scenic interest, beauty, and curiosity. It became the first official recognition that man should not always subjugate nature, but also enjoy it recreationally and aesthetically, and that the government’s role was to preserve areas for that purpose.

The Yosemite Grant was not the product of a nascent public concern for ecological values of the environment. Preservation of scenery and natural curiosities for public enjoyment dictated its establishment, not its biological attributes. Few in America yet understood watershed functions, forestry principles, or the basic interrelationship between plants, animals, and man.

The Yosemite Grant constituted possibly the initial major manifestation of a growing American concern with the loss of its wilderness and its pioneer values. The Yosemite Grant tied in with an early reaction to despoliation and avarice and a fear of the private appropriation of large tracts of land in the public domain.13 By the late 1860s and early 1870s, the American public began experiencing a variety of emotions as a result of fundamental changes in society during and after the Civil War. A period of romantic idealism expressed nostalgia for a dwindling frontier experience. At the same time, Americans felt alarm at the rising tide of materialism, which would increase during the period of the Industrial Revolution. That repugnance fostered and strengthened an emotional reaction—a spiritual attachment to Nature and its basic, simpler values. Feelings of inadequacy in terms of cultural background as compared to the great European civilizations led to a fascination with monumentalism. Celebrating the scenic grandeur of America’s West became a way of competing successfully with European culture and traditions. Yosemite Valley certainly was regarded by its early visitors as a nationalistic resource, an outstanding example of America’s worth in the eyes of the world.

[13. Joseph L. Sax, Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 8.]

One of the prerequisites of Congress’s acceptance of early national parks would be that they have little economic value and thus be worthless for anything other than pleasuring grounds. Early preservationists found that resistance to the establishment of public scenic areas could be offset if they were touted as so remote as to be economically worthless to the country. Legislators continued to feel for many years in regard to the establishment of new park areas that valuable commercial resources should be either excluded at the outset or opened to exploitation regardless of their location.14 Proponents of the Yosemite Grant assured Congress that the valley would be worthless for mining, logging, grazing, or agricultural interests. It is interesting, however, that the state intended from the beginning to make money from the area, through lease arrangements, which could be reinvested in park development. The valley also was a money-making proposition for settlers who sold provisions and provided accommodations to tourists. Through the years the valley has proven a lucrative source of money from tourism and commercial recreation activities. It was actually the potential value of the valley and the Mariposa Grove in terms of commercial tourism and logging activities that many backers of the grant feared would lead to its exploitation and eventual destruction.

The wording of the legislation and comments by visitors and writers of the time are sufficient proof that the object of the grant was to preserve a scenically outstanding area of nationwide value, to establish a true national park, even though it was a park to be managed by a state government. The fact is that in 1864 the federal government was far less diversified than now and no one yet envisaged all-encompassing federal legislation to conserve state areas for national park purposes. In addition, the country’s leaders were much too involved in the problems and strategies of the Civil War to ponder the philosophical implications of what they were doing for the nation at large. President Lincoln himself probably had little inkling of the impact of his signature on the bill setting aside Yosemite Valley as a park. Other matters were occupying his thoughts: an attempt within the Republican party to unseat him as president; Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s repulse at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia; and Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s investment of Petersburg, the key to Richmond, Virginia. It is easy to see how
The Yosemite Act was lost in the tides of war, and only in recent years has its monumental significance been evaluated by historians. It is clear now that the reservation of Yosemite marked perhaps the most significant single event in the changing relationship of Americans to the land they live on.15

[14. Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 48.]

[15. Harold Gilliam, “Centennial of a Pioneer’s Dream,” San Francisco Chronicle, 28 June 1964.]

Despite the fact that Yellowstone was the first federal venture in the field of preservation, it did not advance the concept of conservation in the first years of its existence. Yosemite, on the other hand, began growing and developing as soon as it was set aside, and became a proving ground for new ideas in conservation and park management. Olmsted quickly formulated plans for the best management of the park, and the California legislature voted appropriations for improvements as soon as possible. The early establishment of Yosemite Valley as a park unit under state control significantly influenced the later development of both the National Park System, the California State Park System, and state park systems nationwide, which all benefitted from the experience and knowledge of park principles and management gained in those early Yosemite years. Olmsted’s penetrating analyses of park problems and opportunities were strongly influenced by his Yosemite experience, and his reports are the origin of much of the best of today’s park principles.16

[16. Meyer, “Yosemite - The First State Park,” in Yosemite, Saga of a Century, 17.]

Carl P. Russell stated that it was apparent that the original proponents of the Yosemite act—the scientists, educators, and journalists who visited and described Yosemite and the congressmen and senators who envisioned the initial concept and formulated the legislation—thought of the Yosemite Grant as more than the first state park. They also perceived it as the first official embodiment of the concept that there are places of beauty and of scientific interest that should not be appropriated by individuals or private interests. This was the birth of the National Park idea.17 And it should be noted that when the National Park System was extended in 1890, it was to protect additional areas in California, around Yosemite as well as the present Sequoia National Park and General Grant Grove—areas in a state where the concept of national and local parks was developing in a thoughtful way.

[17. Carl P. Russell, “Birth of the National Park Idea,” in ibid., 7.]

B. State Management of the Yosemite Grant

1. Land Surveys

The state legislature had created the California Geological Survey in 1860 and appointed Josiah Whitney, one of the most respected geologists in America, as its head. Whitney was instructed to make a complete geological survey of the state and submit a report of his findings containing maps and diagrams, scientific descriptions of geological and botanical discoveries, and specimens of same.

As soon as the state of California accepted the Yosemite Grant, it determined to obtain certain statistical data. Land surveys, necessary to establish the boundaries of the grants, were made in the fall of 1864 by Clarence King and James T. Gardner, appointed U. S. deputy surveyor for that purpose. (Gardner later changed the spelling of his name to Gardiner.) Their notes were filed in the office of the U. S. surveyor general of California, who forwarded the official plat of the grant to Washington and to the commissioner of the General Land Office. Gardner also drew a map of the Yosemite Valley, showing the grant boundaries and the topography of its immediate vicinity.

The legislative act accepting the grant also authorized the state geologist to further explore the grant and the adjacent Sierra Nevada in order to prepare a full description of the country with maps and illustrations, to be published and sold to prospective visitors. In 1865 a party consisting of King, Gardner, H. N. Bolander, and C. R. Brinley set out to make a detailed geographical and geological survey of the High Sierra adjacent to Yosemite Valley. Another geological survey party under Charles F. Hoffmann continued additional surveys during 1866.

Two editions of the Yosemite survey work originally published in the state geological survey publication Geology in 1865 were planned for publication, both with text, maps, and illustrations, but only one with photographs. It would be called The Yosemite Book (1868), the other the Yosemite Guide-book (1869). The text was a thorough guide to the valley and surrounding mountains, while the accompanying map was acclaimed as the first accurate map of a high mountain region prepared in the United States. Carleton E. Watkins’s photographic illustrations complemented the text. The book greatly increased visitation to the valley by providing information necessary to travelers. Hoffman and his party also surveyed the valley floor and plotted on a map the number of acres in each tract of meadow, timber, and fern land and the boundaries of individual settlers’s claims and the number of acres each had enclosed. They also surveyed the Big Tree Grove, and measured, plotted, and numbered the largest trees.18

[18. Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley . . . . For the Years 1866-7, 3-6.]

2. Immediate Problems Facing the State

Yosemite Valley’s reputation as one of the most scenic wonders of the world continued to grow. The long, tiring stage or horseback trip; the expense of hiring horses, guides, and packers; and the exorbitant charges demanded by hotelkeepers, however, limited the number of visitors.

Access to the valley was one of the main problems addressed after establishment of the grant. From the north, travelers on horseback usually took the seventeen-mile wagon road from Coulterville to Black’s Hotel at Bull Creek, where they stayed overnight, covering the thirty-two miles into Yosemite Valley the next day. These travelers had to pay to cross the Merced River on Ira Folsom’s ferry, three-fourths of a mile below the Lower Hotel. The only alternative was to follow an unsatisfactory trail farther up the valley on the north side and cross the Merced over a log bridge Hutchings had erected prior to 1865 opposite his hotel, between Yosemite Fall and Sentinel Rock, replacing the crude log structure Hite built in 1859. In order to improve this situation, the Yosemite commissioners prior to 1866-67 erected a good saddle horse bridge across the Merced at the foot of Bridalveil Meadow, near where the trail from the north entered the valley. This Lower Iron Bridge (later Pohono Bridge) enabled visitors to make a full circuit tour of the valley if desired, without the delay and expense of the ferry ride.

The commissioners did not consider it their duty to improve the approaches to the valley, much to the disappointment of neighboring counties. They decided rather that this should be left to competition between the counties, towns, and individuals interested in securing that travel business. The commissioners slightly improved the trail from Yosemite Valley up the Merced Canyon to Vernal Fall so that visitors could ride nearly to its foot. They also placed a bridge across the river above Vernal Fall, facilitating the trip to the top of Nevada Fall. They proposed soon to place a convenient staircase near the ladders at Vernal Fall to make the ascent easier and less dangerous. In the valley the commissioners intended to increase accessibility to all points of interest; remove all obstacles to free circulation, such as trail charges; improve the road around the valley floor; and build a bridge over Ililouette Creek. They considered bridges across the Merced at the upper end of the valley and across Tenaya Creek imperative.19

[19. Ibid., 11, 13.]

High water in the winter of 1867-68 swept away all bridges across the Merced River. James Hutchings vividly described that flood:
On Dec. 23, 1867, after a snow fall of about three feet, a heavy down-pour of rain set in, and incessantly continued for ten successive days. . . . Each rivulet became a foaming torrent, and every stream a thundering cataract. The whole meadow land of the valley was covered by a surging and impetuous flood to an average depth of 9 feet. Bridges were swept away, and everything floatable was carried off. And, supposing that the usual spring flow of water over the Yo Semite Fall would be about 6 thousand gallons per second, as stated by Mr. H. T. Mills, at this particular time it must have been at least 12 or 14 times that amount, giving some eighty thousand gallons per second.20

[20. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras, 492.]

Nothing was left of the new bridge built by the commissioners, although the timbers of Hutchings’s bridge were carried only a short distance away. A traveler to the valley in April 1868 mentioned that he found that the valley
had been nearly all overflowed during the past Winter. The water was up to his [Hutchings’s] hotel, all around his Winter cabin, and over his garden. It was nearly six feet higher than Hutching’s [sic] bridge, (or rather where the bridge was)—for it lays on the bank below. The covering can be made available for another bridge, which is already being built, and will probably be ready for use as soon as travel will commence. All the bridges are carried away; a small portion of Yo Semite bridge remains in a wretched condition; the fences are mostly washed away, and the general damage done is very great; the ferry boat has gone, together with the tree to which it was fastened. . . .21

[21. “A Trip to the Yo Semite Valley on Snow-Shoes,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, by G. C., 17 April 1868; Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 10 April 1868. Hutchings replaced his previous log bridge with a finished timber bridge with a superstructure. In 1878 the state replaced that with an all-metal, steel-arched iron truss bridge (Upper Iron Bridge, later Sentinel Bridge). In 1872 Hutchings noted that his bridge across the Merced was the only one in the valley. J. M. Hutchings, Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California (New York: A. Roman and Company, publ., 1872), 111. The Sentinel Bridge was refurbished in 1898 and used until 1918. A new concrete bridge, completed in 1919, was widened in 1960. Another iron truss bridge was built about 1878-79 at the foot of Cathedral Rocks. Destroyed during the heavy winter of 1889-90, for many years its wreckage lay across the river alongside the new timber bridge that replaced it before the ironwork was finally salvaged. To prevent destruction of valley bridges by heavy snow loads, it was the practice for many years to rip up the plank flooring of some of them just before the snow fell, leaving the floor timbers open until spring. Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 8 August 1957, in Separates File, Yosemite-Bridges, Y-19, #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The major tasks facing the commissioners in the years immediately following passage of the Yosemite act involved increasing visitation by improving access routes, accommodations, and rates for visitor services, and at the same time exercising some control over development and land use. The first step in accomplishing these goals was to acquire all structures and land in the new park.

3. Settlers’ Claims

Prior to the establishment of the state grant, land in Yosemite Valley was a part of the public domain and therefore open to pre-emption and settlement under the homestead laws of the United States. Because the land was unsurveyed, no plats were filed in the U. S. Land Office. Locations given simply by metes and bounds were entered on the county records and considered to be legal guarantees of title until the land was surveyed.

The Yosemite act stipulated that the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove of Big Trees would no longer be open to homestead entry. Instead, ten-year leases would be granted for portions of the park, with the incomes derived from the leases to be used for the preservation and improvement of the grant and its roads, two obviously incompatible activities. Although proponents of the Yosemite bill, in an effort to eliminate delays, had assured Congress that there were no settlements in the valley, several claims had, in fact, been filed prior to passage of the legislation. Those individuals had occupied land in good faith under the pre-emption laws of the United States, and several had also bought the improvements of earlier settlers for rather large sums of money, assuming that their rights would be protected despite the new conditions.

The two men especially concerned over the prospect of losing their Yosemite Valley property were J. M. Hutchings and James C. Lamon. Another was Ira B. Folsom, who owned the ferry across the Merced River and the ladders at Vernal Fall. Although other people claimed houses and land in Yosemite Valley, they did not officially petition the commissioners. Many could probably not have claimed rights on the basis of permanent residence.

According to a petition by Hutchings, the 118 acres he and his family had settled upon had been homesteaded as early as 1856 by Gustavus Hite, Buck Beardsley, and others. In 1858 and 1859 Hite had built the two-story Upper Hotel on the site and a bridge across the Merced River. In addition he had cultivated the land and planted fruit trees. Hite ultimately went bankrupt, and his title to the land and improvements had been sold at public auction to Sullivan and Cashman of San Francisco. The property was then leased to various parties until the spring of 1864, when Hutchings purchased the rights and improvements and moved his family to Yosemite Valley.

Hutchings proceeded to erect several farm buildings, consisting of a small log house, a large barn and shed, corrals, fences, a bridge across the Merced River, and another over Yosemite Creek. In addition to cultivating a vegetable garden and planting grapevines, he established an orchard of 200 fruit trees in the vicinity of the present Yosemite Village and set out strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, gooseberry, and currant bushes. He also grew cereals and grasses and dug irrigation ditches. Although Hutchings had made his improvements after the state grant was established, the commissioners decided to deal leniently with him because they felt that the development had been done with an eye to the preservation of the beauty of the valley. In addition, Hutchings had done more than anyone to publicize the wonders of Yosemite, through his California Magazine and his lithographic reproductions of Thomas Ayers’s drawings.

James Lamon, born in Virginia in 1817, had come to California in 1851 and worked in the sawmill and lumber business in Mariposa County until 1858. After visiting Yosemite in 1857 and 1858, he bought the possessory rights of Charles Norris, Milton Mann, I. A. Epperson, and H. G. Coward, who had filed on 160 acres each. The land had not been officially surveyed nor had the original petitioners validated their claims by residence or improvement. Lamon took possession of 219 acres in 1859 at the upper end of Yosemite Valley, east of the present Ahwahnee Hotel and north of Curry Village. Near the junction of Tenaya Creek and the Merced River, he built the first log cabin in Yosemite and established the first bonafide homestead through settlement.

In 1861 Lamon filed claim to another 160-acre homestead. In the vicinity of the present concession stables, he established two orchards of about 500 fruit trees each, bearing apples, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, and almonds; planted more than an acre of strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, gooseberry, and currant plants; cultivated several acres for a vegetable garden; sowed crops; and constructed irrigation ditches, cabins, and outbuildings.22 He also helped construct the Upper Hotel in 1859. At first Lamon lived in the valley only during the spring and summer, moving to the foothills when snow fell; he later became a year-round resident. Lamon sold the products of his orchards and garden to early hotel keepers and tourists.

[22. “The Settlers of Yo-Semite. Memorial of J. M. Hutchings and J. C. Lamon.” (To the Senate and Assembly of the State of California), December 1867?, in library, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco, California, 1-2; National Register Nomination—Inventory Form, Lamon Orchard, 5 October 1975.]

Public opinion tended to oppose the maintenance of such homesteads, although most Californians felt that Hutchings and Lamon should not be ejected without liberal compensation for their loss. Some believed that because the state could not conduct farming, gardening, or hotel keeping services for visitors, men such as Lamon and Hutchings should be allowed that privilege. On the other hand, the Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette reported:
We have heard considerable complaint on the part of visitors to the Yo Semite Valley about the fencing in of the better part of the grazing land. By this the parties going there have trouble in obtaining proper grazing for their animals, and are annoyed in passing through the Valley. . . . Whatever may be the squatable [sic] rights of these individuals [Hutchings and Lamon] it is evident that their fencing in any part of the Valley will prove a nuisance so far as it effects the public, and is contrary to the evident intention of Congress. . . . The law enacted by the last Legislature gives ample power to the Commissioners to take charge of this property, and to remove all intruders. It is certainly the desire of the people . . . that this law be strictly enforced. . . . they [Hutchings and Lamon] should receive a favorable consideration . . . but they should be required to keep their fences down, and the lands claimed or occupied, free for all to pass over.23

[23. “Yo Semite Valley,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 14 July 1866.]

It was evident even to the Yosemite commissioners that the claims of Hutchings and Lamon, because of the improvements that had been made, would have been valid under the laws of the United States if the land had been surveyed and opened to pre-emption. Because it had not been, and never would be now that it was in a state park, neither Lamon nor Hutchings nor any of the other settlers in the valley held valid title to the land they occupied nor could they hold any hope of ever obtaining a right to it in fee simple. Hutchings and Lamon protested that, in view of all the labor and expense they had contributed to open and develop the valley both for their families and for the public, it was unjust to wrest the fruits of their toil without warning or adequate recompense.

The Yosemite commissioners proposed to buy the claims of the valley settlers and lease the land back to them. Because Lamon’s holdings were inconspicuous, and in recognition of the useful work he had accomplished in the valley, the commissioners offered Lamon the best deal they could under the circumstances—a lease of the premises for ten years at a nominal rent of $1.00 per year. Hutchings’s long residence in the valley and his careful efforts not to mar the landscape, as well as the fact that his hotel was not a particularly lucrative proposition, disposed the commissioners to offer him the same arrangement—a ten-year lease of his 160 acres, including the hotel and house, at a low rent. Hutchings, however, still claiming the rights of a settler on the basis of having purchased land already pre-empted, and probably hoping that public sympathy would influence the legislature to grant better terms, refused to accept a lease or acknowledge the right of the Yosemite commissioners to the land, and convinced Lamon to do the same. At that point legal proceedings were instituted against both men as trespassers.24

[24. Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley . . . For the Years 1866-7, 8-10.]

Fearful that they would be ejected from their homes, Hutchings appealed to the California legislature, asking that it grant him the land he occupied in Yosemite Valley under the National Pre-emption Law and the Possessory Law of California. In 1868 that body passed a bill, subject to Congressional ratification, allowing Hutchings the 160 acres of land occupied and improved by him at Yosemite, with the proviso that the state could lay out roads, bridges, paths, and whatever else was necessary for the convenience of visitors anywhere they wanted in the valley, even through homestead lands. The act would take effect after its ratification by the U. S. Congress.

Governor H. H. Haight was less sympathetic when Assembly Bill No. 238 granting lands in Yosemite Valley to Hutchings and Lamon reached his desk. He ultimately returned the bill to the legislature, leaving the responsibility for its passage with that body. His strongest objection to the act was that he believed it was a repudiation and violation by the state of the trust and related obligations that had been accepted with the specific intent of using it only for specific public purposes. Granting Hutchings’s request would be tantamount to approving conversion of the entire valley to private ownership.

Haight pointed out that although the grantees were only asking for a portion of the land, others in the valley also had made improvements and would want to retain ownership of them. With such a large portion of the lands withdrawn from supervision, it would then, be useless for the state to attempt to control the valley. Hutchings and Lamon, holding 320 acres, would in effect have a monopoly of the usable land in the park. Also it was imperative that public access to every part of the valley be unrestricted if this was to remain truly a public reservation as contemplated by Congress. Governor Haight suggested that it was improper for the state to take such approval action without the assent of Congress. Instead of setting such a dangerous precedent, he continued, the petitioners should be either paid the fair value of their improvements as of the date of the act of Congress establishing the grant or given a lease at a nominal rent for a certain term of years.25

[25. “Veto Message of the Governor in Relation to Assembly Bill No. 238, an Act Granting Lands in Yosemite Valley,” 4 February 1868, in Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California, 3-4.]

The California legislature voted to approve the grant over the governor’s veto, and petitioned Congress to ratify their actions. Leading Eastern newspapers were adamant in their opinions on the subject of the alienation of lands in Yosemite. Pronouncing the action of the California legislators extremely unwise, a New York Tribune editorial reiterated the widespread feeling that Yosemite was not just a state park, but a pleasuring ground for the world:
Certainly, we do not think we make too large a claim when we ask of Congress, in the name of the whole country and of the world of civilized men, to refuse this petition. . . . let Congress absolutely refuse to acknowledge their [Hutchings’s and Lamon’s] right to settle upon the land itself, and so defeat the object for which the valley was ceded to the State. That object was one of the largest and noblest that any State any where, or at any time in the world’s history, has proposed to itself with a view to the health and enjoyment of its people; and the fact that the General Government gave the land for such a purpose, and that the State accepted it, showed a high state of civilization. Barbarian or half-civilized States do not so respect great natural wonders, nor propose to devote them to the enjoyment of the world. . . . If Californians do not see their own interests more clearly, and if they will not respect the rights of the whole country, it is the bounden duty of Congress to protect us in the possession of this most splendid of Nature’s gifts to the American people. . . .26

[26. “Yo Semite at the East,” New York Tribune, 24 June 1868, reported in San Francisco Bulletin and quoted in Mariposa (Ca.) Gazette, 17 July 1868.]

Although Congress pointed out that federal jurisdiction over the lands had ceased, its members proceeded to offer some comments. The House agreed with the state legislature’s decision, declaring that the two homesteads constituted so small a fraction of the entire valley that their retention in private ownership could in no way interfere with public enjoyment of the valley as a “pleasure ground.” Attempts to dispossess them, it was argued, could imply serious trouble for other settlers who in good faith had settled on public lands under the pre-emption and homestead laws of the United States. Many House members were sympathetic to Lamon and Hutchings, who they felt were not speculative squatters, but adventurous pioneers:
as regards the question of a pleasure-ground, it only concerns the comparative few who will have the means and leisure to visit the valley, and these could see and enjoy quite as much if its thousands of acres were carved up into smiling homesteads, whose owners would probably guard the valley as carefully as any official appointed by the State.27

[27. Report of Comm. on Public Lands on House bill no. 184 - “An act to confirm to J. M. Hutchings and J. C. Lamon their pre-emption claims in the Yo-Semite valley, in the State of California,” in U. S. Congress, House Committee on Public Lands, “The Yo-semite Valley and the Right of Pre-Emption,” no date, in Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California, 10.]

The bill in favor of Hutchings and Lamon passed the House but was blocked in the Committee on Public Lands by the Senate. The resolution, therefore, was not acted upon before the final adjournment of Congress, and as a result the act of the state legislature had no force. Still refusing to accept leases, Hutchings and Lamon took their dispute into the courts. The District Court of the Thirteenth Judicial District found for the defendant Hutchings, a decision the governor and the Yosemite commissioners appealed to the state supreme court. In 1871 that body reversed the judgment of the district court. In 1873 Hutchings lost his final appeal in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Both the California Supreme Court and the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the act of the state legislature granting Hutchings 160 acres of land violated two of the conditions of the trust—that the lands be held for public use, resort, and recreation, and that they be inalienable for all time. The U. S. Supreme Court noted that the act of the legislature was inoperative, by its own terms, until ratified by Congress. Congress had never taken that action and probably would never sanction “such a perversion of the trust solemnly accepted by the State.28

[28. John T. McLean, “A Statement Showing the wrong done to, and the pecuniary damage and loss suffered by, The Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company (a Corporation) from the illegal action of the State ” January 1887, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 2, 9-12.]

In 1874 the California legislature established the precedent for land acquisition in Yosemite by appropriating $60,000 to extinguish all private claims in Yosemite Valley, and the Hutchings interests, after bitter contention, were adjudged to be worth $24,000. Lamon received $12,000 as compensation for his claims; A. G. Black received $13,000 and Folsom $6,000. The balance of the fund was returned to the state treasury. Although Hutchings continued to refuse a lease, Lamon finally accepted one.

Hutchings, Lamon, and the other settlers in the valley failed to see how their efforts to commercialize and homestead the land and farm and hunt in the valley posed any threat to Yosemite’s unique beauty and wilderness character. Although the adverse decision by the U. S. Supreme Court engendered many ill feelings between the state and the valley residents, it helped insure the future of a new concept—that certain lands should be protected and preserved for the public good.

4. Trails

a) Early Survey Work

The beginning of tourism to Yosemite increased the state’s need to know more about the region in order to provide accurate travel information. As mentioned earlier, efforts began through public surveys to reproduce on paper the various features of the Yosemite wilderness and the trails penetrating it. The California Geological Survey cursorily surveyed the Yosemite High Sierra in 1863, but investigated more thoroughly from 1864 to 1867 as a result of the creation of the state grant. A party directed by Capt. George M. Wheeler, in charge of geographical surveys west of the 100th Meridian, labored in the Yosemite area in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and produced a large-scale topographic map of Yosemite Valley and vicinity in 1883. First Lieutenant M. M. Macomb, 4th U. S. Artillery Regiment, detailed to the Wheeler party, first surveyed Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1879.

The few old Indian trails and sheepherders’ paths that existed in the Yosemite region were rarely blazed or otherwise delineated so that it was almost impossible to plot them. The earliest maps show the old Mono Trail over Mono Pass, branching in the area of Tuolumne Meadows, with one arm cutting over to the north wall of Yosemite Valley where it was joined by the Coulterville Trail as it climbed from the valley to the north rim. Another arm passed over Clouds Rest and Sunrise Creek, across Little Yosemite Valley, up Buena Vista Creek, and then down to the foothills. The Mono Trail also connected with the Mann brothers’ 1856 trail by continuing from Little Yosemite Valley through Mono Meadow to Ostrander’s, near Peregoy Meadow on the present Glacier Point road. The early survey map also included a route from Ostrander’s to Sentinel Dome that the state survey party blazed in 1864. Travelers reached the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees by a trail from Clark’s Station, while a trail entered Hetch Hetchy Valley from a point on the Big Oak Flat Road between Sprague’s and Hardin’s ranches, west of the present Big Oak Flat entrance to the park.

b) Routes To and Around Yosemite Valley

Because of their high altitude, all of the early trails to Yosemite Valley were susceptible to heavy snowstorms beginning in the fall and continuing well into the spring, so that they could be used only a small part of the year. Only one route tried to avoid the heavy drifts of the high ridges by taking advantage of the lower, relatively snow-free passage through the Merced River Canyon. The Hite’s Cove route was suggested as early as 1871, one of its primary advocates being James A. Hennessey, who was cultivating a commercial garden in the area now encompassed by the town of El Portal. The proposed route started from the settlement of Hite’s Cove, on the South Fork of the Merced River some distance above its confluence with the main channel. A wagon road already connected that village with Mariposa. From Hite’s Cove the trail crossed the ridge to the Merced River, continued upriver to Hennessey’s ranch, then followed the river for a mile or so before diverging from the stream into the mountains and intersecting the Mariposa-Yosemite Valley trail at Grouse Creek. That route, probably based on a previously existing Indian trail, was not heavily used because of its discomforts and difficult grade. The later winter mail route for Yosemite Valley, however, connected Jerseydale and Yosemite via the trail through Hite’s Cove and along the Merced River canyon.

Charles Leidig stated that his parents, Fred and Isabel, came to Yosemite Valley in 1866 over a horse trail via Jenkins Hill down into the Merced River canyon. They then followed up the canyon to the valley, suggesting this is one of the earliest historic routes into Yosemite Valley.29 Lieutenant N. F. McClure, Fifth Cavalry, U. S. Army, shows a trail running along the north side of the Merced River to a point just below the Coulterville Road junction at The Cascades. The trail appears to originate from Hazel Green, allowing access from areas west of the present park. One branch comes south through Anderson’s Flat to Jenkins “Mill,” while the other comes south from Hazel Green through Big Grizzly Flat and the Cranberry Mine area.30

[29. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 278-79.]

[30. N. F. McClure, “Map of the Yosemite National Park,” prepared for use of U. S. troops, March 1896.]

In 1885 the Mariposa Gazette carried an article by James A. Hennessey, written from his ranch on the Merced River, in which he stated that a trip in August to Wawona with a cargo of vegetables and orchard produce had been his first excursion out that way for the season. He also reported:
My new trail from the ranch intersecting the Mariposa and Yosemite Road, one mile east of West Woods, is nearly completed. I passed over it this trip. As soon as I have this trail completed I will commence on another from Fish Camp to Fresno Grove of Big Trees and the California Saw-mills. After that I expect to improve the old Mono and Mariposa Trail. With these trails in proper condition I can reach Tioga from my place in forty-two miles. This route would take in West Woods [Eleven-Mile Station], Peregoy’s Meadows, Little Yosemite, Clouds’ Rest Mountain and Soda Springs. It will be an excellent route and will bring plenty of tramps through to the county after it becomes known.31

[31. 15 August 1885, in Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 3 September 1957, in Separates File, Yosemite-Trails, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

c) Tourist Trails in the Valley

One of the major deficiencies of the Yosemite Valley floor was the lack of footpaths enabling visitors to enjoy short walks from their hotels to scenic points of interest. Only a narrow boardwalk led from Black’s Hotel to the Upper Hotel. By 1864, however, two improved scenic trails out of the valley already existed, one to Vernal Fall, the other to Mirror Lake. The beginning of much of the present Yosemite trail system was laid after establishment of the state grant, when it became imperative that the Board of Yosemite Commissioners improve the faint Indian trails so that eager hikers could reach the valley rim and backcountry beyond. The small annual legislative appropriations could not accomplish extensive trail work or many other improvements on grant lands. As a way of raising revenues, therefore, the commissioners extended toll privileges for a specific length of time for trail construction just as they had for roads. Under that system, various grantees constructed the Four-Mile, Snow, and Eagle Peak trails. In 1882 the commission purchased the Mist and Glacier Point trails and soon after bought the others. The state did little further trail building on the valley up to 1906. Trail building in the backcountry was accomplished by the U. S. Army after 1891.

(1) Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point

James McCauley, an Irishman, came to Hite’s Cove, California, in 1865 to mine. In 1871 he entered into a contract agreement with the Yosemite commissioners to build a toll trail from the south side of the Yosemite Valley floor up to Glacier Point. McCauley selected John Conway to survey the route and build the trail. Conway was one of the most famous trail builders in Yosemite, making many of the points on the valley rim accessible to later visitors. Conway and a trail crew began work in late November 1871 and worked until snow stopped their progress. Starting up the next spring, they had completed the trail to Union Point when Conway was injured in an accident. Because they had completed the survey to Glacier Point, trail work continued to completion in early summer 1872.

Helen Hunt Jackson described the Four-Mile Trail as
. . . a marvelous piece of work. It is broad, smooth, and well protected on the outer edge, in all dangerous places, by large . rocks; so that, although it is far the steepest trail out of the valley, zigzagging back and forth on a sheer granite wall, one rides up it with little alarm or giddiness, and with such a sense of gratitude to the builder that the dollar’s toll seems too small.32

[32. H. H. [Helen Hunt Jackson], Bits of Travel at Home (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894) 127. She also mentioned stopping to rest at Union Point, where she thought McCauley evidently lived, “in a sort of pine-plank wigwam, from the top of which waved the United States flag.” Ibid., 133. This was more likely an equipment storage shed.]

In the 1920s the Park Service slightly rerouted the trail and changed its grades until it is now nearer five miles long; it still, however, retains the historic name. When the Yosemite Valley commissioners initiated their policy of eliminating all private holdings as rapidly as possible, they requested $7,500 from the state legislature in 1877 to purchase trails from their private owners. An act for the purchase of trails in Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove finally passed in March 1881. As stated previously, that bill appropriated $25,000 from the state treasury, part of which was intended for purchasing and making free the trails within the Yosemite Grant constructed and controlled by private individuals. In 1882 the state purchased the Four-Mile Trail from McCauley for $2,500 and made it toll free.

The old abandoned trail parallels the present one up the talus slope below Sentinel Rock. It begins on the valley floor about fifty yards east of the present trail and proceeds via five switchbacks to the base of Sentinel Rock, which it avoids by swinging 1,300 yards to the east. After another 200-yard swing to the west, the old trail enters another series of switchbacks to avoid a short rock-filled chimney at an elevation of 1,200 feet above the floor. From there to Union Point is another irregular series of zigzags, turning to the east and southwest, a prime example of Conway’s engineering competence. Union Point is 2,314 feet above the valley floor, and from there one can see Yosemite Fall, Half Dome, North Dome, El Capitan, Cathedral Rock and Spires, and the Big Oak Flat and Wawona roads.

The trail continues in several long, gentle switchbacks to an elevation of 7,000 feet. There it squeezes east under and over precipitous granite cliffs, emerging within sight of Glacier Point’s overhanging rock. Then the early-day hiker followed a level stretch of trail and made the last climb of a 100-yard rise to Glacier Point.

The impressive engineering and construction skills of the builder are apparent everywhere. Abandonment of the trail and construction of the present one in 1923 have hastened obliteration of the old trail, but only in the narrow, rock-filled chimney below Union Point is one unable to follow its course. The modern trail, paralleling the old, traverses an additional 0.6 mile to eliminate a one-step grade. The present Four-Mile Trail, therefore, is actually 4.6 miles long.33

[33. “Pioneer Trails of Yosemite Valley: The Four Mile Trail,” author unknown, in Separates File, Yosemite-Trails, Y-8, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(2) Indian Canyon Trail

This deep ravine in the wall east of Yosemite Point sheltered an Indian trail to the north rim of the valley. In 1874 James Hutchings paid for construction of a horse trail up Indian Canyon to Yosemite Point, which by 1877 had already fallen into disrepair. Construction of Conway’s Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak trail made this one obsolete. The trail carried traffic for only a few years. Cosie Hutchings Mills recalled in 1941 that Fred Brightman, while working at the livery stable in the valley, had attempted to construct a trail up Indian Canyon, possibly between 1885 and 1888, but had been deterred from completing it by a huge rockslide.

(3) Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak Trail

In 1867 James Hutchings reported that during the winter he had constructed “a good, substantial bridge across the Yosemite Creek . . . so that parties can now visit the foot of the lower Yosemite Fall with more comfort and less danger than formerly.”34 John Conway started the Yosemite Fall toll horse trail in 1873 and first completed it just to the foot of Upper Yosemite Fall. By 1877 he had finished the trail to the top of the fall on the north rim, and by 1888 to Eagle Peak. Conway refused to sell it to the state in 1882 for what he considered an unjust offer. It was subsequently announced in the Mariposa Gazette that the Board of Yosemite Commissioners had declared all trails and roads in the valley toll free, except for the Eagle Point Trail, whose owner refused to recognize the order of the board and surrender his franchise.35 Conway was finally forced to sell in 1885 for $1,500. The present trail closely follows the original.

[34. “Yo-Semite Valley,” in San Francisco Alta, quoted in Mariposa (Ca.) Gazette, 1 June 1867.]

[35. 10 June 1882, in Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 3 September 1957.]

(4) Rim Trail, Pohono Trail

The Pohono Trail route appeared on Lieutenant McClure’s 1896 map, but its original builder and date of construction are uncertain. Originally an Indian trail, it led from Yosemite Valley up past Old Inspiration Point. The rim trail, which meets the Pohono, was constructed in parts by the state during the 1890s and taken over by the cavalry after 1905. About 1906 the trail’s name changed from Dewey Trail to Pohono Trail. The rim trail follows the south rim of the valley from near Sentinel Dome, via The Fissures, deep rock clefts just east of Taft Point, across Bridalveil Creek some distance behind Bridalveil Fall, then on to Dewey and Stanford points and the old stage road at Fort Monroe. It joined the early trail from the South Fork to Charles Peregoy’s Mountain View House in present Peregoy Meadow, which was practically abandoned after 1875 when the Wawona Road was completed to Yosemite Valley. That Alder Creek Trail, one of the oldest in the region and a main early route to Yosemite, led from Wawona through Empire Meadow, across the headwaters of Alder Creek, and along the level to Westfall and Peregoy meadows, and eventually struck the Pohono Trail. One can then turn left to the valley via Old Inspiration Point roughly along the route of the original Pohono Trail or turn right toward Glacier Point.

(5) Clouds Rest and Half (South) Dome Trails

The original trail to Clouds Rest formed a segment of the old Mono Trail. In 1882 the commissioners had recommended that the trail be shortened, which was accomplished, along with improvements, in 1890. In 1912 the Department of the Interior further improved it. Wheeler’s map also showed the spur trail to the base of Half Dome. Although several others, including James Hutchings, had earlier attempted to scale the 8,892-foot monolith of Half Dome, George C. Anderson, the Scottish blacksmith of Yosemite Valley, was the first to finally climb it, on 12 October 1875. A carpenter and former seaman, and prominent in the early trail building days of Yosemite, Anderson accomplished his climb of Half Dome with only drills and a hammer. By driving wooden pins and iron eyebolts into the granite five to six feet apart, he could successively fasten a rope to each bolt and pull himself up, resting his foot on the last spike while he drilled a hole for the next. He followed this painstaking process for 975 feet. Within a week six men, including Galen Clark, then age 61, and one woman, pulled themselves up to the top by Anderson’s rope. John Muir was the ninth person to make the climb, on 10 November 1875. Anderson’s plan of building a staircase to the summit of Half Dome died with him when he succumbed to pneumonia on 8 May 1884.

The cable that Anderson fastened to the bolts enabled Half Dome to be scaled for several years thereafter by the few who dared to meet that challenge. During the winter of 1883-84, sliding ice and snow broke the rope Anderson had installed and ripped out some of the eyebolts. It was again impossible for others to reach the top until several mountaineers duplicated the original climb and replaced the rope. The ropeway had to be replaced again in 1895 and 1901. Park Supervisor Gabriel Sovulewski recalled that Paul Segall replaced old pegs in 1908. John Muir wrote in 1910 that no one had
attempted to carry out Anderson’s plan of making the Dome accessible. For my part I should prefer leaving it in pure wildness, though, after all no great damage could be done by tramping over it. The surface would be strewn with tin cans and bottles, but the winter gales would blow the rubbish away. . . . Blue jays and Clark crows have trod the Dome for many a day, and so have beetles and chipmunks, and Tissiack would hardly be more “conquered” or spoiled should man be added to her list of visitors. His louder scream and heavier scrambling would not stir a line of her countenance.36

[36. Shirley Sargent, John Muir in Yosemite (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1971), 24.]

(6) Vernal Fall and Mist Trails

The Vernal Fall Trail started at Happy Isles and followed the south bank of the Merced canyon to the vicinity of Clark Point. From there one could take either the Mist Trail, passing along the steep cliffs of the Merced and enveloped much of the way with spray from Vernal Fall, or the regular Merced River Trail. The latter is one of the most historic trails in the park, forming one of the earliest segments of the present trail system.

By 1864, when the state began to manage the Yosemite Valley, a trail to the top of Vernal Fall along the south side of the Merced River already existed, its origin unknown. It probably began as an Indian trail, providing access to Little Yosemite Valley. It may have been the path followed by members of the Mariposa Battalion as they searched for Chief Tenaya’s band. Occasional references connect Stephen M. Cunningham to early trail work in the Vernal-Nevada falls area. Cunningham, born in New York State in 1820, served as a justice of the peace for Mariposa in 1852 and became a business associate of James Savage. After serving in the Civil War, he returned to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, where he became a guide and curio seller.

John Olmsted wrote in 1868, upon arriving at a spectacular view of Vernal Fall from Lady Franklin’s rock:
The real hard work was now to be done. Above us the path grew steeper and steeper, until it led along the face of a sloping rock partially covered with muck—where the wind blew furiously, and the spray from the fall was blinding. At this juncture I availed myself, for once, of the strong hand of the guide. On a slippery shelving rock, with a seething cauldron on our left, a precipice on our right, with a boggy, slushy path rising before us, a thick penetrating spray eddying around, filling our eyes and ears, the wind roaring, and bellowing, and lashing against us, and the thunders of the cataract booming on our ears—surely this was a position to be sought but once in a lifetime, and to be endured but once more, and that from necessity.

Soon, however, the whole party were safely at the foot of a high rock, parallel with the face of the fall, where stood a ladder about sixty feet long, nearly perpendicular. Stepping from the top round on to a ledge of rock, I found another ladder some twenty feet high, at right angles with the first, from the top of which a little smart climbing brought the party to a smooth expanse of rock at the very verge of the Vernal Fall.37

[37. John Olmsted, A Trip to California, 1868, in Separates File, Y-4C, #29, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 80.]

During 1869 and 1870, Albert Snow rebuilt the old trail for horse travel connected with his La Casa Nevada hotel operations and for stock that he grazed in Little Yosemite Valley.

Today’s Mist Trail, from above the present Vernal Fall bridge on to the top of the fall, is essentially the same as the original route, except that the trail used to end at Fern Grotto, where a platform and wooden ladders provided access up and over the rim. They were built either by Cunningham or by Ira Folsom, who operated the ferry across the Merced River in the valley. A visitor in 1876 recalled that
There is an awfully pokerish ladder fastened against the cliff, on which you can go down and get very wet. It is painful and rather dangerous, but a great many,, persons escape, and they only charge you seventy five cents.38

[38. Dio Lewis, Gypsies (Boston: Eastern Book Co., 1881), 170-71. The Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette of 10 June 1882 stated that Drew’s ladders at Vernal Fall had been purchased by the Board of Yosemite Commissioners. Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 3 September 1957. This must refer to Colwell O. Drew, a cattleman utilizing Drew’s Meadows near Hog Ranch. A co-owner of La Casa Nevada, he married the Snows’ only daughter, Maria.]

The Vernal Fall Trail toll house, no longer extant, measured twenty feet long by fourteen feet wide. It stood under the edge of an immense granite overhang, called Register Rock, with that stone forming the back part of the house and half of the roof. That same boulder sheltered a livery stable and other outbuildings.39 Major Harry Benson ordered Register Rock, upon which so many early and some famous visitors to Vernal and Nevada falls inscribed their names, painted over in 1906-1907.

[39. Churchill, Over the Purple Hills, 168-69.]

The state of California purchased the Mist Trail and the ladders in 1882 for $300. Within the next few years, wooden stairs replaced the dangerous ladders, and railings were erected in 1892. James Hutchings, in describing the Mist Trail, wrote in his book published in 1886:
Let us seek the “ladders,” so called from the original, but which have been transformed into substantial steps (to which the old term “ladders” still clings), by which we can descend to Fern Grotto, on our way to the foot of the Vernal Fall wall.40

[40. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras, 453.]

(7) Snow Trail

In 1870 Albert Snow, the first known trail builder in Yosemite Valley, constructed a horse trail from the valley floor to Register Rock, the beginning of the Mist Trail, and over to the flat between Vernal and Nevada falls, where he had constructed a hotel. The route of that original trail, which zigzagged up to Clark Point and down to Silver Apron, can be picked up at the junction just above Register Rock. It generally followed the new trail but was much steeper. Then, just after crossing the bridge near Silver Apron, one can find to the right a section of the trail leading directly to the site of La Casa Nevada. The road from La Casa Nevada to Emerald Pool is part of George Anderson’s unfinished trail from Happy Isles.

(8) Anderson Trail

In 1882 George C. Anderson contracted with the Yosemite commissioners and began construction on a trail up the north bank of the Merced River from Happy Isles Bridge to Vernal Fall. He originally planned to build the trail all the way up the north side to the top of the falls near Snow’s hotel, but when costs began to run way over budget and the trail ran into a granite cliff through which it would be necessary to blast, the commission ordered the project stopped. In 1885 the commissioners had a connection built from a point on Anderson’s trail uphill to a new bridge below Vernal Fall, across which it joined the Snow Trail. Anderson’s abandoned trail left the present path about three hundred feet below the bridge at Vernal Fall and continued uphill—broad, substantial, and wide as a wagon road — until it ended abruptly in a grove of trees. The earlier south trail along the Merced ultimately fell into disuse. Anderson built a blacksmith shop along his trail that is mentioned in some of the old commissioners’ reports. Its remains were cleaned up by National Park Service crews in 1957.

(9) Panorama Trail

In 1871 John Conway laid out a horse trail—his first trail building venture in the park, possibly prompted by Washburn and McCready—from Snow’s hotel site to the top of Nevada Fall and on to Little Yosemite Valley along the north side of the Merced River. Washburn and McCready built the original trail from Glacier Point toward Nevada Fall in 1872, following Illilouette Ridge and dropping down to join the Mono Trail at the bridge in Little Yosemite Valley. In 1885 the Echo Wall Trail section of the Panorama Trail was built to Glacier Point directly from Nevada Fall. It later became the Eleven-Mile or Long Trail. In 1893 the commissioners’ reports stated that the Panorama Trail had been rebuilt after long disuse, as had the bridge over Illilouette Creek.

(10) Ledge Trail

By 1871 James Hutchings was guiding parties of hikers over a hazardous route he had blazed that climbed 3,200 feet in one and one-half miles from in back of Camp Curry to Glacier Point. Because of the hazards connected with its use, the National Park Service refused to recognize this as an official trail and discontinued its maintenance.41

[41. Some of this information on early trails came from John W. Bingaman, Pathways: A Story of Trails and Men (Lodi, Calif.: End-Kian Publishing Co., 1968), 20-27.]

5. Improvement of Trails

a) Hardships Attending Travel to Yosemite Valley

Although in the late 1850s the newly discovered Mono diggings east of the Sierra began attracting miners and packers and stimulating trans-Sierra travel over the Mono Trail, Yosemite Valley would not be reached by wagon for many years yet. Until the mid-1870s passengers and freight entered the valley on horses and mules over rough, steep trails. The number of registered visitors to the valley increased steadily from year to year as returning travelers disseminated word of the park’s grandeur. The tourism potential was strong from the beginning, but the uncertain travel conditions remained a hindrance.

Towns neighboring Yosemite Valley quickly lost patience with what they perceived as a lack of foresightedness on the part of the Yosemite commissioners. Although the Yosemite Valley and Big Tree Grove had been surveyed, nothing tangible was being provided by the legislature for their improvement, which would help attract visitors and fatten the coffers of local businessmen:
There is no longer reason for hoping for assistance from the State in either improving these places, or the roads that lead to them, and it now becomes a matter of importance to the people here to consider whether they cannot afford to take the case in their hands., so far as to raise money to improve and rebuild the roads. 42

[42. “The Trails to Yo Semite Valley,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 24 March 1866.]

The number of visitors who willingly accepted the adversities of the Yosemite trip during the early years was phenomenal, but many wryly commented on the crude facilities and rough passage found along the way. One early traveler who made the trip from the south in 1867 recounted that
The most difficult mountain in the way, after leaving Mariposa, is Chowchilla, some sixty-five hundred feet above the sea, and it is decidedly in the way; the trail over it being zig-zag in its course, and is exceedingly difficult. Up and up we went, on an angle varying from thirty to forty degrees, struggling through the dry dust and loose rocks surrounded by pine trees, manzanita and sage brush, the summit seemingly but a short distance up, but when reached not there. We stopped and rested often in our ascent, and in about two hours we were on the summit, fatigued and jaded, as were our horses. After that we plodded on, up and dowri hills, following the trail till we reached Clarks’s [sic]. . . .43

[43. “Yo Semite Valley” (Correspondence of the Hartford (Conn.) Courant), in Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 29 June 1867.]

The Chowchilla Mountains route was notorious for its rugged terrain, steep grades, and difficult course even after it became a wagon road in 1870. Not all of the trip was uncomfortable, however, for having finally arrived at Clark’s establishment, that same 1867 visitor enjoyed a succulent dinner of venison and chicken, bread, coffee, milk, and sweetmeats. He likened Clark to Robinson Crusoe,
monarch of all he surveys, and at his rancho he entertains the traveler in a style peculiar to himself. Although his guests are not supplied with all the comforts of modern degeneracy, they are sure of a good table, good beds and good attention, much better than they can with any reason expect in such a wild, inaccessible place, and at rates which., for moderation are somewhat surprising to California visitors.44

[44. Ibid.]

That same year Mariposa County residents petitioned their board of supervisors to survey for a public wagon road from Mariposa to the South Fork of the Merced, terminating at Clark’s hostelry It was obvious to them that the needs of travelers for better accommodations and routes would have to be met from that end if Mariposans were to acquire their fair share of the increasing tourist trade. Already sensing the keen competition for tourist dollars from Coulterville to the north, Mariposans felt that there should be a good road to Yosemite Valley on each side of the Merced River.45

[45. “The Proposed Wagon-Road to the South Fork,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 16 February 1867; “Wagon Road to the South Fork,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 23 February 1867; “Road to Yo Semite,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 16 March 1867.]

b) Yosemite Commissioners Encourage Road Construction

After the Yosemite Grant was established, as an inducement for individuals or companies to build access routes into the valley, the commissioners offered to grant certain parties franchises to construct trails and roads in and about the park. Paying the cost of those improvements themselves, the builders were allowed in return to collect tolls for the use of their roads. It was stipulated, however, that those roads and trails would pass to the state and become free whenever the legislature appropriated money for the commissioners to reimburse the amounts expended in construction.

By 1869 several road companies were at work, their backers realizing that the first stage route completed to Yosemite would be heavily used. In Mariposa County the “Mariposa and Big Tree Grove Turnpike Company” had been organized the previous summer to build a carriage road as far as Clark’s and ultimately on into Yosemite Valley. The “Yo Semite and Big Tree Grove Turnpike Company” had also been incorporated earlier to build a turnpike from Coulterville via Black’s, Bower Cave, and Deer Flat, into Yosemite Valley, thence by Inspiration Point, the “Meadows,” Clark’s, and the Big Tree Grove to Mariposa. The “Mariposa Big Trees and Yo Semite Turnpike Company,” of which Galen Clark was president, was formed for the purpose of constructing a wagon road from Mariposa to the South Fork and the Big Trees. The road was to connect with the Hogan Ranch road west of the main branch of Chowchilla Creek, cross Chowchilla Mountain to Clark’s ranch on the South Fork of the Merced, and proceed to the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees. In August 1869 a traveler noted two available routes to the valley, one via Mariposa and the other via Big Oak Flat and Harding’s mill. The latter was the cheapest, steepest, and most uncomfortable. The Mariposa route was somewhat longer but easier to travel in comparison.46

[46. “The Yo Semite Roads,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 12 February 1869; “New Road Company,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 12 March 1869; “The Chinese Camp Turnpike,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 23 July 1869; and “What the ‘Chicago Party’ Says,” in Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 20 August 1869.]

c) Work Begins on the Big Oak Flat and Coulterville Roads

Big Oak Flat (earlier Savage’s Diggings), an early mining community thirty miles west of Yosemite National Park, gave its name to the Big Oak Flat Road, the second access for wheeled vehicles built into Yosemite Valley.

A group of men in Tuolumne County had organized the “Chinese Camp and Yo Semite Turnpike Company” in September 1868 with the intent of building a turnpike road from Chinese Camp, through Big Oak Flat, First and Second Garrote, across the Pilot Peak ridge, through Hazel Green and Crane and Tamarack flats, to a point on the summit overlooking Yosemite Valley.47 George W. Coulter was president of the organization and Charles B. Cutting secretary. The state of California granted the company a franchise in February 1869 and a formative meeting for the project took place in Chinese Camp on 19 March. In September 1869 George E. Sprague, L. E. Stuart, and John B. Smith of Garrote, in Tuolumne County, obtained from the Yosemite commissioners the exclusive privilege for that company to build a wagon road within the grant, entering the valley on the north side of the Merced River. The road was to be completed by 1 July 1871. By June 1870 it stretched from Big Oak Flat, through First and Second Garrote, past Sprague’s, Hamilton’s, and Hardin’s ranches, and on beyond the Hodgdon Ranch on the edge of the grant to Crane Flat. On 20 January 1871 the company incorporated as the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company. By July 1871 the Big Oak Flat Road had only reached Gentry’s Station at the northwestern edge of the Yosemite Grant atop the cliff above Yosemite Valley. There time and money ran out. Although the state extended the deadline for completion of the road, on 1 January 1872 the company forfeited its franchise and apparently did not ask to have it renewed.

[47. According to Erwin G. Gudde, California Place Names (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), Garrote acquired its name from the execution of a thief by strangulation. A second execution a few miles away resulted in First and Second Garrote. By 1879, First Garrote had adopted the name Groveland.]

The people of Coulterville realized that they also needed a road into Yosemite Valley to remain competitive in the tourist trade. In 1870 citizens of Mariposa County residing at and near Coulterville incorporated the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company to build a wagon road from Bower Cave, the eastern extremity of the public road leading toward Yosemite Valley, on the North Fork of the Merced River, to the western boundary of the Yosemite Grant. During 1870-72 a wagon road was constructed from Bower Cave (a limestone cavern and later a tourist stop), up the south slope of Pilot Peak, by Hazel Green, to Crane Flat, where a junction was made with the Big Oak Flat Road to Gentry’s. The final miles to the valley floor were made on horseback.

d) Improved Roads and Railroad Service Increase Visitation

Those two routes, in addition to the wagon road built by Galen Clark and others from White and Hatch’s to Clark’s ranch on the South Fork of the Merced River, greatly improved accessibility to Yosemite by 1872. The horseback ride to the valley was reduced on the north side to eight miles from Gentry’s, the terminus of the Big Oak Flat Road; to thirteen miles from Crane Flat, where the Coulterville Road ended, via Gentry’s; and on the south side to twenty-six miles from Clark’s Station.

The completion of the Central Pacific Railroad through the San Joaquin Valley in the early 1870s brought an influx of visitors to Yosemite, with Berenda, Raymond, and Merced serving as staging points as railroad construction advanced. In 1871 the Central Pacific Railroad completed its “Copperopolis Short Line” from Stockton to Milton, in Calaveras County. From there stages carried the passengers through Chinese Camp, Jacksonville, Priests’s Grade, and Big Oak Flat to the valley. The California Lumber Company established Madera on the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876, from which a stage road ultimately led via Coarse Gold, Fresno Flats (Oakhurst), and Fish Camp to Wawona.

Despite their gradual improvements through the years, trails into Yosemite remained steep and dangerous, and travel over them entailed various levels of discomfort and fatigue that continued to discourage many park visitors. To make the most of one’s visit,
a “round trip” was recommended, the tourists coming into the valley by way of the Coulterville trail and leaving by way of the Mariposa trail. No road came closer to Yosemite than Mariposa. Ten days was the minimum a traveler should allow for the journey from San Francisco, and of this three days could be spent in the valley, one in the Big Trees, the remaining six being spent in transit.48

[48. Elizabeth Foote, “Interesting Notes from the “Whitney Guide Book,” Yosemite Nature Notes 16, no. 9 (September 1937):66.]

The improvement of trails up to this point always stopped short of the valley floor because of the great expense of forging a way down the granite walls on either side of the valley. The first official report of the Yosemite commissioners to the state legislature, in 1867, described the difficulty and cost of making the valley accessible by wagon road. It pointed out that the valley could not be entered by following the Merced River upstream, as might be supposed, because of the narrow and precipitous canyon walls. Instead one had to descend 3,000 feet into the valley from above. Building a safe wagon road from any of the existing trail termini down to the valley floor was judged to be difficult and expensive, if not impossible. Such gloomy assessments deterred the only prospective builders of such a road—the companies with interests in the three routes leading to Yosemite. The Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company, however, finally took the initiative.

e) The Coulterville Road Reaches the Valley Floor

1) A New Transportation Era Begins

In the summer of 1872, that company, through its president, Dr. John T. McLean, applied to the Yosemite commissioners for the exclusive privilege of extending its wagon road into Yosemite Valley and collecting tolls for the use of the part of the road within the grant after it was constructed. The road within the limits of the grant was to be free to teams exclusively hauling hay and grain as feed for horses and cattle stabled in the valley and lumber for building purposes (a positive commentary on the board’s attitude toward preservation of the valley floor). It was to be completed within the year 1873.

Because the commission had heard nothing further from Sprague and his associates, and assumed that they were content to have passengers over their road enter the valley via the Coulterville trail from Gentry’s as had been the practice since completion of their road to that point in 1871, it entered into a contract with McLean’s company, leasing it the right-of-way for a period of ten years. Such an exclusive privilege would somewhat offset the cost of the venture because it would secure for the company all travel into Yosemite from the north side of the Merced River.

Indeed, the commissioners granted this exclusive privilege because they did not think anyone would be willing to advance the large sum needed for the enterprise unless they had the assurance of being able to command all the travel on one side of Yosemite Valley. A second reason for their willingness to assure such a monopoly was their belief that the desire of the Mariposa business community to retain its share of Yosemite-bound travel would result in construction of a competing wagon road to the valley from the south side of the Merced. The commissioners felt that one road on each side of the river would suffice for several years to come and that more could not be built without dividing travel to such an extent that parties who advanced funds would receive no remuneration for their investment.

While the Coulterville crew was surveying in search of the best route over which to continue its road to the valley floor, Dr. McLean discovered a stand of Big Trees, which he named the Merced Grove because of its proximity to the Merced River. He immediately perceived the potential tourist attraction of these huge sequoias. Although it would cost $10,000 more than to build from Crane Flat down Crane Creek to Big Meadow, it was decided to reroute the road east from Hazel Green along the southern slope of the dividing ridge between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, through the Merced Grove of Big Trees to Big Meadow, and then on into the Merced Canyon, past the western boundary of the grant, to the Lower Iron Bridge on the valley floor. The Coulterville Road became an expensive proposition when it was decided to detour through the Merced Grove. That decision caused abandonment of six miles of already completed road to Crane Flat and necessitated construction in a granite formation, between Crane Creek and the Merced River canyon floor, that required expensive blasting.

The deep snows of the winter of 1872-73 delayed construction, so the state extended the contract time to the end of 1874. Continuing work during 1873 and 1874, the company finally completed the road on 18 June 1874,
and on that day stage coaches and carriages, filled with passengers, first passed from the towns on the railroad in the San Joaquin Valley, and from the foothill towns of the Sierra Nevada over this road into the Yosemite Valley. The completion of this road made access to Yosemite easy, speedy and comfortable, by wheeled vehicles, instead of tiresome, difficult and dangerous, on horseback, and over trails; and was celebrated in the valley by bonfires, firing of cannon, a procession, a public meeting, and general rejoicing; the press of the State and of the United States noticing the event as one in which not only California but the Nation was interested and to be congratulated.49

[49. McLean, “A Statement,” 23.]

The pioneer route to Yosemite, the Coulterville Road signaled a new era in tourism by opening the valley to wheeled vehicles. The last portion of the road, at The Cascades, featured a frightening grade, lacking curves or turns. It was a straight, steep, dangerous stretch, built straight down the side of the Merced River canyon. The Coulterville Road, in its entirety, left the San Joaquin Valley at Modesto, went east through La Grange, past Red Mountain, to Coulterville, Dudley’s Hotel and Ranch, and Bower Cave, and on to Hazel Green, the Merced Grove, and Big Meadow, and then descended into the Merced River canyon. Its total cost from Bower Cave to the Lower Iron Bridge was $71,000, including the branch from Hazel Green to Crane Flat.

The main division of the Coulterville Road was twenty-seven miles long, from Bower Cave on the North Fork of the Merced River east to the “Blacksmith Shop,” a hole in the rocks on the north side of the Merced where a forge had been established in 1874. That spot lay one-sixteenth of a mile west of The Cascades, near where Cascade Creek emptied into the Merced River, on the west boundary of the Yosemite Grant. (Today the site is near the junction of the All-Year Highway and the old Coulterville Road.) A six-mile branch extended from Hazel Green to Crane Flat, and another four-mile stretch ran from the blacksmith shop to Hutchings’s Hotel.50

[50. For information on the Coulterville Road, see John T. McLean, deposition before R. B. Tappan, Notary Public, 27 September 1891, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA; Jno. T. McLean, Pres., Coulterville & Yosemite Turnpike Co., to Col. S. M. Mansfield, Pres., Commission to examine and report as to certain roads in and about Yosemite National Park, 30 October 1899, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

The width of the road averaged sixteen feet, with turnouts. The average grade from Bower Cave to the blacksmith shop did not exceed eight percent, and its builders stated that nowhere was the grade in excess of fifteen percent. The sunny exposure of the road, because of its location along the south or sunny side of the divide between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, resulted in cheaper maintenance than for the other roads into the park. The road remained free of snow and passable for travel earlier in the spring and stayed open later in the fall. The toll house of the Coulterville Road in the canyon of the Merced River near Cascade Creek was burned by Indians in 1874. The toll collector, George E. Boston, was murdered and his body burned in the conflagration. In the house and destroyed by the fire were all the toll books and other account books of the turnpike company from 1870 to 1874.

2) Later History

When Yosemite National Park was established, including the privately owned toll roads, there were no appropriations available for purchasing those sections of road on park land. The government, therefore, offered to maintain the roads if the companies would declare them toll free. The Big Oak Flat Road company accepted this proposition, but the Coulterville Road company refused it. The latter road fell into disuse, and finally the county board of supervisors declared the section from Hazel Green to Pohono Bridge a public highway in 1917, instigating a lawsuit with Dr. McLean’s daughter who demanded the right to collect tolls. Those rights were denied because of the lack of maintenance on the road since 1908.

The Coulterville Road enters the park four times along its western boundary as it winds to its terminus at Highway 140 in the Merced River canyon, one mile below The Cascades. Its total length across park land is 8-7/8 miles. Starting at the park boundary, near Hazel Green, this dirt road passes through the forest to the Merced Grove. This section is now used only as a fire road by the National Park Service. The south entrance to the grove is blocked by a culvert and the north entrance has a locked gate.

Heading east toward Foresta/Big Meadow, the road is intersected in several places by paved access roads on Forest Service land. The Coulterville Road is paved for the last 3Vmile section beginning at the southern perimeter of Big Meadow. The last 1-3/4 miles’ of road has a grade of around sixteen percent. The sheer descent into the valley required several retaining walls along the outside edge of the road, which are intact. Historically, the road continued up the north side of the Merced River canyon to a junction near the present Pohono Bridge where it joined an earlier wagon road leading to the Old Village area.

The Coulterville Road receives limited use today. Although the precipitous grade is closed to vehicles because of a rockslide in 1982, the partially paved section in the Foresta/Big Meadow area is used, primarily by residents.51

[51. See the National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form, Old Coulterville Road and Trail, prepared by Leslie Starr Hart, 1976. The roadway listed in the National Register nomination does not include the spur from Hazel Green to Crane Flat connecting the Coulterville and Big Oak Flat routes. Portions of that spur are visible from the new Big Oak Flat Road between Crane Flat and Hodgdon Meadow.]

f) The Big Oak Flat Road Reaches the Valley Floor

The residents of Big Oak Flat, meanwhile, remained anxious to promote tourist travel through their region. It had been anticipated that the Coulterville group would connect with the Big Oak Flat Road at Crane Flat and use its saddle train facilities to enter the valley. But when the Coulterville company decided to detour through the Merced Grove, it meant the Big Oak Flat company had no possibility of making even a little money by using the end of their road as a staging entrance for tourists into the valley.

So on 29 August 1872 the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, including Charles B. Cutting, D. B. Newhall, L. D. Gobin, A. Halsey, and George E. Sprague among its shareholders, requested from the Yosemite commissioners a franchise to build another road into the valley on the north side of the Merced River. Because that privilege had already been granted to the Coulterville company, the request was denied. The Big Oak Flat group brought up a similar petition for consideration at the annual meeting of the commissioners on 17 November 1873, and that body rejected it again. After adjournment of that meeting, another petition was submitted, this time for a right-of-way for a toll-free wagon road from Gentry’s Station to the valley floor; it also met with failure.

At that point the company applied to the state legislature for the right to extend its road from Gentry’s to the valley floor, and a bill passed granting them the privilege in February 1874. The new road was to commence at the east end of the Big Oak Flat company’s road, on the north side of the Yosemite Grant, near Gentry’s Station, and terminate on the valley floor near the foot of El Capitan. The Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company later appealed the legislature’s action, protesting that the state had no authority to grant the request, having divested itself of the power to manage the premises and placed it instead in the hands of the governor and commissioners when it accepted the trust. The company bitterly fought the suit, but to no avail.

Because of the scarcity of money, the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company did not complete its road until 17 July 1874, one month after the Coulterville Road had reached the valley floor. The Big Oak Flat Road descended to the valley floor via a series of switchbacks that eased the final descent down the steep talus slopes. The most famous stretch of the road, because of its grade, was the Zigzag section between El Capitan Bridge and Gentry’s Station. Italian laborers skilled in rockwork completed that section by cribbing up the steep sides of the roadbed with solid rock walls without mortar. The wedge shape of the rocks ensured that they would not slip out and that the more weight on the road, the tighter the rocks would hold.

The Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company was incorporated 3 June 1879 to purchase the Big Oak Flat Road and the franchise for the toll road. Title to the Yosemite road of the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company was conveyed to J. M. Hutchings by certificate of sale of 16 May 1878. On 19 November 1879 Hutchings conveyed the road by deed to the Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company.

W. C. Priest, president of the Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, reported on his road to an investigative body in 1899. He stated that the thirty-mile-long toll wagon road began at Dorsey’s old sawmill, about two miles northwest of Hamilton’s Station, and extended east through Hardin’s, Cracker’s, Hodgdon’s, the Tuolumne Big Tree Grove, Crane Flat, and then through Gin and Tamarack flats to Gentry’s Station, and then to the valley floor. Twenty miles of the road lay within the boundary of Yosemite National Park and ten miles outside and west of the grant’s western boundary. The road width averaged thirteen feet with a maximum grade of sixteen percent. The total construction cost of the road was $45,650. The section of the road from its point of commencement to Sequoia (Crocker’s Station), within the national park, a distance of fourteen miles, was kept in good condition and open to travel all year round, while the section of road from Sequoia to the bounds of the Yosemite Valley Grant were open seven months of the year.52

[52. W. C. Priest, Pres., Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, to Col. S. M. Mansfield, President of the Commission appointed to investigate and report upon certain facts relative to the Yosemite National Park, under the Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1899, 31 October 1899, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA; W. C. Priest, President, Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, in Report of the Commission on Roads in Yosemite National Park, California. Senate Document No. 155, 56th Congress, 1st Session, 8 February 1900. Commission: S. M. Mansfield, Colonel, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A.; Harry C. Benson, Captain, Fourth Cavalry, U. S. A.; J. L. Maude, Department of Highways, State of California. Report dated 4 December 1899. In Separates File, Y-20a, #15, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The original Big Oak Flat Road can still be followed down to a primitive campground at Tamarack Flat. The road continues a few miles beyond, but is closed above Gentry’s. The historic route dropped into the valley some distance uphill from the present road, completed in 1940. A rockslide destroyed that Zigzag switchback section in 1943 and traffic was switched to the modern highway. Subsequent slides and washouts further blocked the old road, but its line of descent is visible from the south side of the valley, especially from Tunnel View on the Wawona Road. The original route can be followed in a few places. One is a steep, narrow, winding section from Crane Flat to Hodgdon Meadow. Now a downhill-only route, it passes through the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees.53

[53. Richard P. Ditton and Donald E. McHenry, Yosemite Road Guide, rev. ed. (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1981), 9.]

A detour on the saddle trail to Yosemite began at Crane Flat near where the Coulterville and Big Oak Flat trails merged. It was used in the early spring when there were heavy snows and cut out the higher portions of the trail through Gin and Tamarack flats. Bunnell wrote that when blazing the Coulterville Trail in 1856, they cut two trails from Crane Flat, the lower for early, the upper for later seasonal use. The detour, called “The Lower Trail,” commenced at Crane Flat and avoided the climb up to Tamarack Flat and down again. Whitney’s map shows it proceeding down Crane Creek to just above Big Meadow, then due east to the regular crossing of Cascade Creek where it joined the upper trail again. It was blazed a thousand feet lower than the regular trail and was difficult to find.54

[54. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 224.]

g) Antagonism Between Road Companies Increases

This second road into the valley from the north, which somewhat paralleled the course of the Coulterville route, was built in defiance of the authority of the Yosemite commissioners, who, along with the Coulterville Road company, considered it to be a trespass upon the grant. Its presence, which meant a loss of the exclusive right by the latter to the travel in and out of Yosemite on that side of the valley, resulted in division of traffic between the two roads, increased competition for that patronage between the two companies, and a subsequent reduction of the tolls on both of them.

Illustration 5.
Rock wall cribbing and old roadbed of Coulterville Road (on USFS land), view to east.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 6.
Rock retaining wall and drain, old Big Oak Flat Road.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

Most importantly, the completion of the Big Oak Flat Road meant great and immediate financial loss for the pioneer Coulterville Road company, which, because of its agreement for an exclusive privilege, had expended thousands of dollars in the construction of its road, fully expecting to be repaid by the increased volume of stage travel coming to it alone and paying the liberal tolls allowed by the commissioners. The company had confidently expected to receive a reasonable interest on the cost of the road plus a large annual surplus over the interest to help pay off the original cost of construction. The Big Oak Flat Road eventually became the more popular of the two routes.

A further aggravation to the Coulterville company was its earlier expectation that all tourists to Yosemite, wanting maximum pleasure from the trip, would enter the valley by one route and leave by another. Because its road was expected to be the only one into the valley on the north side, every tourist either entering or leaving by it, the builders of the Coulterville Road had agreed at the behest of the commissioners to collect tolls on the road only where it crossed the boundary of the grant or outside the grant in order to comply with the “public use” condition under which the grant had been made by Congress.

The construction of another road from Gentry’s to the valley meant that from 1874 to 1886, when the state purchased it, the extremely scenic portion of the Coulterville Road extending from the level of the valley to The Cascades constantly carried tourists who entered and returned from the valley by the Mariposa or Gentry routes, and who thus enjoyed the canyon scenery without paying any toll to the Coulterville company.

h) The Wawona Road Reaches the Valley Floor

Galen Clark, from his vantage point at the South Fork of the Merced, had early seen the need to develop better access routes into Yosemite Valley. By 1866 he had pushed a stage road to a point about twelve miles west of his hotel. In 1869 he organized the “Mariposa Big Trees and Yo Semite Turnpike Company” mentioned earlier, and construction on the road from Mariposa to the South Fork took place during 1870-71. The California state legislature, however, refused to buy the road as had been anticipated by the company, somewhat dampening enthusiasm for pursuing it to completion. In 1870, however, Galen Clark opened the Chowchilla Mountain wagon road from Mariposa. Two years earlier the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors had given Clark money from the county road fund to build a bridge across Big Creek on that trail.55

[55. Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 7 March 1868. The Chowchilla Mountain road still receives limited use.]

The later completion of the Coulterville and Big Oak Flat roads to Yosemite Valley east from Coulterville and Stockton attracted many visitors away from Clark’s southern endeavors. Because of increased debts, Clark and Moore’s, as Clark’s ranch was then known, was forced to sell to the firm of Washburn, Coffman & Chapman in 1874. Henry Washburn also believed that a completed road between the South Fork and Yosemite Valley would be advantageous to business, and the completion of such a toll road became a top priority.56

[56. Anthony Crosby and Nick Scrattish, Historic Structure Report, Design and Installation of a Fire Detection and Suppression System, Wawona Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California (Denver: National Park Service, 1983), 11, 14.]

In November 1874 Mariposa County granted a permit for a toll road to the southern boundary of the Yosemite Grant. John Conway and Joseph Ridgeway were appointed commissioners to locate and survey the route. That same fall the Yosemite commissioners granted A. H. Washburn, E. W. Chapman, and W. F. Coffman and Company of Mariposa the right to extend their toll road on the south side of the Merced from the boundary of the grant into the valley on the same terms as those given the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company. A company of Chinese obtained the contract for building the road. James Ridgeway of Mariposa oversaw the work, which started in December at Alder Creek, to which point the road had already been completed. The initial force of 50 Chinese was soon increased to 300 workers, divided into two camps.

One group of laborers worked ‘under James Ridgeway from the valley south, while the other worked under Joe Ridgeway toward the valley north from Alder Creek. Despite severe snow and ice conditions that winter, the South Fork and Yosemite Turnpike Road, except for about 300 yards near Inspiration Point, was completed by 18 April 1875 at a cost of about $76,750. The first stageload of tourists arrived at the end of the road from Wawona on that day. The Ridgeway brothers and their helpers took the stage apart and the Chinese laborers carried the pieces over the still-rough section. They then reassembled the stage, and the passengers continued on their way. Other stages proceeded in the same manner, their passengers enjoying the novelty of walking over the short section of unfinished road.

Access to Yosemite from the south, then, began at Raymond in Madera County, the terminus of the branch line of the Southern Pacific Railroad from Berenda, and proceeded north to the south boundary of the park at Wawona, then on to the valley, a total of seventy-three miles, twenty-six being within the park boundaries. A branch line from Mariposa, over the Chowchilla Mountain, joined the main line at a point one mile south of Wawona. Another branch left the main road at Four-Mile Station, four miles south of Wawona, and ran easterly to the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. (The Yosemite Valley commissioners authorized the survey of the original road through the Mariposa Grove in 1878. Construction began immediately, with the road completed the next year.) Another branch, completed in 1882, left the main road at Chinquapin Station and ran northeast to Glacier Point. On the main branch from Raymond to Yosemite, from a point eight miles north of Ahwahnee to a point on the boundary line between Madera and Mariposa counties, the owner of the Miami sawmill maintained the road and collected tolls. At the boundary line the main Wawona toll road began, owned and controlled by the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company. Points on the latter road were Four Mile Station, Wawona, Eight Mile Station, Grouse Creek, and Fort Monroe, from where the descent to the valley floor was made.

The width of all the sections averaged sixteen feet, with grades varying from four percent to eight percent. The cost of construction of the portion of road extending from the bridge across the South Fork of the Merced to the Yosemite Valley Grant line (20 miles), including bridge, was $35,000. Cost of construction from Chinquapin Junction to Glacier Point (14 miles), $8,000; from the Madera County line to the bridge across the Merced (11 miles), $17,000; from Four Mile Junction to the Big Tree grant line (2 miles), $1,250; from Cold Springs to the bridge over the Merced (13 miles), $15,500. After the state purchased the section of the Wawona Road within the Yosemite Grant in 1886, the Washburns collected toll over the balance of the road until 1917, when the section south of Wawona and the road to Glacier Point were turned over to the federal government.

The road proved to be very popular because of the access it provided to the Big Tree Grove and other views of interest, such as Inspiration and Glacier points. No one could dispute the spectacular view of Yosemite Valley upon entering from the south.57 Until 1933, when the present road circumvented it, visitors first saw the valley from present Old Inspiration Point. Today its place has been taken by Tunnel View, another magnificent overlook at the east end of the Wawona tunnel. A 1 1/4 mile trail leads to Old Inspiration Point from the upper parking area at the tunnel.

[57. A. H. Washburn, Superintendent of the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, to Col. S. M. Mansfield, 31 October 1899, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

Those three roads—the Coulterville, Big Oak Flat, and South Fork routes—commanded all possible approaches and accommodated all the travel to Yosemite for several years. The easier travel conditions and attendant increased publicity about the trip substantially increased the number of visitors to Yosemite.

i) Roads Within the Reservation Boundary

Road building in Yosemite Valley itself always proceeded slowly because of lack of funds, differences of opinion as to proper location, and problems with dust. John Conway constructed a stage road along the north side of the valley in 1872, and two years later built a road for hauling wood from Hutchings’s property along the south side of the valley. As late as 1880 no satisfactory carriage road around the valley existed.

As one of its first acts, the board of commissioners appointed in 1880 by Gov. George C. Perkins unanimously passed a resolution declaring that the state should immediately purchase all toll roads and trails built by individuals or corporations within the limits of the Yosemite Grant and make them free to the public. Guardian Hutchings also favored that policy, stating that the collection of tolls on roads and trails in and to the valley greatly annoyed visitors and that in his opinion the state could ill afford to bear censure over the omission of CO such a relatively small action as the purchase of those enterprises.58

[58. Report of the Commissioners to the Legislature, 20 December 1880, and Report of the Guardian of the Valley to the Yosemite Commissioners, December 1880, in McLean, “A Statement,” 45.]

The legislative session of 1880 appropriated $25,000 to purchase trails and to build roads and bridges within the grant. With part of that money, the Yosemite commissioners initiated construction of a Grand Carriage Drive around the valley floor, on which they continued work until the money was exhausted. During the course of that project, the commissioners realized that the section of the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company’s road extending from the Lower Iron Bridge down the Merced canyon to The Cascades constituted an essential part of the new drive. In accordance with their policy that roads and trails in the grant should be free, they recommended in their biennial report to the legislature in December 1882 that the state purchase that section.

In response, the state legislature in 1883 passed an act appropriating $25,000 for the purchase and construction of roads, trails, and bridges within the grant. Governor George Stoneman, however, for certain fiscal reasons, vetoed it. The 1885 legislature subsequently passed an act on 3 March more compatible with Stoneman’s wishes for tighter control over the commission’s expenditures and again appropriated $25,000 to purchase, construct, and complete avenues, roads, trails, walks, and bridges in Yosemite Valley. The act allocated ten thousand dollars of that appropriation for purchasing the four-mile section of the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company’s road within the grant extending from the blacksmith shop near The Cascades to Hutchings’s Hotel, and $1,500 for the purchase of the Eagle Peak Trail. Thirty-five hundred dollars of the 1885 appropriation was earmarked for the purchase of the three-mile section of the Big Oak Flat Road from Gentry’s to the valley floor, which had cost more than $12,000 to construct. The state purchase of the Coulterville Road section on 2 April 1885 ended the injustice without making up the losses suffered by the road company as a result of the act of the 1873-74 state legislature authorizing the construction of a competing road into the valley on the same side of the river and the policy of the commissioners forbidding the collection of tolls within the grant for the use of that part of the road lying within the grant boundaries. The commissioners did not complete their road around the valley until 1882. In 1886 the state also purchased the seven-mile section of road within the Yosemite Grant from Fort Monroe to the valley floor.

During the season of 1888, Mariposa County, angered by the perceived monopoly of Yosemite travel business by the Washburn

Illustration 7.
Map of Yosemite Valley.
Capt. George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., Expeditions of 1878-79.

[click to enlarge]

interests, agitated for a free road to Yosemite Valley from the town of Mariposa, following up along the Merced River, as a means of promoting new business for the county. The Washburn clique, according to Yosemite Valley artist Charles D. Robinson, looked on this enterprise as potentially ruinous to the exclusive carrying trade it was enjoying.

At a special election, Mariposa County voted bonds to the amount of $75,000 to build a road from Mariposa to Yosemite Valley and to Coulterville. The Washburn faction reportedly placed obstacles in the way of the surveyors and ultimately brought influence to bear to keep the county from floating the bonds. Despite these problems, the road measure grew in popularity and the Washburn interests grew more uneasy and desperate.

As grading and bridge contracts were let, the Washburns argued that the Mariposa County election was illegal and the state supreme court put a restraining injunction against the further operations contemplated on the new road pending an official inquiry. Eventually the court, pressured by the Southern Pacific Railroad/Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company coalition, sustained the Washburn allegations and declared the county election illegal. Thus failed Mariposa County’s attempt to rid itself of the Washburn’s Yosemite business monopoly.59

[59. Charles D. Robinson to Hon. John W. Noble, Secretary of the Interior, 26 January 1891, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

6. Development of Concession Operations

a) Hotels and Recreational Establishments

As stated previously, the Yosemite Grant contained the stipulation that leases not exceeding ten years could be granted for portions of the premises. In 1866 the Yosemite commissioners disallowed private land claims in the Yosemite Valley and those that had been made were purchased in 1874. Although private individuals had been able to establish the earliest commercial enterprises in the valley without restrictions, after 1874 business concessions were allowed only in accordance with the regulations of the commissioners and through state contracts.

A visitor in July 1876 noted that
In the valley were three hotels, two stores, a billiard hall, two or three drinking saloons, a laundry building and several barns. These were so grouped in the upper part of the valley as to form a little village. The population was perhaps a hundred social and honest people. Their charges for board, livery and washing were reasonable. The stores furnish the common groceries and dry goods, likewise barley for horses.60

[60. Lewis, Gypsies, 179. This small settlement south of the Merced near Sentinel Bridge is referred to in this study as the Old Village, while the present administrative and commercial area is referred to as New Village or Yosemite Village.]

The commissioners ultimately authorized a variety of commercial ventures, including hotels, photographic and art studios, bakeries, dry goods and grocery stores, saddle horse rentals, and livery service. They acted as superintendent for the state, determining who could lease lands and what rents would be charged and who could operate roads and trails. The state bought the structures to be used as hotels and determined the charges made to the public. This was intended to avoid contention among competitors and prevent public extortion.

(1) Upper Hotel

Buck Beardsley and Gustavus Hite had erected the original canvas-covered Upper Hotel in 1857 near Sentinel Bridge. A wooden building replaced it in 1859. J. M. Hutchings, who had revisited Yosemite several times after his initial trip in 1855, became convinced that he wanted to reside there. In the spring of 1864 he came to the Upper Hotel as proprietor, only a few months before Yosemite Valley was removed from the public domain. The Upper Hotel property had by that

THE OLD HUTCHINGS HOUSE

time passed into the hands of Sullivan and Cashman of San Francisco in payment of a debt.

The hotel was then a twenty by sixty-foot, two-story frame structure consisting of two large rooms, one upstairs and one down. The upstairs room had become a women’s dormitory, the one downstairs housed the men and boys. That arrangement was not only inconvenient, but often separated families. Hutchings replaced the cotton cloth doors and windows and the muslin partitions between rooms, which had previously evoked expressions of amusement from some guests and of outrage from others, with wooden ones. He also added lean-tos and porches to rejuvenate the structure. Hutchings constructed all those improvements with lumber from a water-powered sawmill John Muir built in 1868 near the foot of Yosemite Fall. A ditch carried water from Yosemite Creek to the sawmill, which cut boards from a large number of trees throughout the valley that had toppled during windstorms. A small lawn with scattered shade trees, some large boulders, and hitching posts and rails dominated the area between “Hutchings House” and the Merced River. Meadowland producing hay for winter feed lay just across the river.61

[61. Olmsted, A Trip to California, 75.]

In 1866 Hutchings added the large, dirt-floored, combination kitchen and sitting room back of the hotel that encompassed a 175-foot-high incense cedar tree that he could not bring himself to fell, giving the addition its name of “Big Tree Room.” Nails driven into the tree’s trunk held culinary utensils. (The structure was later renamed Cedar Cottage.) There is some question as to dates of construction, but possibly Hutchings built the River Cottage and Rock Cottage in 1870 to provide more accommodations. After wintering one season under the shade of the south wall of the valley, the Hutchings family built a cabin on the north side of the Merced River near the foot of Lower Yosemite Fall. By 1866 improvements there consisted of a small log house and a large barn and shed, with a garden and orchard. Hutchings’s claim embraced 118.63 acres of the best meadowland in the valley.

Helen Hunt (Jackson) visited Yosemite Valley in 1872 and described with delight Hutchings’s hotel:
There are no such rooms in Ah-wah-ne as the rooms on the river-side of this little house. This is the back side; and those who wish to see the coming and going of people, the setting-off of saddle-trains, the driving up and down of the laundry wagon, would better take rooms on the front. But he who would like to open his eyes every morning on the full shining of the great Yosemite Fall; to lie in bed, and from his very pillow watch it sway to right and left under moonlight beams, which seem like wands arresting or hastening the motion; to look down into the amber and green Merced, which caresses his very door-sill; to listen at all hours to the grand violoncello tones of the mysterious waters,—let him ask, as we did, for back bedrooms in the Cottage by the River.

But if he is disconcerted by the fact that his bedroom floor is of rough pine boards, and his bedroom walls of thin laths, covered with unbleached cotton; that he has neither chair, nor table, nor pitcher; that his washbowl is a shallow tin pan, and that all the water he wants he must dip in a tin pint from a barrel out in the hall; that his bed is a sack stuffed with ferns, his one window has no curtain and his door no key,—let him leave Ah-wah-ne the next day.62

[62. Helen Hunt [Jackson], Ah-wah-ne Days: A Visit to the Yosemite Valley in 1872 (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1971), 34.]

Illustration 8.
Barnard’s Hotel and cottages, 1890.

[click to enlarge]
1. Glacier Point 2. South Dome 3. Clouds’ Rest 4. Washington Column. 5. North Dome. 6. Royal Arches. 7. Indian Cañon
8. Yosemite Point 9. Lost Arrow. 10. Yosemite Falls. 11. Eagle Point

Illustration 9.
Sentinel Hotel, late 1890s.
Postcard published by Flying Spur Press, Yosemite, California.

[click to enlarge]

As stated previously, in 1874 Hutchings received $24,000 for his holdings from the state. He subsequently, however, refused to pay rent equal to the fair interest on that sum, so the commissioners advertised his property for lease. Hutchings then counteradvertised his intention to contest the legality of the proposed leasing by the commissioners and his own intention to acquire a lease from the state and continue to conduct business himself. George W. Coulter, the only other bidder for the lease, went into partnership with A. J. Murphy.

After lengthy and bitter lawsuits, Hutchings was evicted from his Yosemite land claim in 1875 and moved to San Francisco. James Hutchings returned to Yosemite Valley, strangely enough, as Guardian of the grant, succeeding Galen Clark, in 1880. After his term of office ended in 1884, he moved back to San Francisco. In 1902 he died in a carriage accident on the Big Oak Flat Road, enroute to the valley. In 1876 Coulter and Murphy took over management of the Hutchings hotel group and added a large two-story building across the road from Cedar Cottage, part of which overhung the river, which became the main building of the Sentinel Hotel group. Coulter and Murphy ultimately surrendered their lease to John K. Barnard. He ran the complex, which included Hutchings’s early buildings and Coulter’s and Murphy’s additions and was variously known as Barnard’s Hotel and the Yosemite Falls Hotel, from 1877 until his forcible eviction by the sheriff of Mariposa County in 1893. Barnard installed a windmill and elevated tank in April 1886, but the windmill was dismantled about 1891 when water from the spring at the foot of Glacier Point was piped to the village. During Barnard’s tenure he floored the Big Tree Room, which became a dining room for hotel guests. Barnard also added a lower porch to Cedar Cottage.

A. B. Glasscock took over the premises after Barnard. By 1894 porches, stairs, and a new roof connected the main hotel building and the adjoining River Cottage, which were referred to as the Sentinel Hotel and Annex. In 1897 Jack Leidig worked for a contractor from Madera in remodelling Cedar Cottage, which had become very run down. Most of the guests in the valley had been housed up to that time either at the several units of the Sentinel Hotel or at the Stoneman House, which had just burned. The Cedar Cottage remained much as Hutchings had remodeled it. It had no sleeping quarters downstairs. The east end held a large kitchen, the dining room occupied the middle of the structure, and the sitting room (Big Tree Room) and offices filled the west end. Reconstruction work in 1897 involved removing the hallway and creating bedrooms; installing new doors and windows; replacing the old clapboard with new rustic siding; replacing the old porch with a new two-story one; and razing the laundry, containing four rooms for hired CO help, built by Hutchings at the east end of the building.63

[63. C. A. Harwell, Park Naturalist, Memorandum for the Superintendent, 19 July 1940, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16a, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

After Glasscock’s death in 1897, Jay Bruce Cook took over management of the large group of structures that now included several cottages near the main Sentinel Hotel, each taking its name from its surroundings, which accommodated guests during emergencies in the busiest months. By the turn of the century, the Sentinel Hotel group consisted of the Sentinel Hotel proper, Cedar Cottage (Upper Hotel), Rock Cottage, Oak Cottage, River Cottage, Ivy Cottage, and Locust Cottage (old Cosmopolitan Saloon).64 A four-room bathhouse stood adjacent to the Chinese laundry. Down by the river, beyond the laundry, an open air pavilion featured dances on Wednesday and Saturday nights and church services on Sunday.

[64. The exact construction dates of these structures are unclear. Various sources indicated the Sentinel Hotel proper was built in either 1873 or 1876; Rock Cottage in either 1870, 1873, or 1875; Oak Cottage, 1882, 1890, or 1898; River Cottage, 1870, 1875, or 1882; and Ivy Cottage, 1896 or 1901.]

(2) Lower Hotel/Black’s Hotel

Alex Gordon Black was a pioneer of the Coulterville region and in the late 1850s lived at Bull Creek on the Coulterville Trail where he kept a hostelry for travelers. In 1861 the Blacks moved down into Yosemite Valley when Mrs. Black purchased the five-year-old Lower Hotel built by Beardsley and Cunningham near the foot of Four-Mile Trail, in the area referred to as Lower Yosemite Village. Anticipating more tourists to the grant upon completion of the transcontinental railroad, the Blacks tore down part of that structure in 1869 and erected a long, narrow building with a two-story wing and a porch along the front—Black’s Hotel—in its place. It stood on the south side of the south valley road, about one city block northeast of Leidig’s Hotel and across the road from the Coffman and Kenney stables. The state purchased the structure in 1874 for $1,300. The Blacks continued to operate the hotel until 1880, when the state leased it to Wright and Cook. From 1882 until its demolition in 1888, Jay J. Cook was manager.

(3) Leidig’s Hotel

George Fredrick Leidig, a short, stout German, arrived in Yosemite Valley in 1866 to help James C. Lamon develop his valley homestead. For a while he leased the Lower Hotel, but when owner Black assumed its management, the Leidigs decided to go into business for themselves. Upon receiving a lease from the Yosemite commissioners, Leidig built a two-story hotel about one-quarter mile west of Black’s in 1869. Rivalry between the Leidigs and the Blacks was strong. Although Mrs. Leidig was an excellent cook and attracted many patrons, stage drivers tended to favor the latter’s place.

An early traveler to Yosemite Valley, Caroline Churchill considered Leidig’s Hotel the best hostelry in the valley. It offered good food and clean beds, consisting of mattresses on slat bedsteads. The hotel, surrounded with porches, faced the Yosemite falls and provided a nice place to admire the valley’s views.65 The Leidig Hotel had twelve sleeping rooms upstairs, two sleeping rooms downstairs, and a parlor, sitting room, and dining room. An annex in the rear housed the kitchen. The Leidigs stayed in a separate building back of the kitchen. Handsawed logs from the property went into the structure. The state tore down the hotel after construction of the Stoneman House in 1887. A group of black locust trees mark the site.66

[65. Churchill, Over the Purple Hills, 138-39.]

[66. Much of this information on early sites and structures came from “Other early-day buildings,” by Jack Leidig, 21 November 1941, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(4) Mountain View House

In the 1860s Charles E. Peregoy, a California ’49er, began cattle ranching at present Peregoy Meadow, which lies on either side of the Glacier Point road. Because travelers on the way into the valley from Mariposa frequently stopped to rest at his place, in 1869 he and his wife Mary felled, hewed, and whipsawed fir and yellow pine trees and started construction on the Mountain View House, just south of the present road and on the horse trail from Clark’s Station to Yosemite Valley. That small building contained a kitchen, dining room, office, and bedrooms to accommodate about sixteen guests. Later the owners added another building with a living room and more bedrooms.

Mules brought in all the furniture, bedding, and food for Peregoy’s inn from Mariposa. Tourists stayed overnight and traveled the next day out to Glacier Point, this trail being originally the only access to that majestic view. The later completion of the Four-Mile Trail by James McCauley took some of the overnight trade from the Mountain View House, because tourists could go to the point and then continue on to the valley floor for the night. At that time Peregoy began construction of a building at Glacier Point for tourist accommodation, but before completion he disposed of it to McCauley, who later ran the first hotel at Glacier Point. In the late 1870s, business at the Mountain View House began to decline. A notice of bankruptcy and of the sale of the

Illustration 10.
Wawona Hotel.
From Hutchings, Tourists’ Edition. In the Heart of the Sierras, 1886.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 11.
Hill’s Studio.
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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C. E. Peregoy property, consisting of a ranch and associated buildings on the trail between Clark & Moore’s and the Yosemite Valley, appeared in the Mariposa Gazette in November 1874. The completion of the new Wawona Road in 1875 steered Yosemite traffic into the valley several miles to the west, so that business dropped drastically at Peregoy’s hotel, although it housed guests as late as 1878. The Peregoys later moved to a ranch in Mariposa, where Charles died in 1904.

(5) Wawona Hotel

This hotel complex dates to the 1850s when an earlier hostelry on the site served travelers coming to the Mariposa Grove from the valley or coming in to the valley from Mariposa. A visitor in 1868 described Galen Clark’s ranch, the first hostel on the site, saying it was
built more for use than show, and is capable of indefinite extension without hurting its proportions. It is a long, narrow building of one story, facing south and west, about twenty by one hundred and twenty feet, with covered stoops front and rear, and doors opening on to them from each room. The west room is used as an office, and a receptacle for certain compounds for the inner man; on the outside hangs the antlers of an elk . . . The east end of the house is cut up into bedrooms. . . .67

[67. Olmsted, A Trip to California, 91-92.]

In 1869 Galen Clark, facing financial difficulties due to road construction expenses incurred on his Mariposa-South Fork road, accepted Edwin Moore as a full partner in his hotel enterprise. The next year, however, Clark had to mortgage the ranch to pay for a new sawmill and to further defray expenses of the Chowchilla Mountains stage road between his station and Mariposa, which opened in 1870. The Clark and Moore partnership did not last, however, and the firm of Washburn, Chapman & Coffman purchased the South Fork hostelry in December 1874. The Washburn brothers—Henry, John, and Edward—had arrived in California from New England after the Gold Rush and had been running a livery business and transporting visitors to Clark & Moore’s on their way into Yosemite Valley.

Although Clark’s connection with Wawona ended in 1874, he served Yosemite for forty more years as Guardian, author, and guide before dying of pneumonia in 1910 at age 96. He first became Guardian of the grant in 1866 and served difficult years trying to appease bitter homesteaders, control fires, and oversee the building of bridges, trails, and roads, usually with insufficient appropriations for such work or for his salary. In 1880 a new state constitution limiting tenure of office removed the entire Board of Yosemite Commissioners and Clark. He subsequently became a Yosemite tourist guide and performed other odd jobs in the valley. Summoned back as Guardian in 1889, he resigned in 1896 and spent the rest of his life guiding and writing. He personally prepared the grave in which he lies in the Yosemite Valley cemetery.

Included in the 1874 Washburn purchase were the hotel, various lodging houses, a blacksmith shop, the open bridge across the South Fork of the Merced, and all other improvements, such as the sawmill and barn. It seemed obvious to the new owners that aggressive management and new buildings were needed to make the Big Tree Station, as it became known, a going concern. A single-story building of sixteen rooms, called “Long White,” became the first addition to the complex, in 1876. The Washburn partnership with William F. Coffman and E. W. Chapman proved short-lived, with Chapman and Coffman selling their half-interest in the firm to Henry Washburn in March 1877. Washburn then entered into partnership with John B. Bruce.

The original South Fork lodge building burned in 1878, but Long White survived and became the nucleus of the new Wawona Hotel Victorian gingerbread complex. Undaunted by the fire, Henry Washburn and John Bruce rebuilt. They commenced work on the main two-story hotel building north of Long White, on the site of Clark’s early home and rude hotel, in 1878, and it opened a year later. It contained a

Illustrations 12-14.
Wawona Hotel, Annex Building, and Little Brown (Moore Cottage).
Photos by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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[click to enlarge]

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lobby, sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and office downstairs, and twenty-five guest rooms upstairs. Covered verandas surrounded both stories.

John Bruce died in March 1882, and the Washburn brothers took over management of the hotel. At this time the name Big Tree Station gave way to “Wawona,” the Nutchu Indian word for Big Tree. Edward spent most of his time at the hotel, while Henry and John ran the associated stage line. The Wawona Hotel remained a two-building group until about 1884 when the owners added “Little White” south of Long White. Wood for that building, renamed the Manager’s Cottage in 1952, as for Long White, probably came from the water-powered sawmill Clark and Moore had built in 1869-70 north of the hotel. The South Fork complex became largely self sufficient. The river and a long irrigation ditch supplied water for cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses that grazed in the nearby meadow as well as for crops that grew there, such as hay and timothy, barley, and potatoes. South of the hotel lay an orchard, garden, and chicken coops; other enterprises included a slaughterhouse and dairy. The system that provided water for irrigation and power generation, known as the Washburn Ditch or Brook Walk, diverted water from the South Fork and channeled the flow for five miles.

The Washburn brothers built another sawmill south of the Wawona store in 1878 that operated until the fall of 1883. It was powered by an undershot waterwheel, with water from the South Fork. Lumber processed there was used for a hotel at Coarse Gold and a house at Fresno Flats, but most of it went into buildings at Wawona and Yosemite Valley. About forty acres near Wawona were logged by means of oxen.68

[68. U. S. Forest Service, A Sawmill History of the Sierra National Forest: 1852-1940, comp. by Bert Hurt (Fresno: U. S. Forest Service, 1941), in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3.]

The Washburn brothers managed to develop the Wawona Basin into a highly respected and well-known resort area. The increasing number of visitors to the valley and grove sometimes taxed the resources of the complex and required new measures to solve new problems. By the mid-1880s a source other than the river edges was required to furnish ice for hotel guests during the summer months. In 1886 the Washburns excavated a pond about 200 feet wide by 1,000 feet long, dammed at its lower end and fed through a diversion ditch from the South Fork of the Merced at its upper end. An earthen dike separated it from the adjacent river. ‘The lake was named for landscape artist Thomas Hill’s daughter Estella Louise, who had married John Washburn in 1885.

Ice formed on this pond to a depth of several inches by the first of each year. Local residents then spent several days sawing the ice into long strips that they poled to a dock, where a conveyor belt driven by a horse-powered Persian wheel on the southwest end of the dam lifted them out of the lake and over the dam to the west into a sawdust-insulated icehouse with a 300-ton capacity. The lake also provided recreational opportunities for ice-skating, fishing, swimming, boating, and picnicking by Wawona’s guests and other Yosemite visitors. The auto era, beginning in 1913, necessitated expansion of recreational facilities. In August 1916 the Washburns constructed a boathouse at the lake, and later a bathhouse on the southwest end of the lake near the icehouse.

This ice reservoir functioned as the Wawona Hotel’s source of refrigeration between 1886 and the 1940s. The isolation of the Wawona settlement and the fact that electric power lines did not reach there until 1948 prolonged the use of that operation well past the time that modern refrigeration equipment was available. Floods in 1950 and 1955 damaged the lake’s dikes and the National Park Service removed the icehouse in 1956.69

[69. The cutting and storing of the ice blocks was an activity of major importance to the comfort and convenience of guests of the hotel. The reservoir itself is especially interesting because the Washburns constructed it specifically for ice production on a local level, whereas in other places in the park, notably on the Merced River and at Mirror and Merced lakes, ice cutting operations exploited a natural feature of the landscape. The Stella Lake ice reservoir is part of the Wawona Archeological District. It was an important factor in the success of the hotel and restaurant business there and is a tangible reminder of an important industry of a bygone era. Remains at the site are those of the dam, an earthen dike parallel to the river, the inflow channels that, diverted water from the Merced River, and the reservoir basin itself. The ice industry in Yosemite began apparently in the early 1890s, with construction of an icehouse at Mirror Lake in 1890 by the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company. Cold storage rooms were added to the Stoneman House in 1891 and to Hutchings’s hotel in 1897. Another icehouse was erected at Mirror Lake in 1895. An icehouse was later built at El Portal sometime after 1907. The Yosemite Valley Railroad added a refrigerator car to its line around 1913. The new Yosemite Valley powerplant of 1917-18 finally provided adequate electricity for modern refrigeration equipment. By 1927 the valley’s hotels and camps all possessed electric cold storage facilities. Ice houses also were built at the High Sierra camps in 1916 for snow storage during the summer. See Robert C. Pavlik, “Like a Mirror Hung in the Sky: The Story of Stella Lake, Wawona, Yosemite National Park, California,” typescript, 39 pages, 1986.]

In the mid-1880s, the resort turned into a complex of wide-porched, New England-style buildings and supporting shops. Stables, a blacksmith shop, a carriage and paint shop, and a laundry were present, as were spouting fountains and lily ponds. The hotel area had by that time become a central stage station, the biggest stage stop in Yosemite—the meeting point of the Berenda, Madera, and Mariposa routes. Hay and grain wagons, freight teams, and tourist coaches and carriages were constantly coming and going. The hotel became famous for its sylvan setting, hospitable accommodations, and good meals. Thomas Hill, noted landscape painter and authority on Yosemite and Sierran painting, who had established the first artist’s studio in Yosemite Valley, became closely associated with the hotel beginning in 1885, when his daughter married John Washburn, until his death in 1908. His studio, a three-room pink cottage with a fountain in front, called The Pavilion, was built in 1886 northwest of the main building. Hill moved his summer operations from Yosemite Valley to Wawona and lived off and on in the hotel. His studio functioned as both a workshop and display gallery, giving prestige to the Wawona Hotel and also increasing the audience for his works. Living north of the hotel and across the South Fork of the Merced, settlers in Chilnualna Park supplied the hotel with lumber, produce, and labor. No further buildings were added to the resort until the early 1890s.70

[70. For additional details on the Wawona Hotel history and operations, see Crosby and Scrattish, Historic Structure Report . . . Wawona Hotel, passim. One of the more enduring controversies concerning Wawona Hotel buildings has centered around the original color of the Thomas Hill Studio. Paint analysis of the original exterior siding, however, has conclusively proved that the original color was pink, with gray overlaid at a later date.]

(6) La Casa Nevada

In the early years of the Yosemite Grant, visitors could reach Vernal and Nevada falls only via a crude trail. As mentioned previously, Albert Snow completed a horse trail from the valley floor, up the south side of the Merced River, crossing to the north side between Emerald Pool and Nevada Fall, and continuing on to the flat between Vernal and Nevada falls during 1869-70. There he opened a sort of mountain chalet, La Casa Nevada, in April 1870, situated so close to Nevada Fall that spray often reached its porches. The ride to the hotel for lunch proved immensely popular with visitors, which undoubtedly encouraged Conway’s extension of the trail to Little Yosemite Valley—where Snow pastured cattle and sheep—for use by hardier souls who wished to hike or ride farther. Trails also were built to Half Dome and Clouds Rest, popular destinations from the hotel. La Casa Nevada burned in 1897. It was rumored that Snow and his friends intentionally set the fire after removing everything of value, after being compensated for the value of the property by the Yosemite commissioners.71 The site of this two-story frame building is marked by broken bottles and other debris.

[71. M. Hall McAllister to Carl P. Russell, 31 January 1927, in files, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. D. J. Foley stated in his Yosemite Souvenir and Guide (Yosemite, Calif.: “Tourist” Studio, 1903) for 1903 that the Casa Nevada Hotel was accidently destroyed by fire “during the season of last year [1902]. It had not been used as a hotel for nearly ten years.” P. 29.]

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STAIRWAY ON CLOUD’S REST TRAIL.

(7) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon

One of the most interesting buildings in Yosemite Valley was the Cosmopolitan bathhouse and saloon, established by John C. Smith and J. R. Townsend, and standing on the north side of the road in the Old Village just east of the Pavilion. Smith, born in Ohio, came to San Francisco in 1850 and pursued mining and saloon-keeping at various places. He came to Yosemite from Sonora in Tuolumne County; later a newspaper of that town lavishly described his new business enterprise:
One of the great necessities of Yo Semite Valley during the past ten years has been a saloon such as will be owned and conducted there by Mr. John C. Smith and opened on or before the 1st of May next for the reception of visitors. Each year we hear of the complaints of travellers with regard to the accommodations and the absence of those refinements which are inseparable to celebrated watering places. . . . The main building is 80 feet by 25 with a porch 10 feet wide extending entirely around it. Connected with the saloon will be bath rooms furnished in the most approved and comfortable style with hot and cold baths for ladies and gentlemen, also a Gent’s Reading Room where files of the latest papers can always be seen. Lounges, hammocks, and easy chairs will be scattered around the porch and saloon. A ladies parlor will also be attached. The bar will be furnished with the latest and finest styles of glass and silver ware, and the bar room will contain two superb billiard tables manufactured of California Laurel.

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Swings, shuffle boards, quoits and a shooting gallery will afford amusement for those whose time hangs heavily on their hands. The entire appointments and finish of the saloon will be unsurpassed by any saloon in the State. The cigars, liquors and wines will be of the first quality, and no pains or expense will be spared to rendering one of the most attractive places outside of San Francisco.72

[72. Union Democrat (Sonora, Calif.), 5 November 1870, quoted by Laurence V. Degnan, in “Hersog’s Cosmopolitan Saloon,” typescript, 9 pages., 30 November 1954, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16a, #8, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3-4.]

The Cosmopolitan, a simple one-story, gable-roofed structure surrounded by a covered porch, began operations in 1871 and evidently fulfilled the newspaper’s expectations, at least as far as most travelers were concerned. Helen Hunt described the building with wonder in 1872:
This long, low, dark-brown house . . . consists of nine rooms, a billiard-room . . . a reading-room . . . a small sitting-room . . . and five small bath-rooms. . . . A small store-room at the end completes the list of rooms.

The bath-tubs shine; the floors of the bath-rooms are carpeted; turkish towels hang on the racks; soaps, bottles of cologne, and bay rum are kept in each room; a pincushion stands under each glass, and on the pincushions are not only pins, but scissors, needles, thread, and buttons of several ^kinds. Has anybody ever seen public bath-rooms of this order^73

[73. Hunt [Jackson], Bits of Travel at Home, 138-39.]

Mules carried in all of the equipment, supplies, and luxurious furnishings for the establishment, including full-length mirrors, three pairs of large glass doors that decorated the front of the building, glassware, handsome furniture, and the latest in bath fixtures, astounding travelers who tried to visualize such an undertaking. Helen Hunt remarked that
To have seen the slates of those billiard tables coming down the wall of Ah-wah-ne on the backs of mules must have been an amazing spectacle. As we looked at their great mahogany frames, it seemed more and more impossible every moment. But to all our exclamations Mr. Smith replied, with great quietness, that there was no difficulty in bringing any thing whatever into Ah-wah-ne, and that he intended to bring a piano next year. A mule can carry 600 pounds weight of any thing which can be strapped on his back; and, once strapped firmly on his back, the coach will be carried with far less jolt and jar than on wheels.74

[74. Ibid.]

The Cosmopolitan’s unexpected comforts awaiting travelers after their long, dusty ride into the valley, received many comments. Ladies, especially, were impressed by the clean bathtubs, fine towels, delicate soaps and lotions, and latest papers. The men seemed to enjoy the comforts of the well-stocked bar with its billiard tables even more. The “Grand Register” of valley visitors betweeen 1873 and 1887 was kept in the Cosmopolitan. Two feet long, 1 1/2 feet wide, and 8 inches thick, it held 800 pages and 18,000 names. Signed by Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Theodore Roosevelt, it also contains the names of many governors. It is now in the possession of the National Park Service. For his visitors’ further benefits—to raise them above occasional high watei—Smith built a walkway of five-foot-long planks, at his own expense, stretching from Leidig’s and Black’s hotels to the Sentinel Hotel area. Mrs. John Degnan remembered that the boardwalk was four feet off the ground with seats along the way to accommodate weary pedestrians.75

[75. Ralph Anderson, Park Information Clerk, interview with Mr. and Mrs. John Degnan, 13 December 1934.]

Smith and his brother-in-law, Ben Hayes, operated the Cosmopolitan Saloon under the name of Smith & Hayes. After Smith married and left Yosemite with his ill wife, Hayes continued to conduct the business by himself. It subsequently passed into other hands until operations ceased in the mid-1880s. By 1890 the saloon’s auxiliary structures had vanished. In 1886 J. K. Barnard acquired a windmill and the bathhouse equipment and installed them at his hotel. He evidently hoped to emulate the Cosmopolitan’s success by establishing a bathhouse with wooden water tanks in a separate building immediately east of Cedar Cottage. Water for baths was heated by circulation in iron pipes through a firebox stoked with wood.76

[76. Laurence V. Degnan to Donald E. McHenry, Park Naturalist, 17 November 1954, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16a, #8, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(8) Mountain House

After construction of Conway’s trail to Little Yosemite Valley in 1871, a few stalwart mountaineers made the hike to Glacier Point from there via the Illilouette basin. In addition, Hutchings continued to guide parties to the point over his Ledge Trail. Visitation increased dramatically, however, after 1878, when James McCauley, recognizing that visitor facilities were needed at Glacier Point, acquired Charles Peregoy’s property there and built a two-story hotel known as the Mountain House. It is not hard to understand the popularity of the new hotel, with its superlative views of the Yosemite Valley and its tributary canyons, Half Dome, and the rest of the High Sierra country. Sometime in 1872, McCauley, by accident or design, pushed some burning embers over Glacier Point, unknowingly establishing a tradition that would last for almost 100 years.77

[77. Stories on the origin of the firefall differ. It is generally accepted that McCauley was the first to push a fire over the cliff, about 1871 or 1872. The event was so successful that people began to request it, and McCauley decided to charge for the entertainment. McCauley also is said to have soaked gunny sacks in kerosene, lit them, and, after waving them around, thrown them over the cliff. Fred W. Zimmerman also claimed the distinction of originating the firefall, reporting that in 1883, while camped on Glacier Point, he had built a small fire of pine cones and amused himself by knocking its embers over the edge. J. K. Barnard of the Sentinel Hotel saw the coals cascading down and offered to pay Zimmerman to repeat the act each evening for his guests. However it began, the custom continued irregularly until David Curry revived it on a daily basis for the benefit of vacationers at Camp Curry. M. E. Beatty, “History of the Firefall,” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 6 (June 1934): 41-43. A variation on the firefall consisted of sending a bomb salute from the point, which involved setting a piece of dynamite with a fuse attached on an anvil, placing another anvil on top, and lighting the fuse. The sound of the explosion reportedly echoed between the valley walls as many as fifteen or more times. Sometimes rags soaked in coal oil were ignited and waved back and forth for dramatic effect.]

Visitation at the small resort further increased when the Glacier Point wagon road was built in 1882. McCauley ran the Mountain House in the summer and wintered on his ranch outside the park. While Park Supervisor Gabriel Sovulewski was in the Phillipines during the Spanish-American War in 1898, the state commissioners ousted McCauley when his lease expired in favor of John F. Stevens, in charge of transportation for the Washburns at Wawona. Although Stevens’s name was on the lease, the Washburns actually operated the Mountain House. Stevens operated the hotel for one year, until he became Guardian of the valley, at which time the Washburns took over the Mountain House. They operated it until the Desmond Park Service Company took over in 1916, building a new hotel on the point a year later. The Mountain House survived as a cafeteria until 1969. The oldest building in the park still in use, it burned that year along with the nearby Glacier Point Hotel in the worst structural fire in Yosemite’s history.

(9) Stoneman House

Because leaseholds could not be granted for more than a ten-year period, many Yosemite Valley hotelkeepers were loathe to invest much money in needed repairs or improvements. The possibility always existed that, after such work was done, their lease would not be renewed and their successor would be the only one to benefit. Due to the inability in the 1880s of the existing hotels to accommodate visitors in the more pretentious style desired by its legislators, the state decided to appropriate funds for a new four-story hotel to house 150 guests. The state would lease the new facility to someone under the commissioners’ control and subject to removal if

Illustration 15.
Stoneman House, Yosemite Valley. Built 1886, burned 1896.
Yosemite National Park Collection.

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Illustration 16.
Area of Yosemite Valley in front of Stoneman House.
Information from Laurence Degnan, 1956. Drawing by Erwin N. Thompson.

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necessary. The twenty-sixth state legislature appropriated forty thousand dollars for the project in 1885, and the next year construction commenced on the Stoneman House, named for the former governor of California.

According to Lafayette Bunnell, the Stoneman House, erected at Boling’s Point and Spring, occupied the earlier site of Capt. John Boling’s race course and exercising grounds. While that second expedition of the Mariposa Battalion sojourned in the valley and explored the Sierra, the soldiers exploited various avenues of recreation, among them exercising the animals:
There was then but little undergrowth in the park-like valley, and a half day’s work in lopping off branches along the course enabled us to speed our horses uninterrupted through the groves.78

[78. Lafayette H. Bunnell, MS, in Biennial Report of the Commissioners to _Manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1889-90 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890), 12.]

Upon the hotel’s completion in 1888, Jay J. Cook, manager of Black’s Hotel, assumed charge. The Stoneman House, located near the later Curry Village garage, was a 3V story frame structure with a covered porch around the ground floor and gabled windows on the half-story. A store, bath, and billiard room were separate. The Yosemite commissioners felt that
while the amount expended would not admit of any enchanting architectural display, it was quite enough to rear an exceedingly pretty structure, of slightly modern gothic suspicion, three and one half stories in height, with eighty rooms, dining room accommodations for two hundred, large vestibuled parlor, capacious office, reading and writing rooms, and all modern improvements, such as bath rooms and toilet rooms, for both sexes, on the different floors. It is handsomely furnished throughout, mostly oak, with nice new mattresses, art tapestry and part body Brussels carpets (all new). . . .79

[79. “Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” in Biennial Report of the Commissioners . . . For the Years 1887-88, 14.]

The hotel proved a continual headache and constant source of expense resulting from a multitude of plumbing and construction defects. One of the major assets of the hotel was its excellent water supply, piped from a spring. In those days the valley did not have a central piped water supply, and each establishment, or group of two or three, had its own well or drew water from the Merced River or a nearby creek. After the Stoneman Hotel opened, the Yosemite commissioners decided that some of the older, more unsightly hotels were no longer necessary and should be torn down. Among those were Black’s and Leidig’s hotels, removed in 1888. Only two hotels were then left on the valley floor—the Stoneman House and Barnard’s Hotel, which was described as being “patched and patched until it quite resembles an architectural crazy quilt.”80 The Stoneman House, rather ugly architecturally itself, as well as poorly designed, burned in August 1896.

[80. Ibid., 13.]

b) Stores, Studios, and Other Services

(1) Harris Campground

Yosemite Valley had always been a popular camping place. The tradition began in the earliest days when travelers had to camp out because of the lack of facilities. As time passed, the practice continued, because many visitors were loathe to pay what they thought were exorbitant prices for accommodations, and because others simply enjoyed the closer relationship with nature. Early campers brought all their supplies with them and simply staked their tents or threw their bedrolls wherever they found a likely spot. Because conservation of resources was not yet a concern among the great portion of the visitors, hunting and fishing provided meals, and horses were allowed to graze wherever they could find forage. Any forgotten necessity had to be done without, because there was no way to replenish supplies except when hotels might be able to provide them.

In 1876 Aaron Harris, a storekeeper who had come to Yosemite in 1874, leased J. C. Lamon’s homestead, the Royal Arch Farm, at the eastern end of the valley, for the purpose of catering to campers. He established a more formal campground and began growing animal fodder (clover, timothy, wheat, hay) and selling groceries, such as vegetables, butter, eggs, and milk, to campers. A special inclosure designated “Campers’ Pasture,” adjacent to the campground on the west, was provided for the horses of the campers. Harris established not only the first store in Yosemite Valley, but also the first camping business, originating an idea that later evolved into housekeeping camps that rented equipment to campers. When Harris’s buildings burned in 1887, the commissioners would not replace them, and Harris did not wish to undertake the project because his lease had expired. He therefore left the valley, and William F. Coffman and George W. Kenney obtained a lease on the property in 1888. The state erected new buildings in 1889, including a barn, carriage shed, quarters, an office, a residence, and a corral, using lumber salvaged from the demolished Leidig and Black hotels. The new stable complex housing the Coffman and Kenney saddle horse business became known as Kenneyville.

(2) Degnan Bakery

About 1884 Irish-born John Degnan and his wife Bridget arrived in Yosemite Valley, Degnan having obtained a job as a laborer on the roads and trails in the Yosemite Grant. Their earliest residence consisted of the west end of an abandoned barn on the flat where Yosemite Lodge stands. The barn had been built by Bill (William J.) Howard, former district attorney of Mariposa County who lived on and off in the valley in the 1870s and 1880s. While John maintained a small dairy herd to supply the valley’s increasing demand for milk, Bridget baked homemade bread and cooked occasional meals for tourists in a Dutch oven over an open fire. Before long, the Degnans began to accept boarders and sell a few groceries. Little by little the business grew, as did the Degnan family.

In the fall of 1888, the family moved to Kenneyville, where John served as caretaker of the stables and other buildings during the winter while livery operations were suspended. When operations started up the next season, the Degnans moved into the Kenneys’ former dwelling in the Old Village. The Yosemite commissioners granted them permission to occupy that house at a meeting in December 1888.81

[81. Laurence V. Degnan to Douglas H. Hubbard, 24 February 1956, in master plan files for Yosemite National Park, Western Team, Denver Service Center, National Park Service, Denver, Colorado.]

(3) Fiske Studio

George Fiske, pioneer Yosemite photographer who concentrated on portraying the valley in winter, was born in New Hampshire in 1833. He came west in the early 1850s and for several years drove a stage between Sacramento and Marysville. He first came to Yosemite Valley in 1872, while working for a prominent San Francisco photographer, and travelled about taking landscape pictures, transporting his large camera, plates, and other supplies by pack train. For many years Fiske spent the summer in Yosemite and winters in San Francisco. In 1880 he established a photography studio in the Lower Village, southwest of the Old (or Upper) Village, and stayed through the year, occupying what was known as the “Sierra Cottage.”

(4) Bolton and Westfall Butcher Shop

This shop stood on the south side of the valley road, opposite Galen Clark’s cabin, in the Lower Village. It appears Westfall later had a meat market in the Old Village. The old slaughterhouse, Jack Leidig said, was owned by a Spaniard named Juan Jerona (?), and later operated by Joseph J. Westfall to supply meat to the hotels and public. Located south of the Northside Road and west of the bear pits, the site was once identifiable by limbs cut off a large oak tree in which a windlass was anchored. According to Leidig, C O. Drew furnished the meat for the valley market. Drew pastured eight to twenty cattle, depending on demand. After slaughtering, the cattle would be hoisted by a rope between two trees. The slaughterhouse operated around 1878 or 1879 and was run for five years by the Spaniard and six or eight years more by Op Westfall before being torn down. A large corral stood nearby.82

[82. “Interview with Jack Leidig,” 15 July 1952, by Ralph H. Anderson, in Separates File, Y-4b, #38, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(5) Flores Laundry

The Flores laundry stood just west of Galen Clark’s cabin and across the road from the meat shop.

(6) Cavagnaro Store This long, narrow structure in the Upper Village stood between the relocated chapel and Degnan’s residence. Aaron Harris first operated the store, which Angelo Cavagnaro purchased from him.

(7) Stables

Stables were first located near the foot of Four-Mile Trail and later at Kenneyville in 1888. The old Coffman and Kenney stables used until 1886 stood 200 feet east of Folsom’s Hall in the Lower Village. A big corral stood to the west.

(8) Sinning Woodworking Shop

On the south side of the Old Village road stood the cottage of Adolph Sinning, a skillful wood worker. Probably built prior to 1875, Sinning acquired it in 1877 and operated a woodworking and curio shop. Julius Starke took over Sinning’s woodworking and curio business after the latter’s death on 20 June 1889. A notice in the Bodie (Calif.) Daily Free Press of 18 January 1883 stated that the Yosemite Valley cabinetmaker’s shop, located opposite Barnard’s Hotel, had burned. As far as is known, however, the building that became the Sierra Club’s headquarters in 1898 was the original Sinning cottage. Possibly Sinning’s work area was not in the cottage, but farther west where Starke’s shop was later located, and that burned.

(9) Stegman Seed Store

Next door to Sinning, Henry Stegman ran a seed store where he sold seeds of the Big Trees along with other kinds of seeds found in the valley. By 1890 the German government had been buying sequoia seeds for many years, but the trade was languishing because Stegman, who had been doing the collecting, had been accused of doing harm. Trees had been planted in forests near Heidelberg since 1864, the seeds of which had come from California.83

[83. Hans Huth to Russell K. Grater, Actg. Reg. Chief of Interpretation, Region Four, NPS, 6 June 1961, in History Files, Yosemite, Denver Service Center, National Park Service.]

(10) Reilly Picture Gallery

J. J. Reilly, a stereograph photographer, became the first to open a photographic studio in Yosemite, in 1875. He operated with a succession of partners, one of whom, Gustav Fagersteen, took over Reilly’s studio in 1880 upon Reilly’s departure from the valley.84 According to Laurence Degnan, after Fagersteen’s death his personal property was sold at auction. Only a stack of glass negatives remained, which were thrown in a heap on the floor in the abandoned studio and gradually crushed under the feet of playing children.

[84. Churchill, Over the Purple Hills, 142-43; Ted Orland, Man & Yosemite: A Photographer’s View of the Early Years (Santa Cruz, Calif.: The Image Continuum Press, 1985), 66, 70. Laurence V. Degnan to Ralph H. Anderson, 3 February 1952, Y-4b, #1, in Separates File, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(11) Wells Fargo Office

Charles D. Robinson, an artist who spent some of each year in Yosemite Valley from 1880 to 1890, acquired the right in 1885 to build and lease a small studio next to the Guardian’s office. After he began complaining loudly about the injustices and narrow-minded policies of the Board of Yosemite Commissioners, however, Guardian Walter Dennison invaded his studio and removed his furniture and prints. Dennison then moved the studio and refitted it for use as a post office and Wells Fargo express agency. (This might be the old transportation building mentioned in Appendix F as built around 1882.)85 “’ From that time on, Robinson became a stalwart adversary of the Yosemite commissioners, ultimately filing a public petition of charges against them.

[85. Petition to the Senators and Representatives of the Congress of the United States Against the Extension of the Yosemite Grant, p. 8, from Printed Rules and Regulations and By-Laws of Board of Yosemite Commissioners, 1885. See more on Robinson in Holway R. Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1965), 36-37.]

The original Wells Fargo and Company began banking and express operations in California in 1852. In later years, its gold, treasure boxes, and stagecoaches became a legend in Western folklore. The firm’s first recorded agent in Yosemite was Henry Stegman, who was appointed in 1879 and relinquished the job in 1886. He ran a post office and express office in the old Folsom Hall. After that, a series of agents held the post until 1898 and the appointment of J. B. Cook, last agent of record, who served twelve years. In 1910 the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company built the Yosemite Transportation Company office (Wells Fargo office also) in the Old Village near the Sentinel Hotel. It is among several restored early-day Yosemite structures on permanent exhibit at^86 Wawona.

[86. “Ribbon Cutting Ceremonies Friday In Park Dedicated New Wells Fargo Bank,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 29 April 1971, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16c, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]
(12) Folsom Bridge and Ferry

In 1871 Ira B. Folsom operated a cable ferry across the Merced River for the use of visitors coming into the valley in 1874 on the Big Oak Flat or Coulterville roads. This ferry stood about one-half mile west of the foot of Four-Mile Trail on a curve in the river marked on old maps as Ferry Bend. Later he built a toll bridge below the junction of Eagle Creek and the Merced River, three-fourths of a mile below the Lower Hotel.

Folsom ran what were apparently the first store and saloon in Yosemite Valley. His cabin/store structure, about sixteen by thirty feet, faced north near the west end of Folsom Bridge. He built a large hall just east of Galen Clark’s cabin in the Lower Village with the intention of having a saloon, shows, dances, and a front room for activities similar to Locust Cottage or the Cosmopolitan House. The building was torn down in the late 1880s along with other early structures in the area after the center of valley activities moved farther up the valley with construction of the Stoneman House.

(13) Chapel

This New England-style, 250-seat structure was built under the sponsorship of the California State Sunday School Association in the summer of 1879, partly by subscription from children, but mainly by voluntary contributions from prominent members of the association. Charles Geddes, a leading San Francisco architect, made and presented the plans for the building. E. Thomson of the same city erected it. H. D. Bacon of Oakland gave the bell, and Mary Porter of Philadelphia donated the organ in memory of Florence Hutchings, first white child born in Yosemite.

A dark-colored structure with light trim, the chapel opened for the free use of Christians of every denomination. It originally stood on the south side of the road, on a rise of ground near the base of Four-Mile Trail, a mile or so down the valley from its present site. It was moved from there to its present site in September or October 1901

Illustration 17.
Yosemite Valley chapel.
Photo by George Fiske, Yosemite National Park Collection.

[click to enlarge]

and rebuilt exactly as it had previously stood, facing the same direction, but with several structural changes made when it was moved and afterwards. The building came into National Park Service ownership in 1927.

The original structure consisted of a single room, twenty-six feet three inches wide by fifty feet three inches long, with a stone foundation and a bell tower and a steeple on the roof. The interior and original furnishings consisted of pews, an altar, coal oil lamp fixtures, and exposed stud walls and rafters.

c) Transportation in the Valley

J. M. Hutchings started the first saddle train business in Yosemite in 1866. Fred Brightman, who had come to Yosemite in 1867 or 1868 and worked for Hutchings, started a competitive business in 1870. By 1875 Brightman had formed a partnership with George W. Kenney and applied for a lease of the old Lamon ranch. Because they were short of money, they took Aaron Harris in as a partner. Brightman pulled out the next year and went to work for Washburn’s stage lines while Kenney continued in the saddle business. Harris was evidently supposed to continue running the Lamon ranch until he was repaid for money that Brightman and Kenney had borrowed from him.

William F. Coffman had bought an interest in the Yosemite stage line with Washburn and E. W. Chapman in 1874, but sold it in 1877. In 1878 he purchased Hutchings’s stables and stock in Yosemite Valley and entered into the saddle train business. George Kenney and William Coffman combined their saddle horse businesses in 1885 and as Coffman and Kenney took over the Royal Arch farm lease from Harris in 1888. They later operated stables at Kenneyville, on the site of the present Ahwahnee Hotel. There they supplied horses, guides, and carriages for trips over the Yosemite trails and around the valley floor. In winter the proprietors suspended operations, locked up the vehicles, saddles, harness, and other equipment, and moved their families and livestock to the foothills or the San Joaquin Valley. The business continued until sold to the D. J. Desmond Company in May 1916.

d) Staging and Hauling to Yosemite Valley

Even before the completion of the first wagon roads into Yosemite Valley in the 1870s, tourists by the hundreds made their way into the area via stages to the termini of the public roads and then by saddle train on down into Yosemite Valley. Often commented upon were the accommodations offered to travelers at the various stage stops along the roads, which varied from simple but adequate to simple and unbearable. As travel to Yosemite increased, people who had only occasionally offered meals and lodging to needy travelers began to realize the profitability of such enterprises. As they slowly upgraded their services, actual tourist inns came into existence along the early stage routes.

A number of stage lines served the Yosemite visitor. At first, travelers from Stockton journeyed to Chinese Camp by stage, where they transferred to Simon Shoup’s line and continued on via either the Big Oak Flat or Coulterville route. From the terminus of each of those roads, saddle trains carried travelers down to the valley floor. As soon as the Big Oak Flat Road reached his place, Jeremiah Hodgdon not only opened a tourist hotel but also began a stage line, running a small wagon from Hardin’s Mill east to his ranch.

As mentioned earlier, the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad’s Copperopolis Short Line in 1871 enabled tourists to journey by train to Milton, from which stop a stage took them to Chinese Camp. At the same time Hodgdon extended his stage route farther east to Tamarack, Flat, from which place Hutchings’s saddle mules carried passengers to the valley floor. In 1872 Hodgdon formed a partnership with Shoup in the Yo Semite Stage Line. Shoup delivered passengers from Chinese Camp to Hardin’s Mill, where they transferred to Hodgdon’s line and continued on to Gentry’s where Hutchings’s saddle train met them. Hodgdon built a large barn on a tributary of North Crane Creek near his station to accommodate his horses and stages. Ultimately James Hardin acquired an interest in the line and also established a small rest stop on his property. Hodgdon sold out in 1879, although he kept an interest in the business.

In the 1870s the Nevada Stage Company had some equipment that ran as late as the early 1880s into Yosemite Valley over the Big Oak Flat Road, from Milton via Chinese Camp. It was the manager of the Nevada Stage Line, in fact, who, feeling that Hodgdon’s “hotel” was too primitive, asked Henry Crocker to build a better stage station and hospice (discussed later) for the accommodation of travelers, only a few miles below Hodgdon Meadow. In 1886 the Great Sierra Stage Company was incorporated, after its owners purchased the Yosemite run of the Nevada Stage Company. William C. Priest, Colwell O. Drew, Charles Kassabaum, Henry R. Crocker, and Thomas H. Beals directed the new line that ran from Milton to Yosemite Valley via Copperopolis, O’Byrne’s Ferry, and Chinese Camp. By 1902, after some changes of ownership, the line became the Big Oak Flat-Yosemite Stage Company. In the early 1900s, the peak of staging to Yosemite, that company owned thirty stages and had several hundred horses and thirty drivers in addition to hostelers, blacksmiths, and other essential personnel. The construction of the Sierra Railroad in 1897 attracted most of the Yosemite-bound passengers away from the Copperopolis Short Line. As branch rail lines spread to different points throughout the San Joaquin Valley, travelers could transfer from train to stage wherever it was most convenient.87

[87. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, Appendix I, 316-19.]

Henry Washburn incorporated the Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Company on 16 November 1877 to carry passengers and freight from Merced to Big Tree Station, the Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Nevada Fall, Mariposa Grove, the Fresno Grove of Big Trees, Fresno Flats, and Madera, and to acquire, build, and maintain a wagon and turnpike road on those routes. The company also intended to carry on a livery business and supply conveyances and outfits to tourists. The total length of the stage route was 165 miles and of toll road 73 miles, of which twenty to twenty-five miles lay within the park. This stage line played a prominent role in the development of the Wawona area until about 1914.
A. H. Washburn and John B. Bruce, finding the management of the turnpike road and its associated properties burdensome, decided to convey the South Fork and Yosemite Turnpike Road to the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company in December 1877. That company then became entitled to control and conduct tourists over the turnpike road extending from the north bank of the South Fork of the Merced to the southerly boundary of the Yosemite Valley Grant, near Old - Inspiration Point.88

[88. A. H. Washburn, Supt., Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., to John S. Stidger, Special Agent, General Land Office, 13 November 1892, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

Many tourists considered the wagon road from Wawona to be the most scenic approach to the valley. Because of the influx of people over that route, Wawona became a bustling stage center supporting stables, hay barns, granaries, blacksmith shops, and carriage repair works. The Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Company employed between twenty and forty drivers and owned some forty stages and buggies. During the summer, as many as eleven stages a day ran from the Raymond train station to Wawona, Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, and the Mariposa Grove. The forty-four mile trip from Raymond to Wawona took ten hours, while the twenty-seven miles on into Yosemite Valley from Wawona took six more. Old-timers recalled the “Cannonball” stage from Raymond that, for extra fare, made the run to the Sentinel Hotel in twelve hours. It used six horses rather than four, changed every ten to fifteen miles. Regular stages were more leisurely in their approach to the valley.

Excitement characterized stagecoach rides into Yosemite Valley, as coaches and buggies carefully wound their way down steep, narrow grades covered with several inches of thick dust. Blind curves, fallen trees and rocks, and the unguarded road edges with their sheer drop to the valley floor imbued trips into Yosemite with a thrill not soon forgotten. Yielding to vehicles that had the right-of-way often meant passing precariously close to the road’s edge; so close, in fact, that often stagedrivers unloaded their passengers to walk up ahead and be picked up after the safe passage of the coach. Both his employer and visitors relied upon the stage driver’s skill in managing his horses and being able to discern obstacles through clouds of swirling dust. Delivery of his passengers safely at the hotel entrance endeared him forever to his charges. The names associated with this era of Yosemite transportation are legion and a multitude of anecdotes are connected with each of them. Some of the drivers became famous for their stories about the park and its inhabitants, some of which were true and some of which were sprinkled with more than a dash of exaggeration. But those storytellers were much sought after by Yosemite tourists, the partisans of one driver sometimes arguing with the fans of another whose story differed slightly.

Representative of that worthy brotherhood was George F. Monroe, a well-liked and highly respected Black driver of the 1880s. Time after time the same visitors requested his coach runs between Madera, Wawona, and Yosemite Valley in appreciation of his masterly but kind handling of the horses and his steady hand on the reins. Fort Monroe was named in his honor, as was Monroe Meadows (former Round Meadows), the present site of the Badger Pass ski area. Fort Monroe was a stage station on the old Wawona Road, above the east end of the Wawona tunnel, where the Pohono Trail changes direction from the southwest to the east. Alfred, a mulatto driver who piloted a daily stage between Wawona and the valley, drove dozens of famous passengers, including presidents, actresses, and royalty. Once he even permitted former President Ulysses S. Grant to take the reins.

Occasionally a holdup enlivened the trip to Yosemite, the jewelry and cash of tourists offering lucrative bait for the highwayman. The Mariposa Gazette noted that between 1883 and 1906 six stage robberies occurred on the Yosemite run. Two were more famous than the rest. One, in the summer of 1905, resulted in perhaps the only authentic photograph of a stage robbery in progress. For sheer audacity, however, the multi-stage holdup on a Yosemite road on 7 July 1906 takes the honors. In that instance the robber, who was never apprehended, stopped five successive stages and one private conveyance, waiting for each to come around a turn in the road and then politely motioning it with a shotgun to stop and fall into place behind the others. The San Bernardino (Calif.) Daily Sun reported on 21 June 1907 that “Black Kid,” the famous lone bandit of Yosemite, had held up two stages from Raymond bound for Wawona and robbed sixteen passengers. The “Black Kid” was not as much of a gentleman as the 1906 bandit nor as confident of his abilities, however, because he compelled a woman passenger to stand behind him as a shield to prevent an attack from the rear.

Stagecoaches and buggies were not the only wheeled conveyances coming into Yosemite Valley. Before the construction of wagon roads, a thirty- to forty-muie packtrain delivered supplies to the Fred Leidigs from a store in San Francisco. With the advent of wagon access, in addition to the coming and going of numerous stages, the arrival of freight wagons bringing supplies to the various business establishments and residents provided a high degree of excitement. Heavy hauling of staples, fruit, hay, and other goods to valley residents was accomplished by two wagons hooked together, tandem style, drawn by ten-mule teams. The completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad in 1907 cut markedly into the wagon freight business on the upper roads, although the road from El Portal echoed continually with the thunder of wagons plying passengers and goods between the railroad terminus and Yosemite Valley.

7. Schools

The rapid settlement of Yosemite Valley by entrepreneurs eager to serve the visiting public brought families and, of course, children. Although for awhile those youngsters were able to escape the constraints of a formalized school system, it was not long before their parents felt that lack. In the spring of 1875 several Yosemite families, including the Leidigs, Blacks, Hutchingses, and Howards, petitioned the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors to establish a school district in Yosemite Valley. The district was granted in May and the school was operating by July. At first, the children attended classes held outside under a large oak tree about one mile from Lower Yosemite Fall, probably at the foot of Indian Canyon near Indian Creek:
dry goods box was used by the teacher for a blackboard, on which he printed small words, there being no books in a class of seven beginners.89

[89. “Yosemite Valley School,” in Stockton (Calif.) Daily Independent, 2 August 1876. Confusion exists concerning early school sites. See discussion in footnote 99.]

During the first week they moved into a tent, twelve by sixteen feet, erected by the pioneer trail builder George Anderson near Royal Arches. Some confusion exists as to the location of temporary schools used prior to the permanent structure at the foot of Glacier Point. Although some early valley residents such as Cosie Hutchings Mills remembered the earliest school being on the north side of the valley, Paden and Schlichtmann relate that the first school (1872) operated a few yards from the Leidig Hotel. Unbleached muslin covered the frame structure. The chapel first stood next to that school.90

[90. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 294.]

Jack Leidig states also that the first wooden schoolhouse, about fourteen by twenty-four feet; with a lean-to on the back, stood near the site of the village chapel, near the foot of Four-Mile Trail. It formerly served as a boardinghouse for Washburn, McCready, and Chapman, called the “Lick House,” a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the famous San Francisco hotel of that name. The old saddle corral of Washburn, McCready, and Chapman stood east of the chapel site.91

[91. “Interview with Jack Leidig,” 15 July 1952, by Ralph H. Anderson, Administrative Assistant, in Separates File, Y-4b, #38, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

A permanent school building soon followed, probably in the summer of 1875, when a structure was built about 250 yards above Sentinel Bridge close to the south wall of the valley in the shadow of Glacier Point. Laurence Degnan described it as
a rough unpainted one-room frame shack, 24 feet long by 16 feet wide. The walls were a single thickness of vertical boards and battens, which directly supported the wall plate and shake roof, there being no studding. There was no ceiling or interior lining, not even the white cloth ceiling, so common in other buildings in those days. . . . the structure withstood the winds and storms of almost a quarter of a century, until it was abandoned for school purposes. . . . As might be inferred from the type of construction, the walls of the schoolhouse contained many knotholes and cracks; through these openings friendly green lizards used to crawl and visit the school, clinging to the walls as we chanted the multiplication table. . . . Yet notwithstanding its generous air-conditioning, the schoolhouse was not uncomfortable. The sessions were held in the warmer part of the year, and a large pot-bellied stove took care of the occasional rainy days in summer and the cooler days of spring and autumn. Our front yard, partly flooded in some seasons by high water, was a breeding ground for mosquitoes. . . . sprigs of pungent laurel, or pennyroyal, or both, were placed around the school room, and on the desks and persons of the pupils. But the uninformed mosquitoes did not seem to know that these plants repelled them, and they found that the plump little Yosemite school children . . . were “mighty good eatin’.”92

[92. Laurence V. Degnan, “The Yosemite Valley School,” typescript, 33 pages, 6 December 1955, in Separates File, Yosemite-Schools, Y-26, #15, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 12-13.]

Water for the children to drink came from the Merced River 100 yards away. Furnishings in the school consisted of maps and globes, an abacus, a dictionary, a blackboard along the southwest end of the room, and a small library. The children worked on their slates while sitting on rough benches at homemade tables, which were later replaced with factory-made school desks. Instructional devices included a mannequin showing the human body in a series of superimposed colored plates. Recess took place in the glade in front of the school crossed by the narrow, gravel stage road that ran between the Old Village and the Stoneman House.

The inadequacy of that small schoolhouse increased as the attendance grew, and at a meeting of the Yosemite Commission in July 1896, a motion was made to petition the state legislature for $2,000 to construct a stone schoolhouse. A strange chain of events indirectly provided a new building. After Black’s and Leidig’s hotels had been torn down, competition for customers became fierce between the Stoneman House and Barnard’s, each accusing the other of soliciting business to the detriment of the other. Finally the Yosemite commissioners ordered in 1896 that no stage company could maintain an office or an agent at either hotel. That order resulted in construction that summer of a stage and telegraph office next to the road near the site of the present Le Conte Memorial Lodge, halfway between the two hotels.

With the destruction of the Stoneman House by fire, however, the new office closed. At Guardian Galen Clark’s suggestion in 1897 that the structure would be suitable for a new schoolhouse, the Yosemite commissioners turned it over for that purpose.93

[93. Ibid., 14-15, 18, 30-31.]

For some students, school was especially difficult to reach. The twin McCauley boys had to get up early to ride donkeys down the Four-Mile Trail from the Mountain House to the valley floor. Late in the evening they usually had to walk back up because their mounts would be carrying supplies for the hotel and firewood to fuel their father’s firefall. The school sessions were limited to the summer and parts of spring and fall, about six months to one term. As time went on and the number of permanent residents in the valley grew, especially after completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad in 1907, the school terms were lengthened to 7-1/2 to 8 months. In 1916 the regular full school term was adopted.94

[94. Some confusion exists surrounding the first school building in Yosemite Valley. Mrs. Esther Harris Nathan, who lived in the valley as a child, reported that the first schoolhouse was the “Lick House,” the building that had been a boardinghouse for the Washburn and McCready stables, between Black’s and Leidig’s hotels. The second schoolhouse, she said, was a frame building with a canvas top and wood benches and desks near Indian Canyon. The third was near LeConte Lodge in the upper end of the valley. Ralph H. Anderson, “Interview with Mrs. Esther Harris Nathan,” 8 September 1952, in Separates File, Yosemite-History, #39, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

Degnan stated that about 1909 the schoolhouse building was moved to a spot across the river about 300 yards southwest of the present Park Service headquarters building. His brother and sister later recalled that the schoolhouse at the road fork on the north side of the valley was actually the house at the Lamon orchard that the Degnan family occupied in 1894 that was moved to the new spot to serve as a school. Degnan later agreed that the Lamon dwelling and the stage office were of the same type of construction and that possibly it was not the office that was moved. Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 3 March 1956, in Separates File, Yosemite-Schools, #27. A former student’s father, Sterling Crammer, however, stated that the first canvas and frame school was established in 1872-73, but was not formally incorporated into the Mariposa County school system until 1875. Mr. Crammer said that the school near the Le Conte Memorial was moved in 1909 to a site about 400 yards north of the Sentinel Hotel. “Early Day Schools of Yosemite: Extract from Talk Given by Sterling Crammer at Commencement Exercises, Yosemite Grammar School, June 1943,” in Separates File, Yosemite-Schools, #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. The schoolhouse that was moved across the river about 1909, according to Chief Park Naturalist Donald E. McHenry, became park employees’ residence no. 15. The Park Service demolished it 21 February 1956:

Reminiscences by Cosie Hutchings Mills also relate that the first school, in a tent with frame at the foot of Indian Canyon, was started about 1873. The teacher boarded with the Hutchings family. Noted by Bab Godfrey, 25 January 1943, in Separates File, Yosemite-Schools, #14. It might be that a school was carried on informally for a couple of years in the canvas structure and that the more permanent school building upstream from Sentinel Bridge was not built until after the school was incorporated, in July 1875. The Stockton (Calif.) Daily Independent, however, states the school was organized on 6 July 1875, followed by construction of the tent school. The Mariposa Gazette of 17 July 1875, on the other hand, stated the new school was completed as early as 7 July 1875.]

In the summer of 1891 the Washburns set up a schoolroom at Wawona and the banks of the South Fork of the Merced.

8. Private Lands

From the time of earliest penetration of the Yosemite area, the entire region was open to settlement and development under various land laws. It was only natural that the best meadow and timber lands and those along the routes of the first roads and trails into the area — sites that were best adapted for commercial use—should be quickly appropriated. Settlers acquired those private holdings in various ways —under laws relating to homesteads, pre-emption, timber and mineral lands, reservoir sites, and state school lands. Upon establishment of the national park in 1890, private individuals held some 60,000 acres. During the process of establishing boundaries, the federal government was compelled to recognize those prior rights.

Numerous cabins were built in the valleys and high country of Yosemite in connection with homesteading, stock grazing, lumbering and mining activities. Many of those structures and additional related sites and features in the high country remain unrecorded. A backcountry survey, impossible within the budget and time schedule established for this report, is urgently needed to locate additional resources and fill in data gaps on use of the Yosemite wilderness.

The effects of Indian and Anglo occupation of the backcountry uplands has never been documented in detail. The general ‘lack of published information on land use in those areas does not mean that they escaped exploitation or that such records do not exist. A number of government documents record and discuss early homestead, mining, and lumber claims and several early reminiscences shed light on activities in the area, but these have not yet been sorted out, crosschecked, and organized. This will be a complex task but is sorely needed to complete documentation of Yosemite’s early history. The long-term impact of homesteaders, trappers, and miners on park lands has been minimal. Fortunately no rich mineral values were found in the highlands, and none at all in the valley, but mining activity did open up the backcountry by means of Mono Trail traffic through Bloody Canyon to the east. The Tioga Road, constructed to facilitate mine shipping, directly facilitated later tourism. The effects of stock grazers and lumbermen were pronounced for awhile, resulting in heavy damage to the Yosemite ecosystem. Fortunately administrators managed to arrest those activities before irreparable damage occurred. Actually those landholders exerted a great influence on the park because it was their type of land use that led to the campaign for establishment of the national park.

The federal government finally managed to absorb many private holdings through strict army regulations, the implementation of which eventually drove out some early families, and changing park conditions that exerted pressure on individual landholders and enabled the Park Service to purchase many of their properties. Evidence of early land use in the backcountry exists today in the form of place-names, cabins, activity sites, and other scant remains. The few ramshackle structures that exist around mining operations and on homestead patents are slowly disintegrating and will eventually be gone. It is essential that a backcountry survey ensure that they are not forgotten. In terms of private holdings today, continuing settlement activity at Wawona, Foresta, and Aspen Valley is having the longest-lasting effect on the park and continues to compromise its scenic integrity and values.

In 1951 Robert F. Uhte, a Yosemite National Park ranger, began gathering information on Yosemite’s pioneer cabins. In writing his report, he utilized the field notes, rough sketches, and photographs supplied by several park rangers who had investigated historical structures in the backcountry during the summers of 1949 and 1950. Uhte was primarily interested in the architecture of Yosemite’s log cabins, noting that most of them were simple, crude affairs that were nonetheless interesting because of their history and architectural qualities. Round logs with saddle-notched corners—an easy and quick construction method—characterized most of the cabins investigated at that time. A V-notch cut, easier to form than a U, was sometimes used with round logs, although the saddle notch produced a more finished appearance. A more difficult but more successful method of corner joining was the dovetail or box corner, usually used with hewn logs but sometimes with round ones. Dovetailing made for a tighter fit and often eliminated the need for chinking. Various types of chinking were used when necessary: Split shakes laid flat or on edge between logs; small poles cut to fit into crevices; wedge-shaped slabs laid between logs; or a complete covering of split shakes, laid vertically against the side walls. This latter type of chinking was common in Yosemite because of the proximity of sugar pine for shakes.95

[95. This information and much of the following comes from Robert F. Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 9 (September 1956): 135-43, and 35, no. 10 (October 1956): 144-55.]

Uhte’s informers did not, however, particularly note the surroundings of each cabin or the manner in which the landscape had been affected by human occupation. Most backcountry cabins have some relation to other nearby historical features, such as blazes or corrals, that help indicate the extent and type of activity undertaken by the cabin owners. Those corollary resources also need to be recorded and analyzed to complete the picture of homesteading, mining, ranching, herding, and logging activities in Yosemite’s backcountry.

The early history of some of the more important private land- and leaseholdings within Yosemite National Park is presented below. Structures described are - connected with settlement, stockraising, hostelry, and mining activities. The continued existence of many of these pioneer log cabins is uncertain. Those mentioned in Uhte’s report were inventoried in the early 1950s, but a check of their present status would be another necessary function of a backcountry survey.

a) Bronson Meadows (Hodgdon Meadow) Area

(1) Crocker Station

Henry Robinson Crocker came from Massachusetts to California in 1853 and built a cabin in what was then known as Bronson Meadows. Bronson had operated an early camp there catering to saddle travelers to Yosemite Valley. The superintendent of the Chinese Camp to Yosemite stage company, which used the Big Oak Flat wagon road, requested that Crocker build and run a stage stop that would be superior in accommodations to the hotels of Hodgdon and others. Crocker agreed and in 1880 erected fifteen buildings referred to as “Crocker’s Sierra Resort,” composed of an inn, barns, storehouses, and guest cottages.

Crocker’s became a well-known and important stage stop, providing good food and clean rooms to all travelers along the road. The station served as construction headquarters during the building of the Great Sierra Wagon Road. Crocker died in 1904 and his widow sold the property in 1910. Eventually it came into the hands of the Yosemite National Park Company and for several years lay within the park, four miles from the western boundary. When the boundary changed and excluded it, the property fell into other hands. It took guests as late as 1920, but then began to decay. Some of the smaller buildings were moved to Carl Inn.96

[96. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 207-8, 210.]

(2) Hodgdon Ranch

About two miles within the park on the Big Oak Flat Road is the site of the former Thomas J. Hodgdon ranch. The site of the ranch was first called Moore and Bowen Camp, then Bronson Meadows, and eventually Hodgdon Meadow. Hodgdon, from Vermont, purchased the land in 1865 by squatter’s title. He raised cattle there and built two shake-roofed log cabins, tightly constructed of square, hewn logs on a loose rock foundation. The National Park Service removed the Hodgdon Meadow cabins when it acquired the property.

Illustration 18.
Notching and chinking types.
From Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 10 (October 1956).

[click to enlarge]

Before the Big Oak Flat Road reached this meadow in June 1870, Hodgdon’s served as headquarters for a summer cow camp. The hospitable Mr. Hodgdon often housed and fed Yosemite tourists. Because the number of passersby steadily increased after Hodgdon’s became the terminus of the Big Oak Flat wagon road, Hodgdon decided to build a regular hotel to accommodate more people. He finished it by 1871 and began housing travelers connecting with J. M. Hutchings’s saddle train to Yosemite Valley.

Helen Hunt graphically described the “delights” of a night at “Hogdin’s” in 1872:
Three, four, five in a room; some on floors, without even a blanket. A few pampered ones, women, with tin pans for washbowls and one towel for six hands. The rest, men, with one tin basin in an open shed, and if they had any towel or not I do not know. That was a night at Hogdin’s.

Food? Yes. Junks [sic] of beef floating in bowls of fat, junks of ham ditto, beans ditto, potatoes as hard as bullets, corn-bread steaming with saleratus, doughnuts ditto, hot biscuits ditto; the whole set out in indescribable confusion and dirt, in a narrow, unventilated room, dimly lit by two reeking kerosene lamps. Even brave and travelled souls could not help being appalled at the situation. Not in the wildest and most poverty-stricken little town in Italy could such discomfort be encountered.97

[97. Hunt [Jackson], Ah-wah-ne Days, 25.]

The Hodgdons accommodated stage passengers and travelers along the Big Oak Flat Road until the late 1890s.

The site of Hodgdon’s stage station, a little over a mile beyond the park’s Big Oak Flat entrance, is marked by a cottage set in the lower corner of a green pasture now known as Cuneo Meadows and facing on the highway. This used to be the site of Hodgdon’s two cabins and a barn for the stage horses.98

[98. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 213-16.]
b) Ackerson Meadow

James T. Ackerson came west during the 1849 California gold rush. He settled on land known as Buckley and/or Wade meadows and began supplying hay to Yosemite Valley. T. C. Carlon later purchased the property and pastured cattle there in the summer.

c) Carlon or Carl Inn

Dan and Donna Carlon built their rustic Carl Inn about 1918-19 in a meadow near the old Big Oak Flat Road from the South Fork of the Tuolumne bridge, just inside Yosemite National Park. It consisted of a main building and several bungalows. Four years later it burned, was rebuilt, and burned again. The National Park Serivce took over the land in 1932 and razed the structures in 1940.99

[99. According to Ditton and McHenry, the inn was built about 1919, was twice destroyed by floodwaters, once by fire, and again by snow until finally razed by the Park Service in 1940. Yosemite Road Guide, 19.]

d) Hazel Green

Hazel Green, supporting a number of hazel bushes in its meadow, acquired its name when Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, George W. Coulter, and others were constructing the Coulterville Free Trail in 1856. It became the lunch stop on the second day of the stage trip from Merced to Yosemite over the Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Road. James Halstead collected the tolls at Hazel Green from the spring of 1874 until 1884. About 1877 the Halsteads began supplying food to travelers and a camping place for parties with their own teams. From Hazel Green it was said to be an exhilarating ride through the forests to the Merced Grove of Big Trees and then past Little Nellie Falls to the quiet of Big Meadow (another toll station), and then to drop steeply to the valley floor just below the Cascade Falls. In October 1888 Halstead patented 120 acres at Hazel Green, which passed to his widow after his death in 1901.100

[100. Mary Curry Tresidder, “Reminiscences of Hazel Green,” typescript, 10 pages, in Mary Curry Tresidder Papers, Drawer 13, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Illustration 19.
Cuneo residence, Carl Inn, to northwest (Hodgdon Meadow on old Big Oak Flat Road).

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 20.
Hazel Green ranch on old Coulterville Road (private property outside park boundary), to west.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

e) Crane Flat

Coulter and Bunnell also named this area in 1856 as they worked their way from Black’s hotel on Bull Creek blazing a saddle trail to join Coulterville to the Big Oak Flat Trail so that they could use its descent into Yosemite Valley. The shrill cry of some sandhill cranes (possibly great blue herons) surprised by the explorers suggested the name to them. The two trails joined on the near edge of Crane Flat and continued together toward Gin Flat.

The earliest known habitation at Crane Flat was a cabin mentioned by Josiah Whitney in 1868, which probably belonged to Hugh Mundy, who owned property west of the park and ran sheep in the vicinity. It is also possible that Louis D. Gobin built a structure there as early as the 1860s. By the 1870s, at least, Gobin’s cattle and sheep grazed at Crane Flat during the summer. At first he took in travelers simply as a kindly gesture, serving them meals in his small log cabin. The meadow became a lively place as a stage station and an important stop for food and shelter as more people began to trek to Yosemite Valley. The Gobins even had a dairy house in which they churned their own butter. The buildings burned in 1886 but were rebuilt two years later. The hotel finally closed its doors in 1895. Across from Gobin’s, on the south side of the old road, stood Billy Hurst’s saloon, which served as a supply center for sheepherders and as a saloon for anyone in the area with a thirst for liquor and companionship. A lively place, it functioned until Hurst’s death in the winter of 1889-90. Early cattleman R. A. Curtin once mentioned that James (“Johnny”) Hardin settled at Crane Flat, building a water-powered sawmill and logging with oxen. Ultimately he fell on hard times and lost his ranch at the flat.101

[101. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 219-23; R. A. Curtin to Carl Russell, 6 June 1951, in Separates File, Yosemite-History, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. Curtin may be confused, because Hardin had a ranch and sawmill at Harden Flat on the Big Oak Flat Road.]

f) Gin Flat

In 1879 the Irishman John Curtin bought a ranch in Tuolumne County and for the next twenty-three years worked as a freighter between Stockton and the southern California mines. The Curtins switched gradually from freighting to the cattle business, grazing stock in the foothills during the winter and pasturing them on the high Sierra Nevada ranges in the summer. Ultimately the Curtins decided to use Gin Flat as summer grazing land, and in 1882 the elder Curtin filed upon it and obtained a government patent. Gin Flat acquired its name from an incident involving a barrel of gin that fell off a freight wagon coming up the grade from Crane Flat and that provided refreshment for a group of roadworkers, cowboys, and sheepherders. In the early days, Hugh Mundy also grazed his sheep on Gin Flat, where he had a camp and stored provisions for his herders. His was only one of many bands of sheep grazing on the elevated plateaus every summer, where the plentiful water and grassy meadows provided welcome relief from the parched plains and foothills.

John B. Curtin, Jr., went to Gin Flat as a boy of fifteen after the family took over the property. He and Henry Bancroft lived in the Mundy cabin while felling tamarack logs for their own one-room abode that stood about 150 feet east of the old Big Oak Flat Road in the south end of the meadow.102 Pine log walls hewn on the two exposed sides and secured at their box notch joints by large oak dowels contained wedge-shaped chinking. Curtin used granite for the foundation and for a dry masonry fireplace in a corner of the larger unit. A sugar pine shake roof covered the structure. Curtin’s cow camp also included a barn between the cabin and the present road. The old road passed between that structure and the cabin. They used that cabin, completed about 1883, as a cow camp while cattle grazed on the meadow. The younger Curtin took over Tamarack Flat sometime after the railroad reached El Portal. He moved the larger cabin from the Tamarack Flat Lodge (see below) alongside his Gin Flat cabin in 1914 so that the two appeared as one long structure with a common porch. The larger cabin measured 16 by 24 1/2 feet, the smaller 14 by 18 1/2 feet. A common porch six feet deep spanned both structures. The remains of only one cabin exist today. The National Park Service stabilized its walls in 1961 by adding vertical log posts to keep the walls from collapsing.

[102. Curtin to Russell, 6 June 1951.]

g) Tamarack Flat

Coulter and Bunnell also named Tamarack Flat in 1856. Starting in 1870, before completion of the Big Oak Flat Road to the floor of Yosemite Valley, Alva Hamilton maintained a rude hotel there, the Tamarack House, where tourists and pack train handlers obtained meals. He is the first identified settler on the flat, although in 1869 John Muir had found a white man and Indian woman living there in a log house. Business at Tamarack House fell off drastically in the mid-1870s as soon as stages could go through to the floor of Yosemite Valley. When fire destroyed Hamilton’s buildings, he moved to present Buck Meadows, where he ran a stage stop, continuing to cater to traffic on the Big Oak Flat Road.

David Woods rebuilt Tamarack House, as the Tamarack Flat Lodge, erecting a large stage barn and later a store and saloon. The hostelry possessed several features not found on other cabins in the park. At each of the four corners, hewn, squared logs rested on tall piles of granite rocks. Other design features included box corner joints and a shake roof and chinking. Two large stone steps led up to the doorway. The structure is no longer extant. Wood’s family continued the business after his death in 1884. The difficult winter of 1889-90 probably wreaked havoc on the buildings, or possibly it was the new U. S. Army administration that caused the family to leave in 1891. As noted, in 1914 John Curtin, Jr., moved a Tamarack Flat structure up the mountain to Gin Flat and placed it next to his cabin. It ultimately weathered away.103

[103. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 194-95, 235-36.]

h) Foresta/Big Meadow

Miwok Indians inhabited Big Meadow and the surrounding area, and probably after the 1850s packers, miners, and hunters occasionally passed through. An abundance of water, grass, game, and foodstuffs made Big Meadow particularly attractive for long-term habitation. The Indians called Big Meadow “O'pim” and frequently journeyed there from Hog Ranch for acorns and rest until cold weather drove them to lower elevations in El Portal.

The meadows attracted white settlement also. About 1873 John D. Meyer, a German who had traveled to the goldfields in 1850 and become a prominent rancher and businessman around Groveland, and a fellow countryman, Peter van der Miesen decided to graze cattle and raise hay and grain in Big Meadow. They paid an Indian who lived there a few dollars for his squatter’s rights.

Within a few years Gerhardt (George) Meyer, who had come to California later than his brother, in 1870, acquired his brother’s interest at Big Meadow and became Mieson’s partner. They acquired land near Merced Falls as winter headquarters and filed for adjoining 160-acre homesteads around Big Meadow. In addition to maintaining a toll gate, they operated a lunch stop for the stages carrying mail and tourists over the Coulterville Road and stabled horses for the Washburn and McCready stage line. They also produced alfalfa, barley, potatoes, and berries; raised cattle and hogs; and cultivated a vegetable garden, selling their products to hotels and stores in Yosemite Valley.

In exchange for his help in building barns and a ranch house, the partners allowed George Anderson to build a log cabin on the southern border of their property. Anderson had arrived in Yosemite around 1870. One of the first settlers to locate on the present western boundary of the park, he built his cabin about 1876. The single-room log structure, measuring twenty by twelve or thirteen feet, originally abutted a boulder, into which Anderson cut a fireplace. Professor W. A. Setchell of the University of California bought it from George Meyer and paid James McCauley to move it 200 to 300 yards onto his lots in Foresta in 1909. Professor Setchell finally donated the structure to the National Park Service. With the appropriation of funds to restore the abandoned structure for interpretive use, the Park Service disassembled it and moved it to the Pioneer Yosemite History Center at Wawona in 1961, where it was reassembled.

The present cabin is a single-story, one-room structure, ten by fourteen feet, with a dirt floor. It is notch and saddle log construction with hand-split shakes covering the steeply pitched gable roof and with a large fieldstone fireplace at one end. The hewn squared logs lie in alternating tiers, joined at the corners with a V-notch joint. After the cabin was moved, laborers added chinking in the form of split log wedges. They also transported the masonry fireplace to the new site and rejoined it to the structure. An exterior chimney was placed on the north end of the cabin.

Thomas A. Rutherford, a New Yorker who ran the Cranberry Mine in the Merced River canyon, around 1878 homesteaded the 160 acres that now comprise Foresta, adjoining Meyer and Mieson’s southern boundary. He set up a blacksmith shop and water-powered sawmill on the east bank of Crane Creek. George Meyer worked for him, and, after his death, continued to run the blacksmith shop. Meyer and Mieson’s house probably incorporated lumber from the Opim Mill, run by Rutherford and his partner George L. Rich, although they freighted most of the milled lumber to Yosemite Valley businessmen. Remains of the long ditch that brought water by gravity flow from Crane Creek to the sawmill are visible above the creek and northwest of the Big Meadow bridge. Rutherford’s one-room, board-and-batten cabin stood on a rise overlooking the creek.

A post office, Opim Station, was established in 1882 and lasted a little over a year. Rutherford’s death in 1884 occasioned establishment of the Big Meadow cemetery. James McCauley, who had settled a mile south of Meyer, became administrator of Rutherford’s estate and entered in competition with Meyer for Rutherford’s land. Rutherford’s mill burned the next year, and in 1887 McCauley’s hired hand bought Rutherford’s 160 acres. Later McCauley registered the title in his own name. Bitterness between the two men increased when Meyer removed the shake roof of George Anderson’s abandoned cabin, which McCauley claimed was on his new property. Meyer was forced to pay for the shakes, and eventually McCauley added a new roof.

McCauley had come to Yosemite in 1883, when he purchased the John Hamilton holdings on the flank of the mountain above the Merced River canyon. An early guide in Yosemite before his death in 1882, Hamilton had a house, barn, and some goats on his property. James McCauley acquired that land as winter quarters for his family. He grazed a few cattle at El Portal in the winter and drove them up the Four-Mile Trail to Glacier Point in the summer, where they grazed in nearby meadows while the family stayed in the Mountain House.104 Around 1886-87 McCauley added Rutherford’s 200 acres to the original ranch, which later became the Foresta subdivision. Evicted from Glacier Point about 1898, McCauley and his twin sons, John and Fred, raised cattle, hogs, and horses on their property. McCauley died in an accident on 24 June 1911 while driving a team with a loaded wagon down the steep descent of the Coulterville Road into Yosemite Valley.

[104. Shirley Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost: Foresta, Big, Meadow (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1983), 8-10.]

Several important historical resources exist in the Big Meadow/Foresta area.

(1) McCauley Barn

Part of the old McCauley ranch lies along Foresta Road, approximately two miles northwest of Foresta. Abandoned now, it comprises an open sloping meadowland. All that remain are some ruined buildings, peach trees, Bob Rutherford’s old sawmill, and a derelict barn. Historically Crane Creek supplied water by flume. An apple orchard lies one-half mile north of the barn. The land on which the barn stands was a 160-acre parcel of public domain patented to Thomas A. Rutherford. After his death in 1884, the land was conveyed to Philippe Provuveur, McCauley’s hired hand as recorded on 11 January 1887. James M. McCauley acquired it about 1888.

It is assumed McCauley built the barn on the property sometime soon afterwards. McCauley moved here permanently in 1897 and supplied beef to the valley until his death in 1911. In 1913 his son Fred, who had been growing apples, sold part of the acreage to C. P. Snell for $5,500. In 1923 Fred sold the rest of the ranch to Horace Meyer, who raised hogs until 1955 and cattle until 1974. The property had been unoccupied since 1355. The National Park Service condemned the land in 1974 and grazed horses there.

The McCauley barn is basically an open log cribwork barn or unchinked log building enclosed within later additions of concrete and sawn lumber. The log crib core was used for hay storage, with surrounding stalls. The crib is of peeled, large-diameter logs laid in alternating tiers with V-notch joints. The forty by eighty-foot structure has a gable roof and is built into the hillside. The uphill side has a low concrete retaining wall its full length. Peeled log rafters support the roof that is now corrugated sheet metal but was originally shingled. The barn is sheathed with vertical board siding. The log portion was probably constructed soon after 1887, while most of the additions appear to date from at least the 1940s.105

[105. Historic Resources Inventory form, McCauley Ranch, State of California, Department of Parks and Recreation, prepared by Shirley Sargent, 1981; Gordon S. Chappell, Roger E. Kelly, and Robert M. Cox to Assoc. Reg. Dir., Prof. Services, Western Region, 25 July 1974, “Evaluation of McCauley-Meyer Barn, Yosemite National Park, July 16-17, 1974,” in Box 74, LCS (List of Classified Structures) Data File, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(2) Meyer Barn No. 1 (Saltbox)

Located in Big Meadow, this hewn timber framework barn on the George Meyer property has a gable roof and lean-to shed addition. The barn measures thirty by twenty feet, the lean-to thirty by sixteen feet. The wood-shingled roof is supported by peeled log rafters. Meyer Barn No. 1 was probably built in the early 1880s.

(3) Meyer Barn No. 2 (Cribwork Interior)

Also located in Big Meadow, this fifty-foot-square structure has a steeply pitched, overhanging gable on a hip roof. The twenty-five-foot-high, rectangular log crib on the interior, used for hay storage, is made of unchinked peeled logs laid on alternating tiers and joined with saddle notch joints. There are stalls on three sides of the crib. Peeled log rafters support the originally wood-shingled roof that is now covered with corrugated metal. The barn is sheathed with vertical boards. Meyer Barn No. 2 probably was built in the late 1870s.

(4) Big Meadow Cemetery

Near Meyer’s ranch at Big Meadow is a small graveyard in which five Yosemite pioneers are buried. It was restored and fenced in 1957 when native granite headstones were placed on the grave mounds and identifying markers affixed. The five graves are those of:

Illustration 21.
Shed ruins, McCauley ranch, view to southeast.

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Illustration 22.
Cabin ruins, McCauley ranch, view to southeast.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 23.
Barn, McCauley ranch.
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustration 24.
Sawmill, McCauley ranch.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 25.
Meyer saltbox and crib barns, Big Meadow
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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(a) Thomas Rutherford—Rutherford was the first man buried here, dying of pneumonia at Big Meadow in 1884.

(b) John Henry “Jack” Allen—Allen was a laborer killed in a rockslide above Arch Rock. Surveyors found his body and took it to Big Meadow for burial in 1886.

(c) John “Sawmill” Johnson—Johnson also died in 1886, after working periodically for J. M. Hutchings at his timber mill in the valley. He was once worked for Meyer at Big Meadow. He froze to death while walking home inebriated from Yosemite Valley along the Coulterville Road. James McCauley discovered the body.

(d) Philippe (Philip) Provuveui—Provuveur was a Belgian who immigrated to South America and arrived in San Francisco during the gold rush. He worked as sharecropper on the McCauley ranch. He was also a carpenter and probably helped build some of the structures at the McCauley place. He died sometime after 1901 at the McCauley ranch.

(e) George Washington Drake—Drake was a ranchhand who worked for Meyer most of his life. He died in 1918. His burial was the last in the Big Meadow graveyard.106

[106. Shirley Sargent, “Little Known of Old Graveyard at Big Meadow,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 22 August 1957, in Separates File, Y-4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, 18-19.]

(i) Gentry Station

Gentry’s served as the last station on the Big Oak Flat Road on the brink of the cliffs overlooking the Merced River canyon. Colonel E. S. Gentry settled there and constructed buildings of logs and split shakes. The two-story main house was porchless with a steep roof and stood on a tiny flat to the right of the road. It served travelers when it was necessary to disembark from stages and enter the valley on horse- and muleback. The completion of wagon roads to the valley floor enabled passengers to continue on into the valley without stopping at Gentry’s place.

Gentry ultimately moved out and Joseph Hutchins took over the location in 1885, building a sawmill south of the old Gentry house, which housed some of the mill workers. Additional small cabins were built across the road. Hutchins had contracted to supply lumber for the Stoneman Hotel in Yosemite Valley. Oxen soon began dragging the logs in from the woods, while horse teams carefully hauled the lumber down the Zigzag to the valley floor. Gentry’s became known as a lively place during all this activity, but upon completion of the new valley hotel and exhaustion of the nearby timber supply, Hutchins dismantled the sawmill and the workers’ families eventually moved away.107

[107. Paden and Schlichtmann, Big Oak Flat Road, 239-41.]

j) Aspen Valley

(1) Hodgdon Cabin

At the southeast end of the Aspen Valley meadow, Jeremiah (Jerry) Hodgdon, T. J. Hodgdon’s son, built a two-story log cabin. Hodgdon began work on the structure in 1879, assisted by an old Chinese gentlemen named Ah Hoy and a neighbor called Babcock. Originally constructed as living quarters on the Hodgdon homestead, it was occupied until construction of a larger home. (Although the structure has been termed the only two-story log cabin in Yosemite, James Lamon had built a two-story log house in Yosemite Valley ten years earlier.) The cabin later housed laborers on the Great Sierra Wagon Road and provided summer billeting for detachments of cavalry patrolling Yosemite National Park.

Illustration 26.
Hodgdon Aspen Valley homestead cabin after relocation at Yosemite Pioneer History Center.

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Illustration 27.
Anderson cabin after relocation at Yosemite Pioneer History Center.

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Several additions altered the Hodgdon structure in later years: a large front porch, a lean-to kitchen on the west side, and exterior stairs to the second floor on the south end. The main portion of the cabin was built of peeled logs laid in alternating tiers and interlocked at the corners with saddle-notched joints. A shake roof covered the purlins, which were parallel to the sides and extended about two feet on each end of the cabin. The base log served as the cabin’s foundation. The building timbers were carefully notched on both upper and lower sides and had wedge-shaped chinking.

Descendants of the Hodgdon family who still owned and resided upon the Aspen Valley property in 1951 planned to tear down the old, empty homestead structure. In order to preserve the only extant two-story pioneer log cabin in the Yosemite region, the National Park Service purchased it. In 1960 park employees dismantled it and moved it from its original site in Aspen Valley to the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, where they re-erected it and accomplished considerable interior restoration. After furnishing it with furniture and personal items of the late 1800s, the Park Service has since used the building to interpret pioneer life of early California.

(2) East Meadow Cache

This small trapper’s shelter was built in the East Meadow portion of the Hodgdon Estate near Aspen Valley. Its features were still distinguishable in 1951, although it had rotted almost to the ground. Used as a cache on Babcock’s trap line, it measured only eight feet long and six feet high. It lacked windows and was entered through a trapdoor in the roof. It did contain a small stone fireplace and chimney.

k) Hetch Hetchy Valley/Lake Eleanor Area

Some controversy surrounds the identity of the first white man to enter Hetch Hetchy Valley, although historians believe it was undoubtedly one of three brothers—Joseph, Nathan, or William Screech. Joseph is the one most often credited with the first exploration of this beautiful area northwest of Yosemite Valley in 1850, but other sources claim that without a doubt Nathan made the discovery. The latter recorded in 1935 that during an early hunting trip in the mountains he climbed a high peak, from which vantage point he could see the Tuolumne River flowing out of the Sierra Nevada through a deep cut. He also saw beyond what appeared to be a wider cut in the mountains resembling a deep, wide valley.

Although he did not pursue his discovery at that time, he returned -two years later and succeeded in entering the valley and speaking with its Indian inhabitants. Observing that they cooked some sort of grass covered with seeds, he inquired its name, and received the answer “hatch hatchy.” James Ackerson, who homesteaded near Hetch Hetchy Valley, however, said that Joe Screech and two others made the first trip into the valley and that he accompanied them on their second one. Possibly all three Screech brothers composed that first party and that was when Nate finally reached the valley he had seen earlier. Because by 1868 Joe had cleared a trail that was used to bring in sheep and cattle, he became most closely identified with Hetch Hetchy Valley.108 Sheepherders and cattlemen also once occupied a level spot in the Tuolumne River canyon referred to as Poopenaut Valley.

[108. See a discussion of the discovery of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in ibid., 188-92.]

(1) Miguel Meadow Cabin

Seven miles from the present Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on the Lake Eleanor Road is a meadow once owned by Miguel Errera and his partner Jonas Rush, who owned the Rush and McGill ranch near Keystone in Tuolumne County. There they pastured large herds of cattle and horses during the summer. In a 1906 deposition, Rush and Errera stated they had been co-partners in raising horses, cattle, and mules in Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties for twenty years under the name Rush & Errera. Their lands included the Lake Vernon area and McGill Meadow.

Illustration 28.
Kibbe cabin, 1896.
From Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 10 (October 1956).

Mr. Kibby at his Lake Eleanor cabin in 1896. This photo was taken by Lukens.
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Errera and Rush built a barn and substantial cabin on the latter property. Hewn timbers, completely covered with shakes on the exterior, comprised the structural members of the latter. Later additions included a large dry-masonry fireplace and chimney.

(2) Kibbe Cabin

Homesteader Horace J. Kibbe erected this structure on the shores of natural Lake Eleanor. He recorded the deed to his property in 1890, but the one-room cabin of overlapping shakes dates from an earlier time. It was abandoned by 1914. The enlarged waters of Lake Eleanor reservoir have since inundated the building. Kibbe was referred to as a “squaw man” whose wives reportedly packed trout from lake to lake to ensure both the Indians and Kibbe of good fishing.

(3) Elwell Cabins

Two cabins stood seven miles north of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, along the Jack Main Trail, in “The Beehive” area—a fenced meadow west of Lake Vernon. Lewis and Eugene Elwell built both structures. The Elwells lived near Groveland, California, and each summer drove cattle up into the high country, where they established line camps. About 1889 Lewis Elwell filed on Mount Gibson and Eugene Elwell filed on The Beehive. The latter packed in trout and stocked streams in the area.

The brothers built at least one and possibly both cabins in 1888. Situated on a loose rock foundation, the walls of one comprised five horizontal round logs on one side and six on the other, joined by V notches. Short stumps or uprights placed between the logs at various intervals kept them from sagging—an expedient not found in other Yosemite cabins. The structure measured fifteen by twenty-four feet. Shakes covered the roof and sides. There was no flooring. A 1986 field inventory found no traces of this structure. Large, round logs joined with a box notch, the first one half buried in the ground as foundation, formed the walls of the second, shake-roofed structure, which the Elwell family also used as a summer headquarters during the grazing season. They also built a cabin on Tiltill Mountain and one near Lake Vernon, the latter known to be no longer standing.

(4) Tiltill Mountain

The Elwell brothers built this stockman’s cabin in 1888, the same year they erected those at The Beehive. Probably only seasonally occupied while Elwell cattle grazed in the area, it measured ten by twelve feet. V-notched corners joined walls five logs high. Split shakes functioned as roofing and served for chinking. By 1951 two large trees had fallen over the structure.

(5) Lake Vernon Cabin

Thomas R. Reid pioneered as a homesteader at Lake Vernon in the late 1870s. He and his wife filed on Lake Vernon by preemption and built a cabin on its shores in 1889. A miner from Groveland, Reid also fattened cattle for owners of ranches near Modesto. He regularly took more than 100 animals to summer range via the Big Oak Flat Road, through Hog Ranch (Mather), to the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A saddle trail provided access to Miguel Meadow and Reid’s homestead at Lake Vernon from the Hetch Hetchy Valley. Reid also guided tourists entering Yosemite Valley on horseback from Hodgdon’s ranch around 1869-70.

The Reid log cabin had whipsawed plank floors and roof boards.109

[109. “Interview by Carl P. Russell with Mrs. Thomas Rathbone Reid, Sept. 26, 1951,” in Separates File, Yosemite-Cabins, Y-36, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(6) Rancheria Mountain Cabin

An unknown builder located this structure above Hetch Hetchy Valley on Hat Creek.

(7) Smith Meadow Cabin

The Smith Meadow cabin lay one mile southeast of Smith Peak and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Cyril C. Smith, an early settler from Maine, who had holdings in Merced and pastured stock in the summer in the area of Mather, Hetch Hetchy Valley, and Smith Meadow, built the cabin in 1885. Although primarily a sheep man, Smith raised hogs on the Mather site.110 He was the father of Elmer Smith of Merced, who eventually sold parts of those lands to the city of San Francisco for its Mather recreation camp.

[110. Hog Ranch derived its name from a sheepherder’s painting of a sheep on a boulder in the area in the early 1880s that looked more like a hog. Michael O’Shaughnessy, San Francisco city engineer, changed the name in October 1919 to Mather, in honor of the first director of the National Park Service.]

The twelve by sixteen-foot cabin with shake roof consisted of hewn logs whose box corners were secured with hardwood dowels. The rear wall supported a small dry masonry stone fireplace. Double chinking filled the spaces between the squared timbers. Its continued existence is uncertain.

l) White Wolf

The three Meyer brothers—Diedrich, Heinrich, and John— left Germany in the 1850s for the California goldfields. Having no luck in that endeavor, they turned their efforts to cattle raising and acquired holdings in Tuolumne County. While in summer pasturage in Smith Meadow sometime prior to 1882, some Indians stole their horses and John Meyer took off in hot pursuit. He found not the thieves but another Indian band camped in a beautiful alpine meadow, which he named “White Wolf” in honor of their headman. The name stuck.

By 1882 the land had been surveyed and the Great Sierra Wagon Road, discussed later in this chapter, had reached White Wolf Meadow. One of the teamsters employed in building that road, Johnson Ridley, acquired title to the lush meadow area in 1883. He later conveyed it on 6 November 1884 to John D. Meyer, who received 120 acres including the meadow. Meyer drove his cattle to summer pasture there over the Great Sierra Wagon Road after it fell into disuse.111

[111. George H. Harlan, An Island in Yosemite: The Story of White Wolf Lodge (Greenbrae, Calif.: Published by the Author, 1981), 1-2. Ridley later worked for Henry Washburn at Wawona. After Washburn fired him, Ridley took a potshot at him during a 4th of July celebration. Convicted of attempted murder, Ridley went to San Quentin Prison. Interview with George Harlan by the author, 1984.]

m) Soda Springs and Tuolumne Meadows

The Tuolumne Meadows area is one of the most beautiful in the park and has been frequented from the earliest days. As mentioned earlier in this report, the ancient Mono Trail traversed the High Sierra from west to east, through Tuolumne Meadows, over Mono Pass, and down Bloody Canyon to the east side of the Sierra Nevada. Mono Lake Paiutes traded pinon nuts, dried fly pupae, pandora moth larvae, baskets, rabbit and buffalo robes, salt, tobacco, and obsidian for acorns, berries, beads, paint pigments, arrows, baskets, and abalone shell ornaments from the Miwoks who traded with peoples along the West Coast. That trade continued into the 1880s, and was carried on during summer rendezvous when the Yosemite and Mono Indians encamped in Tuolumne Meadows.

Several parties of whites penetrated the area in the early days, in search of either Indians, wealth, or scientific knowledge. Lieutenant Tredwell Moore passed through with a small command of troops in pursuit of Chief Tenaya in 1852, pausing only long enough to explore briefly for rich mineral ore in the vicinity of Bloody Canyon. By the 1850s a few miners from the western foothills struggled over the slightly improved Mono Trail to the mining settlements near Mono Lake. In 1863 an expedition of the California Geological Survey reached Tuolumne Meadows while studying the watershed between the Merced and Tuolumne rivers and their headwaters and named the Soda Springs.

Sheepherders with immense flocks had been annual visitors to the Yosemite high country meadows since the 1860s. Sheep husbandry in California had boomed since the gold rush days, and the introduction of hardier breeds, such as the Merino, had resulted in excellent wool as well as good meat. Increased agricultural use of the Central Valley, however, began to crowd the flocks, and the extreme heat and dryness of the summer season inflicted great hardship and casualties upon them. During the summers, Basque, Portuguese, Scottish, and French sheepherders escorted the animals through the hills, into the high mountain meadows of the Sierra Nevada, and back again. Along the way the animals feasted on the lush grasses and green plants of meadows such as Tuolumne, uprooting flowers, destroying the soil cover, and fouling water sources as they passed.

In 1869 a California sheep rancher hired a young drifter named John Muir to take charge of a flock of several thousand sheep headed for grazing grounds in the High Sierra. The party reached Soda Springs in late summer and the sheep were deposited in a high pasture north of Tuolumne Meadows. While the sheep fattened, Muir spent much of his time exploring the surrounding high country.

Meanwhile, prospectors remained active in the mountains east of Tuolumne Meadows, and miners and packers frequently plodded along the trail from Big Oak Flat to Bloody Canyon. When the Tioga Mining District blossomed about 1878, a flurry of tunneling and building ensued, culminating in construction of the Great Sierra Wagon Road through Tuolumne Meadows in 1883.

During all those years Tuolumne Meadows was government land, open to homesteading as well as grazing. The army took advantage of its central location in the eastern portion of the park as a starting point for patrols in that area. Its beautiful scenery and convenience as a starting point for hikes into the backcountry also attracted the attention of the Outing Committee of the Sierra Club. Its first annual Outing in 1901 visited Soda Springs, which served as a base of operations during subsequent annual excursions.

(1) Lembert Cabin

The only resident of Tuolumne Meadows who left much of a mark, however, was a New Yorker by birth, John (Jean) Baptiste Lembert. He had worked in and around Yosemite Valley for several years, and, regarded somewhat as a recluse, had built a winter cabin among the Indians on the north side of the Merced River canyon below present El Portal. Lembert established a homestead claim at Tuolumne Meadows that included the Soda Springs in 1885, to which he acquired title 28 June 1895. A few feet in front of, and a little toward Soda Springs from the present Parsons Memorial Lodge, Lembert built a crude, one-room cabin of large, round timbers laid on a granite stone foundation. The shake-chinked and shake-roofed structure had a crude fireplace and a chimney of granite rocks and was adequate for summer occupancy only. On the east side, Lembert added a shed for his donkey.

Around 1889 Lembert erected a small log enclosure over three of the larger soda springs to protect them from contamination by flocks of roving sheep and cattle. The structure measured nine by eleven feet and had no windows. Its peeled logs interlocked at the corners with V-notch joints. Lembert also fenced in his land, making it available for grazing for a fee to parties passing through with stock. Although a loner by desire, he welcomed passersby and was especially friendly with many of the sheepherders frequenting the area. He also had friends among the Indians who came to the meadows to trade in late summer.

Lembert brought in a flock of angora goats that he later lost during a blinding snowstorm in the winter of 1889-90. He also pursued mining in a desultory fashion, sinking a small shaft a short distance into his property, and bottled and sold the water from the soda springs to people in Yosemite Valley. An avid student of nature, with special interests in entomology and botany, Lembert assisted a government scientific expedition that came through the meadows in the 1890s in collecting Sierran plant and insect specimens. Afterwards, he continued sending specimens for payment to museums and scientific societies. In

Illustration 29.
Soda Springs enclosure.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 30.
Tuolumne Meadows cabin, 1950s.
From Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 10 (October 1956).

[click to enlarge]

1895 he received a U. S. patent on his claim. He returned to his Merced River canyon cabin every fall, where he was eventually murdered in the late 1890s.112

[112. Elizabeth Stone O’Neill, Meadow jin the Sky: A History of Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows Region (Fresno: Panorama West Books, 1983), 6-7, 12-17, 22-24, 34-37, 43-47; William E. Colby, “Jean (John) Baptiste Lembert—Personal Memories,” Yosemite Nature Notes 28, no. 9 (September 1949): 113-17.]

(2) Tuolumne Meadows Cabin

This small house stood on the Elizabeth Lake Trail in Tuolumne Meadows. Crudely constructed of large lodgepole timbers, it contained chinking in the form of small wedges placed parallel between the round logs whose corner joints were secured with box corners. Two courses of long shakes covered the roof. The cabin reportedly existed in 1894, built by sheepherders who drove their flocks into the meadows prior to establishment of the park.

(3) Murphy Cabin

In 1878 a Yosemite guide, John L. Murphy, homesteaded the meadows bordering Tenaya Lake, eventually planting a number of brook trout from the Tuolumne River in its waters. In 1881 Archie Leonard, later one of the park’s first civilian rangers, initiated a ten-horse pack train operation between Yosemite Valley and the mining town of Lundy to the east. Travelers over that trail and the later Tioga Road, and hikers on the Eagle Peak Trail from Yosemite Valley, found satisfactory accommodations at the primitive Lake Tenaya stopping place where Murphy and a Mr. (Johnny?) Brown dispensed refreshments.

The hospice was a long, rectangular structure that Murphy initially built as his home. He occupied it during the summer season, when he employed a cook and catered to travelers and campers. In the winter he lived in Mariposa. Exposed logs chinked with large horizontal boards composed about one-third of the structure—evidently the basic cabin, containing a dry masonry rock fireplace and a chimney. The other two-thirds, a later addition, comprised a frame structure covered by horizontal shakes. A shake roof covered the entire cabin, which no longer exists.

Few details of Murphy’s business are known. In 1916 the Desmond Park Service Company established a tourist camp on the site of Murphy’s “inn.” The Yosemite Park and Curry Company closed the operations at Lake Tenaya in 1938 to build in a more isolated location at May Lake.

(4) Snow Flat Cabin

Once visible along the trail leading to May Lake, the remains of two deteriorated cabins at Snow Flat lay about one hundred yards off the Tioga Road. Their history is unknown. The only trace of one of them in 1951 was a pile of large granite boulders, presumably the remains of a dry masonry fireplace and chimney. The other cabin a short distance away had been reduced to a small square enclosure four logs high resembling a corral. The cabin consisted of rough round logs with wedge-shaped chinking laid on a stone foundation, a large boulder having been placed at each of the four corners. Saddle-notched above and below, the logs joined closely at the corners. Piles of ore samples lay around the cabin sites.

n) Tioga Pass

(1) Dana Fork Cabin

This old sheep camp cabin lies on Dana Fork, about one and one-half miles from the Tioga Road along the Mono Pass trail. There an unknown builder erected a one-story, one-room log structure. Measuring about ten feet square, it consisted of large, peeled round white bark pine logs laid in alternating tiers eight logs high. V-notches at the corners allowed tight-fitting chinking. The roofing material consisted of small poles laid parallel to the end of the building and bound together by split shakes. The structure is in ruins with a collapsed roof and deteriorated walls. Because of its proximity to both Dana Meadows

Illustration 31.
Leonard cabin, Little Yosemite Valley, view to north.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

and the Tioga Mining District, the structure, which was standing prior to 1925, probably housed either a sheepherder or miner.

(2) Mono Pass Cabins

The Mono Pass miners’ cabins are a series of shelters at the head of Bloody Canyon just off the Mono Pass trail on the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park. They consist of five log structures erected about 1879 for employee housing by the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company, which owned the Golden Crown and Ella Bloss claims in the area. Constructed of white bark pine logs, they exhibited V-shaped corner notching and wedge-shaped chinking. Sod from a nearby meadow once covered their log roofs.

A one-story, one-room structure, ten by twelve feet, surrounds a shaft lined with vertical logs that is now filled with water. The four cabins stand about 100 feet away, strung in a row across the crest of the rise. Three are small, one-story, one-room buildings, each with door and adjacent window. One larger cabin has a log annex. At least three other shafts exist in the area, one below the cabins and near the lake that is open and log lined, and two others that are filled in. Their sturdy construction and isolation have helped preserve them.

Another small, deteriorated cabin exists near Mono Pass, measuring about ten feet square. The one-story, one-room log structure contained only one opening, a doorway. It was made with round, peeled logs laid in alternating tiers and joined with a V-notch joint at the ends. The log roof has fallen in and parts of the walls have toppled. Its early history is unknown, although a picture of the cabin appears in a 1909 photograph. It was probably built by a miner working at the Golden Crown or Ella Bloss mines.

o) Little Yosemite Valley

(1) Washburn/Leonard Cabin

In Little Yosemite Valley stands a structure referred to variously as both the Washburn Cabin and the Leonard Cabin. Possibly the Washburns built the structure at the upper end of the valley after filing on the area, because they often pastured horses there. Archie Leonard in 1894, and Nathan (“Old Pike”) Phillips, an early Wawona settler, also filed on the area and supposedly built the fence one-half mile from the cabin. The structure may have served as a shelter for travelers on the trails leading from Yosemite Valley to the backcountry and Leonard may even have later used it as a patrol cabin for the Little Yosemite Valley-Washburn Lake area.113

[113. Ralph H. Anderson, “Additional Notes from Jack Leidig,” 15 July 1952, typescript, 4 pages, in Separates File, Yosemite-History, #38, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1.]

The cabin stands two miles east of the Little Yosemite ranger station on the south side of the trail, just east of an aspen grove. The one-story, one-room log structure is of peeled round logs laid on alternating tiers and joined at the corners with saddle-notch joints. It measured about fifteen by twenty feet and had a wood-shingled gable roof. In October 1964 an allotment of $4,100 enabled the Park Service to rehabilitate three historic cabins in the park with day labor. The work involved repairs to log walls and rafters and new shake roofs for the Little Yosemite, McGurk, and Galen Clark (Mariposa Grove) cabins. Restoration of the Little Yosemite Valley structure took place in 1971, but afterward it was partially crushed by a falling tree. It has further deteriorated since that time.

p) Yosemite Valley

(1) Pioneer Cemetery

It is unclear when this plot was laid aside for burial purposes, but it was probably sometime in the late 1860s, when Agnes, the small daughter of the Frederick Leidigs, died after a short illness. Hers was probably the first natural death of a white person in the valley. She was first buried near the present Ahwahnee Hotel site and later reinterred in the present cemetery area. In 1906-7 Gabriel Sovulewski and John Degnan planted rows of incense cedar trees on the south and west sides of the cemetery, and in 1918 they placed the present fence around part of the area. The cemetery is now closed to further entry, the last burials having been made in 1956.

There are probably some graves that still lie outside the limits of the present cemetery, especially of some of the earlier Indian inhabitants of the valley. The cemetery includes several occupants who played important roles in the growth and development of Yosemite National Park. Others were visitors; some were old, some young. There are also several Indian graves. The graves described below are keyed to Illustration 32.

(a) White Graves

i) Henry Eddy, died 10 October 1910. He was a road laborer for the government and also a carpenter who worked on the Yosemite barns. He lived in a tent at the rear of Mr. Sovulewski’s home. His death was due to natural causes.

ii) Frank Beckerman, died 9 July 1910. He was from Coulterville, looking for work in the park, when he fell sick and died in the army hospital.

iii) William Bonney Atkinson, born in 1898 in Yosemite, died in 1902. His father was an employee of the state.

iv-v) James Mason Hutchings, his second wife Augusta L. Hutchings, and his daughter Florence (first white child born in Yosemite Valley). Marked by a large piece of granite and a stone cross. Augusta and Florence died in 1881 and James in 1902.

vi) Effie Crippen, died 1881, youngest daughter of Joshua D. Crippen, sheriff of Mariposa County from 1857 to 1870. His widow married John K. Barnard, operator of the former Hutchings Hotel from 1877 to 1892.

vii) Mrs. Laura Cannon, a visitor to Yosemite, who died in 1895.

viii) Thomas Glynn, a Mexican War veteran and currier by trade, who died in the valley in 1881. His wife for a time operated the hotel at Glacier Point and was a neighbor of the Degnans in the Old Village.

Between the graves of Glynn and Albert May are the remains of an old well Clark dug to provide water to keep the graves green. It had a hand pump. The site is hardly visible today.

ix) Agnes Leidig, infant daughter of the Frederick Leidigs, pioneer hotel keepers. She died in 1868.

x) Albert May, died 1881. May was a carpenter and caretaker for A. G. Black.

xi) James Lamon, whose grave is marked by a tall granite spire. The rock of the monument is white granite taken from one of the “Three Graces.” John Conway worked on the monument, which was erected in 1875 by Lamon’s heirs.

xii) Galen Clark, died 1910. Clark carved his own name on the rough granite stone for his grave; he also dug the hole and planted six sequoias around it about 1886.

xiii-xiv) George Fiske, pioneer photographer in Yosemite in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and his wife Carrie. Mr. Fiske died in 1918 and his wife a year earlier.

xv) Hazel Meyer, infant daughter of George and Lizzie Meyer, pioneer settlers in Mariposa County, of the Big Meadow ranch. When. she died of scarlet fever in 1905, the cemetery was without definite outline, merely a dusty corner on a portion of the valley floor.

Illustration 32.
Yosemite Valley cemetery plan.
From Brubaker, Degnan, and Jackson, Guide to the Pioneer Cemetery.

[click to enlarge]

xvi) Gabriel Sovulewski, died 1938. He served in the army in Yosemite in 1895-97, in Troop K, 4th Cavalry. He continued as the civilian year-round administrator after the army left. He was extremely interested in trails and planned and laid out many of the trails in the park.

xvii) Rose Sovulewski, Gabriel’s wife, died in 1928. xviii) Leonidas (Dick) Whorton, shot and killed at his Cascades home by Abel Mann in April 1887. He served as justice of the peace of Yosemite Valley and was partners with Peter Gordon in 1870 in the “Lake House” at Mirror Lake. He owned eighty acres at The Cascades.

xix) John Hamilton, died 1882. Hamilton was a guide with a cabin and stockade in El Capitan Meadow near the bridge. He also lived in back of Folsom Hall on the south bank of the Merced near Swinging Bridge. This is the same man who owned land near the McCauley ranch in Big Meadow.

xx) George Anderson, died 1884. A small, simple stone marks the grave of the first man to scale Half Dome, in 1875.

xxi) J. W. Wood. Wood was watching cattle for J. B. Curtin when he died at Tamarack Flat. Whether this is the same man who resided near Wawona is not known.

xxii) A. B. Cavagnaro, died 1885. He was a storekeeper in the Old Village.

xxiii) John Anderson, died 1867. Anderson was a stage driver who was violently kicked and instantly killed while breaking a young horse. He was first buried at the base of Four-Mile Trail near the Fiske residence.

xxiv) Walter Coyle baby. The father of this infant worked in the valley.

xxv) Albert Glasscock, died 1897. He took over Barnard’s Hotel, naming it the Sentinel Hotel.

xxvi) James Morgan, died 1901.

xxvii) Sadie Schaeffer, died 1901. Sadie was a waitress for J. B. Cook at the Sentinel Hotel and drowned in the Merced River.

xxviii) Forest S. Townsley, a Yosemite Chief Ranger, died of a heart attack in August 1943. He was a taxidermist who gave the Yosemite Museum its beginning by displaying his work in his office in the Old Village.

xxix) “A Boy.” Identity unknown. Possibly John Bennett, son of Capt. R. H. Bennett, who died by drowning.

xxx) “Frenchman,” probably Etienne Manet, who sold vegetables that he grew in the upper Lamon orchard. He lived in a cabin at the northeast corner of the lower Lamon orchard (now Camp Curry parking area).

xxxi) ________ Woolcock. A miner who fell off a log and broke his neck while working on the Coulterville and Yosemite wagon road.

xxxii) George E. Boston, died 1874. Boston ran the Coulterville Road toll house at Cascades below Yosemite Valley that was burned by Indians.

xxxiii) ________ McKenzie. He was a member of a camping party to the valley in 1896.
xxxiv) A. W. B. Madden, died 1883. He was a tourist who died at the Sentinel Hotel.

(b) Indian Graves

The Ahwahneechees practiced cremation in pre-discovery Yosemite. Their last known cremation ceremony took place in 1873 at cremating grounds directly across the road from the Leidig Hotel, near the base of Sentinel Rock. The earliest recorded Indian burial took place about 1875, immediately south of a large rock near the southeast corner of the present museum. The Yosemite Indians had adopted the burial custom by the turn of the century.114 Sites in El Portal have also provided unburned skeletal remains. Ten of the Indian grave markers in the cemetery are redwood boards placed in recent times. The eleventh is a granite boulder.115

[114. J. W. Bingaman, The Ahwahneechees: A Story of the Yosemite Indians (Lodi, Calif.: End-Kian Publ. Co., 1966), 17-18, and Galen Clark, Indians of Yosemite Valley and Vicinity: Their History, Customs and Traditions (Yosemite Valley: Galen Clark, 1904), 63, quoted in Napton, Archeological Overview, 97-98.]

[115. Jay Johnson, a Native American park maintenance worker claimed the wooden “Miwok” markers were rearranged by park interpreters years ago for aesthetic reasons without regard to actual grave locations. Discussion with DSC comprehensive design team, January 1986.]

xxxv) Sally Ann Dick Castagnetto, died 1932. She was a full-blooded Yosemite Indian married to Henry Stegman and later to Johnny Brown who either at one time operated the Hennessey ranch below El Portal and sold vegetables to people in the valley or ran a pack train that brought the fruits and vegetables to the valley, or both. (The Superintendent’s Monthly Report for April 1932 refers to the death of Sarah Jane Castagnetto.)

xxxvi) Mother of Indian Lucy Brown.

xxxvii) May Tom, age fourteen, a Paiute, killed by a falling tree about 1905.

xxxviii) May Dick, mother of Sally Ann. A full-blooded Yosemite Indian whose husband, Indian Dick, provided wood for the early settlers.

xxxix) Suzie Sam, Lucy Telles’s grandmother, died about 1904. She was a Yosemite Indian, born in the valley. Her husband, Captain Sam, was employed by Camp Curry and the Sentinel Hotel to supply fish.

xl) Lucy Brown, died 1924, said to have been nearly 120 years old. She was one of the last of the original Indians found in the valley at the time of its discovery by white men in 1851.

xli) Bill Brown, died 1899. He was the husband of Indian Lucy and one of the first Indians buried in this cemetery.

xlii) Lancisco Wilson, died 1885. The father of Johnny Wilson, he was one of the old chiefs of the Yosemites. He was approximately 115 years old when he died.

xliii) Johnny Brown, died 1934.

xliv) Pete Hilliard, died 1934. He was part Yosemite Indian and worked for the federal government in the valley.

xlv) Louisa Tom, died 1956. Hers was the last burial in this cemetery.116

[116. Lloyd W. Brubaker, Laurence V. Degnan, and Richard R. Jackson, Guide to the Pioneer Cemetery (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1972), 1-13.]

Illustration 33.
Lamon cabin.
From Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 10 (October 1956).

[click to enlarge]

(2) Lamon Cabin

James C. Lamon built the first log cabin in Yosemite Valley, measuring about eight by ten feet, on his preemption claim at the upper end of the valley in 1859. He used very large logs, skillfully notched on the upper and lower sides and joined tightly at the corners. The logs were graduated in size from the base log up to a small gable filled in with horizontal split shakes.

James Hutchings wrote that Lamon erected a small house on the sunny side of the valley; and, as a precaution against Indian treachery, lived in its basement. This, however, being flooded during a heavy and continuous rain, he afterwards built a commodious log-cabin, that, upon emergency, might be to him both a fortress and a home.117

[117. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras, 137.]

Lamon recorded his claim to 160 acres in Yosemite Valley on 17 May 1861. Later he built his other, larger cabin, a visitor to the valley in 1869 stating that
Mr. Lamon has been getting out material for a two story hewed log house, and making a line fence on his lower boundary. He is now pruning his fruit trees, and showing the young buds which way to “shoot.”118

[118. “Trip to Yo Semite Valley,” by G. C., Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 16 April 1869.]

No remains of either of these two cabins exist today.

(3) Hutchings Cabin

James Mason Hutchings, as mentioned previously, served as proprietor of the Upper Hotel or Hutchings House in the valley after widely publicizing Yosemite in his California Magazine and in several books on the Sierra. Famed as a guide and hotel keeper, he also served as Guardian of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove from 1880 to 1883.

The permanent home he built for his wife and three children stood on the sunnier north side of the valley near the Yosemite falls on the most easterly branch of Yosemite Creek. James C. Lamon assisted in its construction. Round logs joined with a V notch rested on a stone foundation. Shakes formed the roof of the cabin and the chinking between logs. A covered open porch or lean-to occupied one side of the building and a later frame addition on the opposite end provided additional living space. The cabin had a large stone fireplace and chimney.

Back of the cabin Hutchings planted an apple orchard, and Muir’s small cabin rested farther back on the creek. Hutchings’s sawmill operated even farther up the creek. Hutchings connected his cabin to his hotel by an elm-bordered plank boardwalk to a log bridge crossing the Merced River about where Sentinel Bridge is now.119 At least two of those trees are still alive.

[119. Jack Leidig to Douglass Hubbard, October 1958.]

After Hutchings’s court battles with the state over retention of his property in Yosemite Valley, the board of commissioners refused to lease him the homestead he and his family had built. Instead it passed along with his commercial developments south of the river to Coulter and Murphy, and ultimately to John Barnard, who moved into Hutchings’s cabin. After Hutchings became grant Guardian in 1880, Barnard vacated the cabin and the Hutchings family reoccupied it. Hutchings lived there until his death in 1902.120 A traveler to the valley in 1868 described the winter residence of the Hutchings family:
a large cabin made of hewn logs, warm and snug, a huge stone fireplace in one end; hanging shelves, containing some two hundred and fifty volumes, in the corners; fishing rods, guns, and rifles along the walls; and, a pair of snow shoes, indispensable to that snowy. region. . . . Near the house are sheds and hay racks. . . .121

[121. Olmsted, A Trip to California, 75.]

[120. Robert C. Pavlik, “The Hutchings - Sovulewski Homesite, Yosemite Valley,” typescript, 13 pages, n.d. (1986), 4-5.]

Originally of very small construction, the cabin gradually acquired additions through the years, such as an upper story and lean-tos.122 In the early 1900s the structure stored hay. In 1906 the hay and other debris were removed and the Gabriel Sovulewski family occupied the cabin until its removal in 1909.

[122. Anderson, interview with Degnans, 13 December 1934,]

(4) Muir Cabin

John Muir came to Yosemite in 1868 and made Yosemite Valley his headquarters for about five years. During that time he worked at Hutchings’s sawmill cutting lumber for the hotels and cottages of the Sentinel group. He boarded with the Hutchings family and occupied a cabin he built in 1869 back of Hutchings’s winter home along Yosemite Creek near the foot of Lower Yosemite Fall. The one-room cabin consisted of sugar pine shakes with a floor of round tree slabs. Proudly Muir exclaimed that
This cabin . . . was the handsomest building in the Valley, and the most useful and convenient for a mountaineer. . . . I dug a small ditch [from Yosemite Creek] and brought a stream into the cabin, entering at one end and flowing out the other with just current enough to allow it to sing and warble in low, sweet tones, delightful at night while I lay in bed. . . . My bed was suspended from the rafters and lined with libocedrus (Incense cedar) plumes. . . .123

[123. Sargent, John Muir in Yosemite, 15.]

Hutchings later appropriated the cabin, causing Muir to move to Black’s Hotel. No trace of the structure remained by 1901.

In 1871 Muir built a small box-like home or garret beneath the gable of Hutchings’s sawmill, facing west down the valley. A hole in the roof provided a view of Half Dome, while a skylight on the side of the roof permitted a view of Upper Yosemite Fall. An end window faced down the valley. A series of sloping planks roughed by slats, similar to a hen ladder, provided access to the room. No remains of the sawmill structure exist.

In 1872 Muir built another cabin, fourteen by sixteen feet, just opposite Royal Arches and hidden in a growth of trees and shrubs. The cabin construction consisted of round logs joined with a V notch. Purlins parallel to the ridgepole extended two to three feet beyond the cabin. A steeply pitched, sugar pine shake roof covered the structure and overlapped the ridgepole on one side. This structure has been referred to as Muir’s “lost cabin,” and he reveled in its seclusion.

Although Muir bragged that no one could find this structure, photographer George Fiske did, and his resulting photo of it greatly surprised Muir. In later years the Leidig brothers located the site of this “lost cabin” on Tenaya Creek in Camp 9, about 200 feet west of the footbridge and approximately 150 feet south of the creek. The Civilian Conservation Corps removed the last evidence of the structure in 1933.124

[124. “Early Yosemite History Told by Pioneers at ‘Old-Timer’s Campfire,’” 30 May 1943, in Separates File, Y-4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; “Other early-day buildings,” information furnished by Jack Leidig, 21 November 1941, typescript, 11 pages, in Separates File, Yosemite-Buildings, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(5) Leidig Cabin and Barn

Fred and Isabel Leidig came to Yosemite from Coulterville in 1866. Leidig and James Lamon farmed 160 acres on both sides of the Merced River. Leidig built a hotel in 1869.

He erected a cabin north of the Merced River in the woods at the edge of present Leidig Meadow. The family used the structure as winter headquarters during its first few years in the valley. The site of the cabin is about 100 yards west of where the Eagle Peak Trail leaves the highway, on the south side of the road, near where the road turned into the Indian Village. That log cabin, measuring about fourteen by twenty-two feet and facing west, burned about 1883.

The later cabin where the children were born was on the present Ahwahnee Hotel grounds, and appears to have been Lamon’s second cabin. A two-story log house possibly 150 feet south of the present Ahwahnee Hotel, it had breastworks around it and a spring in the cellar.

(6) Howard Cabin

William J. Howard built his cabin in late 1874 or early 1875 on Mirror Lake, between the later footbridge and the small peninsula on which the minister stood for Easter services. At one time remains included four hitching hooks in a rock and one in a tree. Howard built the first road up Tenaya Canyon to Mirror Lake, crossing Sentinel Bridge to the Ahwahnee grounds, and charged $1.00 toll. The state purchased the road in 1886.

Peter Gordon and Leonidas G. Wharton established the Lake House (Mirror Lake House, Howard House) about 1870. A newspaper advertisement of that year mentioned
Mirror Lake House
Yosemite Valley
By Gordon & Wharton
Recently stocked with choice wines, fine
liquors and Havana cigars.
Boats furnished for the Lake.
P. Gordon       L. G. Wharton^125

[125. Mariposa (Calif.) Free Press, 3 June 1870.]

Another item, in the delinquent tax list for 1875, mentioned:
Whorton, L[eonidas]. G. Frame building
at Mirror Lake, in Yo Semite Valley, known
as the Lake House, valued at $200.126

[126. Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 6 February 1875. This is the same Whorton who lived at The Cascades.]

Evidently W. J. Howard leased the premises from the commissioners that year and operated a saloon. A platform built out over the water provided dance space for visitors, and several rowboats were also available.

The Guardian of the grant, by order of the Yosemite commissioners, burned the Howard cabin, described as a shake shanty, about 1880 or 1881, evidently in an effort to improve the lake’s appearance. Howard’s property had already been removed and he received $200.00 in compensation. About 1890 the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company built a frame ice house at the lake.

(7) Happy Isles Cabin

George Anderson occupied a cabin in the Happy Isles area while constructing the trail to Vernal Fall.

(8) Clark Cabin

This structure stood on the north side of the road leading west from the Old Village, approximately 300 yards east of the road leading into the base of Four-Mile Trail. A Spanish family ran a laundry 150 feet west of his cabin. Manual Flora (Manuel Floris) [Editor’s note: Manuel Flores—dea] served as a guide for Hutchings. Hutchings and his daughter Cosie utilized Floris’s cabin after he left the valley.

9) Four-Mile Trail Cabin

This structure at the foot of Four-Mile Trail served as a toll house for those visitors climbing or riding to the Mountain House at Glacier Point.

10) Mail Carrier Shelter Cabins

Louie Ferretti carried the mail from Groveland to Yosemite over the Big Oak Flat Road by snowshoe during the winter months. He shared the task with several other individuals. According to Laurence Degnan, mail was delivered three times a week by a carrier on horseback who picked it up at Jerseydale. Stopover cabins stood at The Cascades and on the north side of the Merced River below the present Pohono Bridge. During the worst of the winter, the mail carrier could ride only as far as one of those small cabins before having to change to skis to get to the post office, which then occupied space in the Stoneman House.127 Nothing remains today of the mail carrier cabins.

[127. Dorothy Holmes, “Early Resident Recalls His School Days in Yosemite,” Fresno (Calif.) Bee, 6 July 1952, in Separates File, Yosemite-Schools, Y-26, #13, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(11) Stegman Cabin

Jack Leidig stated that the Henry Stegman cabin, a two-room structure about twelve by twenty-two feet stood a short distance west of Folsom Bridge. It lay on the right-hand side of the road near the later powerline leading across the road from the old sewage tanks.

(12) Hamilton Cabin

Jack Leidig recalled the John Hamilton cabin, measuring about sixteen by twenty-two feet, stood just west of the El Capitan Bridge intersection on the north side of Yosemite Valley. Hamilton was the Yosemite guide also associated with the Big Meadow area. He harvested fine crops of wheat and barley on El Capitan Meadow.

(13) Shepperd Cabin

According to Leidig, Shepperd’s cabin, later occupied by George Fiske, lay north of the road leading in to Four-Mile Trail. Fiske used the cellar as a darkroom.

(14) Manette Cabin

According to Leidig, in the northwest corner of the Curry orchard a Frenchman, Nicholas Manette, lived in a ten by twelve-foot shack.128

[128. Memo, Information Specialist (Anderson?) to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, 30 June 1950.]

(15) Whorton Cabin

Leonidas G. Whorton, who came from Georgia, dabbled in saloon-keeping at Hite’s Cove, then settled at El Portal, where he established a ranch. He served as justice of the peace for the Yosemite area from 1876 to 1882, was a partner in the Mirror Lake House, and owned mining interests on the Merced. He eventually moved into Yosemite Valley to The Cascades and built a cabin in the approximate location of the present park employee housing (former housing for powerhouse maintenance employees). Abel Mann shot Whorton in 1887. Whorton is buried in the valley cemetery.

(16) Boston Cabin

George Ezra Boston’s cabin leaned against the face of a rock behind the present Park Service employee houses. The tollkeeper for the Coulterville Road, he was killed by the Indian “Piute George,” who was later tried for the crime and incarcerated in San Quentin Prison.

Illustration 34.
McGurk Meadow cabin, to southeast.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

q) Glacier Point

(1) McGurk Cabin

A stockman’s cabin similar in appearance and construction to one in Mono Meadow once stood one mile west of Bridalveil Creek and about one mile north of the Glacier Point road. Thomas M. Again filed for 160 acres in 1884, intending to claim what is now known as McGurk Meadow. The description entered into the county records, however, placed the claim well up Illilouette Creek. He received a patent for the property in 1890.

Hugh Davanay acquired the mistaken title from Again and sold it to John J. McGurk in 1895, who continued in possession until August 1897 when U. S. troops removed him to protect the integrity of the park on the basis of the error in the original description of the claim patented by Again. The land McGurk occupied lay in Range 21 East, while the land covered by the patent lay in Range 22 East, a rough area six miles east of the intended homestead and considered basically worthless. After his removal, McGurk forced Davanay to reimburse him for the loss, and Davanay then tried unsuccessfully to effect a trade with the General Land Office for the desired piece of land. Thus McGurk Meadow has always been in government ownership, although occupied by several persons over a considerable period of time.

McGurk, for whom the meadow was named, was born in Calaveras County in 1856. He worked as a hogman for several years around Oakdale (then Fresno Flats) before turning to cattle raising. In 1896 he settled in Madera County, serving as a deputy sheriff. He purchased the cabin from Davany in 1895 and ran cattle in the high country, during which time he used the cabin, probably built either by Davaney or McGurk, as a seasonal residence. Not designed with sturdy, durable construction in mind, the cabin constituted a summer shelter for workers watching over grazing cattle.

The McGurk cabin is a one-story, one-room log structure about fourteen feet square. Saddle-notched joints formed the corners of the round, peeled lodgepole pine logs laid on alternate tiers. The gable roof had wood shake shingles. It contained no fireplace, windows, or flooring. Split-log, wedge-shaped chinking originally filled the gap between logs. Sierra Club volunteers under the direction of Chief Park Naturalist Douglass Hubbard stabilized the partially collapsed cabin in 1958. Park management then believed that as camping facilities in Yosemite expanded, the Bridalveil Creek Campground would become more important and more hikers would pass through McGurk Meadow, making it a good interpretive site.

(2) Mono Meadow Cabin

This cabin, on the Mono Meadow trail, about one mile east of the Glacier Point road, had walls of small, unchinked lodgepole pine logs. Constructed by Milt Egan, the shelter received seasonal use as a summer line cabin. Later it probably housed sheepherders or cowboys grazing stock in the adjacent meadow. The one-story, one-room cabin measured fourteen feet square and lacked a foundation, window, or floor. Its construction simulated that of the McGurk cabin except that the logs used averaged only six inches in diameter.

(3) Ostrander Cabin

This structure stood near the present Bridalveil Creek Campground. Little is known of its construction. In 1864 a newspaper article mentioned that a grizzly bear had entered and ransacked the cabin.129 Four years later a visitor recounted that after
arriving at the Summit meadows, I found the snow from eight to ten feet deep, and so soft as to make it very tiresome walking. I concluded to go to Ostrander’s sheep ranch, and stop over night in his cabin; which is three fourths of a mile off the direct route. As I approached the cabin I saw signs of wild animals which had been prowling around after offal and carcasses of dead sheep. I found the cabin completely covered with snow, except a little of the chimney top and gable at the south end. There was an opening down beside the chimney, into the interior of the cabin; as I approached this, with the intention of trying to effect an intrance [sic], a wolf rushed out through the opening and passed me. . . . I then enlarged the opening and entered the cabin. I found plenty of indications that wolves and coyotes had frequented the place during the Winter. I soon cleared the snow from the fire place, found an axe and procured plenty of wood and had quite a comfortable night.130

[129. Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 14 May 1864.]

[130. “A Trip to the Yo Semite Valley on Snow-Shoes,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, by G. C., 17 April 1868.]

(4) Westfall Meadows Cabin

J. J. Westfall erected this log cabin on Bridalveil Creek, south of the present Glacier Point road, in the early 1860s to shelter men herding cattle driven up from the plains to feed during times of drought.131

[131. “Yo Semite Valley,” by Gollek, in Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 29 June 1867.]

r) Wawona

(1) Pioneer Cemetery

The cemetery near Wawona, probably used from about 1878 to 1905, is on a hill one-tenth of a mile north of the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. It consists of two small, separate plots, each surrounded by a brown fence. The larger one encloses a granite headstone marking the grave of Nathan B. Phillips (Old Pike), a pioneer in the Wawona area who died in 1896, and a wooden marker for the grave of John L. Yates, an army private stationed at Camp Wood who drowned in August 1905 in the Merced River. A third wooden marker for the grave of H. R. Sargent, either a carpenter or stage driver, is missing.

Recent archeological excavations by park personnel found that an unmarked slab of granite had been placed in the smaller plot and a wood marker dated 1876 had been placed north of the large enclosure. As many as ten people are reportedly buried here. Possibly there are unmarked graves outside the boundaries of the two plots.132

[132. Richard G. Ervin, Test Excavations in the Wawona Valley, Publications in Anthropology No. 26 (Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1984), 119-20.]

(2) Crescent Meadows Cabin

The Crescent Meadows cabin near Wawona consisted of lodgepole logs about nine inches in diameter, joined by a V notch. Wedge-shaped strips chinked the walls and flat shakes covered the crevices. Large rocks placed beneath the base logs served as foundation. It had a dry masonry fireplace and chimney. According to Bob McGregor, a government packer, Robert Wellman built the cabin for use by the livestock partnership of Stockton and Buffman. Some residents of Wawona believed it dated from about 1887.

(3) Turner Meadow Cabin

Stockmen built this cabin four miles below Crescent Lake, east of Wawona.

(4) Buck Camp

The area known as Buck Camp, about sixteen miles east of Wawona and high above the South Fork of the Merced River, provided summer grazing for horses and cattle for a number of years before establishment of the national park. Comprising log houses, corrals, and fenced pastures, it became the starting point for trails leading into the High Sierra. One of the people associated with the camp was Robert S. Wellman.133

[133. Joseph Grinnell, Joseph S. Dixon, and Jean M. Linsdale, Fur-Bearing Mammals of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937), 2 vols., quoting the circumstances surrounding the killing of one of the last grizzly bears in the Yosemite region, in 1887, as recounted in a letter by one of the participants, Robert S. Wellman, 20 April 1918, in 1:83.]

(5) Mariposa Grove Cabins

It is possible Galen Clark built the first log hut in Mariposa Grove as early as 1858 or at least by the early 1860s. That early cabin had shake chinking and an uncovered triangular stockade at one end, possibly used as a kitchen. The Yosemite Valley commissioners’ biennial report for 1885-86 reported that “a comfortable and artistic log cabin has been erected at a central point in the grove for the shelter and convenience of visitors, ornamented by a shapely massive chimney of stone, with commodious fireplace graced by traditional crane and pendent kettle. “134

[134. Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1885-86 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1886), 10.]

Probably the 1885 cabin was an extension of the earlier cabin created by tearing down the open triangle used as a kitchen and replacing it with an enclosed area with a chimney. In 1902 the state lengthened the cabin by adding another room to serve as an office for the Guardian. Known as the Galen Clark Cabin, it stood for the next forty-five years. The Park Service replaced it in 1930, as will be discussed, because it appeared on the verge of collapse.

Galen Clark, appointed as one of the first eight commissioners of the Yosemite Grant in 1864, became Guardian of the grove and valley in 1866. Possibly Clark did not build the earliest, rough, one-room cabin in the Upper Grove until 1864, to function as an office and information center to assist visitors and to facilitate keeping track of activities in the grove. Dr. Henry Bellows is credited with attaching the name “Galen’s Hospice” to the cabin in June 1864 after his party took shelter there during a storm.135

[135. National Register of Historic Places, Inventory—Nomination Form, “Mariposa Grove Museum,” prepared by Leslie Starr Hart, 1975. It was reported in the Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 18 June 1864, that Bellows and his party had passed through Mariposa the week before on their way from Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees.]

An early visitor related that, during a trip to the Mariposa Big Tree Grove: At noon we halted in the forest at a comfortable log cabin, built by Mr. Clark for the accommodation of visitors, which was [illeg.] by the Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York, as “Galen’s Hospice.” It stands near a spring of iceficold water, and here we took our lunch and rested ourselves.136

[136. “Yo Semite Valley,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 29 June 1867, by Gollek, appears to be reprint of his journal of 1865.]

The 1930 cabin, a reconstruction of the 1885 structure as enlarged in 1902, stands on the original site, and, although not an exact duplicate, resembles the original enough to carry on the tradition of style and workmanship. It has undergone major rehabilitation since its construction. The forty-five by twenty-foot log structure contains one large interior room; a ten-foot-wide porch runs the length of the structure at the rear. It has a rubble masonry foundation and a reinforced chimney and is constructed of peeled, saddle-notched sugar pine logs tied with steel dowel pins and chinked with split log strips over oakum packing. The shake roof lies on roofing paper and solid sheathing. It houses a small museum exhibit devoted to the sequoias.

(6) Chilnualna Fall

Prior to 1885 John Washburn held a preemption claim on the lower falls. It became a stop for stage visitors, where he provided picnic facilities. After the Albert Bruces homesteaded the area, they excluded visitors. Albert Bruce and John Washburn, with two Chinese helpers, built a short foot trail to the base of the fall in 1870, while John Conway built the upper trail to the fall in 1895.137

[137. Sargent, Wawona’s Yesterdays, 38.]

(7) Galen Clark Homestead Historic Site

The 2.25-acre Galen Clark homestead site is located near Wawona, about twenty-five yards southeast of the hotel golf course

Illustration 35.
Trail to Chilnualna Fall.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

fairway. The homestead contained a small apple orchard and mineral spring. No trace of the cabin remains that Clark, the region’s first permanent homesteader, built in 1856 next to the Mann brothers’ toll trail.

(8) Cunningham Cabin

Stephen Cunningham homesteaded at the mouth of Rush Creek near Wawona and built a log cabin on the flat below later Camp A. E. Wood, approximately eighty-five yards from the South Fork of the Merced River. He filed on the land in 1861, although the date of construction of the cabin is not known. The eighteen by twenty-one-foot structure fronted on the river and was considered luxurious for its time and place. Its walls were of saddle-notched eight-to-twelve-inch yellow pine logs. In the 1870s Cunningham filed mining and grazing claims in Yosemite Valley, in Little Yosemite Valley, and above Bridalveil Fall. Assisting Galen Clark as keeper of the Big Tree Grove, Cunningham supplemented his income as a state employee by making curios for sale to visitors to the Mariposa Grove. The Washburns bought Cunningham’s land after his death and held it until 1932. The carriage road providing access to the cabin from Clark’s Station was obliterated with construction of the modern road into the new Cunningham Flat Campground in 1951. The decaying cabin still stood in 1950, but only a pile of granite from the fireplace and chimney remained when the area was cleared for campground construction the next year.

(9) West Woods (Eleven-Mile Station)

John Wesley Wood, known as “West Woods,” lived at Eleven-Mile Station, about 10.76 miles north of Wawona and 2.20 miles south of Chinquapin. Woods lived near the stage station year-round, running a roadside stopping place where campers could stay and also buy horse feed. He eventually moved to Yosemite Valley and at one time operated a meat market there for George Meyer of Big Meadow. A delinquent tax list published in the Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette of 28 January 1882 mentions:
Wood, J. Wesley—Frame house, situated on the road between Big Tree Station and Yo Semite Valley at the 11-mile Station nearly opposite Yo Semite Stage & Turnpike Co’s. stable. Value $50. Personal property $70. Total $120.138

[138. Laurence V. Degnan to Douglass H. Hubbard, 3 September 1957, in Separates File, Yosemite-Trails, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

(10) Other Homesteaders

Although Galen Clark, who had claimed his 160 acres in March 1856, was the first homesteader in the Wawona Basin to have his land patented, William H. Leeper, Davis Potts, James C. May, and Hiram Cartwright had each filed land claims earlier in the month. John T. Banton claimed a quarter section in 1862 and Jarvis Kiel filed for one near Clark’s house in 1868. During the 1880s and 1890s other homesteaders who filed and received patents included the Van Campens and Washburns, Roscoe Greeley, John E. Hammond, Archibald C. Stoddart, John Green, and others. Emily V. Dodge patented 480 acres in 1891, while Thomas Hill and his wife each homesteaded 160 acres and received patents that same year.139

[139. Sargent, Wawona’s Yesterdays, 13.]

During 1986, a question arose over the age of some structures on the Edward Vagim property in Section 35 at Wawona. Research showed that Catharine Leitch had filed on the property in 1888 under the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862. She was the sister of Albert Bruce, another Wawona pioneer who received patents to land adjacent to hers in 1889 and 1892. Between them, they owned three-quarters of all the land in Section 35 by 1895. Catharine Leitch’s son, Bruce, served as mail carrier between Mariposa and Big Tree Station (Wawona) and also filed on his own land in the area. In 1905 he was a licensee operating a curio and gift shop in the Mariposa Grove, a job he continued until his death in 1910. He served also as a justice of the peace in Mariposa. Acting Superintendent Harry C. Benson described Leitch in 1906 as the only person in the Mariposa Grove, whose presence helped secure the place and who was able to answer tourist questions and add greatly to visitor pleasure. The Leitch property passed through a series of transactions until sold to Edward and Blanche Vagim in 1945. The oldest structure on the property probably dates from the late 1880s or early 1890s.140

[140. Bob Pavlik to Gordon Chappell, Western Regional Historian, National Park Service, 19 August 1986, re: Vagim property, Section 35, Wawona, Yosemite National Park.]

s) El Portal Area

(1) Hennessey Ranch

The Vigilance Committee of San Francisco reportedly forced James A. Hennessey, a native of Ireland, out of town in the 1850s.141 He came to the Hite’s Cove area and briefly worked for John R. Hite before starting his own extensive garden and orchard at present El Portal beginning in the early 1870s. Hennessey peddled his vegetables, fruits, and berries as far east as Bodie as well as to Wawona, the Yosemite Valley hotels, and nearby Hite’s Cove. He also constructed a two-story frame building on his property to accommodate Yosemite-bound travelers. In 1887 the mortgage on the ranch, located at the present site of the government trailer park, was foreclosed, and John Hite acquired the house, corral, barn, orchard, and outbuildings. By 1891 the Hennessey ranch belonged to Augustus H. Ward, who had extensive mining and real estate interests in and around El Portal. These were eventually acquired by the Yosemite Valley Railroad. Hennessey committed suicide in San Francisco in 1908. The original condition of the area has changed because of the installation of a government trailer park. Some fruit trees mark the spot of Hennessey’s former farm, while some drylaid masonry wall remnants in the trailer village might be remains of ranch structures.

[141. Ralph Rene Mendershausen, Treasures of the South Fork (Fresno: Panorama West Books, 1983), 54.]

(2) Rutherford Mine

The Rutherford Mine lay north of the Merced River. The Rutherford brothers discovered it about 1863 and patented it in 1874. According to a 27 April 1867 Mariposa Gazette article, the Rutherford brothers formerly owned the Yosemite quartz mill. By 1867 the Rutherford vein, owned by J. Tannabill of Garrote, and the Cranberry vein, owned by A. C. Bradford of Mariposa and by Tannabill, lay idle, as did the mill. The Rutherford vein had been yielding seventy dollars a ton and the Cranberry from twelve to thirty dollars a ton. The properties changed hands in 1868 and 1875. The Rutherford Mine remained intermittently active until the summer of 1889, when it closed. In 1885 the discovery of a rich vein in the Cranberry Mine gave further impetus to mining activities until 1896. Augustus H. Ward owned the property in the early 1920s. F. E. Bass of San Francisco then took over the Rutherford and Cranberry mines, leasing the Rutherford property to R. A. Frederick of El Portal about 1927. The property was later disposed of and used for home sites. Practically nothing remains of the old mine workings.142

[142. Historic Resources Inventory form, Rutherford Mine, State of California, Department of Parks and Recreation, prepared by James Law, 1981.]

9. The Tioga Mine and Great Sierra Wagon Road

a) Early Activity in the Tuolumne Meadows Area

Tuolumne Meadows remained largely undisturbed into the 1880s, although, as mentioned earlier, it was a focal point for summer gatherings of Mono and Miwok Indians who engaged for many years in a trans-Sierra trade, beginning possibly as early as 2500 B. C. Indians mainly used the meadows for social contacts, as a source of food, and, after initial hostile encounters with whites, as a place of refuge as well.

The first white men to visit the Tuolumne region were probably members of Joseph Walker’s 1833 expedition. Not until 1852, when 1st Lt. Tredwell Moore and members of the 2d Infantry pursued Chief Tenaya and members of his band over the mountains toward Mono Lake, was the country explored at all. Moore and his troops cursorily examined the region north and south of Bloody Canyon before returning to Fort Miller on the San Joaquin River with a few gold ore samples. In 1852 Leroy (Lee) Vining and some fellow prospectors crossed west over the mountains via Bloody Canyon, exploring the region east of Tuolumne Meadows. Vining eventually homesteaded in present Lee Vining Canyon and established a sawmill.143

[143. According to one author, at least, Vining did not actually cross the mountains and settle in Mono County until sometime after 1857, when placer mining in Mariposa began to decline. Mendershausen, Treasures of the South Fork, 34-35.]

Moore’s expedition reports and the publicity given Yosemite Valley by early visitors prompted public interest not only in Yosemite Valley, but in the rich mining properties east of the Sierra Nevada. As a consequence, Tom McGee, who owned a liquor store in Big Oak Flat in the 1850s and a store in the Mono Diggings and operated a pack outfit between them over the Mono Trail, cleared and blazed the old route about 1857. Along it passed miners and packers from the mines of the Mother Lode to the settlements of Dogtown and Monoville near Mono Lake, where they had established mines along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada and in several of their rugged canyons. The trail was also occasionally traveled simply for pleasure by Yosemite tourists beginning in the late 1850s. b) Formation of the Tioga Mining District In 1860 a member of a prospecting party near Bloody Canyon staked a silver claim, “The Sheepherder,” on Tioga Hill, a high ridge about one mile northwest of Tioga Pass, although he never pursued development. This original discovery of the Tioga Mine deposit fell into mythological oblivion as one of the numerous “lost mines” of the West. Also in 1860 the state legislature established the California Geological Survey, which, as mentioned earlier, requested a group headed by Josiah Dwight Whitney to map the state of California and categorize its resources. During its detailed survey of the High Sierra adjacent to Yosemite Valley, the party established a camp at Soda Springs in the summer of 1863 and reconnoitered the area, climbing peaks and surveying valleys.

During the 1860s and 1870s, sheepherders utilized much of the area for summer grazing for their flocks. In 1874 one of those men, William Brusky, stumbled across the old Sheepherder location notice and, recalling stories of the earlier discovery, prospected the site until he found rich silver ore in 1877. In 1878 Brusky located four claims along the Sheepherder Lode on Tioga Hill—the Tiptop, Lake, Sonora, and Summit, all of which the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company eventually purchased. The Great Sierra ledge, including the Bevan, Ah Waga, Hancock, Atherton, and High Rock claims, paralleled the Sheepherder Lode on the south. W. W. Rockfellow originally located the High Rock in 1878; it later became the Mount Dana and finally the Great Sierra Mine. The mining camp of Dana sprang up on that claim, acquiring a post office by 1880.

Also in 1878 E. B. Burdick, Samuel Baker, and W. J. Bevan organized the Tioga Mining District extending eight miles north-south from the foot of Bloody Canyon, over the Sierra Nevada summit, and down the Tuolumne River to Soda Springs. More than 350 mining claims comprised the Tioga Mining District. Sonora, California, businessmen owned most of the properties, although some Eastern capital was invested. A few Yosemite Valley residents, such as Albert Snow and A. G. Black, also became involved in mining efforts there. One claim, the May Lundy, ten miles north of Tioga, was unusual for the area in that it actually produced great wealth—three million dollars. It and neighboring mines were originally included in the Tioga Mining District, but because of their distance from the books of the Tioga recorder, they were later made a part of the new Homer Mining District.

Between 1878 and 1884 the area around Upper Gaylor Lake bustled with the activity of miners, engineers, and merchants. Shortly before committing suicide in 1881, Brusky and the owners of the adjoining claims on the Sheepherder Lode attempted to incorporate as “The Consolidated Lake, Summit and Sonora Claims,” while the High Rock passed to the Mount Dana Mining Company and then to the Great Sierra Mining Company, both California corporations. The latter company, predecessor of the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company, began winter-long operations at Dana on Tioga Hill in 1881-82 with substantial buildings and sufficient supplies. Very little is known of the mining operations of the company, but evidently it retrieved no silver and finally collapsed.

c) The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company Commences Operations

In 1881 Franklin H. Watriss, Warren B. Wilson, and Charles H. Forward, incorporated the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company in the state of Illinois. Proposing to engage in mining, working, and smelting silver and gold and other ores, the company purchased the major claims of both the Sheepherder and Great Sierra lodes on Tioga Hill.144 The new owners of the Tioga Mine decided to drill a tunnel into the base of Tioga Hill in hopes of intercepting the Sheepherder vein at depth. That procedure would also facilitate water drainage and removal of ore and waste rock.

[144. Photostatic copy of Statement of Incorporation in the State of Illinois, Cook County, for Franklin H. Watriss, Warren B. Wilson, Charles H. Forward to Form a Corporation—“The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company,” capital stock $8,000,000, location of principal office in city of Chicago, filed 10 November 1881, in Box 86, Tioga Mine, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

On 25 February 1882, hand drilling began on the Great Sierra tunnel. It soon became evident that drilling machinery was required, and the company bought the necessary equipment and shipped it to Lundy. It was fortunate that the company was well financed, because it cost an enormous sum to bring in men and supplies as well as tons of mining equipment. Initially the trail through Bloody Canyon provided the only access from the east, but eventually miners blazed another route from the mining camp of Lundy, via Mill Creek Canyon to Lake Canyon and then up Lee Vining Canyon to Tioga. Over that route in mid-winter passed 16,000 pounds of machinery, including an engine, boiler, air-compressor, drills, and iron pipe, transported on six heavy hardwood sleds. A crew of ten men and two mules with rope and block and tackle hauled the load up and over the mountains for a distance of about nine miles. Upon its arrival at the mine more than two months later, the owners quickly installed the machinery and started work.

The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company established its headquarters at Bennettville, stretching along Slate Creek a few hundred yards from the mouth of the mine tunnel. It acquired a post office on 13 March 1882, first called Bennett City and later Tioga. In time Bennettville, named for the company president, Thomas Bennett, Jr., became headquarters for the Tioga Mining District. A sawmill brought up from Lundy provided mine timbers and materials for camp buildings, including a boardinghouse, utility buildings, a company office, an assay office, and a stable.

At Mono Pass stand the log cabins of the Golden Crown and Ella Bloss mines, owned by the Great Sierra Company and worked on as late as 1890. Reportedly two men, Fuller and Hayt (or Hoyt), found large ledges of antimonial silver at the site in 1879. The Golden Crown, Mt. Hoffmann, and Mt. Gibbs (in Mono Pass) groups never produced pay dirt, but there are mining remains associated with them.

Illustrations 36 and 37.
Great Sierra Mine cabin ruins.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

d) Construction of the Great Sierra Wagon Road The bustling activity in the Tioga Mining District and expectations of great success suggested to the board of directors of the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company that pack trains would not be adequate for shipping ore to market or bringing in supplies and equipment to Bennettville. Trails had been established, as previously stated, to the eastern railheads via Lundy and Bloody Canyon. The company now decided, however, that a less precipitous route across to the western flank of the Sierra Nevada would facilitate bringing machinery and supplies to the mines from the railhead at Copperopolis, near Angel’s Camp, via the Big Oak Flat Road. Access already existed, after all, as far as Crocker’s Station.

The projected route would serve as both a wagon road and railroad. In 1882 personnel of the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company incorporated the California and Yosemite Short Line Railroad to run from Modesto to Mono Valley via Lee Vining Creek Canyon, with its principal place of buisiness being “Bennettsville” in the Tioga Mining District. Capital subscribed for the new railroad company funded supplies for the road survey crew.145

[145. Bloody Canyon, or Tuolumne Pass as it was sometimes called, and the Sonora Pass, twenty-four miles farther north, were the only passes in the Sierra range south of Reno available for a railroad to cross to make the shortest route from the East to San Francisco. These were the two passes considered by the Union Pacific Railroad for its direct route from Ogden, Utah, to San Francisco. It was expected that the Tuolumne Pass would be chosen in order to secure the Yosemite Valley travel as well as take advantage of the timber supply and mineral lands in that area. “The Great Sierra Mining Properties Situated in Tioga Mining District, Mono County, California,” by Thos. Bennett, Jr., New Bedford, Mass., 15 February 1890, carbon copy of typescript, in Box 86, Tioga Mine, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 4.

In the fall of 1882 survey work began on the Great Sierra wagon road, starting at Crocker’s Station and continuing east to White Wolf, where efforts ended with the coming of winter. A crew started road construction that same fall and built a little way beyond the later Carl Inn. Work resumed the following spring with a force of about 250 men and the road reached White Wolf about 1 June. The survey through Tioga Pass to the Sheepherder Mine ended in July 1883, and construction of the entire 56-1/4-mile stretch finished 4 September 1883, at a cost of $61,095.22. A crew consisting of both Chinese and white laborers accomplished the job using graders, picks and shovels, and blasting powder.

Upon completion of the new thirteen-foot-wide road, carriage and wagon transportation could pass from Crocker’s Station to Bennettville. Travelers left the Big Oak Flat Road near Crocker’s Station, continued east across the South Fork of the Tuolumne River, ascended to Aspen Valley, passing over the low divide between the South and Middle Forks of the Tuolumne, and on to White Wolf and the summit. From there the road ran down the western watershed of Yosemite Creek, which it crossed by a substantial bridge about seven miles from Yosemite Valley. It then continued up the eastern watershed of Yosemite Creek to Porcupine Flat, which it followed to Indian and Snow creeks. Following Snow Creek to its headwaters under Mount Hoffman, the road continued east to Lake Tenaya, along its north shore, and up Tenaya Canyon to Tenaya Summit. It then proceeded along the south side of Tuolumne Meadows to the junction of the Main and Lyell Forks of the Tuolumne River, along the Main Fork of the Tuolumne to Pilot Knob (the south end of Tioga Hill), and finally along the east slope of Tioga Hill to Bennettville.

The most direct route for teamsters crossing the Sierra, the new road was considered an easy haul for freight teams because of its low and uniform grades (three to ten percent) and its substantial bridges built with stone abutments and heavy timber sills, stringers, and flooring. The road was well built from an engineering standpoint, with several culverts and bridges and rock walls along much of its route. The retaining wall along the edge of Lake Tenaya, buried or removed during rebuilding of the road in 1959-60, was a striking example of its excellent

Illustration 38.
Lifting winch, Great Sierra Mine.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 39.
Old Tioga Road through Tuolumne Meadows.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

construction. The mining company expected the road to be a good investment, by reducing freight prices and yielding income from tolls. In fact, soon after completion of the road, Mariposa, Tuolumne, and Mono counties granted William C. Priest of Big Oak Flat, agent for the road company, the franchise to collect tolls for use of the road by the general traveling public, although no records of toll revenue have surfaced.

Heavy use of the road in the future seemed assured with the anticipated completion of the additional four miles needed to connect it with the Lake Canyon toll road to Lundy and Bodie, making it a through route across the mountains. The road was little used after the Tioga mines closed, however, because of the continuing lack of a wagon road on to the east. Toll collection ceased, as did repairs, and the road fell into a state of neglect.

for sheepmen, hunters, and trespassers, and the army began advocating the federal government’s acquisition of the route. The estabishment of Yosemite National Park included within its boundaries the entire Tioga Road except for about four miles of the extreme eastern portion. Establishment of the park also withdrew land on either side of the road from entry and occupation for business purposes and thereby diminished use of the road. Its owners stated that it would have been more valuable as an income-producing property if the Tioga mines had continued to operate, if the federal government had not established the national park, and if a wagon road had been built east from Tioga Pass to the public highways of Mono or Inyo counties so that the Tioga Road could have become a connecting link over the Sierra.146

[146. Wilson & Wilson, atts. for Capt. Rodolphus W. Swift, owner of Tioga R d., to Col. S. M. Mansfield, Pres. of the Yosemite National Park Commission, 31 October 1899, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

The Tioga Road did not become a trans-Sierra route until the state completed the present road down Lee Vining Canyon in 1911. In 1915 Stephen Mather bought the road and deeded it to the government. In July of that year, the highway opened to motor cars. In 1937 the section of road from Crane Flat, near the western boundary, to McSwain Meadow, near White Wolf Lodge, and the section from Cathedral Creek to Tioga Pass, were realigned, bypassing Aspen Valley with a two-lane paved road via Crane Flat on the new section of the Big Oak Flat Road.

Prior to 1961, when the modern Tioga Road was dedicated, a twenty-one-mile section of the old road was the only route across Yosemite National Park and one of the few across the Sierra Nevada. In several places in the park the old road is still used to reach remote streams and camps. The last unimproved portion of the modern Tioga Road, the Lee Vining grade east of Tioga Pass and outside the park, was rebuilt beginning in 1963.

The original Great Sierra Wagon Road comes generally northeast for 17-3/4 miles from the western boundary of the park to near White Wolf Campground. The westernmost 3-3/4 miles of road are paved. Two and one-quarter miles beyond where the pavement ends, the road passes along the southern edge of Aspen Valley. It then enters a dense forest, following a tributary of the South Fork of the Tuolumne, up to the Harden Lake Campground spur. This section of road is narrow in places and required drywall masonry retaining walls.

There the forest opens up for a short distance to White Wolf Campground. Part of the old road then leaves the main route of the present Tioga Road and leads four miles to Yosemite Creek and a small primitive campground. At May Lake Junction an interpretive sign sketches the history of the old Tioga Road and a second sign tells about the machinery used by the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company. Total length of the old road section there is 1.8 miles, ending at the start of the trail to the May Lake High Sierra camp.

The section of road from Aspen Valley to White Wolf Campground is no longer passable by vehicle. Maintenance stopped after a tree fell across the roadbed. The section between the western boundary and Aspen Valley is open during the summer season as an access route for property owners in the area.

e) The Tioga Mine Plays Out

By 1884 the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company’s mine tunnel had been blasted 1,784 feet into the mountain without producing one ounce of millable ore. The company had already been experiencing acute financial troubles, and at that point lacked money or resources to pursue the work. On 3 July 1884 its executive committee telegraphed orders to suspend all operations. The primary backers of the company, such as Thomas Bennett, J r., one of the founders of the Wamsutta Mills; William Swift, of the firm of Swift and Perry, owners and outfitters of whaling ships; and his brother Rhodolphus Swift, a whaling captain, thought at first that the mine could resume operations if the company underwent a reorganization. The Mariposa Gazette reported in 1885 that
It looks as though the Swift Brothers, of the Tioga Mining property, after last year’s vacation, were about to go ahead again. The time was lost in a little game of freeze out; at any rate, that is the general supposition, that some of the smaller fish, stockholders, were played out. Already about three-quarters of a million of dollars have been spent, and those representing the company seje/n to be in good spirits and appear satisfied to push the work.147

[147. Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 15 August 1885, in Degnan to Hubbard, 3 September 1957.]

As time passed and no progress was made in resolving the situation, the Eastern stockholders became edgy and, in an attempt to learn the true value of the property, sent William Swift to Bennettville with an English mining engineer. The latter assigned a value of more than twelve million dollars to the holdings of the stockholders, who, in early 1887, assigned the claims to William Swift as trustee.

The state mineralogist’s report for 1887-88 contained some information on the Great Sierra, Sheepherder, and Golden Crown mines in the Tioga Mining District. Although their ore averaged twenty-five dollars per ton in gold and silver, and the immediate vicinity offered a ready supply of both timber and water power, the comparative inaccessibility of the mines, in addition to high freight rates and a harsh climate, made mining unprofitable.148

[148. California State Mining Bureau, Eighth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist. For the Year Ending October 1, 1888 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1888), 675.]

During the summer of 1887, Swift sued the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company and obtained a judgment of more than two hundred seventy-seven thousand dollars. Ultimately he bought the entire property, including the road and the mines, in 1888 at public auction. The state mineralogist’s report for 1889-90 stated that after a lengthy suspension, work on the mine tunnel had resumed the previous year with the driving of a double tunnel, six feet wide and seven feet high.149

[149. California State Mining Bureau, Tenth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist. For the Year Ending October 1, 1890 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890), 342-43.]

By then, however, nearly everyone realized that the suspension presaged a shutdown, and disgusted miners had already begun drifting off to find new employment. Although more than three hundred thousand dollars had been spent in mine development to date, none of the new owners, mostly residents of New Bedford, Massachusetts, had enough interest, or perhaps optimism, to complete the tunnel project. William Swift died in 1892 and Thomas Bennett in 1898. In settlement of a debt William owed his brother Rhodolphus, the Tioga property passed to the latter in 1895 and, upon his death in 1901, to his heirs.

10. Management of the Grant by the Yosemite Commissioners

a) Replacement of the Board of Commissioners, 1880

Almost ten years after establishment of the grant, Charles Nordhoff suggested that the commissioners still had much to do to “improve” the valley:
I saw a notice, signed “Galen Clark, guardian,” that no more buildings should be put up; and as the houses so far erected are little better than shanties, this seemed to me judicious. . . . It [Yosemite Valley] needs one good carriage road from one end to the other on the level plain, and a little judicious and skillful combing down of the wildness, with plantings of indigenous shrubs and flowers, and a little drainage and embankment, so that the Merced River may be kept within its bounds at all seasons. . . . Under the present management it is easy to see that as travel increases more leases will be granted to hotel-keepers, and these build temporary, tasteless structures which form blots on the landscape. They hold for only ten years, and therefore make shabby and temporary buildings. . . . In its present condition the Valley will not remain. It must either be made more beautiful, as I have suggested, or it will become a wreck, denuded of fine trees, cumbered with enterprising toll-takers, and made nauseous by the taint of selfish and sordid speculation.150

[150. Charles Nordhoff, California: for Health, Pleasure, and Residence (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publ., 1873), 77, 80. Nordoff, sailor, author, and journalist, worked for Harper & Brothers (1857-61). The New York Evening Post (1861-71), and served as editor of the New York Herald (1872-87).]

The California state legislative act of 1866 had entrusted the Board of Yosemite Commissioners with full power to administer the Yosemite Grant. In an effort to supply needed services to visitors and gain additional improvements to the park, the board had leased land and buildings to private individuals. In their manner of distributing those leases, however, they left themselves open to charges of corruption, favoritism, and graft. By 1880 the various concessioners, the commissioners, and the state legislature were at such odds, and public opinion so unfavorable to the system of management of the grant, that the legislature attempted to dissolve the original board and appoint another.

Although members of the first board resisted dissolution, the state filed suit and forced them to vacate their offices. At the same time, James Hutchings replaced Galen Clark as Guardian. The new board jumped off to a good start, maintaining, after some study, that the previous commissioners had been grossly negligent in the administration of the grant. Before long, however, the new board began incurring the antagonism of a variety of groups and individuals.

b) Report of the State Engineer, 1881

State Engineer William Hammond Hall visited Yosemite Valley in 1881 and subsequently made some observations and recommendations on its condition. His rather lengthy treatise addressed “improvement” of Yosemite Valley in terms of works necessary for its preservation or promotion of its use, actions that were not by any means actually improvements to the valley’s appearance, but necessary evils prompted by man’s occupation and use of the area:
Seriously to speak of its “improvement” would be presumptuous; but, if it is to be occupied and enjoyed, there arises a duty, because it becomes a necessity, to preserve this property from defacement; for the influence of man’s presence in such regions is destructive of their charms, and productive of effects which pain rather than please the beholder.151

[151. William Hammond Hall, “To Preserve from Defacement and Promote the Use of the Yosemite Valley,” Report of State Engineer, appendix to Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1885-86, 13.]

(1) Protecting Yosemite Valley from Defacement

Hall recommended three actions to preserve Yosemite Valley from deterioration. First it would be necessary to control the mountain watershed tributary to the valley streams to prevent the destruction of timber and vegetation thereon. Second, the board needed to regulate the use of the valley floor and its surroundings to prevent the valley covering from being trampled out of existence and useful vegetation being supplanted by some that was less desirable but better able to withstand sustained use. Third, the natural deteriorative action of the valley streams needed to be counteracted.

(a) Preservation of the Watershed

The Yosemite Grant of 1864 did not include the valley watershed, but extended to a line drawn around the valley at an average distance of only one mile from its edge. The mountain canyons and higher valleys from which the waters drained into the valley’s waterfalls and streams lay outside the grant area. Unless the state acquired those almost 200,000 acres draining into the valley, Hall feared they would nearly all pass into the hands of private individuals for sheep and cattle grazing and logging purposes. Hall’s argument that the watershed should be included within the limits of the grant was a precursor of the later idea of ecosystem preservation.

By controlling the watershed, the commissioners could prevent grazing and sow the seeds of native trees over a considerable area not presently forested, thereby laying the foundation for protection of the valley below. In future years, under wise management, that area could be used for limited logging and grazing without detriment to the land. Then the state would posses a magnificent huge mountain holding, with a scenic wonder in its midst, that might yield an income sufficient to repay the cost of maintenance and “improvement” of Yosemite Valley.

Hall argued that the watershed could also irrigate the dry plains of Merced County, enabling a great number of people to benefit from the mountain resources rather than only a small number of lumber- or sheepmen. Continued logging would cause the supply of water to fail much earlier in the season, while if the area of timber growth increased, the falls would contain water to a later date each year. If the timber were stripped and the country overrun with sheep, the water entering the valley in the early part of the season would be muddy. The sand and gravel banks formed by silt deposition would obstruct the main river channel through the valley, forcing erosion of the banks and flooding of the beautiful meadows, which, permitting unobstructed views of the waterfalls and cliffs, formed an essential feature of the landscape.

(b) Regulation of Use of the Valley Floor

Hall pointed out that the constant travel over the valley floor and the grazing of animals affected the character and extent of its growth. The finer forage grasses were being thinned out and more robust grasses and weeds were taking their place. The area of meadow was decreasing due to the spread of young thickets of forest and shrub growth. The cessation of the old Indian practice of burning off thickets, which created new clearings almost every year for grass growth, may have been partly responsible. This observation by Hall appears to be an early recognition of the value of “prescribed burns.” The continued cropping of the finer grasses and trampling of the ground by grazing horses that avoided the coarser growths, allowing them to flourish, remained the primary cause, however.

The soil and subsoil of the meadows were becoming compacted, inhibiting percolation of water therein. Meadows therefore tended to dry out earlier each year, resulting in a change in character of their forage vegetation and the encroachment of thicket growths. The preservation and extension of grass meadows could perhaps be accomplished by regulating the use of natural meadows and grazing lands to prevent overcropping; by clearing, perhaps plowing, and resowing the land; and by clearing and bringing under cultivation by irrigation other suitable lands as grass meadows to supply the deficiency in the forage supply.

(c) Treatment of the Valley Streams

Hall deemed it necessary to clear out and regulate the streams in the valley to check the influence of natural processes, to mitigate the effects of occupation and use of the valley and its watershed, and to add to the enjoyment of the use of the valley. He acknowledged that rivers constantly eroded their banks in some places and built them up in others. When undisturbed, nature healed those wounds, covering deposits of silt with shrubbery and rapidly forming new banks. But in Yosemite Valley, man and his domestic animals facilitated the destructive process and prevented the buildup of new banks. In Yosemite Valley the Merced River, flowing for a considerable portion of its course through a light alluvial deposit, continually cut away the banks in a number of places, widening its channel, dividing its waters, and leaving sand and gravel bars where meadowland formerly existed. Regulatory measures again seemed necessary.

In summing up the condition of the grant property, Hall ventured a remark that has proven an accurate assessment of the problems that would plague Yosemite National Park management to the present day:
The occupation and use of the water-shed above the valley, the visiting and enjoyment of the valley itself, and the operations designed to prepare for these, are all calculated to destroy its attractions. The immediate interest of every land owner in the water-shed, of every visitor to the valley, are inimical to the preservation of the property, and consequently at war with the object of your trust.152

[152. Ibid., 17.]

(2) Promoting Tourism

Hall also approached the subject of how better to promote the use of Yosemite Valley and concluded that in order for a greater number of people to more generally enjoy the valley, they had to be able to reach it more quickly and cheaply, view its scenery with less fatigue and outlay of money, and find accommodations there more comfortable and less expensive.

(a) Improving Approaches to the Valley

Hall pointed out that the varied and beautiful sights of Yosemite could not be seen in a day, or even in two or three. To have adequate time to reflect upon and properly appreciate Yosemite’s sights, visitors needed to stay about a month. In reality, however, the average visit lasted less than a week, because the trip in proved so grueling that travelers thought of nothing else once they got there but getting the return trip over with as quickly as possible. Construction of a series of easy drives in the valley, providing periodic scenic viewpoints, would be a great attraction, as would less expensive and more comfortable hotel accommodations.

But basic problems still existed: lack of adequate forage for animals and lack of suitable roads over which supplies from outside could be delivered cheaply, over which private teams with reasonable loads could be driven, or over which stages could be driven with some comfort. Hall considered a first-class wagon road to the valley, with light grades and a smooth surface, of paramount importance. Although the portions of the three roads entering the valley that were built especially for Yosemite travel—that is, from the ends of the county roads to the valley—were tolerable, the county roads used in reaching the roads to Yosemite Valley were less so.

(b) Improvements to Travel In and About Yosemite Valley

Hall’s suggestions for valley roads included one main drive following generally along the edge of the rocky talus lying between the plain and the valley walls, a few cross-valley connecting drives between certain points on the main road, some side drives from the main road up the talus slopes, and branch roads up principal canyons to points near their lower falls. In plotting roads across the valley, efforts needed to be made not to disturb the open meadows, but to follow the edges or margins of the open grounds and even of the smaller glades as much as possible.

In road construction, Hall suggested trying to avoid bare macadamized surfaces and artificial lines. Those improvements, Hall thought, that would increase the pleasure of carriage rides, would turn Yosemite into a resort where families would spend several months. That would put the valley’s management on a better basis financially, enable the public to be accommodated at reasonable rates, and relieve maintenance costs to a great extent.

(c) Trails

Hall noted that the existing trails to Eagle Peak, Glacier Point, and Snow’s hotel provided adequate access to the surrounding heights, but saw the necessity for a connecting trail from Glacier Point to Snow’s, around the rim of the valley, via Illilouette Fall, and also for a trail up Illilouette Canyon to the foot of the fall. Because of the pressing need for better roads, he did not believe that more extended work on trails was necessary at that time. In pondering the proposed location of a trail on the north side of the Merced River to the summit of Vernal Fall and then on to Snow’s, Hall rejected it as unnecessary because it would involve a heavy outlay of money and effort when the object had already been accomplished by the existing trail and because its construction would mar the face of a picturesque cliff.

(d) Footpaths

One of the greatest needs in Yosemite Valley was of firm, clean footpaths to special attractions or fine viewpoints and even between the various hotels. People tired of riding and driving every day and also of remaining inside or sitting on hotel porches. They enjoyed moving about, but preferred doing it without encountering the dust of the roads and trails. In locating rural park paths, Hall suggested, straight lines should be avoided as well as long formal curves. Every change of direction needed a purpose, either to follow the topography, to circumvent an obstruction, or to provide a special view. Hall urgently recommended abolishing all plank walks in the valley when possible, and in the meantime camouflaging them as much as possible.

(e) Bridges

Hall pointed out that cheap, flimsily built structures looked out of character in Yosemite Valley. All architectural works, he said, should be solid and massive in character, especially the bridges. Stone offered a preferable fabric, especially if the crossing passed over a stream with a rocky bed and banks. Rough, massive timber would be suitable if the crossing lay in a forest and spanned a quiet-flowing stream with sandy banks and bed. Ironwork could be appropriate where the crossing stood in open ground, distant from heavy timber growth or rock formations, and where the bridge needed to be less conspicuous. In retrospect, at this early date Hall was pioneering “rustic” design of bridges to harmonize with their particular natural surroundings.

Hall then presented a critique of existing valley bridges. The iron bridge at the Upper Hotel was not out of place, according to Hall, but the lower iron bridge should be of stone because it was the first large artificial construction encountered on entering the valley and needed to be imposing and impart a sense of security. He suggested that the existing lower iron bridge be moved to the lower crossing of Yosemite Creek or to a crossing on the main river between the Upper Iron Bridge and Tenaya Creek, and that a stone arch be built in its place at the lower main crossing.

(f) Drainage and Guard Walls

Culverts, necessary for drainage under roads and walks, should be of stone rather than wood, Hall stated. Large and solid stone walls, one and a half or two feet high, should be erected along the edge of narrow or high roads.

(g) Hotels, Stores, Houses

Because dwellings, although necessary to provide shelter and other material comforts, constituted an intrusion on the landscape, they had to be tolerated but should be as inconspicuous as possible. Ideally, Yosemite Valley houses would be of massive stone construction, near the base of the valley walls, surrounded by trees, with a fine view in front. Buildings should not be placed in meadows or glades, near any of the falls, or between the falls and the valley. A development plan was necessary before new structures were built. Hall recommended that the proposition to locate cottages between the Upper Hotel and Yosemite Fall be dropped, and that they be located instead on the south side of the Merced River between the hotels. In this area, also, Hall pioneered in calling for “rustic” design of buildings and other structures to harmonize with the landscape.

(3) Landscaping

Hall had several general suggestions for improving the landscape:

(a) Around houses—Residents should not attempt any city-type gardens or imitations of fountains or waterfalls. There should be no fences, and front yards should maintain an open view, although they could be edged by native trees, shrubs, and flowers. If fences were absolutely necessary, they should be of wire or else unpainted rough timber, never whitewashed.

(b) Plantings—Hedges or rows of trees were out of character for the valley and should be avoided. Only native trees and shrubs should be planted.

(c) Timber clearing—The many large and heavy growths of young trees (pines, willows, etc.) in the valley did not add to the landscape, but actually detracted from it by obstructing views. They needed thinning out and gradual clearing. Clumps of willows, alders, and other softwood trees were to be left in disconnected, irregular lines to divide the meadowland into the several tracts that appeared to be natural divisions. Most of the valley lowlands were to be returned to grass. Judicial thinning out was also needed in the higher timber areas of the valley where the growth obstructed views and actually formed woods.

(4) Agricultural Development

The land surface of the valley, Hall remarked, fell into three general categories: meadows, fern lands, and rocky slopes. Although timber covered much of the higher fern lands, large tracts of open ground remained that Hall felt were valueless as well as unsightly. He had already determined that a good supply of hay available at low cost would increase visitation to the valley. Hay would continue to be at a premium, however, because of increased demand for the small supply available as a result of overgrazing of existing meadows. The solution to the problem seemed to be cultivation of additional natural meadowland through irrigation and conversion of much of the fern land to grass meadows. Such an action would not only improve the landscape, but would augment state revenues and enhance visitor pleasure by furnishing abundant forage at low rates. Hall estimated that 1,000 acres in the valley could be cultivated in that manner.

(5) River Overflow

One of the major problems in the valley, previously introduced, was river overflow and the subsequent destruction of meadowlands. Hall found the Merced River channel above the Upper Iron Bridge to be in bad condition: divided, spread out, obstructed, and tortuous in its course. That resulted in an unregulated annual overflow of the valley meadows and the potential for a disastrous flood each season. To remedy the situation, Hall recommended clearing the channel in the lower part of the valley of obstructions; farther up, it would be necessary to divert the waters into one channel, which would be deepened and straightened, by building training walls of stone and brush, spurs, and cross dykes, systematically and judiciously located. The channel clearing operations might well involve blasting of rocks and sunken tree logs and the use of a small flatboat for a hand dredge and rake.

Hall ended his discussion by noting that, contrary to what he had once thought, the problems at Yosemite were so great, covering such a wide range, topographically and technically, and necessitating such exact treatment, that a detailed plan was necessary to develop the valley resources. It appeared absolutely essential to conduct a topographical survey and draw up a systematic development plan.153

[153. Ibid., 18-31.]

c) Remarks on Hall’s Report

Hall’s report highlights several natural resource problems in Yosemite Valley whose resolution has been a major source of concern for park administrators and natural resource managers through the years. Because most of them will not be discussed elsewhere in detail, an indication is presented here of the continuing problems involving stream control, including drainage, erosion, and overflow and vegetative changes due to fire suppression, vista clearing, meadow drainage, and the introduction of exotic species. Attempts to combat these problems resulted in a number of man-made structures that exist today and whose significance is related to changing resource management policies through the years.

The white man’s discovery of Yosemite Valley and its environs and subsequent often contradictory efforts to preserve resources and enhance aesthetic values while increasing recreational use have resulted in many changes to the environment. Plowing, seeding of crops and pastures, irrigation, mowing, livestock grazing, clearing of trees and brush, changing drainage patterns, fencing meadows, building roads and trails, and constructing hotels, campgrounds, and utility systems have drastically impacted the park’s vegetation, soil, and stream conditions, especially in Yosemite Valley.154 The valley’s riverscape has been completely altered by efforts to control flooding and bank erosion. The forests of the Yosemite region, originally parklike with little undergrowth and wide expanses of meadows, took on a completely different character under state and federal management. The involvement of modern man in natural processes has resulted in alterations such as an unnatural accumulation of fuels, proliferation of a dense understory in forest communities, reduction in the number and size of meadows, lack of regeneration in giant sequoia and black oak forests, and introduction of exotic species.

[154. Harold F. Heady and Paul J. Zinke, Vegetational Changes In Yosemite Valley, National Park Service Occasional Paper Number Five (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978), 1-2.]

(1) Yosemite Valley River Drainage and Erosion Control

A major question since establishment of the grant has concerned control of the valley river and stream system. Little description of the pre-1880s condition of the system exists except for an occasional mention of swampy oxbows and meandering river channels. State Geologist Josiah Whitney provided a more detailed description in his Yosemite Guide-Book in 1870, noting the river’s sharp bends and the swampy meadows. The latter condition resulted from natural rock dams that impeded the drainage of surface water: terminal moraines occurred near the mouth of the valley and lateral moraines existed between Tenaya Creek and the Merced River. Numerous log jams in the valley also reduced stream velocity and drainage and aided meandering and the undercutting of streambanks.

These conditions caused little concern until the rapid expansion of tourist facilities in the early years of the grant resulted in placement of a variety of hotels and roads within the valley’s floodplain. Visitors also established campgrounds along the banks of the river and small streams, which became traditional campsites. Additionally, the state commissioners started to view the meadows as potential farming areas. Before long, state administrators noticed that the uncontrolled meadering of the Merced constantly washed away sections of the meadows and many of their trees. The state commissioners seemed unaware of, or simply chose to ignore, the fact that heavily eroded streambanks had long been a natural part of the Yosemite Valley scene, as evidenced by the earliest photos of the area. Actually stream erosion had been a natural process since the last glacial retreat, playing a principal part in creation of the valley floor by building up new meadows.

The Yosemite commissioners, however, faced pragmatic considerations. They only saw the erosion process as destructive of meadowlands. If allowed to continue, they feared it would turn the entire valley into a wasteland and dispel all possibilities of state profit. Despite the edict of the grant specifying preservation of the valley’s natural conditions (which would seem to entail preservation of its natural processes) for future enjoyment, the commission pondered ways to alter and thereby control the stream system to prevent the destruction of meadows and the loss of real estate through periodic flooding and erosion. Foremost in its mind was protection of the valley from change and encouragement of public use, the latter necessitating removal of any threat to visitor access and facilities.

From 1864 to 1879, therefore, the commission endeavored to control lateral erosion to prevent tree destruction and drain meadows for agricultural use and construction purposes. In 1879 Guardian Galen Clark attempted to remedy the situation by blasting the El Capitan terminal moraine, thus lowering the water table. By so doing he hoped to open more land for grazing and also eliminate mosquito breeding areas. He then leveled the fragments of boulders left after the blasting. By lowering the base level of the stream system several feet, Clark stimulated vertical erosion in the riverbed and also changed the valley ecology. Removal of the El Capitan moraine has been called the most influential single act affecting the valley river system.155

[155. James F. Milestone, “The Influence of Modern Man on the Stream System of Yosemite Valley,” M. A. thesis, San Francisco State University, 1978, 40. This document presents a detailed history of stream control in Yosemite Valley and is the source for most of this information on that subject.]

From 1864 to 1965, administrators attacked lateral shifting of the Merced River into its banks, believing it to be, after 1 re periodic flooding, the foremost threat to valley defacement.156 Even during the twentieth century, most management activity concerned prevention of bank erosion rather than analysis of river channel behavior and its relationship to other natural processes. Unfortunately this problem was exacerbated by large-scale costly development in the valley that required protection. The campaign to halt natural lateral erosion finally ended in the mid-1960s after all critical meanders threatening development had been riprapped. Application of this riprap has drastically changed the valley riverscape by altering the configuration of riverbanks and paving them with granite boulders. The resultant decrease in sediment load in the river has resulted in the disappearance of vast stretches of braided stream channels that originally characterized the valley floor.

[156. Ibid., 67.]

The state grant period proved exceedingly destructive of the natural riverscape of Yosemite Valley, resulting in the removal of natural rock dams, the initiation of bank revetment projects, the commencement of dredging operations to acquire gravel for development projects, the construction of wing dams, and the removal of log jams and other obstructions from stream channels. If the commissioners had chosen to acknowledge stream erosion as a natural process and planned development around that process, perhaps the later elaborate and expensive stream control projects that have continued into modern times would not have been necessary. Perhaps, as Olmsted suggested, the board of commissioners should have included some natural scientists who could have advised on such matters. Unfortunately, the policies developed under state management became so entrenched that they continued into the National Park Service era. Park Service efforts to manage the Merced River stream system in the valley will be discussed in a later chapter as they relate to historical resources.

Despite man’s efforts to limit their impacts, the processes of nature continue, often with dramatic effect. Normal winter and spring floods still leave behind layers of fine sand and silt that fill in low areas, while rain-swollen floodwaters in the late 1930s and in the 1950s wreaked havoc and destruction in their wake. Most efforts to confine the river to its channel and prevent bank cutting have ultimately proven unsuccessful. This continual pattern of flooding, deposition, and erosion, in conjunction with a low water table during the dry summer months, affects soil development and vegetation to a great degree.157

[157. Heady and Zinke, Vegetational Changes in Yosemite Valley, 3.]

Galen Clark, in his Early Days in Yosemite Valley, cogently described an unfortunate result of heavy tourist visitation and freighting activities that was mentioned by most travelers to the valley and directly related to the periodic silting process. He noted that the topsoil over which the stage roads ran consisted of a very fine disintegrated granitic sand. The heavy traffic, including freight wagons, stagecoaches, campers’ wagons, private carriages, and horseback riders, cut deeply into the soft soil, pulverizing it
until the roadbed has become a deep channel of volatile earth dust, which rises in great clouds, enveloping stage coaches and Passengers, obscuring vision, penetrating ears, eyes, nose and mouth if not kept closely shut, and covering the whole body with a dusty pall so that as the stages arrive at the Hotel they appear to be loaded with human images carved in brown stone.158

[158. Galen Clark, Early Days in Yosemite Valley (Los Angeles: The Docter Press, 1964), 4.]

The vegetative cover of the valley has also undergone dramatic changes as a result of state and federal intervention in natural and aboriginal processes.

(2) Yosemite Valley Vegetative Changes

(a) Fire Suppression

The areas within Yosemite Valley most disturbed by human activity through the years have recovered well. They are, however, quite different from the meadows of 1851 and earlier. In the early years, three-fourths of the valley was open ground, with meadows covered by waist-high grasses and flowering plants. The dryer parts of the valley supported scatterings of forest trees—pines, cedars, and oaks—widely separated and clear of underbrush. One could see clearly up, down, and across the valley. The original open conditions of the valley floor and other forested areas within the present national park were attributable to two factors: low intensity surface fires set by Indians and lightning-caused fires that were a natural element of the mixed-conifer ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada. Indians used the controlled burning of vegetation, sometimes followed by hand-eradication, to clear brushy areas and grasslands. Systematic burning was an important environmental modification made by the California Indians probably over hundreds of years to increase the yield of edible seeds, to encourage the growth of desirable plants, to drive game, to provide forage for deer and elk, to facilitate nut harvesting, and to provide an easy passage through the valley.

Natural and aboriginal fires created an environment in the valley favorable to the establishment and maintenance of black oak woodlands. By the late 1880s, the annual Indian practice of burning off dried grass and leaves had been discontinued, actually forbidden by law, enabling a growth of young pines to spring up all over the valley and encroach on the meadowlands.159 Attempts to suppress fires began before establishment of the national park and by 1910 an effective suppression program was in effect. As with stream control, the need for fire control was a direct outgrowth of construction and development and protection of investments. The most significant influence of man on park vegetation has been the suppression of naturally occurring fires. The cessation of Indian burning and the initiation of a park management philosophy of “preservation” caused many changes by altering a biotic complex dependent on the periodic occurrence of fire. As with stream control management, which attempted to preserve an existing situation without allowing the processes that led to that situation to continue, the commissioners and later Park Service managers tried to preserve the aboriginal landscape without continuing the aboriginal activities that created it. This early management decision to suppress natural fires led to an unnatural ecological succession and conditions threatening to destroy park values.

[159. Biennial Report of the Commissioners . . . For the Years 1887-88, 18.]

As a result of the discontinuance of controlled burning, a tangle of understory thickets and accumulated bushy debris took over the forest floor and posed a serious fire hazard. Once fires started, they became almost impossible to stop. In contrast, in areas where fires are frequent, their intensity is much less. Effective fire suppression resulted in several other adverse impacts, also, such as the replacement of meadows by mixed-conifer forests, the slowing down of nutrient recycling, a decrease in wildlife habitat, and more trees suspectible to insects and disease. The commissioners realized the implications of letting these processes continue and constantly worried about the necessity to open up the meadows. Attempts to restore natural conditions, however, were limited to the mechanical removal of small trees encroaching on the meadows and black oak woodlands. Limited vista clearing was carried out by early settlers in the valley prior to 1880 and much of the valley floor was cleared of underbrush in the 1890s. It became a regular activity during the Civilian Conservation Corps period and continued in a limited fashion until 1961.

One of the chief duties of the army administration of Yosemite National Park concerned the suppression of fire. Man-made fires resulted from careless hunters, sheepherders, or tourists, whose abandoned campfires often flared out of control. The army made no distinction between natural and man-made fires, and in its zeal to protect the park contributed its part in prolonging an undesirable management practice:
The suppression of fires was thus intimately connected with the establishment of Army administration: fire suppression was a visible, material, and symbolic expression of Army determination to rid the park of destruction and vandalism of all sorts, to regulate tourism, and to confront and remove the lawless class of poachers.160

[160. Stephen J. Pyne, Fire In America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton, N. J.: Princton University Press, 1982), 228. See, however, footnote 55, p. 403, which notes that several army administrators disagreed with the government’s policy of fire suppression and prevention.]

Finally, in the 1960s, changes in Park Service policy directed that each park be restored as nearly as possible to the conditions existing when the park was first visited by Anglos. This new management philosophy of perpetuating natural processes resulted in the introduction of prescribed fire into Yosemite’s mixed conifer forests. Since 1967, the Park Service, by simulating the natural fire process, has hoped to recreate and then perpetuate what are thought to be pristine conditions, thereby reducing fire hazards also. Prescribed fire was introduced in the park in 1970, and burning commenced at Foresta, Yosemite Valley, and along the Wawona Road. Prescriptions have since been developed and refined to meet burning objectives for larger and more vegetationally diverse areas. Until 1972, the Park Service suppressed all naturally occurring fires. In that year four natural fire management units were established in which all natural fires could run their course. In 1975 conditional fire management was initiated. In those units fires were promply suppressed only during the normal fire season. The long-range objective is the reestablishment of conditions in which natural fires can again be allowed to burn throughout all the natural areas of the park.161

[161. Jan W. van Wagtendonk, Refined Burning Prescriptions for Yosemite National Park, National Park Service Occasional Paper Number Two (Washington: Government Printing Office, n.d.), 1-2, 19; Yosemite National Park, Natural Resources Management Plan and Environmental Assessment (Denver: National Park Service, 1977), 4-5, 14; Yosemite National Park, Management Program: An Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan for Yosemite National Park (Denver: National Park Service, 1977), 1-2, 14, 26.]

(b) Drainage of Meadows

As mentioned above, Guardian Clark’s removal of the El Capitan moraine deepened the Merced River channel through the valley. This resulted in less marshland, which of course comprised one of the major purposes for that action. The valley meadows thus opened up for cultivation were quickly appropriated. Leidig Meadow, extending from Swinging Bridge to Rocky Point, was put under cultivation early after being surrounded by a rail fence. Two-thirds of Stoneman Meadow was plowed and seeded in timothy, while Washburn and McCready built a log barn at El Capitan Meadow in which they stored their hay. A stone drift fence was built there prior to 1881. A wire fence encircled the meadow in 1884, though by 1886 the commissioners began taking down such structures.162 The Lamon orchard underneath Half Dome, east of the present location of the concession stables, produced fruit and garden goods that Lamon sold to innkeepers and campers. It comprised approximately four acres and originally contained about 500 trees twenty feet apart. Lamon planted a second orchard around 1861, whose remains have been severely impacted by the Curry Village parking area. James Hutchings had an orchard near the present Yosemite Village. Reduced in size, it has a road running through its southern boundary and has been severely impacted by trails and construction of the nearby housing area. ‘The Wawona Meadow served many purposes over the years, including the growing of hay and pasturing of cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses, and as an airplane landing field. The Park Service eliminated pasturing of stock there in 1976. Man maintained the valley meadows by burning previous to 1850 and after that by cultivation, grazing, and tree and brush pulling. In the 1950s the Park Service cleared two acres of black oak woodland of coniferous understory. Other than that, only insignificant amounts of such work have been carried out in the valley.

[162. Anderson interview with Degnans, 13 December 1934.]

(c) Introduction of Exotics

Another problem on the valley floor concerned exotics. Early settlers in the valley planted exotic trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses for aesthetic purposes and to insure self-sufficiency. Exotics degrade the natural integrity of park ecosystems and constitute an undesirable alteration of the natural scene. These often displaced native species and became so naturalized that it was doubtful if they could ever be eradicated. The Park Service pursued their eradiction, however, and annually from 1963 to 1972 removed approximately 50,000 exotic plants by digging and pulling individual specimens from meadows and road edges.163

[163. Yosemite National Park, Management Program, 38.]

(3) Mariposa Grove Management Problems

Areas other than Yosemite Valley provided concern for the Board of Yosemite Commissioners early on. The Mariposa Grove seemed constantly under threat of fire damage, it being especially suspectible to fires started outside the grant boundaries. As stated earlier, in 1865 Olmsted noted that the commissioners proposed laying a road to and around the grove to act as a fire barrier. The Guardians of the grant, concerned over accumulations of combustible debris, repeatedly pressured the legislature for funds to reduce fire hazards in the grove. Not until an 1889 wildfire surrounded and invaded the trees, penetrating deeply into the Upper Grove, was some clearing of grove debris accomplished. The legislature approved funds to clean up the area, and by 1892 extensive clearing of organic debris and removal of forest litter had been accomplished. The Guardian justified road building that year as a safeguard against fire. Army administrators also worried about the potential seriousness of accumulations of combustible debris. An extensive cleanup campaign from 1911 to 1915 near visitor use areas alleviated some of those concerns.

Concern for grove vegetation usually centered around specific trees in the grove, such as the Grizzly Giant. In 1911 soil was hauled in and spread over its roots that had been exposed to the trampling of horse hoofs due to the location of the main stage road from Yosemite Valley just to the east. In 1912 a high wire fence was erected around the base of the tree. A CCC program in 1933 undertook an extensive and vigorous cleanup campaign that rid the grove of much combustible debris and snags. Workers cleared the roadsides of hazardous trees and shrubs and sloped the steep road banks. Heavy foot erosion worried park administrators also, and in 1954 they built a rock wall along the upper road bank next to the Tunnel Tree to reduce destruction. That year a committee was established composed of Yosemite personnel, including the park forester and naturalist, to study sequoia problems. Its final report was an important contribution to the preservation of sequoias. The Park Service eliminated the Mariposa Grove Campground in 1955 and laid wood mulch around the base of certain trees. Vandalism has played only a minor role in human impact on the grove, far exceeded by the construction of roads, trails, and buildings over the root system of the giant sequoias.

In the grove, too, fire is a natural ecological factor in the control of tree species. It controls groundcover and understory vegetation to provide room for the germination of sequoia seeds, which are released from the cones by hot fires. Larger sequoias are insulated from the effects of fire by their thick, relatively fire-resistant bark. In 1932 the Park Service decided to allow debris to accumulate on the ground in the grove. The only deviation from this policy involved vista clearing from 1934 to 1935. The last specific effort to reduce the quantity of combustible debris had been the army effort between 1911 and 1915.164

[164. Richard John Hartesveldt, “The Effects of Human Impact upon Sequoia Gigantea and its Environment in the Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California,” Ph. D. diss., University of Michigan, 1962, 38, 40-41, 45, 50-51, 56, 59-60, 63-64, 66-67, 70, 74, 140-43.]

d) Report of the Commissioners, 1885-86

In 1885-86 the commissioners for Yosemite Valley submitted their biennial report to the state legislature. In it they pointed out that during the first five years after acceptance of the grant by the state, only 456 people, on the average, visited it annually. After the completion of the transcontinental railway, that number swelled to 1,122. The board stressed that with improved facilities, more people would come, and stay longer, substantially augmenting the state coffers.

The commissioners felt that a big step toward accommodating the increased visitation was being taken with construction of the Stoneman Hotel. The next major necessity was suitable provision for pedestrian traffic. Promenades radiating from the new hotel as well as from the older ones would provide inviting and secluded walks to points of interest or restfulness. They would complement the fine carriage road that had already been constructed encircling the entire valley along the line of talus at the foot of the valley walls.

The report warned that pasturage in the valley was exhausted and that increased demand necessitated an increase in meadowland area. Overuse of the best meadowlands was resulting in encroachment by brambles and thickets of young trees. Indeed, some pastures had already become woodlands. The commissioners appealed for restoration of the valley to its earlier, natural condition. The fast-growing underbrush also crowded upon the carriage drives and trails, restricting views and emphasizing the need for some sort of forestry program. Ungoverned watercourses also caused serious damage in the valley and required engineering advice on a proper remedy.

Improvements made since the 1884 report included:

(1) A new trail to La Casa Nevada—The construction of a massive bridge over the Merced River at Register Rock connected the Vernal and Nevada falls trails, thereby completing the work Anderson had begun and bringing his trail into profitable use.

(2) A new bridge at Diamond Cascade—The previous bridge had become unsafe as a result of storm damage and heavy use.

(3) A trail from Nevada Fall to Glacier Point—The board had constructed a trail from La Casa Nevada to Glacier Point, referred to as the Echo Wall Trail. It crossed the Merced River over a bridge a few yards above Nevada Fall, skirted the edge of Echo Wall, and crossed Illilouette Creek over a bridge at the brink of its fall, and then passed upward to Glacier Point. Its construction enabled the entire circuit from the valley to Glacier Point, Sentinel Dome, Too-lool-a-we-ack (Illilouette) Fall, Nevada Fall, La Casa Nevada, and Vernal Fall to be made in one day.

(4) A dam above Mirror Lake—Over the previous several years, granite debris brought down in the waters of Tenaya Creek had been filling in Mirror Lake. A dam had been constructed across the lake outlet in an attempt to submerge the deposit, but that provided no permanent solution. The board had initiated a survey of the Tenaya Creek channel above the lake, and, as a result, had constructed a retaining dam in a narrow, rocky gorge, which appeared to alleviate the silt deposition.

Projected improvements in the grant included:

(5) Construction of a bridge across Yosemite Creek above the brink of the Upper Fall—The project had already begun in anticipation of the commission’s being financially able to lay a trail from there to Yosemite Point, returning by way of Indian Canyon.

(6) Rehabilitation of the disused (Pohono) trail from Glacier Point to Old Inspiration Point that reached Yosemite Valley near Bridalveil Fall by way of The Fissures.

(7) Construction of a trail opening up the scenery of the South Fork of the Merced and enabling tourists to visit the foot of Too-lool-a-we-ack Fall.

The report also noted that, during the tourist season, constant vigilance was necessary in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to guard against destruction of the trees by souvenir hunters and by forest fires started accidentally by sheepherders, hunters, prospectors, and campers. A comfortable log cabin had been erected at a central point in the grove as shelter for the convenience of visitors. Five hundred dollars had been spent in constructing new roads in the grove and in improving those already built.

The board closed its regular report by calling attention to the need for enlargement of the grant. Because it felt that the beauty of the valley rested largely with its waterfalls, which in turn depended upon the Sierra Nevada for their water supply, the board stated that the control and preservation of the watershed discharging into Yosemite Valley appeared vital to the valley’s future appeal. In retrospect, this recommendation for watershed protection comprised an initial step in protection of the larger Yosemite ecosystem.

e) Report of the Commissioners, 1887-88 In this report, the commissioners detailed expenditures made thus far for improvements in the valley, which entailed:
$60,000 for the purchase of settlers’ claims;

$15,000 for the purchase of the Eagle Point, Mirror Lake, and Glacier Point trails and of the Coulterville Road;

$6,000 for the construction of the Upper and Lower iron bridges;

$18,000 for the construction of the Tissaack, Pohono, and Bridalveil bridges, and of the Yosemite, Echo Wall, and Register Rock trails; and

$45,000 for the construction of the Stoneman House.165

[165. Biennial Report of the Commissioners . . . For the Years 1887-88, 15.]

The last appropriation of $15,000 from the state legislature, plus about $8,000 from rents for the period 1887-88, had been used in repairing new trails, constructing new roads and bridges, erecting new stables and other buildings, demolishing old structures, graveling roads, removing rocks, clearing out underbrush, and purchasing lumber for new construction. At their last annual meeting, the commissioners had decided to remove the old “shanties” that had been serving as hotels and stables and replace them with more pretentious structures. Improvements over the previous four months had included an addition to Bernard’s Hotel and extension of the wings of the south abutment of the Upper Iron Bridge adjacent to that building. Other work accomplished under the immediate supervision of Commissioner E. W. Chapman, from August to September 1888, included:

(1) a broad footpath from the Stoneman House along the north side of the south Lamon orchard to the Moraine or Georgie Avenue bridge, beyond the stable of the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, on Georgie Avenue;

(2) a road from the southeast corner of the south Lamon orchard to the Merced River at the lower end of the Tissaack Moraine; thence, from the opposite side of the river to Tissaack Avenue, at a point east of the north Lamon orchard. A branch of that new road extended to the new stable of the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company. The new road and bridge afforded a short and direct route from the Stoneman House to Mirror Lake and the stage stables;

(3) a new barn and coachhouse for the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company near the new road on the north side and about halfway between the south Lamon orchard and Moraine bridge. The barn measured forty-eight by sixty feet and accommodated thirty horses as well as hay and grain storage. The coachhouse, sixteen by forty feet, could shelter four coaches and contained a sleeping room for the stable man. A five-board corral, eighty-four by one hundred twenty-eight feet, was attached to the stable;

(4) a truss bridge across the Merced at the Tissaack Moraine connected the two portions of the new Georgie Avenue. The Moraine bridge consisted of heavy hewn timbers and had a span of sixty-one feet;

(5) a two-inch and one-inch pipeline to convey water from the Glacier Spring main at the southeast corner of south Lamon orchard to the new stable;
Illustration 40.
Yosemite Valley roads and structures.
Frontispiece, Biennial Report of the Commissioners, 1887-88.

[click to enlarge]

(6) a sub-branch of the Glacier Spring main laid around the Stoneman House with four hydrants for fire protection;

(7) a two-inch water pipe laid from the store at Stoneman House to the Royal Arch bridge, and across it to the new buildings on the Royal Arch farm;

(8) a broad roadway (Royal Arch Avenue) from the Stoneman House to the nearest point on the Merced, where crews constructed the seventy-six-foot-span Royal Arch truss bridge of heavy hewn timbers on massive granite abutments. In the planning of the Moraine and Royal Arch bridges, engineers avoided the annoying defect of the other wooden bridges in the valley—i.e., the obstruction of the view of persons sitting in carriages by the truss timbers;

(9) an extension of Royal Arch Avenue along the north bank of the Merced from Royal Arch bridge to the Grand Round drive under the Royal Arches;

(10) the Royal Arch farm buildings near the site of the old Lamon farmhouse, consisting of a fifty-two by one hundred-foot barn for fifty-two horses; a sixteen by sixty-foot carriage shed; a sixteen by sixty-foot men’s quarters and office; a twenty-four by sixty-foot residence with veranda on the south and east sides; and a five-board corral. Ninety percent of the lumber for those structures came from the old Folsom building and from the Black and Leidig hotel buildings, all of which, except for the two-room Leidig cabin in the rear of the latter hotel, had been removed;

(11) a roadway branching from Glacier Avenue, under Moran’s Point, and extending along the south bank of the Merced to the Royal Arch bridge;

(12) a three-board fence from a point above Royal Arch bridge to the southwest corner of south Lamon orchard, defining the Stoneman Meadow; and

(13) pruning of forest trees in front of the Stoneman House and clearing out of the undergrowth east of a line from the Royal Arch bridge northeast to the Royal Arch farm.166

[166. E. W. Chapman, Commissioner, Report “To the Executive Committee of the Board of Commissioners to Manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” 25 September 1888, in ibid., 16-17.]

Commissioner Chapman pointed out, as had others before him, that vegetable matter accumulating undisturbed beneath the trees of the valley and the resultant growth of young pines were destroying much meadowland as well as creating a fire hazard. He pleaded that the state vigorously pursue meadow reclamation as the only way to combat the situation. That would involve removing young pines from the fern lands, removing the unsightly undergrowth in all areas, and seeding the valley to grasses to suppress the undergrowth and restore the landscape to its original beauty. Along other lines, Chapman suggested that the campgrounds should remain below the Royal Arch farm and Iron Spring on the north side of the Merced River and noted the immediate need of restoring Mirror Lake to its former beauty and of raising a wall to create a large and permanent reservoir for irrigation of the valley lands. The Yosemite commissioners also requested money in the next legislative appropriation for work in the Mariposa Grove. That area had been neglected for many years, with only a little work accomplished in creating footpaths to some of the larger trees and in clearing away underbrush.167

[167. Ibid., 18; Biennial Report of the Commissioners . . . For the Years 1887-88, 19.]

During this time, visitors could enter Yosemite via several different means. The Yosemite branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad diverged from the main line at Berenda and proceeded twenty-two miles to its terminus at Raymond. From there stages left daily during the travel season, with hotel accommodations available at Raymond, Grant’s Springs, and Wawona. Another stage route began at Milton, the terminus of the Stockton and Copperopolis Railway, which connected with the Central Pacific line at Stockton. That route ran through the Tuolumne Big Tree Grove and offered accommodations at Priest’s Hotel and Chinese Camp. Another feeder stage route ran from Madera, a town on the Southern Pacific Railroad, to Fresno Flats. Other tourist came from Merced on the Southern Pacific line via the Merced Grove of Big Trees or from Modesto on the Southern Pacific to Coulterville.

f) Report of the Commissioners, 1889-90

During 1889-90 the Yosemite commissioners were involved with several important items of business. Again the restoration of Mirror Lake on Tenaya Creek took precedence. A popular stop on valley tours, the lake had become so covered with aquatic plants and shrubs due to shoaling of the basin that it no longer reflected. Previous repair work had consisted of renovating the basin and erecting a permanent granite dam across its outlet to raise the water level. Dredge work was a continuing process. A dreadful fire in the forest surrounding the Big Tree Grove had posed a serious threat to the giant sequoias and most of the annual appropriation for the grove had been consumed in fire defense. In addition to the usual repairs on roads and trails, the commissioners had constructed a shorter and better trail to Cloud’s Rest from the floor of Little Yosemite Valley.

The commissioners also at that time issued some important policy statements. Their aim was to preserve the valley floor as nearly as possible in its natural state by avoiding the grouping of buildings in a “village” effect, by reducing the number of permanent residents in the valley to the lowest number required for guarding public property in the winter, by expelling from, the valley all “tradesmen, trinket and curiosity peddlers, hawkers, solicitors, and similar nuisances who prey upon visitors,” and by restoring the park-like character of the valley according to forestery principles. The board also reported that Congress was already acting on its request to add the Yosemite watershed to the reservation in order to safeguard its forests and prevent diversion of its streams.

11. Establishment of Yosemite National Park

a) Accusations of Mismanagement of the State Grant

A lengthy petition presented to the U. S. Congress around 1888 opposed the extension of the Yosemite Grant and requested an investigation into its management. The document outlined a host of infractions of the trust that the state had accepted, beginning with what it termed the series of “unhappy and coercive measures” against the settlers of the valley, which had generated a bitter antagonism that continued to that day. The document accused the Board of Yosemite Commissioners of regarding the early settlers as obstacles in the way of development, even though they had made all the original improvements to the valley, for which they had been poorly paid by the state.

The petitioners continued their criticism by stating that Guardian James Hutchings, from 1881 to 1884, had implemented a systematic plan for improving the valley. With his removal and the installation of Walter E. Dennison in that position, who the complainants perceived as being totally unfamiliar with the region and its history, the situation had deteriorated rapidly. The new system that Dennison inaugurated appeared to foster gross favoritism and injustice, often degenerating into personal persecution. He reportedly granted exclusive privileges and leases to those persons that remained pliable and friendly to the board, an act of favoritism that other prospective businessmen deeply resented. One of the most blatant acts of partiality related to the dominant position accorded the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, whose interests were promoted over those of various other businesses. The lessee of the state-built Stoneman Hotel, for instance, happened to be a principal stockholder in that stage line. At the time of the hotel’s construction, the board of commissioners had ordered two earlier hotels destroyed, an action others perceived as achieving a monopoly for the state hotel. Another favored business appeared to be the saddle train and livery company of Coffman and Kenney, which had been allowed to lease and farm nearly the entire valley floor by 1888 and was charging outrageous and extortionate rates to campers.

Other changes instituted during that time that the petioners considered intolerable included:

(1) a changeover to yearly permits from ten-year leases and the transfer of private real property to the board on behalf of the state;

(2) the board’s continual violation of individual contracts;

(3) the encouragement of “pools” among hotel proprietors to maintain exorbitant rates;

(4) the cutting of vast quantities of young timber and entire virgin groves on the valley floor, beginning in June 1884, and the conversion of most of the cleared land to hayfields and private pastures;

(5) the arbitrary cutting of magnificent trees to obtain satisfactory vistas from certain viewpoints;

(6) the fencing in of nearly all the valley floor with barbed wire;

(7) the holding of board meetings behind closed doors, despite an act by the state legislature expressly requiring that all such meetings be open to the public;

(8) the lack of representation of Mariposa and Tuolumne counties on the Board of Yosemite Commissioners, and its monopolization by southern California and San Francisco interests; and

(9) the acceptance of gifts and presents from valley tenants by certain commissioners.

The petition went on to explain that the widespread criticism circulating about the one-sided and narrow policies of the Yosemite commissioners had prompted the San Francisco Daily Examiner to publish a series of articles upon the management of the valley during 1888. These first formally published charges of mismanagement on the part of the Yosemite commissioners appeared in the June, July, and August issues of the Examiner. They alleged many depredations upon the environment, including: devastation of timber in the valley in a wanton and grossly disfiguring manner; unsatisfactory travel conditions in the valley resulting from the liberal quantities of dust and the lack of good walks and pathways for pedestrians; lack of places of amusement; neglect of mountain trails and state livestock; fencing in nearly all the meadowland of the valley; and granting exclusive franchises that discouraged competition and resulted in high prices for hay, grain, livery services, supplies, and accommodations.

The Examiner articles led to an official inquiry by the California State Legislature during its 1888-89 session. That investigation exposed abuses in the management of the trust and resulted in a recommendation to dissolve the Board of Yosemite Commissioners and form a commission upon entirely different lines. The legislature then, however, in a complete turnabout, voted a large sum of money for the use of the original commission over the next two years.

The petitioners were objecting to the request by the Yosemite commissioners remaining in power that Congress repeal the terms of the original Yosemite Grant and pass new laws for its government. Other changes the commissioners desired included reduction of the number of Yosemite commissioners from eight to three, conversion of that office to an elective rather than appointive position, and enlargement of the domain within the Yosemite Grant to include the watershed of the Sierra Nevada and country a certain number of miles north, south, and west deemed necessary to protect that watershed from the depredations of sheepmen.

Illustration 41.
“Cultivated fields, fences, and areas of excessive landscape management, Yosemite Valley, 1883-1890.”
From Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club.

[click to enlarge]

The purpose of the opposing petition was to request that Congress not acquiesce in those demands, for the following reasons: First, if the office of Yosemite commissioner were an elective, and therefore a salaried, position, it would degenerate into a political gift at the whim of whichever political party happened to be in power at the time. Second, if the Yosemite Grant were enlarged as requested to include the Sierra Nevada watershed, it would unjustly deprive preemptionists of their property and improvements. The fear existed also that the commissioners would destroy much of the magnificent forest in the new area for economic gain as they had done in Yosemite Valley.

According to the petitioners, the depredations by sheepherders and logging interests had been greatly exaggerated. Their remoteness from markets and the difficulty of transporting their lumber to market would forever check wholesale destruction of the Sierran forests, “especially in the heart of a practically inexhaustible supply of timber.” If the government acquired the balance of the timber in that locality, it would increase the value of those timber sections owned by private parties and possibly lead to the formation of a giant timber trust. It would also discourage railroads attempting to enter California over either of its central passes by removing from availability an item necessary in their construction and operation.

The petitioners contended that by granting those requests, Congress would actually be securing water, timber, and railroad pass monopolies for the Board of Yosemite Commissioners. Healthy competition would be sacrificed in favor of a few individuals. How long would it be, they asked, before some water corporation interested the board in a scheme for building storage dams to retain surplus waters in the mountains, which would later be offered for sale at high cost to the farming community of central California? And what if a single railway line managed to exert enough influence over the board to gain control of the two most important remaining railroad passes over the central Sierra Nevada—through Lee Vining and Bloody canyons?

In summation, the petitioners feared that enlarging the park area would invest the board of commissioners with control over all future water sources for central California; over one of the finest timber belts in the world when, it was argued, it had already proven incapable of properly preserving the small forest area of Yosemite Valley; and over the landed interests of many settlers and owners of mountain property, when its management policy relating to individuals holding interests within Yosemite Valley had already proven unfair, unjust, and discriminatory. They hoped, instead, that Congress would retract the Yosemite Grant and place it under military administration, with direct supervision by a body of civilian experts in the fields of engineering, landscape gardening, and art. They also pleaded for a thorough investigation of the Yosemite matter, in the best interest of all American park reservations, to determine whether in the future such splendid wonders as Yosemite Valley should be entrusted to such precarious management.168

[168. Petition to the Senators and Representatives of the Congress of the United States. Against the Extension of the Yosemite Grant and Praying for an Investigation into the Management of the Present Grant, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-26. Specific “Charges against the Board of Yosemite Commissioners preferred by Chas. D. Robinson at the Cal. State Legislature of 1889” included:

1. squandering and misapplying public moneys
2. forcible breaking and entering of private property
3. wanton destruction of public and private property
4. cutting and destroying timber in the valley
5. burning shrubbery, clearing and plowing up meadows, and allowing persons to do the same for private gain, thereby doing irreparable damage to the natural beauties of the valley
6. fencing and farming out public lands for the benefit of private individuals
7. refusing to investigate or consider charges of gross neglect and incompetence and of destruction of property alleged against Guardian Dennison
8. connivance with persons endeavoring to secure all business privileges in Yosemite Valley and to remove residents and debar the general public from joint and legal use of the valley
9. neglect to prosecute persons disfiguring and destroying natural features of the valley in defiance of the law
10. holding annual meetings with closed doors in defiance of the law
11. allowing contractors for the Stoneman House to cut and mill timber within the limits of the grant
12. open defiance of laws prohibiting the granting of exclusive privileges
13. reduction of rentals to the prejudice of the state income
14. making illegal and arbitrary contracts with laborers and withholding their wages
15. refusing to recognize their own contracts and to pay balance due on the same
16. suppressing and withholding facts from citizens concerning the acceptance of the Stoneman House by the board and illegally leasing the same
17. cutting wood on the grant and selling it to residents of the valley, thereby destroying the natural park timber, in defiance of their own rules and regulations and in violation of the law
18. official sanction and approval of a return to the vicious toll system of former years abolished with great difficulty and at considerable expense by the legislature
19. eviction of law-abiding and useful families in aid of monopoly enterprises, thereby destroying the District School of Yosemite
20. gross neglect of public roads and trails within the grant
21. employment of state labor upon work for private parties
22. general failure and incompetency of the board system to properly manage the Yosemite Valley for the interests of the state of California, in accordance with the conditions imposed by the United States for the comfort and convenience of visitors from abroad or for the welfare of the residents of the valley.

Charles D. Robinson instigated the first investigation of the Yosemite charges by the California State Legislature. Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

b) Arrival of John Muir in California

Others would soon join in the movement for recession of the Yosemite Grant to the United States. In March 1868 a ship’s passenger disembarked at San Francisco Bay, destined not only to play a strong role in the realization of that objective, but who would also have a profound, long-term effect on the philosophical development and the implementation of wildland conservation in America. John Muir, a young Scotsman possessed of a wide range of interests, including invention, science, and botany, had read about Yosemite Valley and had traveled a circuitous route from Wisconsin to see it firsthand. With a companion, Muir set out on a walking trip across the Central Valley to Yosemite. That short excursion whetted his appetite for further exploration of the Sierra Nevada at some future date.

Muir worked on the West Coast during the winter of 1868-69 at a variety of jobs, finally finding employment with a sheepman. In the spring ‘of 1869 the owner sent him toward Tuolumne Meadows to oversee a sheepherder with a band of more than 2,000 animals. From June to September, snatching bits of time between his duties as supervisor, Muir managed to explore much of the Yosemite high country, observing, sketching, and recording his adventures in a journal. His almost spiritual experience among the majestic peaks and flowery meadows, akin to a rebirth, transformed him into an avid conservationist and foe of all people and activities that might despoil “the most spacious and delightful high pleasure-ground” he had ever seen. During that summer Muir studied the animals and weather of Yosemite, formulated theories on glaciation, and began molding his gospel of wilderness—the basic tenets of a philosophy of ecology and conservation that perceived wildness as a necessity for the sustenance of human existence.

Muir’s experiences in the Sierra high country spoiled him for any other lifestyle, and he soon quit his flatland work to return to Yosemite Valley. There he first worked at the sawmill run by James Hutchings, cutting up trees damaged by storms on the floor of Yosemite Valley. Nights he spent in the perusal of scientific books and further study of the flora and fauna of the region.

Before long Muir acquired a reputation in the scientific and literary world that blossomed as time went on. Important figures sought his company for long discussions on life and nature and the interdependency of the two. Muir’s strong arguments for glaciation as the origin of Yosemite Valley gained him a worthy antagonist also, in the person of Josiah Dwight Whitney, California state geologist. Whitney, a distinguished scientist with a national reputation, had written The Yosemite Guide-Book, a widely read and much-used work acclaimed for its clear explanation of the origin of the valley. Whitney was fully convinced that subsidence had formed Yosemite Valley and never hesitated to declare his disagreement with Muir’s theories. Undaunted and unintimidated, Muir spent much of his time in painstaking observation of the valley walls and floor and in careful documentation of his findings. In later years Muir would achieve recognition as one of the first scientists to perceive the importance of glacial erosion in the Sierra Nevada.169

[169. Although Muir was definitely on the right track in his glacial studies, he erred in some of his conclusions regarding the extent of glaciation in the Sierra. William R. Jones, former chief naturalist at Yosemite National Park, pointed out that glaciation in Yosemite Valley was responsible for probably only one-third of its visible depth. Originally the Merced River gouged out a V-shaped valley, which was later modified by three ice invasions. The present U-shaped valley, while typical of glacial sculpture, has a floor that is wide, flat, and alluviated, rather than rounded. This results from having subsequently been covered by a lake formed when a terminal moraine at the west end of the valley blocked drainage of the melting glacier. “The Sheepherder Versus the Geologist,” Audubon (January-February 1967): 48.]

Muir’s time in Yosemite and the Sierra high country furnished the grist for brilliant, voluminous articles on the origin, beauty, and use of America’s wilderness treasures. He spent the remainder of his life alerting people through books and lectures to the wonder and fragility of nature and the necessity of preserving it. His subjects included not just Yosemite but all wild areas.

c) John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson Join Forces

Much of Muir’s writing focused on the damage to the environment by sheepmen and lumbermen. After his marriage in 1880, Muir spent the next few years managing the family’s ranch in Martinez. But his concern for the future of Yosemite Valley and its surrounding high country rekindled in the late 1880s, and his conservation crusade demanding legislative interference to end the spoliation attracted a strong ally in Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine.

On visiting Yosemite Valley together in 1889, Muir and Johnson were appalled to find the valley despoiled by commercialism and exploitation in the form of fenced pastures, plowed hayfields, and unsightly development. Even Tuolumne Meadows, remote from the sordid moneymaking projects they perceived going on below, had not been spared the ravages of man’s unregulated occupation. Fires set to improve pasturage and unrestricted grazing had resulted in charred tree stumps; dusty, bare meadows; and “trampled, muddy streams. Upon leaving the high country where their flocks had consumed nearly all the vegetation, sheepmen habitually set fires to give the grass an opportunity for renewed growth the next season. That practice not only destroyed many fine trees and shrubs, but left nothing to retain the snow, whose rapid melting resulted in dry waterfalls during the height of the tourist season.

To Muir and Johnson it was obvious that state management had proven inadequate and would ultimately ruin forever the precious landscape of the Sierra. Neither the valley nor the surrounding forests, mountains, and meadows received adequate attention, enabling businessmen, cattlemen, sheepmen, and timber interests to rape the resources unopposed.

The discussions between Muir and Johnson ultimately touched upon the possibility of incorporating the peaks, meadows, and lakes of the high country into a national park, and Muir’s future writings focused on achievement of that goal. In two articles written for Century Magazine, “The Treasures of the Yosemite” (August 1890) and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park” (September 1890), Muir eloquently described the beauties of the region and the forces at work on their destruction, finally urging adoption of the proposal for their preservation as a national park. Muir and Johnson sought to protect as much as possible of the Yosemite ecosystem, noting the interdependence of the valley and the high country surrounding it. Those Century articles, an effort to sidestep the pettiness and intrigue of local politics and appeal to the nation as a whole, adequately fulfilled their purpose.

d) Response of the Commissioners to Charges of Mismanagement

In their report of 1889-90, the Yosemite commissioners responded to “the shameful and shameless attacks” upon their management of the valley. Referring particularly to Muir’s articles in Century Magazine, the commission pointed out that it had been trying to restore the valley floor to its condition as first noted by white men. At that time the valley was park-like in its lack of underbrush and small tree growth. By the late 1880s, the commissioners noted, at least one hundred trees were growing where only one had stood when whites entered the valley. Obviously, they maintained, charges of wholesale destruction of resources were nonsense.

The commissioners also argued that Nature was responsible for many of the changes on the valley floor. Whenever the Merced River flooded and cut a new channel, it created a new meadow by overflowing and killing the timber that lay in its floodplain. Meanwhile, young pines and other conifers sprang up in the old meadows in the angles from which the river retreated. This concurrent destruction and renewal was an ever-changing and continual process. The commission charged that pictures showing a large area of tree stumps that were published in the Century and as described indicative of the condition of the entire valley floor actually depicted only one area of pine thicket that had been killed by floodwaters and was being cleared. Rebutting criticism of widespread agricultural activity on the valley floor, the commission stated that the results of such experiments had never been encouraging. The sterile soil and short growing season lessened the chances for success of that particular enterprise.

In a final attempt to dispel any questions about their management of the Yosemite, the commissioners published in their report to the legislature a number of letters written by recent visitors to the valley giving their impressions of its condition and management. Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble had requested the letters in the course of an investigation of the charges of mismanagement ordered by the U. S. Senate. All the letters published were complimentary of the job being done by the commissioners under trying circumstances and with limited appropriations.

e) Comments on the Controversy

Debate over the success of state management of the Yosemite Grant raged for several years. The prolonged litigation over settlers’ claims in the valley initiated immediately after federal cession of the grant set the tone for the commissioners’ continuing tumultuous relationship with valley residents. Such actions as the later failure of the state legislature to back up the ruling of the Yosemite commissioners relative to the granting of exclusive road rights on the north side of the valley generated further ill feeling between the state and the general public. Throughout the early years of state management, well-publicized outbursts of public anger over commission decisions alternated with almost complete indifference to commission activities. Lack of funds and of a well-defined management policy ultimately handicapped the state administration so severely that in 1880 the state legislature replaced the first board of commissioners. Not until the next decade did public awareness mature to the point that closer attention was paid to state administrative procedures and the area’s future. It needs to be remembered also that conservation per se was in a nascent stage at this time and that issues such as scenic preservation and natural resource management were thoroughly unexplored. The problems that overdevelopment, lack of architectural planning, and overuse would bring had to be learned by experience. Also, the valley’s isolation from supply points made it seem logical and economically intelligent to grow food and provide a variety of commercial services on-site.

Because the purpose of ceding the Yosemite Valley to the state of California had been to preserve great natural wonders in their original condition, the allegations by 1890 of spoliation of the valley became particularly serious. Most Congressional members firmly believed that proof of the permission of such injuries would demand forfeiture of the state’s title to the grant. It is difficult to doubt the sincerity of concerned individuals such as John Muir, who claimed that destruction of Yosemite Valley accelerated every year. On the other hand, there must be some appreciation of the trying conditions under which the Board of Yosemite Commissioners was attempting to manage the valley and of the apparent sincerity and concern of at least some of the commissioners through the years.

Without question, trees were felled in certain places on the valley floor and other areas were cultivated. The extent of those activities and their impact on the beauty and grandeur of the valley remained open to question. Some of the state projects that precipitated criticism, such as the destruction of trees and shrubs surrounding the new Stoneman House and the erection of a dam at the lower end of Mirror Lake, were undertaken to improve the visitor experience. Those particular actions were designed to alleviate the mosquito problem, avoid the danger of falling branches around the hotel, and preserve the mirrorlike surface of a popular tourist attraction. Critics argued that such activity ran counter to the obligation undertaken by the state to preserve the natural landscape. Obviously, the aim of “pure” conservationists to preserve resources unimpaired, and the need of the state to encourage tourist-oriented development and the spending of money in order to support maintenance costs, were at odds, a dilemma that would continue to plague management efforts in the valley to the present day. On the other hand, the commissioners were nearly always applauded for judicious tree cutting to repair fire, storm, and flood damage; for restoring meadows by clearing trees and brush; and for reopening scenic vistas obscured by intrusive growth. The desirability, extent, and methods of natural resource management were then, as now, subject to controversy.

One of the more detailed letters concerning alleged spoliation of the valley published in the 1889-90 commission report came from George Davidson of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in San Francisco. Davidson suggested that in debating the character of “improvements” to the valley, no two engineers or commissions would agree. He also recognized that a restricted budget made it difficult to decide what should be done first or how to do it best. Furthermore, valley residents would alway disagree with visitors as to what “improvements” were needed, and personal feelings would always cloud professional opinions. These same problems have continued to the present day. Davidson perceived, as others had and would continue to note, that the principal defect in management of the valley, in addition to an insufficient budget, was the lack of agreement on future direction, resulting in a scarcity of any type of comprehensive planning. This absence of a plan for “improvement” meant a lack of organization not only in ‘the implementation of natural resource management objectives but also in engineering work, such as the building of better roads and paths, the improvement of trails, and the building of bridges. Davidson, as Hall had done, suggested the need for a thorough topographical survey of the valley and a study of the Merced River to enable the commission to propose a systematic and broad plan of development.170

[170. George Davidson to Secretary of the Interior, 8 November 1890, in Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1889-90 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890), 20-22.]

The burden imposed upon the Yosemite Board of Commissioners was startling when viewed in relation to the yearly appropriations received. One of the commission’s complaints in the 1890 report involved the recent decision of the state legislature to purchase the turnpike roads within the Yosemite Grant. Although commendable from the standpoint of reducing private claims in the valley, the act had added significantly to the cost of valley maintenance. Every year required a constant and considerable outlay of money for labor and material for the repair of roads, trails, and buildings damaged by floods, rockslides, and storms; constant fire protection for the valley and Big Tree Grove; the preservation of old trails and the construction of new trails, roads, and footpaths; and increases in guest accommodations and services.

It could be argued that the state of California met its obligations as well as could be expected under the stringent limitations of a low budget, increased visitation, changing land use, inadequate policing powers, and differing theories of land conservation. This does not preclude the obvious existence of corruption of a type that often pervades state politics and the probable truth of many of the charges of favoritism and ineptitude. The Southern Pacific Railroad, for instance, exerted a powerful influence on the state legislature and consequently on the Board of Yosemite Commissioners. Through the Washburn interests, it effectively controlled the transportation monopoly in Yosemite and kept a tight rein on valley affairs. On the whole, however, the Board of Yosemite Commissioners appears to have made an effort, with little professional direction, to preserve the integrity of the valley as a scenic wonder as much as consistent with the state’s intention of turning the valley into a source of revenue. The continuing diversity of opinion on the future level of development of the grant, further charges of corruption and inefficiency, and the state’s seeming inability to protect and maintain the Yosemite Grant in an appropriate manner would eventually lead to the inclusion of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove within a national park under federal control.

f) The Yosemite National Park Bill Passes Congress

Muir’s moving and influential articles in Century Magazine appeared just as Congress been debating legislation to establish a Yosemite National Park. The previous March, Representative William Vandever of Ventura County, California, had introduced a bill in the House of Representatives for protection of the Sierran forests. Political pressure had resulted in omission from the proposed Yosemite Reservation of some important areas of the High Sierra—most of the Tuolumne River watershed, Tuolumne Meadows, Tenaya Lake, and the Ritter Range.

Much public support for the original proposal had surfaced, however, varying from interests as powerful as the Southern Pacific Railroad, which envisioned a profitable tourist transportation business, to the President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison. When Muir’s articles appeared, they were widely quoted and circulated, and preservation of the entire Yosemite high country and indeed of all Sierran forests and meadows became of nationwide concern.

Renewed pressure resulted in submission of a second bill in place of the original, extending the Yosemite Reservation to again include all the vital high country areas. Backed by Secretary of the Interior Noble and President Harrison, the bill cleared both houses of Congress on 30 September and was signed into law by President Harrison on 1 October 1890, a legislative feat rarely accomplished in this day of lengthy debate and partisanship. The establishment of Sequoia National Park on 25 September and of Yosemite and General Grant (now Kings Canyon) national parks on 1 October saved much of the finest scenery and some of the noblest forests of the Sierra Nevada for the enjoyment of future generations.171

[171. On 30 September 1890, Representative Lewis E. Payson of Rhode Island [Illinois?] reported the substitute bill (H. R. 12187) from the Committee on Public Lands. Entitled “A bill to set apart a certain tract of land in the State of California as a forest reservation,” it granted exclusive control over the area to the Secretary of the Interior. In recommending passage of the bill, the committee report stated:
The preservation by the Government in all its original beauty of a region like this seems to the committee to be a duty to the present and to future generations. The rapid increase of population and the resulting destruction of natural objects make it incumbent on the Government in so far as may be to preserve the wonders and beauties of our country from injury and destruction, in order that they may afford pleasure as well as instruction to the people.

Congressional Record—House, 30 September 1890, 10752.]

g) Comments on the Preservation Movement and Establishment of Yosemite National Park

The law enacted in 1890 set aside an area larger than the present national park as “reserved forest lands”—1,400 square miles surrounding and connecting the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree

Illustration 42.
Map of Yosemite Valley, August 1890.
From Muir, “The Proposed Yosemite National Park—Treasures & Features,” 1890.

[click to enlarge]

Grove units of the state-run Yosemite Grant dating from 1864. The act provided that nothing in it should be construed as in any way affecting the original grant to the state of California, over which the Secretary of the Interior had no authority or control.

The successful attempt by John Muir and R. U. Johnson to establish a national park in the Yosemite high country had collided with a variety of well-entrenched private and commercial interests. The Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, which had a monopoly on valley transportation services and exerted great influence over the Board of Yosemite Commissioners; various cattlemen, sheepmen, homesteaders, and lumbermen with patented property in the Yosemite high country; and the politically minded state commissioners—all feared a strong government presence exerting undue control over their lives and activities.

On the other hand, some groups, such as the Southern Pacific Railroad, however, aided the preservation cause on behalf of their interests in boosting tourism. California farmers were concerned with the protection of watersheds for agricultural purposes. In addition, the two men found support among a small constituency interested in protection and preservation of the environment. Before the heyday of utilitarian conservation and scientific management of resources, the preservation movement consisted primarily of idealists, enthusiasts with a love of the outdoors but lacking the training and knowledge that would enable them to better understand the complexities of nature. Only gradually had those people begun to comprehend the arguments of Muir and Olmsted that entire related environments needed protection, including the commonplace features of an area as well as the spectacular and unique. It would be years before the concept of interdependent ecosystems and of wilderness preservation as a justification for the establishment of parks would take hold.

At this time, despite the use being made of the high country by several groups, it still appeared to be relatively useless because of its isolation and ruggedness. There was no way of knowing that before long the arrival of railroads would make the Yosemite high country’s resources extremely valuable and lead to a variety of political maneuvering to reduce the size of the new national park to exclude rich timber and mineral lands.

It will be interesting to note as the Yosemite story continues that despite their seemingly disparate interests at times today, conservationists and park managers succeeded in working alongside each other with little friction in the early years. Indeed parks flourished under their combined patronage. Both groups, in their zeal to find support for a national park system, recognized the advantages of developing tourism and commercial recreation. As long as crowds remained small and impact on the resources minimal, conservationist aims remained compatible with park use. Not until the twentieth century would preservationists become dismayed by the seeming impossibility of promoting park use without an adverse impact on natural resources and consequent physical deterioration of park facilities and the environment. Even worse, growing commercialism would threaten to overshadow the basic purpose of parks as areas of relaxation and contemplation.

In 1890, however, such concerns loomed far in the future. Preservationists only hoped that establishment of the larger national park around Yosemite Valley would ensure the survival of the valley’s resources by protecting the high mountain meadow drainage basins and forests from the ravages of overgrazing and indiscriminate logging. Additionally, and by no means of lesser importance in their eyes, the act created a new mountain preserve of unparalleled natural beauty for the enjoyment of all people.

CHAPTER III. ADMINISTRATION OF THE YOSEMITE GRANT AND YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, 1890-1905

A. The U. S. Army Enters Yosemite 311
1. The U. S. Army Becomes the Regulatory force in the New California Parks 311
2. Aspects of Military Management 312
3. Contributions of the U. S. Army to the Present National Park System 318
B. Trails, bridges, and Roads 320
1. Trails and bridges 320
a) Pre-Army Trail System 320
b) Blazes 321
c) Army Troops Begin Improving routes 325
2. Toll Roads 341
C. Construction and Development 349
1. State of California 349
a) Pavilion 349
b) Powerhouse 349
2. Concession Operations 349
a) Wawona Hotel 349
b) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon 350
c) Camp Curry 351
d) Degnan Bakery 352
e) Fiske Studio 352
f) Foley Studio 352
g) Jorgensen Studio 353
h) Boysen Studio 353
i) Best Studio 354
j) Studio of the Three Arrows 354
3. Sierra Club 354
a) Creation of Club 354
b) LeConte Lodge 357
4. U. S. Army 359
a) New Camp buildings 359
b) Arboretum 360

D. Natural Resource Management 365
1. Continuing Charges of Spoliation of Yosemite Valley 365
2. The Sheep Problem 368
a) The Sheep industry in the 1890s 368
b) Army Measures to Combat Trespassing 370
3. Grazing on Park Lands 372
4. Poaching 373
5. Fish Planting 374
6. Forest Management 377
7. Stream Flow Measurements in Yosemite Valley 377
8. Origins of a Major Conservation Battle 380
a) Initiation of the Hetch Hetchy Project 380
b) The Secretary of the interior Denies Mayor Phelan‘s Applications 385

E. A New Transportation Era Begins 388
1. Railroad Lines to Yosemite 388
a) Yosemite Short Line Railway Company 388
b) Yosemite Valley Railroad 389

F. Private Lands and boundary Changes 391
G. Recession of the Yosemite Grant 402
H. Refocus of Park Administration 412

A. The U. S. Army Enters Yosemite

1. The U. S. Army Becomes the Regulatory Force in the New California Parks

Acts of Congress approved 25 September and 1 October 1890 set aside three separate tracts of land in the state of California. The statutes required the Secretary of the Interior, who had exclusive control over the properties, to publish rules and regulations for the preservation from injury of all timber, mineral deposits, and natural curiosities or wonders. He also had to provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game in the park and against their capture for either merchandising or profit, as well as remove all trespassers.

With the establishment of Yellowstone in 1872 and of Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks in 1890, the federal government attempted to initiate a system of national preserves for public use and enjoyment. The 1864 act establishing the Yosemite Grant, however, legislated no “national” laws or appropriations to ensure the execution of the Secretary of Interior’s new and complex responsibilities. In addition, Congress immediately returned to more important Civil War matters without addressing the need for a strict regulatory agent to patrol boundaries, guard the forests and streams, enforce rules and regulations, and generally protect government interests.

Without either a legal system, annual appropriations, or the necessary administrative facilities to accomplish the purposes set forth in the laws, the Secretary of the Interior advised the President of the United States on 4 December 1890 that the best arrangement for preventing timber cutting, sheep herding, trespassing, and spoliation would be to station a troop of cavalry in Yosemite and another in Sequoia to administer it and General Grant. The President approved instituting in those areas an administration similar to that in Yellowstone, and army detachments occupied those parks during part of every year after 1891; until 1900 they operated without congressional sanction.

The precedent for military management of the California parks had been set at Yellowstone National Park. In the first years after establishment of that area, the Department of the Interior had been helpless in preventing spoliation, the civilian administrators having neither the physical nor the legal force to prevent depredations. Although conditions became so appalling that some pessimists called for abandoning this first formal federal experiment in conservation, a few staunch supporters of the idea managed to get a clause included in the Sundry Civil Act of 3 March 1883 that authorized the Secretary of the Interior to request the Secretary of War for troops for the protection and preservation of the park if needed.

In 1886, after Congress refused to appropriate money for Yellowstone’s administration, the Secretary of the Interior did ask the Secretary of War for troops of cavalry to protect the area. That system of military management was so effective that it was later extended to the Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia national parks, without a legal basis, however, because the 3 March act did not legally apply to later parks. The military administration of those four parks comprises a unique period in our history, because the army maintained and protected those lands for years without legal sanction or official law enforcement procedures. The army successfully functioned as a civil government—a role never previously or since required of it.

2. Aspects of Military Management

Troops protected and patrolled the California parks only during the summer months, from May to October, in the hopes that the heavy snows of winter would deter intrusion by trespassers during that time. Two troops of cavalry served in the three parks, leaving the Presidio of San Francisco in early May and arriving in the parks two weeks later after an overland march of 250 miles. One troop went south to patrol Sequoia and General Grant parks, the other stayed in Yosemite. The officer in charge of the southern detachment became acting superintendent of the Sequoia National Park, the other officer being designated acting superintendent of the Yosemite National Park. Both submitted annual reports to the Secretary of the Interior. The army never established a permanent military post at Yosemite, only a temporary summer headquarters on the southern boundary near Wawona and a semipermanent post later in Yosemite Valley.

When U. S. troops first occupied the three California parks in 1891, they found conditions very similar to those in Yellowstone. Boundaries were unmarked, roads and trails were practically nonexistent, and people had -for years been availing themselves of hunting, fishing, mining, and grazing opportunities on those vast public lands. The area of army responsibility in Yosemite comprised a huge, relatively uncharted wilderness easily penetrated by trespassers. The cavalry units assigned to Camp A. E. Wood received few instructions on problem solving and little money with which to work. Usually army officers served only one season as acting superintendent and it was difficult within that time to become well acquainted with the park and its needs. After 1897 a new acting superintendent was appointed each year. During one or two periods, as many as three different acting superintendents served within a year. The resulting lack of continuity in policy and in interpretation of the rules, and the fact that each new superintendent had only begun to learn his duties by the time he left, were objectionable features of this system of management. In the absence of a penal code, military commanders often resorted to ingenious expedients and cunning contrivances as a substitute for legal methods.

After Congress provided a legal structure. for Yellowstone Park in 1894, but failed to make the act applicable to the California parks, pleas by California superintendent for additional legislation became more insistent. The Secretary of the Interior forwarded those requests in each of his annual reports to Congress, with no affect. The illegal aspects of using U. S. troops to perform civil duty surfaced again in 1896, when the Secretary of War questioned the Secretary of the Interior’s routine

Illustration 43.
Yosemite Valley, 1892.
Published by the Edinburgh Geographical Institute.

[click to enlarge]

request for a military detail. The Secretary of the Interior convinced him that the precedent of five years practice provided sufficient authority for such procedure.

For the duration of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Secretary of War suspended the annual assignment of troops to the parks. During that time a civilian, J. W. Zevely, special inspector for the Department of the Interior, nominally protected the parks. As acting superintendent, he immediately appointed eleven men as forest agents to patrol the park. Four special agents of the General Land Office, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, also reported to Zevely for duty. Two of them were each placed in charge of a squad of men in Yosemite and two were dispatched to Sequoia and General Grant parks. Those civilians continued the army’s methods of expelling trespassers, extinguishing fires, and confiscating firearms.

On 1 September army personnel—Capt. Joseph E. Caine and the First Utah Volunteer Cavalry—returned to Yosemite. After those troops left in the fall, funds were found to appoint Archie O. Leonard, early guide and pack train boss in the area, and Charles T. Leidig, first white boy born in Yosemite Valley, as the first official civilian rangers for the park, with direct charge of park matters. They remained in Yosemite throughout the winter and for several years thereafter. During that time they willingly assisted the army troops and became indispensable in the administration of affairs in the park. Meanwhile, opposition to the extra-legal military administration was rising on several quarters and questions mounting in the War Department regarding the legal authorization for such an employment of the army.

Congress became the arbiter of the matter, and by act of 6 June 1900 authorized and directed the Secretary of War, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior, to detail troops to prevent trespassing for any of the purposes declared by the statute to be unlawful. The presence of troops in the California parks finally became legal.

The act of Congress approved 6 February 1905 authorized all persons employed in forest reserves and national parks to make arrests for the violation of rules and regulations. Still no real penalties existed other than expulsion, so that this act was only a beginning. In 1910 the acting superintendents of the California parks appended to the published rules and regulations of Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks an excerpt from an act designed to protect Indian reservations and allotments. The portion cited provided a fine and imprisonment for anyone cutting trees or leaving a fire burning upon land reserved by the U. S. for public use. This remained the only piece of punitive legislation available during the military administration of the California parks.

After the recession to the federal government of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1905, military headquarters moved to a central location in Yosemite Valley and military protection extended throughout the valley and high country. The army continued to detail troops to Sequoia and Yosemite until 1914, when a force of civilian rangers replaced them upon the insistence of the military commanders that conditions had materially altered since the establisment of the parks.

During the twenty-three years between 1891 and 1914, a succession of eighteen army officers (see Appendix E) and various cavalry units functioned admirably as guardians of the meadows, forests, and animal life of Yosemite. The military commanders chosen to perform nonmilitary duties in the parks were men of high caliber who took their trust seriously. Some officers truly distinguished themselves—among them Maj. Harry C. Benson and Maj. William W. Forsyth. Benson, especially, is renowned for his explorations, map making, fish planting, and determination to end the encroachments of sheepmen and cattlemen. He was also the guiding force behind trail location and construction.

Several individuals carried the army tradition into the later civilian administration of the park. Gabriel Sovulewski first came to Yosemite in 1895 as Quartermaster Sergeant with the army. Honorably discharged after service in the Phillipine Islands in 1898, he worked as a civilian guide and packer in Yosemite in 1901. In 1906 he returned as park supervisor and looked after park interests during the winter. He also served as acting superintendent during the early years of civilian administration from 1914 to 1916. Many of the park’s trails and roads were built under his supervision. Subordinate officers and enlisted men, such as Lt. N. F. McClure, also made important contributions in backcountry exploration and map making, while others helped stock the Yosemite rivers and streams with trout. Place-names throughout the High Sierra commemorate many of those army officers and men.

3. Contributions of the U. S. Army to the Present National Park System

The U. S. Army began its work in the California parks during a relatively calm period in world affairs. As a result, troops were regarded less as a combative force than as a peacetime regulatory agent to be called upon in times of need. Initially, a hostile neighboring population, accustomed to free use of public land for grazing, hunting, lumbering, and mining, resented curtailment of those privileges in Yosemite, and in their resentment attempted in every way possible to circumvent the authorities. Attitudes gradually changed through the years, however, and more people became firm believers in preservation and protection of resources through the establishment of national parks.

The United States Army filled a void in early park administration that could not be filled any other way. To a large degree army officers developed the park policy inherited and later refined by the National Park Service. More important, perhaps, without benefit of a well-defined legal system and hampered by the absence of punitive legislation, army troops saved Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks from destruction just as they had Yellowstone. At the same time, they managed to instill in the surrounding populace a regard for conservation of America’s natural resources.

Park duty often involved incurring the emnity of homesteaders and cattlemen and sheepmen and occasional hostility from the state Guardian and commissioners. Local interests in the counties surrounding the park affected by the creation of federal forest reservations resented losing thousands of acres of taxable land and valuable timber and mining rights. Relations between them and the various park administrators became more and more strained over the years. Despite the difficulties, park details were not an unattractive burden for either army officers or men. The former relished the relatively autonomous and independent command, and the men enjoyed the pleasant, summer-long relief from routine army duties. Troops also encountered less discipline, drill, and restraint. They became good field soldiers with six months of intensive field training to their credit at the end of each year.

Military authorities made a major contribution toward the conservation of natural resources, managing to convince the public, despite their determined enforcement of regulations by often unorthodox and severe methods, that preservation was necessary and even advantageous. Communities around the parks gradually began to favor strict compliance with the rules, convinced by the acting superintendents of the recreational and economic advantages of park existence.

As their legacy to America’s national parks, the military developed workable administrative procedures; made physical improvements, including the construction of roads, trails, bridges, campgrounds, and administrative buildings; formulated policies on natural resource management, conservation, and protection, and on private lands and leasing; initiated interpretive and naturalist programs; collected and analyzed scientific data; thwarted actions inimical to the interests of the parks; and protected them against the caprices of politicians and wanton destruction by merchants and businessmen. The U. S. Cavalry protected the beginnings of the National Park System when no other source of protection was feasible or available. When ultimately the park ideal gained a foothold and conservation became a natural part of the nation’s thinking, the presence of a military force became inappropriate. At that time, the transition from the military administration to a civil one was less abrupt because many military personnel accepted discharges from the army and became the professional cadre around which the first civilian ranger force formed.

Conditions in Yellowstone had ultimately forced the enactment of a comprehensive organic law for its government, to protect the resources and punish criminals. By the early 1900s such conditions as existed in Yellowstone prior to that ‘legislation appeared in Yosemite, resulting in the inability of the military to efficiently enforce the rules and regulations the Interior Department prescribed. The interests of all concerned, but especially those of the United States, required the enactment of laws suitable for the dignified and orderly government of the parks. Continued military government was not perceived to be the final answer for Yosemite any more than it had been for Yellowstone. Parks required civil administration, which could be most effectively and appropriately provided by the enforcement of suitable laws through an adequate administrative system by qualified civil officials.1

[1. Good information on early army administration of America’s national parks is found in Harold Duane Hampton, “Conservation and Cavalry: A Study of the Role of the United States Army in the Development of a National Park System, 1886-1917,” Ph. D. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1965, which has been used as a source for some of the statements in this section. Also see Hampton, How the U. S. Cavalry Saved Our National Parks (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971). ]

B. Trails, Bridges, and Roads

1. Trails and Bridges

a) Pre-Army Trail System

Indian trails connecting Wawona, Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, and the Sierra uplands comprised the most traveled routes in the Yosemite region when the army took charge. The first detachments found only a few marked trails beyond the rim of Yosemite Valley. Those rough routes had been established first by Indians and then slightly improved by packers transporting goods across the Sierra to miners on the east side, by wandering stock, cattlemen, and miners, and by sheepherders and the packtrains supplying them. The army improved and blazed those routes during their patrols, but also had to forge new ones. Abandonment or rerouting of old trails sometimes became necessary to avoid slides, to improve grades, or to shorten distances. Private contractors constructed many of the new trails as the Interior Department made appropriations available, but army engineers and army labor planned and constructed most of the road and trail systems during those early days. Funds for the construction and repair of trails first became available in 1899, with annual appropriations then following regularly. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Garrard of the Fourteenth Cavalry was the first acting superintendent (1903) who personally supervised trail construction.

The existing trail system in the Yosemite backcountry had its inception in the early U. S. Army patrol work, with most of the main features of today’s system laid down by 1914. During the army administration, the geography of the Yosemite wilderness was transferred to paper and not simply a part of oral tradition. Because cavalry units assigned to the park changed each year, routes had to be clearly established and mapped early in the military administration to avoid duplication of effort. One interesting aspect of the army’s surveying and mapwork is that it probably caused the loss of many original place names. Early penetrators of the wilderness had bestowed names on certain areas and topographical features that reflected events concerning its discovery or personal experiences involving that site. Those had been in common usage for years, but were gradually replaced in the 1890s with names reflecting new experiences and a new authority. Because of their placement on paper, those new designations became permanent references to particular areas.2

[ 2. James B. Snyder, “Yosemite Wilderness—An Overview,” n.d., typescript, 4 pages, section of draft of Yosemite Wilderness Management Plan, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. ]

b) Blazes

A valuable group of resources within Yosemite National Park’s backcountry are the blazes left by individuals who used the

Illustration 44.
Outline map of Yosemite Valley.
From Hutchings, Yo Semite Valley and the Big Trees, 1894.

[click to enlarge]

backcountry in a variety of ways. Styles range from the vertical lens of sheepherders () to the uppercase ‘T’ of the military to the more recent U. S. Forest Service “i”. Some wags stoutly maintained that the ‘T’ was used as [the] symbol so that the Irishmen in the army would know that it was a tree!”3 Although the early sheepherder blazes marked trails and grazing areas, some figures and designs appear to be simply efforts to pass the time. The army used the T mark between 1890 and 1914, possibly ending as early as 1906, to aid backcountry patrols, especially after snowfalls. After that time Gabriel Sovulewski, in charge of trail work, used a diamond-shaped blaze, which was used into the 1930s until he retired. Some examples of turn-of-the-century crossed sabers also remain in the backcountry. Some blazes found have a deep vertical slash in the center with a later crossbar forming a T, within a^4 later diamond shape. Initials have also been found. The earliest blaze in the park is on the Mono Trail and dates from 1857.5 Blazes occur about five feet up on trees, usually lodgepole pines. After cutting, the bark, in healing the wound, curled over and thickened, accentuating the blaze to some degree. Because the marks have not been kept cleared of new growth, many have become obscured.

[3. Allan (Shields?) to Keith (Trexler?), 29 July (1959-60?), Yosemite-Trails, Y-8, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; John Mahoney to Doug Hubbard, 20 August 1958, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

[4. Scott Carpenter, Review of Historic Resource Study, 1986, 5.]

[5. Jim Snyder, Historic Resource Study review comments, 1986, 21.]

These blazes are an interesting and significant reminder of undocumented backcountry grazing and mining operations and trailblazing. They indicate areas of concentration as well as early trail marking and map making activities within the park. Presently they are threatened by new wildfire let-burn policies. Many of the earlier sheepherder blazes may also have cultural significance, because most of the carvers were foreign born. Examples of the different types of blazes should be preserved. A record of their locations would be a useful guide to early trails in the region. Probably every year marked trees are dying and falling, resulting in the loss of these symbols of significant exploration and land use.

c) Army Troops Begin Improving Routes

Captain Abram Epperson Wood, commanding Company I, Fourth Cavalry, became the first acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park in 1891 and continued in that position until 1894. Establishing a base camp on the South Fork of the Merced Rivei—later referred to as Camp A. E. Wood—about one mile west of and on’ the opposite bank from the Wawona Hotel, the new administrator proceeded to tackle Yosemite’s problems. He had not been informed of his duties before his arrival, nor were maps of the area provided, necessitating that he purchase a small township map of the park printed in San Francisco so that he could locate the park boundaries! Once he had determined the boundaries, Wood periodically detached units to patrol them for trespassing cattle and sheep.

The road of greatest use to army troops patrolling the park was the “Big Oak Flat and Tioga Road,” which left the Big Oak Flat Road about five miles into the park and continued east to the Sierra crest. Although not much used for the two or three years prior to the army’s arrival and obstructed with fallen trees and washouts, it remained a good mounted trail. Wood’s troops also frequently utilized the section of the Mono Trail that began at Wawona, wound up along the South Fork of the Merced, turned northeast probably in the vicinity of Alder Creek, crossed the main Merced River just above Nevada Fall, and then dropped over the divide between it and the Tuolumne River, crossing the latter at Tuolumne Meadows and then proceeding east over the summit through Bloody Canyon.

Three other trails often served patrol purposes: the Virginia Trail, entering the park probably near Virginia Canyon and heading down toward the Tuolumne River at the lower end of Tuolumne Meadows; a trail from Mount Conness to Tuolumne Meadows; and one

Illustration 45.
Diamond and T blazes on lodgepole pine, Ostrander Lake Trail.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

entering the park from the headwaters of Bull Creek and reaching the Merced River about where the western boundary of the park crossed it. That trail then passed up the river to join the Coulterville and Yosemite Road where it entered the foot of the valley.

The track from Mariposa to Hite’s Cove and on into the valley was difficult and seldom used. The army did blaze a few lesser trails in the park to preserve them because they facilitated communications and police work. They mainly comprised old stock trails that would be obliterated as grazing was phased out unless the army accomplished preservation work. One of the most pressing needs of the army was a trail system consisting of a route running around the park inside the boundaries, with other trails branching off to important points, and including log bridges over main streams.

By 1894 the Lower Iron Bridge across the Merced River near where the Big Oak Flat Road entered the valley still had not been rebuilt after collapsing from snow loads years before. That situation forced travelers to follow along the north side of the valley to the Upper Iron Bridge spanning the river almost directly opposite Yosemite Fall. Additionally, Lt. Col. S. B. M. Young, Fourth Cavalry, acting superintendent in 1896, stated that the bridge for saddle and pack animals over the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley needed to be repaired or abandoned. That structure, of log stringers supported on timber cribs filled with rock and floored with split timber, served as the only means of communication with the section north of the Tuolumne River until August, when the fords became passable. Young also reported the need for two log bridges enabling mounted patrols and pack animals to pass through the southeast section of the park early in the season. Large rocks that covered the streambeds in that region, coupled with strong spring currents, made fording almost impossible.6

[6. S. B. M. Young, Lt. Col, Fourth Cavalry, Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the Interior, 1896 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896), 8.]

An act of Congress approved 1899 appropriated $4,000 for the protection of the park and the construction of bridges, fencing, trails, and the improvement of roads other than toll roads. Contracts were immediately entered into for the construction of a bridge across the Merced River and for the repair of a trail from the bridge to its connection with the Coulterville wagon road, a distance of fourteen miles.

In 1901 a new trail, to Dewey Point, followed the south rim of the valley from near Sentinel Dome via The Fissures, across Bridalveil Creek some distance back of Bridalveil Fall, then on to Dewey and Stanford points and the stage road at Fort Monroe. At that time the valley floor contained twenty miles of carriage road and twenty-four miles of saddle trails.7

[7. D. J. Foley, Yosemite Souvenir and Guide (Yosemite, Calif.: “Tourist” Studio-office, 1901), 19, 24, 45, 54.]

By the end of fiscal year 1901, a contractor had nearly completed a bridge over Wet Gulch (exact location unknown), and Acting Superintendent L. A. Craig, Major, Fifteenth Cavalry, recommended repair and/or construction of the following trails and roads:

repair of trail from head of Chilnualna Fall to Devils Post Pile, 38 miles;

construction of trail from Clouds Rest trail to Lake Merced, 5 miles;

repair of trail from Tiltill trail east side of Rancheria Creek to “The Sink” (not located on modern maps, but see McClure’s 1896 map, Illustrations 43-45), 10 miles;

repair of trail from Poopenaut Valley to Lake Eleanor, 9 miles;

repair of trail from headwaters of San Joaquin River to head of Bloody Canyon, 30 miles;

repair of trail from Lake Tenaya to White Cascades on Tuolumne River, 9 miles;

repair of trail from Lake Eleanor to Lake Vernon, 11 miles;

repair of trail from Lake Vernon to Tiltill Valley, 8 miles;

construction of bridge over Tuolumne River near Lembert’s Soda Springs to be used by saddle and pack animals; and

construction of trail from Lake Ostrander to Crescent Lake, 7 miles.8

[8. L. A. Craig, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 10 October 1901, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1901. Miscellaneous Reports. Part L Bureau Officers, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901), 552-54.]
Illustrations 46-48. “Map of the Yosemite National Park Prepared for Use of U. S. Troops by N. F. McClure, 1st Lieut., 5th Cavalry, March, 1896.” This map is especially useful for locating early place-names and structures. These three copies show wagon roads, army patrol posts, direction and extent of patrols, routes used by packtrains supplying the posts, and cattle- and sheep-grazing areas. From Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

During fiscal year 1902, the army contracted for construction of several trails:

from Alder Creek to Peregoy Meadow,
from Devils Post Pile to Bloody Canyon,
from Mono Meadow to Lembert’s Soda Springs,
from Ostrander Lake to Crescent Lake,
from Lake Eleanor to Lake Vernon, and
from Lake Vernon to Tiltill Valley.

A bridge was also built over the Tuolumne River near Lembert’s Soda Springs.9

[9. O. L. Hein, Major, Third U. S. Cavalry, Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park hn California to the Secretary of the Interior, 1902 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), 4.]

During the 1903 season, the establishment of permanent patrolling stations, manned by four to six men each, enabled troops to more thoroughly guard and patrol the park. Captain Benson and the civilian rangers advising him had suggested this system. Subposts, each consisting of one noncommissioned officer and from three to nine privates, were established at Little Jackass, Agnew’s, Lembert’s Soda Springs, Return Creek (above Tuolumne Meadows), in Hetch Hetchy Valley, at Crocker’s, and at Buck Camp.10 Troops serving at those substations were relieved once a month. Detachment commanders made daily patrols to cover all approaches to the park and all territory where sheepmen and poachers might be found. An officer’s patrol visited and inspected each substation at least once a month.

[10. Little Jackass Meadow was part of Yosemite National Park from 1890 to 1905. Its name was changed to Soldier Meadow in 1922. Theodore C. Agnew, a miner, settled in the meadow bearing his name, north of Devils Postpile NM, in 1877. Agnew guided army troops patrolling the park. Peter Browning, Place Names of the Sierra Nevada (Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1986), 2, 204.]

The building and repairing of trails progressed well during 1903 and all contract work was completed except for the trail from The Sink to Rodgers Lake. Soldiers used axes, hatchets, and saws to open up about sixty miles of trail that had become overgrown or blocked by fallen trees. Expenditures had been made on trails from Poopenaut Valley to Lake Eleanor, from Tenaya Lake via McGee Lake to Smoky Jack Meadows (named for sheepman John Connell), from Rancheria Creek to The Sink, from the west summit of the North Fork of the San Joaquin River to Kings Creek and for a bridge across that river, from near Upper Chilnualna Fall to Johnson and Chiquito lakes, from Rancheria bridge connecting with the Poopenaut trail to Lake Eleanor, and from The Sink to Rodgers Lake. Other work that needed to be done included repairing and tarring the two suspension bridges in the valley of the Merced River near Hennessey’s ranch site.11

[11. Jos. Garrard, Lt. Col., Fourteenth Cavalry, Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park in California to the Secretary of the Interior, 1903 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), 4-5, 7-8.]

In the first part of the 1904 season, the army again established patrol posts, divided into eastern and western sections, with an officer in command of each. The commander of the eastern one took post at Soda Springs, the commander of the western section remained at Camp A. E. Wood. Each section commander inspected each of his posts at least once during his tour. After all posts had been set up, the patrols of adjoining posts were required to meet and exchange mail or messages every week, resulting in a complete circuit of patrols from the first post back to Camp Wood. Each post patrolled to its front beyond the line of the reservation.

Because small numbers of cattle had been found trespassing in the park, the troops constructed an impoundment corral at Big Oak Flats, near T. H. Carlin’s place on the South Fork of the Tuolumne River. Acting Superintendent Maj. John Bigelow, Jr., requested authority to grant a permit for cattle grazing on government land because he believed that cattle grazing helped diminish forest fires, that cattle trails served as useful fire guards, and that the presence of cattle in the park assured the help of cattlemen and herders in preventing and extinguishing forest fires. He also argued that cattle ranging on government land would lead to the fencing in of the patented lands to exclude those cattle and would thus aid in defining more clearly the metes and bounds of those lands. Bigelow also stated that “cattle are a picturesque feature of the landscape, relieving the monotony of wastes of grass and wood.”12 The only work accomplished on roads or trails during that time involved construction by the troops of a road from the Glacier Point road to Mono Meadow.

[12. John Bigelow, Jr., Major, Ninth Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 June 1904, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1904. Miscellaneous Reports. Part L Bureau Officers, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 380-81.]

Expenditures incurred up to 15 September 1904 included repairing the trail from Rodgers Lake to Smoky Jack Meadow, constructing a trail from Lembert’s Soda Springs to the Palmer trail, repairing parts of the trail from Hog Ranch to Hetch Hetchy, constructing a trail from Hopkins’s place (Hopkins Meadow—roughly the junction of the Sunrise and Highwater trails below Clouds Rest) to Merced Lake, repairing the trail from Crescent Lake to Johnson Lake, repairing the trail from Chilnualna Fall to its junction with the trail from the “target range,” tarring the suspension bridges over the Merced River and Wet Gulch, and constructing a footbridge over the South Fork of the Merced River near Camp Wood.

On 30 April 1905, Capt. H. C. Benson, Fourth Cavalry, became acting superintendent and reestablished headquarters at Camp A. E. Wood and outposts for patrol purposes in outlying districts—at Crane Flat, Hetch Hetchy Valley, Jack Main Canyon, Aspen Valley, Merced Lake, Soda Springs, and Matterhorn Canyon.

Trails constructed or improved during 1905 led
from a point on the Lake Vernon-Hay Stack Peak trail eastward into Jack Main Canyon and out from Tiltill Mountain to Tiltill Valley;

from a point near Breeze Lakes, via Fernandez Pass and the headwaters of Granite Creek, to Post Peak, Isberg Pass, and down the east bank of the Merced River to Merced Lake;

from a point on the above trail in the McClure Fork Canyon northeastwardly via Vogelsang Peak, Fletcher Lake, and Tuolumne Pass to the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne where Ireland Creek empties into it; and

from a point in Jack Main Canyon, where the trail from Tiltill Mountain reaches the canyon floor, northeast along the east bank of Fall River, up Jack Main Canyon.

Work on these trails proved very difficult. The new paths were well constructed, however, and their entire lengths could be ridden on horseback. Because all the trails ran at high altitudes, travelers received spectacular views of the park. Other construction included a bridge across Rancheria Creek.

2. Toll Roads

The future of the four toll roads into Yosemite Valley, which passed through the national park, quickly became a topic of discussion among early army administrators. Because the initial road construction had been costly and the severe winters entailed expensive repairs each spring, the various road companies charged high toll rates for passage. To many visitors the payment of tolls entailed an economic hardship when added to the exorbitant prices they had to pay for hay and grain in the valley. In addition, tolls seemed incompatible with the concept of a national resort and recreation area open to all, rich and poor alike. The army believed that federal acquisition of those roads would encourage more public use of the park and would enable maintaining them in proper condition to facilitate the supply of army troops and the discharge of their duties in enforcing the rules and regulations of the park.

Because the roads had been built under the authority of both national and state law, the owners could not be deprived of their property except upon reasonable compensation. The Secretary of the Interior had the power to regulate, but not to prohibit, the taking of tolls on roads in the national park outside of Yosemite Valley. The absolute prohibition by the federal government of levying tolls would be tantamount to confiscation and illegal. The answer to the problem seemed to be appropriate legislation providing for their acquisition and the settlement of any legal claims of the road companies.13

[13. Assistant Attorney General to the Secretary of the Interior, 7 December 1891, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 12-14.]

On 18 February 1892, Secretary of the Interior John Noble sent a letter to A. G. Speer, special agent of the General Land Office in San Francisco. In that communication Noble stated that the Interior Department wished to foster a system of roads and transportation and hotel accommodations that would make visitor excursions to the park as agreeable as possible. At the same time, the department would attempt to be as liberal as possible to all private interests as was compatible with the purposes of Congress in establishing the park.

To that end, Noble directed Speer to consult with Capt. Abram Wood as soon as possible and obtain information on the condition, origin, and right of franchise of all the toll roads within the park as well as on their convenience and use to the public. Noble also requested that Speer meet with the various owners and managers of the toll roads to enable them to make their claims to recognition by the Department of the Interior.

In the summer of 1892, Capt. John S. Stidger, a special agent from the General Land Office, and Maj. Eugene F. Weigel joined Speer and Wood in that endeavor, with Weigel, a special land inspector of the Interior Department, also detailed to investigate the condition of affairs in Yosemite Valley. On 24 September Speer was relieved of official duty and Captain Stidger directed to continue the work relating to the toll roads with Weigel and Wood. In his 3 October 1892 report to Noble concerning Yosemite Valley, Weigel noted that the toll roads in and outside of the park were very annoying to travelers and recommended that the federal government acquire all such roads within the limits of the national park.

On 21 October 1892 representatives of the four toll roads—the Big Oak Flat and Yosemite Road, the Coulterville and Yosemite Road, the Great Sierra Wagon Road, and the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Road—met Weigel, Wood, and Stidger at the U. S. Land Office in San Francisco and presented them with statements from the corporations owning those roads, showing their condition, franchise rights, length, cost, rates of toll, and so forth. In his report to Noble of 15 November Stidger suggested that the United States government follow the example set by the state of California and purchase and open to free use all the roads within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. Congressional representatives from California and the Executive Committee of the Yosemite Board of Commissioners also made pleas to that end, citing federal money that had been appropriated for roads and bridges at Yellowstone National Park and at the National Military Park embracing the Chickamauga and Chattanooga battlefields.14

[14. Senators and Representatives in the U. S. Congress from California to the Honorable Hoke Smith, Secretary of the Interior, ca. 16 October 1895, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-7.]

House bill 7872 and Senate bill 3675, relative to the purchase and opening to free traffic of the four private toll roads in Yosemite National Park and to the building of other necessary new roads by the government, were introduced in the Fifty-fifth Congress. The House referred the former to the Committee on Public Lands, which reported favorably on it and recommended passage by the House of Representatives. The pressure of business in the House was such that neither Senate bill 3675, which had passed the Senate, nor House bill 7872 could be reached, and neither was passed by the Fifty-fifth Congress.

A substitute measure, however, in the form of an amendment to the “Act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government,” passed on 3 March 1899. That provision, in addition to providing $4,000 as mentioned earlier for the protection of the park and for specific construction and improvement work, also provided that the Secretary of War expend some of the money to appoint three commissioners to examine and collect data on the existing toll roads; on new wagon roads from Yosemite Valley to Merced, Mariposa, and Tuolumne counties; on a new wagon road connecting the Tioga Road with roads in Mono or Inyo counties; and on a wagon road to Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Secretary of War Russell A. Alger appointed the requested Yosemite National Park Commission on 28 April 1899, composed of Col. Samuel M. Mansfield, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A.; Capt. Harry C. Benson; and J. R. Price, of the Department of Highways of the state of California. Just prior to the commencement of the commission’s work, Mr. Price ceased to be a member of the Department of Highways and retired from the commission. Joseph L. Maude, commissioner of highways of the state, succeeded him. The commission performed its work during the summer and fall of 1899 and reported to the Secretary of the Interior on 4 December.15

[15. The commission’s report was printed by order of the Senate as Senate Doc. 155, 56th Congress, 1st session. ]

The commission pointed out that up until 1890 little attention had been paid to the country surrounding Yosemite Valley. Now, however, the tolls demanded by owners of the only access routes restricted travel into the new national park. The government’s duty entailed either purchasing the existing roads or constructing new toll-free ones. If the latter course were chosen, the existing road owners would have to be compensated in some way, because the construction of free roads would divert all travel from the toll roads and would constitute practically a confiscation of the existing toll roads. It would be advantageous, anyway, the commission argued, for the government to own all entry roads into the park to ensure proper control of traffic.

The commission also found that the existing roads used for patrol purposes were not adequate for smooth communication between the troops guarding the park. The construction of additional roads would also lessen the cost of transportation of supplies to the troops and enable better fire control. Eliminating tolls on all the existing roads and constructing new ones would also enable visitors as well as the military to reach all sections of the park. Suggested new roads led: from the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the Tioga Road, along the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne, to the foot of Lyell Glacier; from the Mono Valley to the Tioga Road via either Mill Creek, Lee Vining, or Bloody canyons; from Tenaya Lake, on the Tioga Road, down Tenaya Creek Canyon to the floor of Yosemite Valley; and from Yosemite Valley, utilizing the existing road to The Cascades, west down the Merced River canyon. The latter road, providing access from the Mono Valley on the east to the San Joaquin Valley on the west, would be easier and faster than any existing routes and would remain open through the entire year. The road down Tenaya Creek Canyon would shorten the distance between Yosemite Valley and Soda Springs and avoid the high altitude of the Tioga Road at Snow Flat.

Since the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890, $8,000 had been appropriated out of the public treasury for its maintenance, half of this sum in 1898 and half a year later. The first $4,000 funded a special civilian detail to prevent trespassing by sheep and cattle within the park limits while the U. S. Cavalry, usually charged with that duty, fought in the Philippine Islands; the latter amount had been expended in defraying the expenses of the Yosemite National Park Commission. Californians felt that Congress should be more liberal in its appropriations for the development of Yosemite, commensurate with the state’s contributions to the public treasury. They recommended renewed efforts toward purchasing at fair value and eliminating tolls on the four toll roads into Yosemite and building the new road from Merced Falls to

Illustration 49.
Yosemite Valley floor, ca. 1900.
Postcards published by Flying Spur Press,
Yosemite, California.

Illustration 50.
First automobile in Yosemite Valley, 1900.

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[click to enlarge]

the valley. A subsequent Congress, they suggested, could pass the necessary appropriations to build the other proposed free roads.16

[16. John T. McLean, A Brief Statement, Showing how properly California has kept the conditions of the trust upon which it accepted the grant of the Yosemite Valley. . . . How munificently the Nation, through Congress, has treated its other National Parks . . .; what undeserved neglect the Yosemite National Park has had . . .; and, a Plea That the same care and consideration should be given to The Yosemite Park. . . . (Washington: Globe Printing Company, 1900), 15-21, 26-28, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.

This statement was prepared by McLean and printed as an argument for appropriations by Congress to make the park toll roads free and for the construction of such new roads as were necessary to make all parts of the park accessible. It was first to be read at a meeting of the California congressional delegation held on 16 April 1900 and subsequently circulated among members of Congress in Washington and among state officers and members of the California press.]

With the publication of the commission’s report, and in line with the annual reports and official letters of various secretaries of the interior between the years 1892 and 1898 declaring it to be government policy that all roads traversing national parks should be free, the California congressional delegation decided to act. It determined to request sufficient appropriations to buy the private roads in the park and to build at least the proposed new road from Merced Falls up the Merced River canyon to Yosemite Valley. The California State Legislature, in an extra session, unanimously passed Assembly Concurrent Resolution, No. 2, introduced by the Committee on Roads and Highways, on 7 February 1900. That resolution, regarding appropriations for roads in and about Yosemite National Park, instructed the California congressional delegation in Washington to take whatever action it thought necessary to secure proper appropriations for the necessary improvements to the park in accordance with the report of the three federal commissioners.

C. Construction and Development

1. State of California

a) Pavilion

During the 1901 season, the Yosemite commissioners built an open-air dance floor, or pavilion, on the riverbank near the Guardian’s office in the Old Village. Lighted by electricity, it served for all sorts of public functions, especially for the dancing socials held twice a week during the summer and fall.

b) Powerhouse

In 1902 the state built an electric light and power plant on one of the Happy Isles. The Yosemite commissioners managed the plant, which had cost about $30,000. The plant was housed in a permanent frame building. Water to run the operation was diverted from the river to the powerhouse through an imbedded iron pipeline. In the plant it turned against a pelton wheel with sufficient head to operate the system. The building had a concrete floor containing imbedded wooden beams to which were bolted the generators and the frames holding the pelton wheels. In 1905 the California state attorney general ruled that the electric light plant was a permanent fixture of the valley and that title thereto passed to the United States under the terms of the recession act.17

[17. U. S. Webb, Attorney General, to Hon. J. J. Lermen, Sec. of Comm. to Manage Yosemite Valley 23 July 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 6.]

2. Concession Operations

a) Wawona Hotel

Sometime prior to 1894, the Washburns erected “Little Brown,” a two-story cottage with cupola east of the main hotel. Early in 1891 they and J. J. Cook and his son formed the Wawona Hotel Company to manage the hotel and the farming, bartering, and other commercial interests associated with it. About 1899 construction began on “Long Brown” (present Washburn Cottage) east of Long White (Clark Cottage).

b) Cosmopolitan Bathhouse and Saloon

After the Cosmopolitan ceased to operate in the 1880s, the premises served various purposes. The front of the building became the office and living quarters of the Guardian of the valley, occupied in turn by Walter E. Dennison, Mark L. McCord, Galen Clark, and Miles Wallace. The final two Guardians under the state—John F. Stevens and George T. Harlow, from 1899 to 1906, lived in a new building slightly east of the Old Village general store.

During Clark’s second administration as Guardian, 1889 to 1897, his office in the Cosmopolitan’s front room functioned as a club or lounge for the men of the village and occasional visitors. There, gathered around a large table and huge stove, they passed the time catching up on valley affairs. Occasionally assemblies, such as school programs and community parties, took place in another large room near the center of the building. (Even in Smith’s time, his saloon had frequently been the site of local gatherings.)

The excess space in the Cosmopolitan building not needed by the Guardian provided extra sleeping quarters in connection with the Sentinel Hotel and also served as the hotel barroom and barber shop. A section in the rear of the building became a small bunkhouse for workmen. The bunkhouse, barroom, and barber shop were collectively referred to as the “Collar and Elbow.” After the Guardian’s office and living quarters moved to the new headquarters building, the front part of the Cosmopolitan functioned variously as a post office and express office, and served whatever other needs arose.18

[18. Degnan to McHenry, 17 November 1954.]

c) Camp Curry

In 1899 two teachers came to Yosemite who had begun using their summer vacations to manage camping tours of the West. David A. and Jennie Foster Curry had settled in Redwood City, California, in 1898. Having become enamoured of mountain country through classes in nature lore taken under David Starr Jordan at Indiana University, they had for several seasons arranged and conducted tours through Yellowstone Park, in which small parties moved from place to place with camp equipment and baggage.

In 1899 they decided to spend the summer in Yosemite and establish a camp there. With seven sleeping tents and a larger one to serve as dining room and kitchen, and with the assistance only of a cook and students from Stanford University working for room and board, the Currys originated an idea in tourist service that revolutionized hostelry operations in Yosemite and other national parks. Their first camp stood on the site of present Camp Curry.

The success of this hotel/camp arrangement was immediately apparent. What began as a summer camping operation to accommodate a few paying guests turned into much more than that as more than 290 people registered the first year, necessitating the addition of eighteen more tents. Dependency on the railroad and a two-week round trip by wagons and mules to Merced for supplies made operation of the camp difficult, but the reasonable rates and informal hospitality brought patrons back year after year. Evening campfire entertainments proved popular from the beginning, gradually becoming more structured with regular entertainment programs. During one of the first summers of operation, Curry revived McCauley’s firefall tradition on a regular basis. By 1901 a large dining room and rustic office had been built. The Currys adopted the distinctive Adirondack rustic style for their earliest permanent buildings. Characterized by stick and bark panelling, the style later appeared on the Yosemite Valley Railroad Station at El Portal and on the railroad’s office in Yosemite Valley. The original registration office built in 1904 is now used as a lounge. Postal facilities have also been incorporated on the north side. Its rustic style is characterized by unpeeled logs, vertical posts, and horizontal beams, with strips of natural cedar bark in a herringbone pattern as a decorative element.

d) Degnan Bakery

By 1894 John Degnan was cultivating Lamon’s upper orchard and the family lived in a small frame house near the site of Lamon’s original cabin for a few months. After the family moved back to the Old Village, John continued to work for the state and do odd construction jobs for the hotels and stage companies. In 1898 Degnan built a new house on the site of the old J. J. Westfall meat market. In the bakery attached to the rear of their house, Bridget prepared bread for sale in a brick oven that yielded 100 loaves per baking. The Degnans sold these and other baked goods through the store.19

[19. Degnan to Hubbard, 24 February 1956.]

e) Fiske Studio

In May 1904 fire destroyed George Fiske’s Yosemite home, resulting in the loss of its furnishings in addition to his lenses, cameras, and entire collection of West Coast negatives. Fiske rebuilt, although it is unclear whether in the same area, north of the Four-Mile trailhead and about one mile from the Old Village, or in the Old Village, where a 1920 map shows a residence referred to as Fiske’s house.20

[20. Ansel F. Hall, Guide to Yosemite: A Handbook of the Trails and Roads of Yosemite Valley and the Adjacent Region. (Yosemite National Park: National ‘Park Service, 1920), 9.]

f) Foley Studio

D. J. Foley established a print shop and photographic studio in 1891 and published a souvenir paper titled The Yosemite Tourist beginning in that year. He also sold Foley’s Yosemite Souvenir and Guide. His building, known as the Yosemite Tourist Printing Office and Studio, stood just west of the superintendent’s office. (After his death, Mrs. Foley continued the business into the 1940s.)

g) Jorgensen Studio

Artist Chris Jorgensen first came to Yosemite Valley in 1898 and camped two summers before building his first cottage—a studio and residence—on the north bank of the Merced River in 1900. He built a one-story, one-room log structure, “the bungalow,” in 1903 on the opposite side of the river from the Sentinel Hotel and a short distance above the bridge. He also had a barn and storehouse on his land. This new residence had a wood shingle-covered gable roof, with the front decorative gable end projecting ten feet beyond the front wall of the cabin. Its walls consisted of peeled logs in alternating tiers and contained an original stained glass window. Jorgensen, a noted painter, maintained a seasonal residence and studio in the valley for twenty years.21

[21. In 1962 the Park Service razed the earlier Jorgensen studio and residence and moved the later bungalow to the Yosemite Pioneer History Center, believing it to be the studio building. It is, therefore, the Jorgensen home that has been preserved rather than his studio. Mary Vocelka, Research Librarian, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Comments on the Historic Resource Study, 8 January 1987, 1.]

h) Boysen Studio

While the valley was under state control, J. T. Boysen received a concession to conduct a photographic studio. He had come to the valley about 1898 and had supplied photos of the valley and of the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the World Exposition at St. Louis and at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland. His first two years he conducted his business in a tent, but when the commissioners ruled that there would be no more tents along the main avenue in 1900, he built a small studio of unfinished lumber west of the superintendent’s office between D. J. Foley’s Studio and Salter’s store. Boysen concentrated on photographing the Mariposa Grove and the Yosemite Indians. The Yosemite Park and Curry Company bought his studio in 1943.

i) Best Studio

In the spring of 1901 landscape painter Harry C. Best came to Yosemite, and, after marrying a young lady he had met in the valley, applied for a permit from the Yosemite commissioners to sell photographs and paintings. In the season of 1902 the couple set up a tent studio near the government pavilion in the Old Village.

j) Studio of the Three Arrows

In the winter of 1902, Harold A. Taylor, who had arrived in the valley the preceding April as assistant to Julius Boysen, and Eugene Hallett, agent for the Santa Fe stage line, formed the Hallett-Taylor Company and took over the business and building of Oliver Lippincott. They named their place the ‘’studio of the Three Arrows,” because Taylor’s family crest centered around three arrows, and, in addition, the name seemed an appropriate motif for the valley because of its Indian history. The photographic business stood across the street from the Degnan home and bakery.

3. Sierra Club

a) Creation of Club

Although John Muir and other conservationists had been highly delighted by the preservation of the Yosemite high country through establishment of the national park, they continued to worry that forces bent on the exploitation of the fledgling national parks would continue to agitate for mineral, timber, water, and homestead rights. They began to think in terms of some sort of unified organization to combat those aggressions and lobby for preservation of the wilderness. At the same time, a growing number of people in California started to express an interest in hiking and exploring the Sierra. What they needed was an organization to provide maps and material related to mountaineering. It seemed logical, ultimately, for the two groups with such similar interests to join and form a mountaineering club—a Sierra club—to work toward the preservation of California’s natural wonders, especially those of the Yosemite region.

On 4 June 1892 those individuals formed the Sierra Club, with John Muir as president, to explore the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast, to publish reliable information concerning that area, and to enlist the cooperation of the people and government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada. It took a while for the club to get going. Despite its periodic meetings and publication of a Bulletin beginning in 1893, interest in it gradually began to wane. In 1897 the Sierra Club asked that it be allowed to establish headquarters in Yosemite Valley where it could provide maps and other data to visitors. The club also was considering laying out short trips and arranging excursions to the high country. A year later it reached an agreement with the Board of Yosemite Commissioners that the latter would repair the Sinning cottage on the opposite side of the road from the Sentinel Hotel for the Sierra Club’s use as a general information bureau. The club then furnished the house and provided publications, maps, and collections relating to the High Sierra. The club and the board of commissioners equally bore the salary for a summer attendant, who would man the bureau for the club and also assist the Guardian by directing campers to campgrounds and by dispensing 2 general information on the valley to visitors in the Guardian’s absence.22
[22. J. N. LeConte and Charles A. Bailey to the President and Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, 9 June 1898, in “Notes and Correspondence,” Sierra Club Bulletin II, no. 4 (June 1898): 239.]

The idea of sponsoring mountain excursions seemed the most likely prospect for reinvigorating the club. The idea received only minimal consideration, however, until the arrival of William E. Colby on the scene. In 1900 Colby, a lawyer and enthusiastic hiker who eventually became a leader in the Sierra Club, envisioned leading organized outings into the High Sierra. President Muir agreed with the suggestion and made Colby chairman of the Outing Committee. They scheduled the first official Sierra Club Outing for Tuolumne Meadows in the summer of 1901. As plans got underway, a new member, Edward Parsons, joined the club. A successful businessman and accomplished mountaineer, he was already a member of several prestigious mountaineering groups when he joined the Sierra Club. Immediately becoming a member of the Outing Committee, he and Colby led hundreds of hikers into the mountains over the next several years. Colby served forty-four years as secretary of the club and two as president. For sixteen years he served as an active member of the Yosemite Advisory Board.

That first Sierra Club outing, consisting of rugged day-long expeditions into the surrounding mountains from a base camp in Tuolumne Meadows, initiated a special kind of social and instructive institution in the Sierra Nevada. Club members returned year after year for the popular trips and developed life-long friendships amid the active social programs and the serious study of nature pursued through reading assignments and natural history lectures by Muir and other experts around the evening campfire. The trips were intended not only to attract new members and provide a pleasant recreational experience, but also to instill in club members an appreciation of the beauty and inspiration of the mountains and a desire to defend them from all threats of spoliation. Soda Springs, where the Sierra Club established a campground and later a lodge, became the center of field activities for Sierra Club members. The club sponsored various summer and winter activities in that area, including hiking, sightseeing, cross-country skiing, and mountaineering. The Sierra Club’s outings had a strong impact on backcountry use, providing the impetus for additional trail building and map work.

In general, the Sierra Club aimed at the promotion of both a recreational and aesthetic appreciation of the High Sierra country, but it was especially protective of Yosemite. Its genuine concern for the future of that great preserve became apparent during the battles over recession of the Yosemite Grant and development of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The Sierra Club’s dedication to the preservation of Yosemite National Park would be severely tested during that last controversy. The club’s leading members, although disheartened by the outcome of the issue, nevertheless in the course of the entire affair acquired a knowledge of political processes and skills in political maneuvering that would prove invaluable in the future. The club itself acquired a reputation that provided it with considerable influence and ensured its participation in important policy-making decisions on conservation matters related to the public domain.23

[23. Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 168-69. After John Muir’s death in 1914, the Sierra Club became primarily a social organization, losing some of its established ties with mountaineering. After 1916 it often aligned itself with the National Park Service, two of its illustrious members being Californians Stephen Mather and Horace Albright. It tended to refrain, however, from active participation in conservation battles by the mid-1930s and into the 1940s, although it reemerged during the 1960s in the forefront of the modern American conservation movement. Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown -and Company, 1981), 214, 272.]

b) LeConte Lodge

On 6 July 1901 Joseph LeConte, the eminent scientist and noted professor of geology and natural history at the University of California, an early director of the Sierra Club who spent much of his time studying the Sierra and the geology of Yosemite, died at Camp Curry in Yosemite Valley.

The directors of the Sierra Club appointed a commission, consisting of Professors A. C. Lawson and William R. Dudley, Dr. Edward R. Taylor, Elliott McAllister, and William E. Colby, to decide upon an appropriate memorial. The committee decided that, rather than building a conventional memorial, it would be more appropriate, based on LeConte’s active and useful life, to erect a lodge to serve as a reminder of LeConte and also be of direct benefit to others.

Large groups of Professor LeConte’s friends contributed to the $5,000 fund necessary for construction, including many prominent San Francisco merchants; the student body, alumni, and faculty of the University of California; members of the faculty of Stanford University; mining engineers; geologists; LeConte’s relatives and personal friends; and members of the Sierra Club. Although they raised several thousand dollars, a few hundred were still lacking. As a result, the directors of the Sierra Club levied an assessment on club members of $1.00 each. LeConte’s widow provided the last $200 needed in the form of twenty-eight gold nuggets that had been given Dr. LeConte on his golden wedding anniversary by several former pupils in South Africa.

The LeConte Memorial Lodge, finished in September 1903 at a cost of $4,714 and dedicated on 3 July 1904, had a picturesque and unique character that attracted great interest. The architect, John White, donated both his plans and his time to the work. The finished structure, containing a variety of design features, nonetheless blended harmoniously with its environment. Located behind Camp Curry and under the walls of Glacier Point on a gentle slope against a background of trees, the lodge entrance provided a fine view of Half Dome. The structure became the Sierra Club’s headquarters in Yosemite Valley during the summers and contained a portion of the club library as well as maps and photographs. A custodian provided information to visitors on the club and surrounding mountains from May to July.

Local rough-hewn granite formed the foundations, walls, and chimney of the structure. As much of the rock’s weathered surface as possible faced the exterior. Broad granite steps led to a “Dutch” entrance door. The main reading room measured thirty-six by twenty-five feet with a huge granite fireplace at one end surrounded by bookcases and window seats. Interior roof beams were left exposed and rough finished. The unique reading room table, measuring nine by five feet, had a heavy top supported by two sections of the unbarked trunk of a large yellow pine.24

[24. William E. Colby, “The Completed LeConte Memorial Lodge,” Sierra Club Bulletin 5 (1904-1905), no. 1 (January 1904) (San Francisco: The Sierra Club, 1950), 66-69.]

4. U. S. Army

a) New Camp Buildings

The U. S. Army used the present site of the A. E. Wood Campground on the South Fork of the Merced River near Wawona as its main camp and administrative headquarters from 1891 until 1907, when the troops moved into Yosemite Valley. Captain Abram Wood established the first army post on 17 May 1891 and called it “Camp near Wawona.” Its designation changed to “Camp A. E. Wood” in 1901.25 In the beginning, tents and other temporary structures, which were usually destroyed by campers and other trespassers during the winter, sheltered the troops and their equipment. A desperate need existed for a permanent building for housing and to allow storage of equipment so that it would not have to be transported back to San Francisco each year. Little construction took place the first few years, although troops did construct a horse shed in 1901.

[25. Register of Letters Received, 1912, and Letters Received, 1912-13, RG 393, Records of the U. S. Army Commands (Army Posts), NA. Camp A. E. Wood became “Camp Yosemite” when it moved into Yosemite Valley in May 1907. The army abandoned the latter post 31 October 1913.]

As stated earlier, in 1904, in the vicinity of the camp, the soldiers built a footbridge across Big Creek, which is no longer extant. A simple two-plank-wide structure, it provided access to the arboretum, described below. Another bridge in course of construction by the troops that season crossed the South Fork of the Merced River. Troops also added an office/storeroom and corral that year.

In 1905 the War Department allotted $3,000 for the improvement of Camp A. E. Wood. This funded installation of a water supply system and the construction of numerous buildings, including kitchens and mess halls, commissary and quartermaster storehouses, a stable extension, and a bathhouse. The army purchased lumber for the sides and roofs, but the soldiers obtained the construction timbers from nearby forests. During the year the troops also built a packtrain stable, a laundry, and a wagon shed, the material for those buildings obtained through the seizure of several thousand shakes illegally cut on government land. The troops quartered in floored Sibley tents, and enjoyed ranges and other equipment necessary for their comfort during a protracted stay.26

[26. Report on Yosemite National Park, under “National Parks and Reservations,” in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905. Report of the Secretary of the Interior and Bureau Offices, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905), 165.]

b) Arboretum

Major John Bigelow, Jr., acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park, constructed an arboretum and botanical garden in 1904 close to Camp A. E. Wood. Bigelow described the arboretum as bounded on the north by the south side of the South Fork of the Merced River, on the east by property of the Wawona Hotel, on the south by the southern boundary of the park, and on the west by a line running north-south from a point between the two bridges at Camp Wood and the southern boundary of the park. It covered an area of roughly 75 to 100 acres. On its eastern boundary, Big Creek, which furnished drinking water to the army camp via a flume and pipe, ran northward into the Merced River. An old trail followed up the right bank of Big Creek about one-half mile to where the water entered the flume, while another old trail connecting the Wawona Hotel and the camp passed through the arboretum from east to west.

Bigelow had guideposts erected to assist visitors in finding their way to and through the arboretum and several seats constructed to provide opportunities for sitting and studying the various plantings. He intended to fence in the area to keep out loose stock. Labels and signs adorned the trees and marked the plants. The signs consisted of one-inch plank, double coated on both sides with light-brown paint, which bore English and Latin names in dark brown letters 1% to 2 inches high. The labels were nailed to the trees, and the signs nailed to posts that were painted light brown and charred where they entered the ground. White metal tags measuring about 3 inches by 3/4-inch bore the names of the flowers. Bigelow put First Lieutenant and Assistant Surgeon Henry F. Pipes in charge of the arboretum, who had no particular training as a botanist but evinced great enthusiasm for the project.

By late fall 1904 troops had improved the arboretum by posting more signs and labels, opening up paths, erecting signposts and seats, trimming trees, and removing dead wood. Thirty-six trees and plants had been marked, as well as two prehistoric Indian bedrock mortar sites within the arboretum acreage, and a number of plants had been identified for transplanting in the arboretum.

The order instituting the arboretum designated that an officer be detailed to take charge of it, assisted by a noncommissioned officer and one private detailed on special duty. Their responsibilities included guarding the grounds against trespassers; marking samples of the various species of trees, flowers, and plants found in the arboretum with both their English and Latin names; and planting in the arboretum, as far as practicable, other varieties of interesting plants found within the park boundaries.27

[27. Appendix, Exhibit A, in Bigelow, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 23 September 1904, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1904, 395-97. ]

Bigelow, very interested in natural history and especially in trees, intended that the arboretum develop into a prominent feature of the park and some day be supplemented by a building serving as a museum and library. This accorded with his belief that one of the essential purposes of the Yosemite forest reservation was to provide a museum of nature for the general public free of cost, to display not only trees, but everything associated with them, in nature, including animals, minerals, and geological features.

Illustration 51.
Wawona arboretum, 1904. Footbridge over Big Creek at left, bench built onto trees at right.

[click to enlarge]

LOCATION OF OLD ARBORETUM AT WAWONA

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Illustration 52.
Wawona arboretum, 1904. Sign on post identifies “Manzanita.”
Photographer unknown.

[click to enlarge]

The year after the arboretum’s establishment, however, the boundary change of 7 February 1905 excluded the patented land on which it lay, on the south side of the Merced River, from the park. Acting Superintendent H. C. Benson at that time attempted to gather and store for future use within the park as many of the identifying signs as possible, although some had already been knocked down by surveyors for a projected railroad into the region. (See discussion of Fresno Traction Company later in this chapter.) In 1929 Ranger J. N. Morris rediscovered the arboretum, neglected for years, and found twenty trees still bore labels. The area became part of the park again with the Wawona Basin addition of 1932.

The arboretum project remains significant as an initial attempt to interpret for visitors and other interested people the botanical features of Yosemite National Park, sixteen years before Dr. Harold C. Bryant began the nature-guide service in Yosemite that became the nucleus of the present naturalist interpretive program of the National Park Service. The arboretum complex included the first self-guiding nature trail in the National Park System.

At its height, the arboretum complex consisted only of the two bridges mentioned, several rustic benches, the labels that identified plantings, and the interpretive signs that guided visitors. The flat area to the east, between the hillside and the Merced River, became the site of a sewage treatment facility for the Wawona Hotel, which considerably changed the appearance of the area. Sewage canals were placed prior to 1951, and a sewage treatment pond with a pump, a pumphouse, and a spray field was later installed on the hillside above. Today there are few traces left of the arboretum. A few signs can still be found with some searching, although the bulk of them have been removed or weathered away, as have the benches built for contemplation of the plantings. The trails are now overgrown and almost impossible to distinguish.28

[28. Other sources of information on this interesting enterprise are J. N. Morris, “An Old Nature Trail is Found Near Wawona,” Yosemite Nature Notes 9, no. 3 (March 1930): 17-18; Sargent, Wawona’s Yesterdays, 18; and O. L. Wallis, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Arboretum,” Yosemite Nature Notes 30, no. 9 (September 1951): 83-85.]

D. Natural Resource Management

1. Continuing Charges of Spoliation of Yosemite Valley

On 22 September 1890 the U. S. Senate adopted a resolution that the Secretary of the Interior report to the Senate as to whether the lands turned over to the state of California in 1864 had been spoliated or otherwise diverted from the public use stipulated by the grant. If so, the Secretary was to determine what steps would be necessary and proper in order to ensure the prevention of further spoliation and the return of the valley to public use.

Congress made no appropriation to enable the Secretary to prosecute his inquiries, and so he pursued the problem primarily through correspondence. He sent letters of inquiry to persons of good repute who he thought probably knew details about the situation in Yosemite. He perused reports and printed statements on the subject, as well as photographs of the valley.

The general concensus of the people asked for opinions seemed to be that
1) there had been a general and indiscriminate destruction of timber in the valley, for building material, to prepare land for plowing, to open up views, and for fuel;

2) from one-half to four-fifths of the valley had been fenced with barbed wire and planted in grass or grain, confining, travel to narrow limits between the fences and the cliffs;

3) many rare plants had been destroyed by pasturing animals and plowing;

4) the management of the valley had fallen into the hands of a monopoly, with no competition permitted for hotel accommodations, transportation, or animal fodder;

5) the only land available for grazing was used by stock of the stable and transportation men so that no grazing lands existed for the mounts of visitors;

6) the high country had been abandoned to sheepherders, whose fires had damaged trees and shrubs, and to their flocks, which had eaten the grasses and herbage down to the bare dirt; and

7) the Big Tree Grove had been severely damaged by fires, with little effort made by the commissioners to extinguish them.

The Secretary of the Interior concluded that the commissioners intended to cultivate as much land on the valley floor as possible to augment the state revenues, even though that action diverted most of the floor from use as a public resort. That was contrary to the intent of Congress, which had stipulated that all features be perpetuated in their original beauty and that only as much of the valley be leased as was absolutely necessary for appropriate buildings for the comfortable entertainment of tourists and other visitors, hopefully with only minimal marring of natural features. The Secretary of the Interior believed that the matter merited further examination and recommended that a committee be authorized to make additional investigations.29

[29. John W. Noble, Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, jjn Response to Senate resolution of September 22, 1890, relative to the alleged spoliation of lands granted to the State of California, 30 January 1891, 52d Congress, 2d Session, Ex. Doc. No. 67, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-4.]

On 2 March 1891 the Senate directed the Secretary of the Interior to continue the inquiry and to report his final conclusions to the next session of Congress. Still no appropriation materialized and little further happened until again the Secretary of the Interior called for money and authority to conduct a full-scale investigation. Finally Major Weigel was detailed to make the requisite investigation on the condition of affairs in the valley. He submitted his final report 3 October 1892.

Weigel concluded that much of the natural beauty of the Yosemite area had been compromised through unscientific and indiscriminate land management practices; that more drives and walks were needed; that many of the old, unsightly buildings should be removed; that hotel, stabling, and transportation charges ran too high; and that generally most residents of nearby counties favored valley administration reverting to the federal government. The toll roads and other transportation monopolies, plus exorbitant prices for other goods, made the park practically inaccessible to those with limited time and money.

Another report, dated 15 November 1892, submitted by Captain Stidger, stated that speculation, traffic, and gain comprised the dominating features of the state management. Stidger recommended that the state of California be asked to relinquish its trust and that the valley and the national park be placed under the rules and regulations that governed Yellowstone National Park.

Noble suggested that the facts in those two special reports, in conjunction with the evidence and photos transmitted in his January 1891 report to the Senate, incontestably showed that the state commissioners worked only with an eye to profit and not the preservation of the scenic and botanic wonders of the valley. He recommended that the valley be reconveyed to the federal government and put under the same management as the surrounding national park.30

[30. John W. Noble, Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, un Response to Senate resolution of September 22, 1890, relative to the supposed spoliation of lands granted to the State of California in 1864, 29 December 1892, 52d Congress, 2d Session, Ex. Doc. No. 22, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-7.]

2. The Sheep Problem

a) The Sheep Industry in the 1890s

Although cattle owners seemed generally willing to abide by the new anti-trespassing regulations for the park imposed by the army, the annual sheep migrations to the vicinity of the park did not lessen. By mid-June 1891 Captain Wood estimated that nearly 90,000 sheep hovered close to the park boundaries, driven up from the San Joaquin Valley and the coast. Bands numbered 2,000 to 3,000, each accompanied by an outfit of from three to five herders and their dogs, with pack animals carrying supplies. The herders, and many of the owners, were foreigners — Portuguese, Chileans, French, Mexicans, and Basques. Sheep owners tended to use different groups at different times.

Problems related to sheep grazing became a major issue in the early days of the national parks. This was a period of extensive cattle- and sheep raising in California, and owners were accustomed to having their own way when it came to pasturing their animals. Although California sheepmen had imported animals to sell to hungry miners during the Gold Rush of 1849, by the late 1850s the state’s sheep industry revolved around the production of wool. Initially acres of uninhabited cheap land in the San Joaquin Valley provided an abundance of unfettered pasturage. Flocks numbering in the tens of thousands ranged over a vast territory in central California, covering Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Merced, San Joaquin, Colusa, Yuba, Sutter, Butte, and Tehama counties. Because of the vast sheep population, however, the danger of depasturage of grazing lands became acute. Beginning in the 1860s, farmers and fruit growers began squeezing the herds west toward the foothills or south toward the lower part of the state. This coupled with several severe droughts compelled sheep raisers to annually remove their stock to the mountains for summer feeding. This practice of seasonal migrations allowed further growth and development of the sheep industry. The wild, rugged nature of the Sierra backcountry seemed to make it worthless for cultivation but perfect for sheep pasturing because of that animal’s ability to feed upon the sparse vegetation in precipitous canyons and gulches. Sheep owners, therefore, viewed the establishment of national parks and later efforts to enlarge them with alarm, and their immediate response to the new edicts entailed determining how seriously they would be enforced.

Herders reached the summer pastures via a long trail along the east slope of the Sierra, eventually looping through the mountains by way of the passes near Yosemite. Sometimes the herds went as far north as Lake Tahoe before turning west. The trail began at Mojave, with flocks feeding into it from areas even farther south. Central Valley owners drove their herds down the west side of the valley to Bakersfield and over the Tehachapi Mountains to join the migration. The trail then wound its way up the Owens River valley to Bishop, Lone Pine, and on up to Mono Lake, while herders outfitted for the Sierra meadows along the way. Other herds migrated via the central valley and western foothills and returned to their lambing stations along the eastern slope of the Sierra.

Mexicans, Basques, and Portuguese were considered the best sheepherders. They lived a solitary, but not arduous, life, most of their time after the migration spent in sitting or sleeping and watching over the flocks, for which duty they depended a great deal on their dogs. Consequently, they had much free time for handicrafts, such as braiding horsehair ornaments or carving. Once a week while they were in the mountains a foreman came around to replenish supplies.

Soon after the establishment of Yosemite National Park, Author Mary Austin asked a sheepherder where he proposed to pasture his flock. “Jacques” laughingly responded that he would continue to feed his sheep as always by bribing the army patrol with whiskey, taking off the sheep bells, being careful of fires, and taking his chances on getting caught. Miss Austin reflected that the long custom of the sheepmen to pasture in the high country had established in their eyes a “right” to those particular meadows. The sheepmen always held the advantage over their pursuers because they knew the country better, with its secret trails and hidden glens. The army remained hindered by an inadequate patrol force and the lack of severe penalties for grazing on the reserve. As Miss Austin put it, “An ordinance slackly enforced is lightly respected.”31

[31. Mary Austin, The Flock (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1906), 191-99. Other good information on the early sheep industry can be found in Henry Camille Blaud, The Basques, A Thesis, College of the Pacific, 1957. Reproduced in 1974 by R and E Research Associates, San Francisco and Saratoga, California; Charles M. Chase, “The Live Stock Interests of California,” in California (San Francisco: California State Board of Trade, 1897-98), 80-84; James E. Perkins, Sheep Husbandry in California. A Paper Presented Before the California State Agricultural Society (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1863); Major W. Shepherd, R. E., Prairie Experiences im Handling Cattle and Sheep (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1884); Charles Howard Shinn, “With the Sheep, in California,” (March 1891, excerpt, source unknown), 483-89; and Edward N. Wentworth, America’s Sheep Trails: History, Personalities (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State College Press, 1948).]

b) Army Measures to Combat Trespassing

The immediate damage sheep inflicted on the mountain meadows was enormous. The vast herds overgrazed, crushed vegetation and soil, and cut rutlike trails with their sharp hooves that hastened erosion of the hills. These destructive activities little concerned the flock owners or their herdsmen. The 1890s brought disruption to the industry in the form of falling wool prices, further decreases in open winter range, transportation changes, and the prohibition of sheep grazing in the Sierra Forest Reserve set aside on the west flank of the Sierra in 1893 and the Yosemite and Sequoia national parks established in 1890. Just as the cattlemen were used to their own way in the highlands, the sheepherders who had used the Sierra meadows for years refused to recognize the new governmental boundaries and regulations. Ultimately the prohibition of sheep grazing in national parks and restrictions on their pasturage in national forests, in addition to other subtler changes within the industry, would end this large-scale sheep grazing.32

[32. Hal Roth, Pathway in the Sky: The Story of the John Muir Trail, (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1965), 15-17.]

Realizing his limitations in terms of patrol manpower and the army’s ability to enforce penalties for trespassing, Captain Wood decided that he must take some plan of action to thoroughly frighten the owners as well as the herders of these flocks. That action consisted of having his patrols arrest and bring to camp any herders and their dogs found willfully trespassing after having been warned against the practice. Wood required owners to furnish bonds for their herders’ release. That procedure appeared to Wood to alleviate the problem for a short while.

When the herders realized that the army merely warned them and then set them loose, however, they merely determined that the next time they would not get caught, and cheerfully returned to their old practices. A stronger tactic the army formalized beginning in 1904 was to drive the herd outside the park at the point where it was found, transport the offending sheepherder to the opposite boundary of the park and set him loose, and drive the rest of the outfit off in another direction. That practice necessitated a long, inconvenient, and expensive roundup time for the sheepherder to retrieve his scattered flock and left it vulnerable, meanwhile, to the depredations of predators. It also proved only a stopgap measure, however, because soon after reorganizing the flocks, the herders usually returned.

What resulted was the involvement of the United States Army in an endless game of hide-and-seek over an enormous tract of almost inaccessible mountain territory with a formidable number of unterrified, thoroughly resentful, sheepherders who became extremely cautious and even more cunning in their transgressions. The sheepmen often banded together and hired men as spies to monitor army movements and warn of the approach of patrols. At that instant the sheep, which were grazing just inside the park boundary, would be driven outside in time to avoid detection. Knowing no punitive law existed to cover their case, sheepherders risked expulsion from the reservation, with its attendant inconveniences, rather than forego the advantage of free grazing on the public domain. The situation was exasperating for both sides. Although acting park superintendents continually urged the Department of the Interior to formulate strict penalities consisting of fines or jail terms for trespass, it invoked no such policy.

3. Grazing on Park Lands

The use of patented lands within the park posed another problem for army administrators. Acting Superintendent L. A. Craig, Major, Fifteenth Cavalry, enclosed in his 1901 report to the Secretary of the Interior an extract of a petition sent to the Department of the Interior by property owners regarding grazing on Yosemite parklands. Those people who grazed cattle and horses in the park usually entered upon their lands in April or May and remained until mid-October, when they returned to their Central Valley ranches. In the park, the animals grazed within given confines, such as along mountain ridges or rivers. The patented lands held stock during the October roundups.

The petition for allowing grazing in the park under the same restrictions as placed on stock grazing within the forest reserves primarily argued that grazing would better preserve the park and its natural conditions. Forest fires could be more easily avoided because animal trails served as fire breaks and because, by eating the grass and underbrush, the stock destroyed much flammable material. Since grazing privileges had been disallowed, the undergrowth in the park had grown so thick that it loomed as a potential fire hazard and also proved less beneficial in conserving snow load. Stock owners also argued that game was becoming scarcer in the park each year, due to the destruction of bird eggs and young deer by predators, which previously had fed on horse and cattle carcasses.

Craig himself did not object to property owners and those leasing land within the park limits grazing cattle near their premises under the supervision of park authorities, but only from 1 August to 1 October and only after the owners had obtained permits from the acting superintendent defining the number of cattle involved, their brands, and the limits of their authorized ranges which were not to include park meadowlands.33

[33. Craig, “Report of the Acting Superintendent,” 1901, 552-54.]

4. Poaching

Although the army protected fish and wildlife during the summer, often hunters, trappers, and fishermen waited to enter the park after the troops departure in the fall. Colonel S. B. M. Young took an active interest in the problem of hunters and trappers during his 1896 tenure as acting superintendent. When Young’s men arrived in the summer, they found that hunters and trappers during the winter and spring had killed large quantities of game. To his distress, Young found that both game and song birds had been shot and that fish in their spawning beds had been killed by explosives. The angry Young refused from then on to issue permits to carry firearms within the park and had his patrol parties disarm anyone found carrying them. The removal of firearms, in addition to a reduction in predators in the surrounding region, resulted in an increase of quail and grouse, and Young hoped that the deer, bear, lynx, fox, raccoon, tree squirrels, and chipmunks would similarly multiply and eventually lose their fear of man so that they could be studied in their natural state.34 When charges were made that some of the army troops were killing game, the superintendent stripped the men of their carbines and armed them with revolvers instead.

[34. Young, Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park, 1896, 3-4, 8.]

Young also established an outlying camp near Crocker’s Station on the Big Oak Flat Road to more readily patrol that larger portion of the park. Later superintendents maintained the guard at Crocker’s because it enabled the seizure of firearms brought over the Big Oak Flat and Coulterville roads, the instruction of campers as to rules and regulations before they entered the park, and the escort of cattle brought in on permits to graze on patented lands. In 1897 Acting Superintendent Alexander Rodgers mentioned another poaching probiem—the killing of deer every fall by Indians coming into the park from Nevada.35 During the 1903 season, Rangers Leidig and Leonard became deputy fish commissioners of the state, empowered to make arrests for all violations of the state laws affecting fish and game.

[35. Alex. Rodgers, Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year Ended June 30, 1897 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897), 4.]

5. Fish Planting

The date of the first unofficial planting of fish in the waters of the Yosemite region is uncertain. As early as 1867 the Mariposa Gazette lamented

that the creeks and lakes in this section of the country [Yosemite region] are destitute of fish. The Tuolumne is a charming stream here but contains no fish. I think our statesmen ought to consider whether supplying these lakes artificially with fish would not be a popular and profitable mode of spending the funds of the State.36

[36. “Grizzly Gulch Correspondence,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, 21 September 1867.]

When the army entered Yosemite, it found fish in the Merced River in Yosemite Valley, in the South Fork near Wawona, and up the Tuolumne River as far as the Hetch Hetchy falls. None existed in the tributaries or lakes above the valley’s rim because of the insurmountable obstacle to ascension presented by the waterfalls. The two commonest species of fish that existed inside the present park boundaries were the rainbow trout and the Sacramento sucker. There are references to private individuals introducing trout into barren waters, a practice followed by homesteaders, miners, stockmen, sheepherders, and sportsmen in the high country to supplement the food obtained by hunting. Homesteader Horace G. Kibbe stocked Lakes Eleanor, Laurel, and Vernon in the northwest section of the park with trout about 1877 and John L. Murphy planted trout in Tenaya Lake a year or so later. Sheepherders may also have transferred trout from certain streams to others nearer their summer campgrounds. Such individual efforts sufficed on a limited basis but did not meet the needs of the general public. The California Fish and Game Commission was organized in 1870 to improve hunting and fishing in the state and also to conserve certain specimens of fish, birds, and mammals from extinction.

Although fish commissioners brought in trout as early as 1879, the first official fish planting in the park took place in 1892 when W. H. Shebley of the California Fish Commission brought a shipment of cutthroat, Eastern brook, and rainbow trout from the Sisson Hatchery in Siskiyou County (now the Mt. Shasta hatchery) to Raymond by train. From there it went by stage to Wawona and then in an army ambulance wagon to Mono Meadow. There the fish were transferred into cans, strapped onto packmules, and taken to various watercourses, including Merced and Ostrander lakes and Bridalveil Creek.37 The army became intensively involved in these fish planting procedures that initiated the later park fisheries program. Early in June 1895 the California Fish and Game Commission sent 30,000 Eastern brook trout that Deputy Arthur G. Fletcher of the State Board of Fish Commissioners put in Yosemite’s streams, assisted by an army detail. The commission also established a small hatchery near Wawona to provide fish for the park lakes and streams, and the army continued to aid Fletcher in stocking the majority of the main streams and lakes in the park that were originally barren of fish with rainbow and cutthroat trout.

[37. H. C. Bryant, “Early Trout Plantings in Yosemite,” Yosemite Nature Notes 9, no. 1 (January 1930): 16; A. E. Borell, “History of Fishing in Yosemite,” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 8 (August 1934): 57-59; Willis A. Evans, Orthello L. Wallis, and Glenn D. Gallison, Fishes of Yosemite National Park (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1944), rev. 1958 and 1961. The introduction of exotic game fishes into the Yosemite area comprised an attempt to establish fish in barren waters and later to supplement the stock in heavily fished areas. Seven species of game fish have been introduced; the rainbow, golden, brook, brown, cutthroat, and Dolly Varden trout and the American grayling. Evans et al., 4.]

The Yosemite-Raymond Stage Line (Washburn interests) installed the Wawona fish hatchery, a wooden superstructure on a stone foundation, and turned it over to the California Fish and Game Commission on condition that it hatch and distribute 500,000 trout eggs annually. M. L. Cross managed the station for several years, while the Washburn brothers kept the facility in repair, their main desire being to stock the streams and lakes in the vicinity of Wawona. Eggs were shipped in from outside sources. The station operated every year except 1897, the output of trout fry consisting of rainbow, mykiss, loch leven, and Eastern brook. The fish generally had to be planted before the end of July, at which time the water warmed rapidly, promoting the growth of algae.

Colonel Benson (acting superintendent 1905-1908) and his troops actively distributed trout throughout the barren streams and lakes of Yosemite National Park. During the early years of fish distribution, fingerlings often were not carried much beyond Yosemite Valley. During the 1905 season, however, Acting Superintendent Benson transported the fingerlings from 70 to 100 miles away before distributing them. He and his men placed 60,000 in Washburn Lake on the Merced River; 60,000 in the Middle and South forks of the Tuolumne River; 30,000 in Ostrander Lake and Bridalveil Creek; and 30,000 in Rush Creek. In addition Benson netted fish in lakes and rivers that he had originally planted when he was a subaltern in the park from 1895 to 1897 and transported them to other areas. The Wawona hatchery closed in 1928 when the Fish and Game Commission thought campers had contaminated Big Creek, the hatchery’s only water source.38

[38. “Wawona Hatchery—1895-1928,” from Earl Leitritz, A History of California’s Fish Hatcheries, Fish Bulletin 150 (Sacramento: Department of Fish and Game, no date), 23.]

6. Forest Management

Colonel Young, in his 1896 report to the Secretary of the Interior, pointed out that the floor of the forests and groves in the park, filled with fallen leaves, twigs, resinous cones, trunks, and branches, and covered over with assorted foliage and undergrowth, conducted flames quickly during the dry season. This covering also, however, preserved, increased, and equalized the water supply by retarding surface drainage and evaporation by the winds. To destroy that cover by spot burning early in the season when fires could be controlled, as a preventative against later forest fires in the dry season, destroyed that natural regulatory process, the preservation of which was one of the prime reasons for establishing forest reserves. Young, therefore, strictly enforced section 2 of the congressional act of 1 October 1890, which stated that the area’s flora, trees, animals, birds, and fish be preserved from any interference by man.39

[39. Young, Report of the Acting Superintendent, 1896, 5.]

7. Stream Flow Measurements in Yosemite Valley

An interesting data collection process had its beginnings in 1904 when the Yosemite Valley commissioners, desirous of having discharge stations established on several of the principal streams in the valley, began working with the hydrographic branch of the U. S. Geological

Illustration 53.
Staff water gauge at Pohono Bridge.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

Survey to obtain information on the runoff of the Merced River and its tributaries. The latter agency agreed to establish the stations, provide the measuring instruments, make all computations, and compile records. The commissioners, for their part, furnished an assistant to perform the fieldwork.

In July of that year E. A. Chandler and N. W. Currie erected staff gauges on Yosemite Creek, Tenaya Creek, and on the Merced River at Sentinel Bridge. Chandler served as the Nevada state engineer, employed by the Geological Survey to help with cooperative work. Currie functioned as valley electrician and had the job of recording daily readings of the stream gauges and taking occasional discharge measurements with a current meter. That exercise would result in a continuous gauge record so that the daily discharges of the valley streams could be published weekly in the daily papers throughout the state as a matter of interest to people who might want to visit the valley when the streams were full and the waterfalls at their best.

As it turned out, Currie made only one discharge measurement at each of the stations after installation and kept daily gauge readings only until the end of September 1904. At that time he stopped work upon the advice of the Guardian of the grant, probably because, as an uncompensated extra duty, it conflicted with his other responsibilities.

8. Origins of a Major Conservation Battle

a) Initiation of the Hetch Hetchy Project

Although the ramifications of this issue would not be fully comprehended for a few years, the incredibly complex and controversial Hetch Hetchy Project, a plan evolved by the city and county of San Francisco to provide a municipal water supply, had its beginnings in 1901-2. The Secretary of the Interior had authority to permit the use of rights-of-way prior to this time, but that authority was originally limited to those rights-of-way extending through public lands, as distinguished from reservations and parks. The act of Congress approved 15 February 1901 authorized him to extend those permits to forest and other reservations, and to the Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks. Specifically, it empowered him

to permit the use of rights of way through the public lands, forest and other reservations of the United States, and the Yosemite, Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, California . . . for canals, ditches, pipes and pipe lines, flumes, tunnels, or other water conduits, and for water plants, dams and reservoirs used to promote irrigation or mining or quarrying, or the manufacturing or cutting of timber or lumber, or the supplying of water for domestic, public, or any other beneficial uses . . . by any citizen, association, or corporation of the United States. . . .40

[40. Act approved 15 February 1901 (31 Stat. L. 790), quoted in “Memorandum as to Power of the Secretary of the Interior to Authorize the Construction by the United States, Under the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, of a Reservoir Within the Yosemite National Park,” ca. February 1905, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1.]

The San Francisco Water Works had built the city of San Francisco’s earliest large-scale water supply system in 1857 to provide water for the semi-arid Bay region. It brought the water of Lobos Creek, a small stream draining the northwesterly section of the city, by wooden flume to a pumping station on the bay shore at Black Point. From there the water was raised to reservoirs on Russian Hill, from which it was distributed through a system of pipes. Use of this water stopped in 1893 due to increasing contamination.

The Spring Valley Water Works began operations in 1860, running south into San Mateo County and beginning development of the Peninsula System of the San Francisco Water Department. It consolidated with the San Francisco Water Works in 1865 and operated under the name of the Spring Valley Water Company. Its first water supply came from Pilarcitos Creek in the mountains of San Mateo County, south of San Francisco. There a dam was constructed and reservoir formed from which a thirty-two-mile flume conveyed water to the city. The company built additional dams and steel pipes from time to time, ultimately developing the water sources on the San Francisco peninsula to their economic limit.

As early as 1871 city engineers realized that the water resources of the region were inadequate for future needs. Within the Coast Range, the regions south and east of San Francisco Bay had no surplus water, while streams to the north remained inaccessible. The problem constantly resurfaced as dry seasons and fires recurred. In addition, controversies continually arose between the water company and city officials over rates and service. The Spring Valley Water Company and the Contra Costa Water Company, which delivered water to Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley, enjoyed a monopoly of the water supply business, charging unusually high prices. Public opinion greatly favored obtaining municipal control of that public utility. Also, located near centers of population and human activity, the Spring Valley Company’s sources became subject to increasing pollution.

Although the city had attempted to negotiate with the Spring Valley Company for its sale, as the city charter required before the construction of independent utilities, the company remained unwilling to sell. Meanwhile it acquired water rights in Calaveras Valley and in Alameda and Santa Clara counties. The next step was to Alameda Creek, across San Francisco Bay, in 1887, from which a pipeline connected with the Peninsula System.

It became apparent, however, that the Spring Valley supply could not be increased indefinitely, that the only satisfactory solution to the problem lay in municipal ownership, and that the city would eventually have to resort to the Sierra Nevada -for a larger capacity water supply, despite the challenges posed by transporting that water 150 miles.

The impetus for San Francisco’s application for reservoir rights-of-way in Hetch Hetchy Valley and at Lake Eleanor as a source of domestic water supply resided in the new city charter, effective 8 January 1900, which imposed upon its legislative officers the obligation to submit proposals for the acquisition of a municipal water supply. That prompted an examination of existing and available sources in 1901.

In that year the municipal authorities chose the upper Tuolumne River as the best source of this future supply because of the abundance of water, the possibilities of a large reservoir site, the best electric power potential, the seeming impossibility of future contamination, the fact that its utilization involved only the use of waste floodwaters beyond the ultimate demands of all other dependent industries, and because all other sources appeared inferior to this one in purity as well as being encumbered with prior rights.41 The source of the Tuolumne River was a permanent glacier on Mount Lyell. Draining more than 650 square miles of watershed, the river flowed westerly through the northern part of Yosemite National Park and through Stanislaus National Forest, emerging from the foothills near La Grange and eventually emptying into the San Joaquin River.

[41. “In the Matter of the Application of The City and County of San Francisco For Reservoir Rights of Way in Hetch Hetchy Valley and Lake Eleanor Within the Yosemite National Park. Reply to Objections of the Honorable Secretaries of the Interior and of Commerce and Labor. On Behalf of the City and County of San Francisco,” 17 July 1905, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-5; City and County of San Francisco, Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco Water and Power, September 1967, in Box 85 (Hetch Hetchy), Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 6-8. ]

The Hetch Hetchy Valley, through which the Tuolumne River flowed, lay near the northwest corner of the park. By the early twentieth century, it remained relatively unknown to the majority of visitors to Yosemite Valley, although those few who had inspected it firsthand compared it favorably to the latter place in scenic beauty. Josiah Whitney of the California Geological Survey and Lt. Montgomery Macomb of the Wheeler Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian had both reconnoitered the area and admired its assets. By 1905, however, it could still only be reached by trail from Crocker’s Station on the Big Oak Flat Road or from Hazel Green, via Crocker’s, on the Coulterville Road. Its limited access restricted visitation and thereby limited its number of supporters when the battle for its preservation ensued. Unfortunately the steep walls, extensive floor, and narrow outlet that thrilled visitors with their beauty combined to make the valley an ideal reservoir site.

Activity in the valley had been minimal after the Central Sierra Miwoks and Owens Valley Paiute [Editor’s note: Mono Paiute, not Ownes Valley Paiute—dea] stopped inhabiting it regularly during the summer and fall. Some early evidence of homesteading activity and cattle grazing also appear in the written record. During the summer of 1904, some Stanford University students conducted a hotel camp there under the auspices of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, evidently in an attempt to develop Hetch Hetchy into a summer resort area rivaling Yosemite Valley. If such use had been developed, it might have helped save the valley from destruction.

Following a decision by the city of San Francisco to develop the Tuolumne River watershed as a future supply source, in 1901 James D. Phelan, mayor of San Francisco, as quietly as possible and acting as a private citizen, selected, surveyed, filed upon, and made application for reservoir sites and rights-of-way upon the Tuolumne River and its tributaries and in the Hetch Hetchy Valley and at Lake Eleanor. Preliminary development work kept those land appropriations alive until the city could obtain a permit from the federal government for the acquisition of storage reservoir sites on public lands within Yosemite National Park. In April 1902 Phelan applied under the act of 15 February 1901 for rights-of-way for two reservoirs within the park for the purpose of storing water for irrigation and manufacturing purposes and for water power and domestic use, the sites being located on the Tuolumne River and at Lake Eleanor.

b) The Secretary of the Interior Denies Mayor Phelan’s Applications

President Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock denied Mayor Phelan’s application for rights-of-way for two reservoirs in Yosemite National Park on 20 January 1903, directing the latter’s attention to the fact that much of the right-of-way desired ran over patented lands, over which the department had no authority to grant privileges. Furthermore, it appeared that the surveys of the sites had been made surreptitiously and without securing the consent of the department to enter the reservation for that purpose. The city defended its actions by responding that it found no requirement that authority to make such surveys had to be requested of the Secretary of the Interior and that it had been essential to move quietly to prevent private speculators from securing control of this only remaining possible source of public water in the state.

Subsequently Phelan transferred his alleged water rights in the park to the city of San Francisco, and a motion for the reopening of the case was favorably considered. A formal hearing continued for three days. After due consideration of the facts disclosed at the hearing, the Secretary of the Interior again concluded that under existing law the application of the city could not be granted. On 22 December 1903 Hitchcock sent a letter formally denying the application of the city of San Francisco for a right-of-way for reservoir sites at Hetch Hetchy Valley and Lake Eleanor to the commissioner of the General Land Office.

The letter stated that the act of 1 October 1890 obliged the Secretary of the Interior to preserve and retain the natural curiosities and wonders in the park in their “natural condition.” Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy Valley were of such obvious scenic importance that it would constitute a violation of that act for the secretary to permit their alteration, as would be necessary in order to construct the dams, reservoirs, and other works necessary to carry out the designs of the city. This obligation on the Interior Department stood despite the contention that the appropriation of Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy Valley for water storage reservoirs would enhance rather than detract from their natural beauty. Hitchcock reiterated that the site of the proposed reservoir at Lake Eleanor constituted patented lands and the department could not grant privileges there. (Actually the fact that a portion of the contemplated reservoir site lay upon private lands was not an obstacle to the granting of the application. Departmental approval would only have affected the public lands involved and would not have prejudiced the rights of private owners. In regard to those, the city would have had to proceed with condemnation proceedings in the state courts.)

Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock continued:

Presumably the Yosemite National Park was created such by law because of the natural objects, of varying degrees of scenic importance, located within its boundaries, inclusive alike of its beautiful small lakes, like Eleanor, and its majestic wonders, like Hetch-Hetchy and Yosemite Valley. It is the aggregation of such natural scenic features that makes the Yosemite Park a wonderland which the Congress of the United States sought by law to preserve for all coming time as nearly as practicable the condition fashioned by the hand of the Creator. . . .42

[42. E. A. Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior, to the President, 20 February 1905, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 4.]

The policy of the Interior Department regarding the granting of rights-of-way in Yosemite was to refuse all applications when the project seemed incompatible with the public interest, as expressed in the original 1890 act; when the proposed enterprise involved the appropriation of private property in the park that had not been consented thereto by the owner; or when it violated the act of 1 October 1890 creating the park, especially the provision directing the secretary to retain in their natural condition all natural curiosities within the reservation.43

[43. Ibid., 5. This statement of policy also appeared in the Secretary of the Interior’s annual report for 1904.]

Government officials argued that the clear purpose of the 1890 act had been to set apart and maintain the reservation in its natural condition and the object of the 1901 act was to only permit such uses as would not interfere with the original purpose of the reservation. Any use necessitating alteration of the natural scenery of the park would be incompatible with the directives of the original act. That Congress did not intend to authorize permits for uses that would permanently alter the natural condition of the park was evident. A clause in the act provided that any permission by the Secretary of the Interior under the provisions of the act could be revoked by him or his successor at their discretion and would not be construed to confer any right or easement or interest in, to, or over any public land, reservation, or park.44

[44. Appendix B, V. H. Metcalf, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, to the President, 1 March 1905, in “Matter of the Application of The City and County of San Francisco For Reservoir Rights of Way in Hetch Hetchy Valley and Lake Eleanor,” 17 July 1905, iii-iv.]

The controversy surrounding the proposed development of the Tuolumne River watershed, referred to as the Hetch Hetchy Project after its main storage reservoir, would continue over the next eight years and become the foremost preservation issue of the burgeoning national park movement. The conflict between strict preservation and controlled exploitation, heightened to some degree by the confusing term “reserved forest lands” used in the Yosemite Act, plagued a number of other early parks and has endured in one form or another to the present day. In this particular case, national parks were not yet an entrenched feature of American life, and expediency and materialism eventually won out over scenic preservation despite the vociferous opposition to the reservoir plan by conservation groups, corporate interests either hostile to the municipal ownership of public utilities or financially involved in rival water-supply projects, and irrigation districts fearful of water loss. One of the benefits reaped by the conservation movement from this argument over whether to simply regulate or whether to totally restrict the use of precious resources was that it stimulated thought and reaffirmed preservationist goals regarding national parks and their purpose. The dire results of the Hetch Hetchy conflict probably influenced to a great degree the successful passage of the act creating the National Park Service in 1916.

E. A New Transportation Era Begins

1. Railroad Lines to Yosemite

a) Yosemite Short Line Railway Company

Railroads to Yosemite had early been considered a necessity, both to shorten an otherwise long and tedious sightseeing trip and to facilitate business enterprises. As early as 1871 the Stockton & Copperopolis line began transporting travelers from the Central Valley to Milton, where they transferred to stagecoach lines for the ride into Yosemite Valley.

By 1898 the Sierra Railway Company of California began laying track east from Oakdale, reaching Tuolumne City in 1900. Sierra Railway officials jealously guarded their interests against all other proposed lines, because of the valuable timberlands along the route to Yosemite. The Crocker Bank interests subsidizing the rail line and the officers of the railroad intended to harvest the rich timber stands stretching for miles along the southern border of Tuolumne County. Two Sierra Railway feeders—the narrow-gauge Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valleys Railway from Tuolumne City, built by the West Side Flume and Lumber Company, and the standard-gauge Sugar Pine Railway from Sonora—reached forested areas to the north. The above parties also incorporated the Yosemite Short Line Railway Company and began construction in 1905. They planned to extend the Short Line tracks past Jacksonville, up the south bank of the Tuolumne River, and east into the Sierra Nevada along the same general route as the present state route 120. The sixty-mile-long line would have a ten-mile branch from Crocker’s Station north to Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Permission for the railroad to enter Yosemite was refused, but surveys for the line progressed as far as Crocker’s, in hopes that bureaucratic minds would change in the future. Surveys proceeded east along roughly the same route the Hetch Hetchy Railroad followed later, except that the narrow-gauge Short Line planned to run along the top edge of the river canyon rather than through Buck Meadow. The route as surveyed then ran up the South Fork of the Tuolumne River canyon into Harden Flat, north of Hodgdon’s, and reached the park boundary near the Tuolumne Grove. The company made haste to reach the park boundary before the Yosemite Valley Railroad, discussed later.

Heavy rains and flooding severely hampered construction work on the Short Line and increased expenses grew worrisome, but the San Francisco earthquake of 18 April 1906, with resulting financial losses, became the deciding factor in ending further expansion of the line. Grading had reached the south side of Little Humbug Creek, three-fourths of a mile west of the Sylvester Carlin home north of Groveland. Despite a brief resurgence of activity in November 1906 and recurrent promises through the succeeding months that the line would be finished — if not to carry passengers at least to enable exploitation of the thousands of acres of fine sugar pine trees owned by the railroad above Crocker’s—it was never completed.45

[45. Ted Wurm, “Short Line to Yosemite,” in National Railway Historical Society Bulletin 41, no. 4 (1976): 4-12, 36.]

b) Yosemite Valley Railroad

On 18 December 1902 a group of Oakland and San Francisco financiers incorporated the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company for a period of fifty years. Nathaniel C. Ray, superintendent of the Merced Gold Mining Company at Coulterville, initially proposed the line and then interested Oakland capitalists John S. Drum and Thomas Prather in the project. The company immediately attempted to obtain a right-of-way to Yosemite Valley directly up the Merced River canyon. Subsequent to the park boundary change of 1905, the railroad company filed an application with the Department of the Interior for permission to construct a railroad through the lands in the Sierra Forest reserve to the western boundary of the park. The department granted the application and, on 5 September 1905 entered into a contract with that company providing, among other things, for the payment for this privilege of one thousand dollars per year. The department reserved the right to reassess that rate in future years and also required that the company permit the use of its equipment and right-of-way to transport over its line the cars of such persons, firms, or corporations as the Secretary of the Interior might designate.46

[46. Report on Yosemite National Park, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905, 171.]

By September 1905 survey work was completed and grading began from Merced, the line’s western terminus. By October construction was proceeding, with the first carloads of rail arriving in November. The most difficult portion of the work involved the stretch from Merced Falls east, which ran mostly through the rough and steep Merced River canyon, where roads and trails had to be built to transport supplies and equipment and blasting and drilling were necessary to clear a roadbed. Only pack horses could be used to reach some of the work sites, and often materials had to be lowered by rope from the canyon rim. By May 1907 the line almost reached the national park boundary, at which point the company established a railhead, El Portal (“the Gateway”). Although the company never acquired a right-of-way through the park, it did build a wagon road to the valley from El Portal, which later became the Arch Rock entrance to the park. The first train from Merced arrived at El Portal on 15 May 1907.47
[47. Hank Johnston, Railroads of the Yosemite Valley (Long Beach, Calif.: Johnston-Howe, Publ., 1963), 10, 15. The extension of the line into Yosemite Valley halted because of steep grades, the government’s reluctance to sell the right-of-way, and opposition to spoiling the beauty of the park.]

F. Private Lands and Boundary Changes

Yosemite National Park, as first established on 1 October 1890, contained approximately 1,512 square miles, its boundaries including some of the most beautiful areas anywhere in the Sierra. In addition to possessing a great variety of animal and bird life and woodland cover, however, it also contained more than 60,000 acres of private inholdings, concentrated largely along its western border and consisting of lands principally valuable for their particularly high-grade sugar and yellow pine timber. No large mineral deposits existed in the park, although claims had been filed in several places along the western border.

As explained earlier, this land alienation had arisen through patents issued to settlers, lumbermen, and miners for lands in the area long before they were considered for national park status. Those first selections of land, of course, included the best locations in terms of accessibility, valuable timber holdings, choice meadowlands, and the most attractive shorelines of lakes and streams. Early settlers did not even overlook reservoir site possibilities and sometimes filed on lands with a view to the eventual development of rivers and waterfalls for power purposes. Because those holdings had been acquired in good faith, their owners could not be dispossessed, but, when the question of determining boundaries arose in 1890, it was found to be impracticable to exclude them. In the first place, the government had no clear idea how much patented land existed. Additionally, because Congress established the park long before automobiles came into general use, it did not realize the problem that private holdings would present as access to them improved.

Under the law, private landowners retained every right of ownership and use enjoyed by property owners anywhere. As a result, it became obvious as early as 1892 that private landownership constituted a serious obstacle not only to satisfactory administration of the area in the public interest, but also to effective protection of its landscape and wildlife from destruction resulting from logging and other types of land utilization inconsistent with the purposes for which the park had been established. Even if purchase had been considered, the federal government in 1890 had no money to buy out these settlers.

For a long time acting superintendents received no specific instructions on questions affecting the varied interests of the park. The first administrator, Captain Wood, therefore, set precedents followed by his colleagues. Wood either resolved problems immediately, guided by his own ideas of equity in each case; refer them to the department; or simply awaited some sort of fixed governmental policy. Wood made the point in his 1891 report that the number of private interests within the park boundaries, including primarily mining and timber claims and homesteads, was much greater than Congress had realized when it included so much area within the limits of the reserve. About three years earlier, for example, when rumors circulated concerning construction of a railroad to the park, people had plastered the mountains with timber claims. Questions growing out of private interests constantly arose and demanded deep thought and often firmness on the part of each successive superintendent.

All acting park superintendents addressed the problems of landownership, perhaps none as thoroughly as Maj. John Bigelow, Jr., as evidenced in his report of 23 September 1904. In that report Bigelow called attention to the fact that the act establishing Yosemite “National Park” actually set apart certain townships as reserved forest lands rather than using the word “park.” (In fact, he believed the area did not really qualify as a park because it lacked good roads and trails, an efficient guardianship, adequate traveler accommodations, and the freedom of going in and out without paying—all attributes one would expect of a national park.) Still, Bigelow perceived that when Congress set aside these tracts of land as forest reservations, it was not seeking to promote the interests of lumbermen, but to provide recreation for the American people. As he elaborated:

The value of a given tract of land to the park is not determined by the quantity of timber that promoters and speculators can reckon on getting off it; it consists of the sum of the wholesome pleasures which it yields to the general public, to the people of moderate or scanty means who on foot, or horseback, or in wagons, seek it in the heat of summer as a relief from the sweltering temperature of Fresno, Madera, and other low-land towns and settlements of California, and to people in better circumstances who come to it on bicycles, in automobiles, and by rail and stage, from all parts of California, of the United States, and of the world.48

[48. Bigelow, report of 23 September 1904, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior, 1904, 387.]

Bigelow believed that essentially the Yosemite forest reservation had been established to protect the water supply of the region, a purpose that daily increased in importance because lumber companies were felling trees at such a rate that they would eventually affect the general water supply of that section of the country. Bigelow sensed that the park was already remarkably dry for a wooded country. As stated earlier in reference to his arboretum, Bigelow also strongly believed that the reservation had been set aside to preserve all the natural, mineral, and geological features of the country comprising the park—“To an intelligent lover of nature a few samples of a rare tree or flower may make a spot more interesting, a piece of land more valuable, than thousands of feet of food for lumber mills.”49 Bigelow noted, in that regard, that the townships on the western border of the park lay in a warm belt, possessing, he thought, a higher average temperature than any other similar area in the park. Those townships contained forms and conditions, if not species, of vegetable and animal life not found elsewhere. They also included most of the mining claims in the park and probably the most interesting mineralogical features.

[49. Ibid., 388.]

Bigelow hoped that Congress would enable the federal government to acquire Yosemite Valley, to ensure better administration and development of the area as a whole; to purchase the toll roads in the park to facilitate army communications and visitor access; to purchase certain patented lands, thereby resolving the question of boundaries; and to resist the removal of eight townships from the national park. That latter measure, introduced into Congress by J. N. Gillette of California, provided for transferring eight townships, or 240 square miles, comprising private lands mostly in the western sector, from the park to the forest reserve. Bigelow reflected on a number of concerns relative to that proposal. The southwestern corner of the park served as the principal winter retreat for deer and other small game. Excluding it from the park and placing it in the adjoining forest reserve where hunting and trapping occurred would be disastrous to those animals. Having grown tame while protected in -the park, they would fall easy prey to hunters. In addition, the western part of the park was the region of principal forest fire activity. Bigelow urged that it would be safer for the park to have flammable timber within its boundary and under its control than adjoining it and not under its control. The cutting of timber within the park would not injure it any more than cutting it just outside the boundary. Bigelow argued that even if the private lands there could not be obtained by purchase or appropriated by eminent domain, they should not be removed from the park. Congress had given Yosemite National Park to the people of the United States and it was inconceivable that body would take the land away merely at the insistence of a syndicate of lumber merchants in disregard of the wishes of the actual “owners” of the property.50

[50. John Bigelow, Jr. ‘s, lucid assessment of the many problems facing park administration are found in ibid., 386-90.]

The existence of private landownership related closely to administration of the park. In 1904 Maj. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, Commanding General of the Pacific Division of the U. S. Army, advised Congress to enact laws for the civil government of Sequoia, General Grant, and Yosemite national parks similar to those in force at Yellowstone. Responding to that recommendation, Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock pointed out that in Yellowstone the United States had full jurisdiction over the lands and Congress could enact laws governing them and provide for their enforcement in the courts. However, exclusive jurisdiction over properties in the California parks that had been established after California statehood had not yet been ceded to the federal government. Hitchcock stated that when private holdings in those reservations were eliminated and the state ceded jurisdiction over the park lands to the United States, measures would immediately be taken toward the enactment of laws for those parks similar to those in effect in Yellowstone. In the meantime, the present method of administration appeared the best that could be devised.51

[51. Arthur MacArthur, Major General, Commanding, Pacific Division, U. S. A., to The Military Secretary, War Department, 25 November 1904, and response by E. A. Hitchcock, Secretary, Department of the Interior, 22 December 1904, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

The question of whether to realign boundaries or purchase patented lands might have continued indefinitely if a crucial timber-cutting situation had not made an immediate resolution of the problem imperative. The Yosemite Lumber Company, which had purchased extensive private holdings in the southern and western parts of the park, began logging operations in 1903. The resulting ugly gashes through the forests prompted the Interior Department to take action.

In 1904 Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock appointed a commission to survey the Yosemite boundary situation, make a field investigation, and submit recommendations to Congress. The commission consisted of Maj. Hiram M. Chittenden, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A.; Robert B. Marshall, topographer with the U. S. Geological Survey; and Frank Bond, chief of the drafting division of the General Land Office. Those men concluded that a smaller park, with fewer private holdings, could be more easily protected and supervised than the original area with its large, concentrated timber holdings that would eventually be logged. There appeared no hope of securing appropriations to buy out the private holdings in the park because of Congress’s well-established practice of refraining from appropriating moneys to purchase privately owned lands for recreational and park purposes. The commission recommended, therefore, that the boundaries be revised to exclude the bulk of the timberlands.

Such a boundary revision would result in eliminating approximately 430 square miles from the original park area of 1,512 square miles. Private land holdings would accordingly decrease from around 60,000 acres to about 20,000. The 40,000 acres of private property proposed for exclusion largely comprised timberlands in the lower elevations that were sufficiently accessible to permit practical logging operations. The commission believed that the remaining timberlands within the park remained sufficiently inaccessible to preclude logging activity. The mineral lands of the Chowchilla Mountains would also be excluded.

Congress, by act of 7 February 1905 entitled “An Act to exclude from the Yosemite National Park, California, certain lands therein described and to attach and include the said lands in the Sierra Forest Reserve,” carried the boundary commission’s recommendations into effect and modified the reservation boundaries accordingly. It eliminated several townships on the park’s four corners, including all the Chowchilla mining claims in the southwest portion and established the present Foerster-lsberg-Triple Divide Peak crest as the eastern boundary. It eliminated the scenic country of the upper San Joaquin River, the Minarets, the Mount Ritter Range, and the Devils Postpile.52 As a result, the park’s western boundary ran primarily along section lines, in contrast to the northern and eastern boundaries that followed the watershed—an easily distinguishable natural boundary. The 7 February act excluded 542.88 square miles and made them a part of the Sierra Forest Reserve. It also added about 113.62 square miles, resulting in a total of approximately 1,082 square miles of Yosemite parkland. The committee had further recommended that the area remaining after the boundary changes be officially designated “Yosemite National Park.”

[52. Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club, 51. The Devils Postpile received national monument status in 1911.]

The 7 February 1905 act also provided that, as in the case of the Yosemite Valley Railroad right-of-way, the Secretary of the Interior could require payment for privileges granted under the act of 15 February 1901 or under any other act relating to rights-of-way over public lands on the lands segregated from the park and made a part of the Sierra Forest Reserve. All moneys received from that source would be used to manage, protect, and improve the park. On 7 July 1905 the Department of the Interior promulgated regulations to carry the provisions of the act into effect.

Even with the change in boundary, there remained more than 22,000 acres of privately owned land in the park, which the commission recommended either exchanging for government lands in the portions excluded or purchasing. This was the first suggestion for a federal policy of exchanging government lands outside a park, or soon to be placed outside a park, for private lands inside a park. Congress, however, took no action on those recommendations and, as a result, many of the privately owned timberlands along the western border, both inside and outside the park, were cut over.

Many of the remaining properties comprised timber claims or small meadows that the owners used as a pretext for driving cattle into the park with the intent of pasturing them there in violation of the law. Few of those claims had any value. At Tuolumne Meadows, after Jean Lembert’s death, his property had passed to his brother Jacob. On 7 January 1897, the Lembert estate sold the Soda Springs claim to John and Fred McCauley of Big Meadow. The McCauleys refenced much of the land and built a new, larger cabin on the rocky knoll west of the springs. The one-story, one-room McCauley cabin, one of the more recently constructed log cabins in Yosemite, still stands in Tuolumne Meadows, slightly west of Parsons Memorial Lodge. The McCauleys built the structure as a bunkhouse in 1902. Although some modern features appear in the structure, the original character of peeled, round logs on the exterior, hewn flat on the interior, with square or box-notched corner joints, is visible. The cabin stands on a rock foundation and has mortar

Illustration 54.
McCauley cabin, Tuolumne Meadows.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

chinking. Alterations include a shingle roof with flashing, a concrete floor, a screen door, and glass windows. Tuolumne Meadows provided good summer pasturing for the McCauley cattle for many years.

During this time, there was also activity at Hazel Green. In 1903 a typhoid epidemic struck Palo Alto, California, where the David Currys lived in the winters, and after several family members had been stricken, it was decided to spend a summer recuperating at Hazel Green, which Curry was negotiating to buy from Mrs. Halstead. The purchase was recorded in 1904, although the Curry family had already moved in by 1903. Hazel Green then consisted of one or two log cabins and a white frame house with a wing of bedrooms. The large barn functioned as part of the changing station for stage teams.53

[53. Tresidder, “Reminiscences of Hazel Green.”]

One of the most blatant trespassers on park lands at that time, according to Acting Superintendent Harry Benson, continued to be Senator John B. Curtin of Sonora, who owned about 640 acres of patented lands at Gin, Crane, and Tamarack flats. Although he had carried on considerable correspondence with its administrators since the establishment of the park, Curtin’s problems came to a head during the tenure of Acting Superintendent Benson, whose vigorous enforcement of park regulations resulted in a legal confrontation. Curtin’s flagrant violations of park rules against trespassing had angered park administrators to the point that they prohibited him from driving his stock along the public roads within the park to his property. Curtin then obtained permission to graze several hundred head of cattle in the forest reserve adjoining the park; after being turned loose in that area, the animals immediately headed toward their old grazing grounds near Tamarack, Cascade, and Yosemite creeks, between the Big Oak Flat and Tioga roads, and had consequently been impounded at Wawona.

In response to what he perceived as unfair governmental control, Curtin brought suit in the state courts for a restraining injunction against the acting superintendent to prevent interference with his cattle-grazing operations. He disputed the legality of the Interior Department regulations requiring any person intending to drive stock upon land he claimed within the park to survey it and point out its metes and bounds to the acting superintendent. Curtin also questioned the legality of removing a man’s cattle for failure to comply with that regulation.54

[54. “Yosemite National Park,” in “National Parks and Reservations,” in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905, 167; H. C. Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 10 October 1905, in ibid., 693-95; H. C. Benson, report of operations in Yosemite National Park during June 1905, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite) RG 79, NA, 4.]

The Department of Justice assigned the district attorney for the Northern District of California to take charge of the matter and the case was removed to the U. S. Circuit Court for resolution. Curtin lost the decision in the Circuit Court, but eventually was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court. The voluminous and acrimonious correspondence between Curtin and park superintendents through the years provides an enlightening picture of the resistance of early Yosemite pioneers and stockmen to government control.

The boundary change of 1905 proved to be only a short-term solution to a growing problem. Completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad to within a mile of the western park boundary in 1907 made possible the logging of private lands remaining in the park previously considered inaccessible. Additional legislation in later years would be required to protect Yosemite’s scenic features.

G. Recession of the Yosemite Grant

It is clear that by the end of the first ten years of army administration of Yosemite National Park, a number of problems still remained to be resolved. All acting superintendents agreed that the implementation of several policies by the federal government, in addition to the acquisition of toll roads, would improve the situation. The policies they suggested included:

1) assignment of more troops to the park so that it could be thoroughly protected;

2) purchase of all private lands within the park limits, so that owners and lessees of patented lands could not allow their sheep and cattle to roam the entire park;

3) formulation of a system of severe penalties for trespass by herders, hunters, and other violators of the park rules. The only penalties in use entailed dispersement of herds, detention of pack trains and camp equipage and stock, and forceful ejection of owners and herders from the park. The superintendent recommended that some officer connected with administration of the park be given the same powers as those enjoyed by U. S. commissioners.

4) establishment of a military camp within Yosemite Valley—a more central and convenient point from which to patrol;

5) erection of a permanent camp in the vicinity of Wawona, with a stable, mess house and kitchen, and library, enabling a detail of men to remain in the park and protect it during the winter months after the bulk of the troops had withdrawn;

6) proper surveying and marking of the park boundary so that patrols and civilians alike could recognize the reservation limits, thereby avoiding much of the ill feeling that arose when people were accused of trespassing; and,

7) a reversal of government policy relative to fire control. Army administrators believed that instead of preventing and suppressing fires, they should be initiating a systematic burning of the forests.55

[55. As early as 1898, however, civilian Acting Superintendent J. W. Zevely stated:

In the matter of the prevention of forest fires; from conversations had with old mountaineers, men who have lived in the Sierras since the fifties, who have been constant observers of the conditions there, and who are deeply interested in the preservation of the forests in the National Parks as well as the National Reservations, I have concluded that the policy heretofore pursued by the Government looking to the prevention of fires altogether, is erroneous. Since the Yosemite Park was established, great efforts have been made by each Superintendent to prevent fires altogether, and when they have started, to prevent their spread. The consequence of this is that the floors of the mountains and the valleys have become covered by decaying pine needles and cones and the leaves of the deciduous trees to a depth of from twelve to eighteen inches; in addition, many trees have fallen and are now decaying, and the whole mass is highly inflammable. The consequence is that when fires start under existing conditions, it is next to impossible to control them at all, and the trees in the track of a fire are destroyed. Prior to the inauguration of the present policy, fires occurred almost every year in all parts of the forests; in fact, they were frequently set by the Indians, but there was so little accumulation on the ground that they were in a great measure harmless, and did not, in any sense, retard the growth of the forest.

I therefore think it would be well to consider whether or not the policy of the Government had not better be reversed, and instead of efforts to prevent fires, a systematic burning had not better be indulged. There is not to be found now in the whole forest any tree of great magnitude which has not upon it the marks of fire, yet the trees have in no wise been seriously affected by these burnings.

Major John Bigelow, Jr., in 1904 also recommended regular and systematic burning of the underbrush and other debris, a procedure recommended by Major Hein in 1902 and approved by Colonel Garrard in 1903. See J. W. Zevely “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park for the Year 1898,” in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), 5-6, and John Bigelow, Jr., “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 1904, 382. ]

Other problems existed in addition to those related specifically to national park administration. The army’s job had often been made more difficult because of the split administration of the region between the state, controlling Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, and the army. Not only were the valley and grove thirty-five miles apart, but after 1890 the valley became a park within a park. For years acting superintendents, environmental groups, the state press, and other influential bodies, as well as a large portion of the general public of California, had expressed themselves as being in favor of the recession of the Yosemite Grant to the federal government. The Sierra Club pointed out that the state of California simply could not afford to appropriate a sufficient amount of money to adequately care for the area. Other necessities in the state would always limit the amount that could be expended on valley improvements. Even though state pride might argue against the changeover, the club believed that the time had come to acknowledge that only the federal government could afford the financial burden of care and development required. Terminating the trust would eventually render the valley and grove more accessible and more enjoyable to visit.56

[56. “Statement Concerning the Proposed Recession of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove by the State of California to the United States,” in Sierra Club Bulletin 5, no. 3 (January 1905): 242-47.]

From the War and Interior department viewpoints, such an action would allow the establishment of a suitable post for the army troops, the adoption of a comprehensive system of patrols, the protection of the valley and surrounding areas against fire, the construction of an adequate system of free public roads into the valley, the erection of ample hotel and other visitor accommodations, the prevention of rate abuse by concessioners, and would generally facilitate the administration and protection of the park and ensure the valley’s proper preservation and accessibility. Those favoring recession of the grant believed that the valley and its surroundings logically formed one administrative unit and that the unsuccessful anomaly of dual ownership and divided responsibility should not be allowed to continue. Members of the state legislature and others who had certain vested interests in the valley that might lapse if the federal government assumed control, such as stage lines and hotels, violently opposed the recession. The Southern Pacific Railroad, meanwhile, under the guidance of New York financier E. H. Harriman, secretly threw its weight behind the recession movement. The San Francisco Examiner and State Senator John Curtin led the opposition, calling on state pride in an attempt to prevent this action.

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt visited Yosemite and, desiring to view the park as thoroughly as possible, accompanied John Muir into the backcountry for two days and three nights. The pair camped in the Mariposa Grove, at Sentinel Dome, and in the meadows near Bridalveil Fall, where a plaque was later erected commemorating their exchanges around the campfires. The strong-minded Muir had no qualms in passing along his firm convictions on the subject of preserving unspoiled places, in suggesting specific areas that should be saved, and in suggesting necessary legislation to carry out that goal. Despite the disapproval of the valley folk, who were thwarted in their plans for large celebrations in the President’s honor, the discussions between Muir and Roosevelt centering around conservation and despoliation of the forests undoubtedly hastened action on the recession of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove and influenced Roosevelt to launch an aggressive conservation policy that resulted in the setting aside of large tracts of land in national forest preserves, monuments, and parks.

The urgings of the pro-recession advocates finally culminated in the passage of an act by the California legislature, approved by the governor 3 March 1905, retroceding to the United States the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees for national park purposes. The act made the recession of the lands in question conditional upon their being formally accepted by the federal government. That provision, included at the request of those who opposed the recession, later served to impede the transfer after the bill had passed.

Illustration 55.

EXHIBIT “C”

MAJOR CHANGES TO BOUNDARIES
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
1864 - 1979

— • • —

Act of June 30, 1864, authorizing grant to State of California of the “Yosemite Valley” and land embracing the “Mariposa Big Tree Grove.” Signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Also the Act of June 2, 1920, accepting cession by California of exclusive jurisdiction of lands embraced within Yosemite.

• • • • • •

Act to set apart certain tracts of land within the State of California as national Forest Reservations. Approved October 1, 1890, and signed by President Harrison.

— — — —

Act to exclude certain lands from the Forest Reservation and to attach and include the said lands in the Sierra Forest Reserve. Approved February 7, 1905. Lands hereafter known as Yosemite National Park.

Joint Resolution, approved June 11, 1906. Areas subtracted from the Park.

Land and timber exchange authorized by Act of Congress. Approved April 16, 1914.

Presidential Proclamation of April 14, 1930, signed by President Hoover for the preservation of timber stands along western boundary. The “Rockefeller Purchase.”

Proclamation of August 13, 1932, signed by President Hoover, The “Wawona Addition.”

Act of July 9, 1937, authorizing the Secretary of Interior to purchase lands in the “Carl Inn Addition,” signed by President F. D. Roosevelt.

*

Proposed Crocker Ridge Addition: 253 acres of U. S. Department of Agriculture, Stanislaus National Forest land to be included within the Yosemite boundary. Proposed Mt. Raymond transfer: 160 acres of Park land to be transferred to U. S. Department of Agriculture, Sierra National Forest.

From Yosemite Draft Land Acquisition Plan, 1979

[click to enlarge]

With prior knowledge of the legislation pending in the California legislature, the Department of the Interior contacted the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate on 1 March 1905, calling attention to the bill’s provisions. At the same time the department suggested incorporating in the Sundry Civil Bill acceptance of the retrocession, making the lands part of Yosemite National Park and appropriating money for their management and protection. The suggested legislation was incorporated in the Sundry Civil Bill, acted upon favorably by the Senate, rejected in the House, sent to conference, and finally eliminated from the bill.

Immediately after the governor of California approved the act of the state legislature, the information was telegraphed to Washington. Senator George C. Perkins of California immediately introduced a bill in the Senate providing for the acceptance of the recession and for a suitable appropriation for the care of Yosemite Valley, which immediately passed. It then went to the House, where attention was called to the fact that the rules forbade the introduction of new legislation on the last day of Congress. Members of Congress then agreed that a joint resolution should be prepared to obviate the difficulty. That resolution passed the Senate and later the House in an amended form. Public Resolution No. 29, 3 March 1905, carried the title “Joint Resolution Accepting the recession by the State of California of the Yosemite Valley Grant and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove in the Yosemite National Park.”

At that point, the Secretary of the Interior and the military authorities requested permission of the state to establish a military camp in the valley, that being a more central location from which to send out patrols and obtain supplies. The secretary also requested the governor to turn over the state property in the valley to the acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park as the legal representative of the Interior Department. When the military superintendent, after consultation with Governor George Pardee, proceeded to the valley to select a suitable camp location, however, the Yosemite commissioners informed him that they did not recognize his right to establish a camp of his choice. Instead, treating the troops as they would any other campers, they asked the Guardian to locate the campsite. Because the area designated for their camp was a small meadow, unsuitable for a detachment of that size, Benson decided not to quarter troops in the valley during the 1905 season.

The state commissioners opposed to the recession refused to cooperate in any way with federal authorities. They declined to surrender the state’s property, arguing that the valley had been entrusted to their care by the state and that, in their opinion, the federal government had not formally accepted the recession as specified under the state act. They then turned the matter over to the state attorney-general for opinion. Although it seemed clearly the intention of Congress to accept the recession of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, the bill prepared by the Department of the Interior, as amended and passed into law, provided only an appropriation for the care of Yosemite National Park. It contained no specific acceptance of the cession by Congress.

The Interior Department noted, however, that the original act ceded the valley to the state only in trust and that the state, tired of the responsibility, had determined to abandon it and had passed a resolution to that effect, which the governor had approved. Neither the state legislature nor the governor opposed turning over state property on the grounds that the federal government had not accepted the recession. That argument had instead been initiated by a body that the state legislature had created and that had, in fact, by the act of recession, been legislated out of office. The Yosemite commissioners, however, managed by such delaying tactics to retain possession of state property in the valley and the grove and prevent its use by the federal government in the administration of the reservation.

The joint resolution of 3 March 1905 appropriated twenty thousand dollars for the management, improvement, and protection of Yosemite National Park. The question then arose as to the propriety of expending part of that appropriation in improvements in the valley and grove, which were still being held as state property. The Comptroller of the Treasury held that the sum appropriated by the resolution was intended to be used for that purpose. Because of the problems posed by the stubbornness of the state commissioners, however, the Department of the Interior declined to spend any of the sum on either area.

Obviously something had to be done to resolve this continuing problem of dual ownership. At the insistence of Senator Perkins, a draft joint resolution was prepared that he introduced in the Senate on 19 December 1905 as Senate Joint Resolution 14, entitled “Joint Resolution Accepting the recession by the State of California of the Yosemite Valley Grant and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, and including the same, together with fractional sections five and six, township five south, range twenty-two east, Mount Diablo meridian, California, within the metes and bounds of the Yosemite National Park.” (For administrative purposes in the management of the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, a parcel of land approximately one mile long and two miles wide, immediately south of the park and abutting the grove on the north, was included within the metes and bounds of the park.)

On 15 January 1906, California Congressman J. N. Gillett introduced the same form of resolution in the House as Joint Resolution 77. Further complicating matters, an amendment was proposed to Senate Joint Resolution 14 relative to further elimination of lands from the southwestern portion of the park.

A group of San Joaquin Valley businessmen, backed by the Southern Pacific Railroad, had formed the Fresno Traction Company in 1903 in hopes of building a line from Fresno to Wawona to compete with the Yosemite Valley Railroad. The Fresno Traction Company in 1906, during the discussion on the joint resolution accepting the recession, urged congressional members to amend the bill to eliminate a strip of land on the southwest from the park to enable the company to secure a right-of-way for its electric railroad. That proposed line would approach Yosemite Valley via Wawona, carrying passengers, baggage, and freight, but not conveying timber, lumber, or like materials cut within the park or nearer to it than Wawona without permission of the Secretary of the Interior. The company also stated it would purchase at least twenty-five thousand dollars worth of patented timberlands along the route, subject to an option of the government to purchase, and construct a wagon road from the line’s terminus connecting with the road system into the valley. Private parties and the acting superintendent opposed that amendment, which the Department of the Interior considered detrimental to the park’s welfare. A hearing on the subject was held at the department. Because the acreage proposed for elimination from the park and placement in the Sierra Forest * Reserve was too large, a substitute amendment was suggested. It permitted construction of a railroad from the south under conditions not materially affecting the integrity of the park or necessitating elimination of such a large acreage of valuable forest land.

Accordingly a new bill was prepared embodying the substitute amendment. Introduced in the House as Joint Resolution 118 and reported on favorably by the appropriate House and Senate committees, the bill as amended passed the House and Senate and President Roosevelt signed it under date of 11 June 1906. The resolution changed the park boundaries by excluding 13.06 square miles and adding about 54 square miles, making a total area of about 1,124 square miles. The new boundaries followed surveyed lines on the west and southwest because of existing private claims, but on the north, east, and south followed natural lines—either divides between watersheds or large stream channels.

On 15 June 1906, the acting superintendent was directed to establish his camp in the Yosemite Valley and take charge of the latter as well as the grove. The Interior Department telegraphed Governor Pardee to advise the Yosemite Valley commission of the approval of the bill accepting the recession and to direct the Guardian to complete his work and turn over state property to Major Benson.

The commissioners remained in charge of the valley and grove until 1 August 1906, at which time the state formally surrendered the reservation to the acting superintendent, as well as the electric plant in the valley. Personal property, such as horses, wagons, tools, and implements, was stored with private parties in the valley pending its appraisal and transfer to the federal government.57

[57. Report on Yosemite National Park under “National Parks and Reservations,” 172-75, and Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 10 October 1905, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905, 691-92; and report on Yosemite National Park, under “National Parks and Reservations,” 197-200, and H. C. Benson, Major, Fourteenth Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1906, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906. Report of the Secretary of the Interior and Bureau Officers, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906), 649-52. All fixtures in the valley were transferred to the federal government under a transfer act passed by the California legislature. Portable property was appraised and bought by Major Benson for $1,750.]

H. Refocus of Park Administration

Prior to the recession of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the United States, Yosemite National Park had been administered more as a forest reservation or “wilderness park.” Although it had posed a tremendous number of complex problems, acting superintendents had not been concerned with most of the problems generated by tourism, such as adequate visitor accommodations, safety measures, transportation services, rate regulation, grocery and feed services, and the like. With the transfer of administrative headquarters from Wawona to the valley, however, acting superintendents of necessity became much more involved in immediate and complex pressures. In addition to concerns over private landownership, poaching, and trespassing, they became embroiled in questions of improved road systems; water, sewer, and electrical requirements; the need for better communication and administrative facilities; and regulation of a growing concession industry.

CHAPTER IV. ADMINISTRATION OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, 1906-1915

A. The Army Moves Its Headquarters to Yosemite Valley 413
B. Trails, bridges, and Roads 414
1. Trails and bridges 414
a) General Trail and bridge Work 414
b) John Muir Trail 419
2. Roads 425
a) El Portal Road 425
b) Status of Roads in 1913 430
c) Road and Trail Construction Required of the City of San Francisco 431
d) Initiation of Auto Travel in Yosemite 433
e) Effects of Auto Travel in the Park 437
f) The Federal Government Acquires the Tioga Road. 439
g) The Big Oak Flat Road Becomes Toll Free 443

C. Buildings and Construction 443
1. Army Camp 443
2. Yosemite Village 446
3. Park General 451
a) Schools 451
b) Powerhouse 456
c) Miscellaneous 456
d) Wood-Splitting plant 457
e) Fire Lookouts and Patrol cabins 457
D. Campgrounds 458
E. Visitor Service Operations Expand 461
1. The U. S. Army Becomes involved in Business Concessions 461
2. Concession Permits in Operation During That Time 462
3. Camp Curry Continues to Grow 470
4. The Camp Idea Expands to Other areas 472
5. The Washburn interests 472
6. The Yosemite Transportation Company 477
7. The Yosemite Valley Railroad Company 478
8. The Shaffer and Lounsbury garage 479
9. The Desmond Park Service Company 479
F. Patented Lands Again Pose a Problem 481
1. Timberlands 481
a) Lumber interests Eye Park Timber Stands 481
b) Congress Authorizes Land Exchanges 483
c) The Yosemite Lumber Company 484
d) The Madera Sugar Pine Company 488
2. Private Properties 488
a) Foresta 488
b) McCauley ranch 489
c) The Cascades (Gentry Tract) 490
d) Tuolumne Meadows (Soda Springs) 490

G. Insect and Blister Rust Control 494
1. Beetle Depredations 494
2. White Pine Blister Rust 495
H. The Hetch Hetchy Water Project Plan Proceeds 496
1. The Garfield Permit 496
2. Antagonism to the Project Continues 497
3. The City of San Francisco Begins Acquiring Land 498
4. A New Secretary of the Interior Questions His Predecessor‘s Actions 500
5. The Raker Act 501
6. Construction Begins 505
7. General Character of the System 506
8. Elements of the Hetchy Hetchy System 507
a) Hetch Hetchy Railroad 507
b) Sawmills 509
c) Lake Eleanor Dam 512
d) Hetch Hetchy Dam 512

I. Completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad 513
J. Growth of El Portal 516
K. Growth of interest in National Parks and Need for Better Organization Leads to Establishment of National Park Service 518
1. Change in Administration of the Parks 518
2. Proposal for a Bureau of National Parks and Resorts 519
3. Establishment of the National Park Service 521

A. The Army Moves Its Headquarters to Yosemite Valley

The first army headquarters in Yosemite National Park had been established near Wawona because the state of California still controlled the more logical site—Yosemite Valley—and state officials had made it abundantly clear that they did not want army troops permanently encamped in the valley. In fact, according to former park supervisor Gabriel Sovulewski, the Yosemite commissioners forbade army patrols entering the valley from Wawona from camping farther up the valley than Bridalveil Meadow and strictly limited their movements in the valley, off or on duty.1 With the recession of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the United States, Acting Superintendent Maj. H. C. Benson proceeded to the valley on 22 June 1906 with one troop of cavalry, leaving only an outpost at Wawona.

[1. Gabriel Sovulewski, “The Story of Campgrounds in Yosemite Valley,” Yosemite Nature Notes 16, no. 11 (November 1937): 81.]

The War Department allotted $1,500 for the erection of new buildings on the present site of Yosemite Lodge and the re-erection of all the buildings that had been located at Wawona during the summer of 1905. In addition, the army built a forage house, saddle rooms for each troop, grain sheds, an orderly room for each troop, and an adjutant’s office. All stables, one for each troop and one for pack mules, had to be built anew. The army camp occupied all the ground west of the Yosemite Creek bridge as far as Rocky Point, including Leidig Meadow.

B. Trails, Bridges, and Roads

1. Trails and Bridges

a) General Trail and Bridge Work

Appropriations for improvement and repair of park facilities allowed construction of several trails and bridges during the year 1906. Thomas H. Carter of Wawona contracted for all the work, which included:

a six-mile trail from Hetch Hetchy Valley to Tiltill Valley;

a trail from the crossing of Rancheria Creek at its upper bridge to a point five miles up Rancheria Mountain toward “The Sink”;

a two-mile trail from “The Sink” to Pleasant Valley;

a twelve-mile trail from Pleasant Valley to Benson Lake, along the south side of the lake to its east side, then north to Kerrick Canyon;

a one-mile trail along the north side of Tiltill Valley connecting a trail entering on the southeast with one leaving for Lake Eleanor on the northwest;

three miles of trail from Lake Vernon to Tiltill Valley;

a 3-mile trail along the north side of Hetch Hetchy Valley, extending from the bridge at the upper end of Hetch Hetchy to a point half a mile below Falls Creek;

a fourteen-mile trail in Kerrick Canyon to the point where the trail to Stubblefield Canyon leaves it, then across Thompson and Stubblefield canyons to Tilden Lake; and

bridges over Falls Creek in Hetch Hetchy Valley, over Falls Creek just below Lake Vernon, and over Eleanor Creek within one mile of Lake Eleanor.2

[2. Report on Yosemite National Park, 196-97, and Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906, 656-57.]

In 1907 Carter constructed a four-mile trail from Tilden Lake into Jack Main Canyon; a new trail from Hog Ranch to Hetch Hetchy Valley replacing the old steep and rocky one; and a trail along the north side of that valley.3 Also sometime during 1907 to 1908 Superintendent Benson ordered Register Rock cleared of its grafitti.

[3. H. C. Benson, Major, 14th Cavalry, Acting Superintendent, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1907, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1907. Administrative. Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 561.]

In 1908 Paul Seagall placed new pegs on the Half Dome route. The Sierra Club supplied the money for a new cable, the end of which Lawrence Sovulewski carried to the top. During the 1908 season, Carter constructed trails from Rancheria Mountain, via Bear Valley, to Kerrick Canyon, and from there, via Slide Canyon, to Matterhorn Peak, connecting with existing trails. The northern part of the park appeared now well supplied with trails, except for the area between Lake Eleanor and Twin Lakes. Also that year the army oversaw replacement of the Pohono Bridge in Yosemite Valley and repair of the iron bridge near the Sentinel Hotel. Day labor repaired the bridge over the Merced River above Kenneyville (Upper Bridge). Louis C. Hill, a supervising engineer, recommended that in the future all bridges constructed be arches of either reinforced concrete or granite, that style being much more satisfactory from both a maintenance and aesthetic point of view.4

[4. H. C. Benson, Major, 14th Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1908, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1908. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908), 426-27, and Appendix A, “Roads in Yosemite National Park,” Louis C. Hill, Supervising Engineer, to Hon. James R. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, 10 December 1907, in ibid., 436.]

No new bridges were built during the 1909 season, but the El Capitan Bridge received a new floor and the bridges over the Merced near Camp Curry and over the Tuolumne in Hetch Hetchy Valley underwent repairs. By 1909 the following bridges crossed the Merced River and Tenaya Creek in Yosemite Valley:

Pohono Bridge (steel), 100 feet,
Sentinel Hotel Bridge (steel), 96 feet,
El Capitan Bridge (wood), 100 feet,
Stoneman Bridge (wood), 92 feet,
Upper Bridge (wood), 100 feet,
Power House Bridge (wood), 86 feet,
Tenaya Creek Bridge (wood), 85 feet.

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, believing that all the bridges except Pohono would have to be replaced within a few years, also recommended that they be replaced by stone arch bridges, which would be almost indestructible, more appropriate to the park setting, and “an adequate monument to represent the American Government in architectural work in its national park.”5

[5. Appendix A, “Report on Roads, Trails, and Engineering Structures,” A. R. Ehrnbeck, 1st Lieut., Corps of Engineers, 4 October 1909, in Wm. W. Forsyth, Major, Sixth Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1909, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1909. Administrative Reports, jjn 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary . of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1910), 434.]

By the 1910 season, all the important trails outside of the valley had been repaired and those from Tamarack Flat to Aspen Valley and from Hetch Hetchy Valley to Lake Eleanor shortened and improved. A new trail from above Mirror Lake to Tenaya Lake had been completed nearly to the top of the cliff in Tenaya Canyon. Bridge construction in 1910 included a new wagon bridge over the Merced River at the power plant, a new footbridge to Happy Isles, and a new wagon bridge over Cascade Creek on the Yosemite-EI Portal road. By this time names had been formalized for several of the largest bridges in the valley, including Sentinel Bridge over the Merced River near the Sentinel Hotel; Stoneman Bridge across the Merced between Kenneyville and Camp Curry; Clarks Bridge over the Merced near the old orchard in the east end of the valley; Tenaya Bridge over Tenaya Creek; and Secretary Bridge over the Merced near Happy Isles.6

[6. Wm. W. Forsyth, Major, Sixth Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1910, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1910. Administrative Reports in 2 Volumes. Volume II. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing ‘Office, 1911), 464-65.]

In the fall of 1911 bridge work included replacement of the log bridge over Yosemite Creek near Camp Yosemite and repair of the foot suspension bridge over the Merced near Camp Ahwahnee, badly damaged by high water and floating logs in the river. The heavy floods of the spring and early summer had also carried away part of the bridge over the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley.7 Trail work also continued. Originally, to reach Merced Lake, hikers had to ascend the Sunrise Creek Trail and cut north of Bunnell Cascade before dropping down to Merced Lake. In 1911 a new trail followed along the Merced River to Bunnell Point and crossed over its tip to Merced Lake, saving four miles.

[7. Wm. W. Forsyth, Major, Sixth Cavalry, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1911, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal. Year Ended June 30, 1911. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912), 589.]

During 1912-13, trail construction included completion of: a trail branching off of the Mirror Lake-Tenaya Lake trail at Snow Creek and proceeding to North Dome and Yosemite Point; a trail from Tenaya Lake to Clouds Rest, passing between Clouds Rest and Sunrise Mountain, via Forsyth Pass; a spur trail from the Forsyth Pass trail to the junction of the Merced Lake and Sunrise trails; a trail from McClure Fork to Washburn Lake; and a trail from the junction of the Yosemite Fall and Eagle Peak trails, via White Wolf and Harden Lake, to Hetch Hetchy Valley; as well as changing of the Sunrise trail from its junction with the old Clouds Rest trail to its junction with the Merced Lake trail.

Bridges constructed during 1912-13 included two horse and pedestrian bridges over the Merced River between Merced and Washburn lakes, one over the Merced River above Nevada Fall, and another over 11lilouette Creek; a wagon bridge over Tenaya Creek on the valley floor; two footbridges on the Happy Isles trail; and a small footbridge over a branch of Yosemite Creek on the Lost Arrow trail.8 Also a contractor, Oscar Parlier of Tulare, California, began construction of three reinforced-concrete arch bridges on the road passing by the foot of Bridalveil Fall. The government constructed the spandrel walls and roadway involved.

[8. Gabriel Sovulewski, Park Supervisor, “Report of the Park Supervisor,” 15 October 1913, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1913. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914), 732, 734. The McClure Fork of the Merced River became Lewis Creek in 1944. See discussion in Chapter V, fn. 8.]

Labors during the 1914 season consisted primarily of improving trails in the south and southeastern parts of the park. About three miles of new trail constructed from Washburn Lake south to the Lyell Fork of the Merced River opened up a beautiful section along the main canyon of the Merced. A trail that ran from the Wawona ranger station along the South Fork of the Merced for several miles before bearing north to the main Buck Camp trail at the Buck Camp ranger station was named for Ranger Archie Leonard. Leonard had supposedly first blazed the trail in the early 1900s during his scouting and guide work in the park for the U. S. Army troops. A sixty-foot-span foot and horse bridge of wood and steel trusses, known as the Register Rock Bridge, was constructed over the Merced River below Vernal Fall.9

[9. Gabriel Sovulewski, Park Supervisor, “Report of the Park Supervisor,” 27 September 1914, and David A. Sherfey, Resident Engineer, “Report of Resident Engineer,” 30 September 1914, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1914. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume II. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915), 730, 735.]

New trails constructed during 1914 and 1915 included: the Donohue Pass trail—from the junction of Ireland Creek and the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River to Donohue Pass; the Buck Camp trail—from Illilouette Fall, along Illilouette and Buena Vista creeks, joining the Buck Camp trail at Johnson Lake; the Merced Pass trail—from its junction with the Mono Meadow trail to Merced Pass; and partial relocation of the Merced Lake trail near Merced Lake. In addition, the California Construction Company of San Francisco constructed a new El Capitan Bridge in 1915, a combination steel and wood truss structure with a span of 87-1/2 feet.10

[10. Gabriel Sovulewski, Park Supervisor, “Report of Park Supervisor,” 30 September 1915, and David A. Sherfey, Resident Engineer, “Report of the Resident Engineer,” 30 September 1915, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915. Administrative Reports in 2 Volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916), 923, 926.]

b) John Muir Trail

Theodore S. Solomons, a mountain-climbing enthusiast and one of the founding members of the Sierra Club, first conceived of a pack trail across the southern High Sierra paralleling the main crest as a young boy of fourteen. He arrived in Yosemite in 1892 to begin the first of a series of organized explorations of the region to find a practicable route. Early reconnaissance work, lacking detail, had previously been undertaken during 1864 and 1865 by Professor William H. Brewer of the California Geological Survey and his assistants. Later John Muir had explored many of the upper canyons of the San Joaquin and King’s rivers. Solomons was primarily working, however, in areas of the Sierra whose main features remained completely unknown. During his 1892 trip, Solomons concentrated chiefly on the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River to the mouth of the South Fork. Other trips in 1894 and 1895 further explored the upper regions of the San Joaquin River basin and basically established the route that now constitutes the northern half of the John Muir Trail.

In 1887 Joseph N. LeConte, professor of mechanical and hydraulic engineering at the University of California, and nephew of geologist Joseph LeConte, began making regular trips into the Sierra making scientific observations and triangulating major peaks. In 1893 he compiled all data available on the portion of the Sierra Nevada adjacent to King’s River and published a map. A larger and more inclusive one published by the Sierra Club in 1896 showed the results of explorations to date. After Solomons’s groundbreaking, other explorers subsequently penetrated new areas and established new landmarks which facilitated perfecting of the route. In 1898 LeConte followed Solomons’s route south from Yosemite and pioneered a way to King’s River Canyon. Because the southern part of the route avoided the High Sierra at its most beautiful point, however, it was still not considered the true high mountain route that Solomons had striven for.

LeConte continued working out and piecing together bits of the route until he finally completed the desired 228-mile route in 1908. His 1909 map outlines in detail most of the present John Muir Trail.

By that time the areas at either end of the route had been well mapped, making the whole region known, although as yet inaccessible to most people. Yosemite National Park already had a decent trail system, but most of the rest of the proposed route lay in national forests. The northern part consisted primarily of Indian paths and sheep trails, while farther south various agencies, including the U. S. Forest Service, Fresno and Tulare counties, and the Sierra Club had built or financed improvements on trails in various sections. It still remained difficult to pass from one region to another and most of the trail was only generally indicated on maps.

Meanwhile, in 1901 the Sierra Club had begun its annual summer Outings. During 1914 a member, Meyer Lissner, suggested that the state of California undertake a program to improve and construct High Sierra trails to make that area more accessible. He proposed that the club formulate a program to seek appropriations for trail development. The club immediately appointed a committee to develop the idea. Meanwhile, John Muir, leader of the Sierra Club for many years, died, and William Colby, secretary of the club and the man drawing up the bill, inserted a provision to name this proposed trail along the Sierra crest the John Muir Trail, in honor of the man who so enthusiastically explored and publicized the beauties of the High Sierra.

On 28 January 1915 State Senator William J. Carr introduced the bill in the California Senate and Assemblyman F. C. Scott introduced it in the lower house. Governor Hiram Johnson signed the bill into law on 17 May 1915, and the legislature appropriated $10,000 for the work. State Engineer William F. McClure, required by the bill to select a practical route from Yosemite to Mount Whitney along the crest of the Sierra, made two field inspections to establish the exact route. It was decided, after several conferences with representatives of the Sierra Club and Forest Service, that the trail would begin at Yosemite Valley and ascend to Tuolumne Meadows;

Illustration 56.
Sketch map of the High Mountain Route, Yosemite to the King’s River Canyon, 1908.
From LeConte, “The High Mountain Route Between Yosemite and the King’s River Canon,” Sierra Club Bulletin 7, no. 1 (January 1909).

[click to enlarge]

thence across Donohue Pass and Island Pass to Thousand Island Lake and past the Devils Postpile, Fish Creek, North Fork of Mono Creek, Vermilion Valley, Bear Creek, Blaney Meadows, Evolution Creek, Muir Pass, Grouse Meadow, Palisade Creek, upper basin of the South Fork of Kings Riveg,, Pinchot Pass, Woods Creek, Rae Lake, Glen Pass, Bullfrog Lake, Bubbs Creek, Junction. Pass, Tyndall Creek, and Crabtree Meadows to Mount Whitney.11

[11. Walter L. Huber, “The John Muir Trail,” Sierra Club Bulletin 15, no. 1 (February 1930): 40.]

McClure asked officers of the Forest Service to supervise the trail’s construction, which they did without charge. Initial work began in August 1915 on connecting completed portions of the trail and would continue for several more years as the state legislature provided additional appropriations.12

[12. Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 25, 27-28, 38, 41-42. Also see Theodore S. Solomons, “A Search for a High Mountain Route from the Yosemite to the King’s River Canon,” Sierra Club Bulletin 1, no. 6 (May 1895): 221-37; Joseph N. LeConte, “The High Mountain Route Between Yosemite and the King’s River Canon,” Sierra Club Bulletin 7, no. 1 (January 1909): 1-22; Huber, “John Muir Trail,” 37-40; Theodore S. Solomons, “The Beginnings of the John Muir Trail,” Sierra Club Bulletin 25, no. 1 (February 1940): 28-40.]

2. Roads

a) El Portal Road

In connection with their proposed railroad up the Merced, the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company had offered to build a wagon road from El Portal connecting with the Coulterville toll road. Upon completion, the road would become a public highway. The company would construct those few miles, at an estimated cost of $80,000, if Congress made no similar appropriation for such a project. When Congress did not, the company planned to proceed on construction and have both its railroad and a wagon road in operation for the 1907 travel season. To complement that endeavor, the Department of the Interior allotted $8,000

Illustration 57.
Map of Yosemite Valley showing roads and projected revisions, 1912-13. From Automobile Club of Southern California Road Department Report on Condition of Roads into Yosemite Valley, 1912, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.

[click to enlarge]

to improve the roads leading from the terminus of that wagon road to the existing road system on the valley floor and to the various hotels. It also authorized construction of three bridges and a culvert on those roads.

Although the new wagon road facilitated travel into the valley from El Portal, it remained an uncomfortable journey. The majority of park visitors followed this route, which led from the terminus of the Yosemite Valley Railroad along the north bank of the Merced River for ten miles before crossing to the south side of the river over the Pohono Bridge and proceeding on to the Sentinel Hotel. The first ten miles of the road remained for several years extremely rocky, narrow, and tortuous. In 1908 Acting Superintendent Benson complained about the deplorable road conditions into and around Yosemite Valley: “The one great drawback to the visitor’s pleasure is the fact that he is driven over rough roads so dusty that when he arrives at his destination his dearest friend could not recognize him.”13 Benson stressed that the valley roads needed widening, macadamizing, and watering.

[13. Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1908, 425.]

The first actual roadwork the federal government performed after recession of Yosemite Valley involved improvement of the El Portal road. In 1909 work began on macadamizing it from the El Capitan Bridge to the Sentinel Hotel along the south side of the Merced. A year later that portion had been graded and culverts installed. Traveling conditions over the El Portal-Old Yosemite Village road improved in 1910 with installation of a sprinkling system with water for the new road section, provided by two 5,000-gallon tanks installed between Camp Ahwahnee and the El Capitan Bridge. During the fall of 1912 and summer of 1913, grading and macadamizing proceeded on the El Portal road in the area of Camp Ahwahnee.

The work of widening the lower sections of the road began on 10 May 1913. By the first of October almost two miles had been widened from ten to twenty-five feet to incude a guard wall, ditch, and eighteen-foot roadbed. Construction work involved drilling and blasting through the large boulders and solid granite formation through which the road wound. Rock debris from this effort was thrown down the slope toward the Merced River.

b) Status of Roads in 1913

In 1913 the government owned forty-six miles of road within Yosemite National Park, including nineteen on the floor of Yosemite Valley, on both sides of the Merced River from the Pohono Bridge to Mirror Lake; the nine miles of the El Portal road, from the Pohono Bridge to the western park boundary; four miles of the Wawona Road, from the valley floor to Fort Monroe on the southern rim; four miles of the Big Oak Flat Road, from the valley floor to Gentry’s on the valley’s northern rim; and ten miles of roads in the Mariposa Big Tree Grove. A lack of planning had resulted in an excessive number of unattractive roads in the valley that intruded on the landscape.

In addition, approximately 106 miles of wagon road existed in the park, either toll roads or otherwise privately owned, including 19 miles of the Coulterville Road, whose franchise expired about 1920; 10 miles of the Big Oak Flat Road, whose franchise expired 20 January 1921; 45 miles of the Tioga Road, whose franchise expired 8 January 1934; and 32 miles of the Wawona-Glacier Point Road, whose franchise expired 16 November 1927.

These roads were all in poor condition in 1913. Prior to the 1920s, most road work involved maintenance and repair with only minor improvements. Until the roads were paved, park crews accomplished renovation work each spring with horse teams and hand tools—filling ruts and washouts, spreading gravel, and sprinkling the roadbed. Exclusion of autos from the park from 1907 to 1913 contributed in large part to the continuing deterioration of park roads. The increased use of the roads after that time eventually applied the necessary pressure that resulted in resurfacing and realigning of existing routes and construction of new ones. Travel over roads into the valley had dropped to such an extent after construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad that the various road companies found it no longer profitable to maintain them. Consequently, the Coulterville and Tioga roads had been practically abandoned, although the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company continued to collect tolls on the Wawona Road, keep it in repair, and operate a horse-drawn transportation line over it. Visitors also continued to use the Big Oak Flat Road to some extent.

Another road, built by cattlemen and others living or working in the area, led from the Tioga Road to Hog Ranch via Ackerson Meadow. That private road branched off the Tioga Road about one mile from Carl Inn, outside the park. Only a ford existed across the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River until about 1915, when a bridge was completed and approaches built on each end. That road became an important link in the trip to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that the park transportation system inaugurated in 1918, although Congress did not provide funds and authorize its maintenance by the National Park Service until 1922.

c) Road and Trail Construction Required of the City of San Francisco

M. M. O’Shaughnessy, city engineer for the city of San Francisco and chief architect of the Hetch Hetchy Project, appeared before the Public Lands Committee in 1913 and offered to spend one million dollars on roads and trails for the benefit of visitors to Yosemite as the Secretary of the Interior might direct.14 The act of Congress approved 19 December 1913 granting the city and county of San Francisco certain rights-of-way in, over, and through public lands in Yosemite National Park and Stanislaus National Forest specified that the grantee would construct on the north side of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir site a scenic road or trail (to be determined by the Secretary of the Interior) above and along the proposed lake to a point designated, and a trail leading from that road or trail to Tiltill Valley and to Lake Vernon and a road or trail to Lake Eleanor and Cherry Valley via Miguel Meadow. Likewise it directed the city to build a wagon road from Hamilton along the most feasible route adjacent to its proposed aqueduct from Groveland to, Hog Ranch and into the Hetch Hetchy dam site. The city of San Francisco rebuilt approximately four miles of that road—a typical mountain track used only by horse-drawn vehicles—eliminating the steep grades so that it could be used to truck in supplies and equipment for the Hetch Hetchy Project prior to construction of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad. Congress also requested a road along the south slope of Smith Peak from Hog Ranch past Harden Lake to a junction with the Tioga Road.

[14. E. P. Leavitt, Acting Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, to the Director, National Park Service, 9 November 1927, in Box 84, Hetch Hetchy, “Gen’l 1926-1927,” in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 2-9, 14.]

The purpose of the road or trail along the north edge of the reservoir and of the trail from that route to Tiltill Valley and Lake Vernon was to allow accessibility to the large park area in the Rancheria Mountain district that would become isolated when construction of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir flooded all the trails up the valley previously leading into that area.

The city could build other roads or trails through the public lands necessary for its construction work subject to the approval of the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior. Those roads and trails would be assigned free of cost to the federal government, which would be reimbursed by the city for maintenance costs. The money received would be kept in a separate fund and applied to the building and maintenance of roads and trails and other improvements in Yosemite and other national parks in the state.

d) Initiation of Auto Travel in Yosemite

In 1900 Frank H. and Arthur E. Holmes had driven a Stanley Steamer over the Chowchilla Mountains to Wawona. Over the next few years, state officials allowed the few cars who ventured in free access to Yosemite Valley. That goodwill evaporated after 1906 when Yosemite Valley became part of Yosemite National Park and the volatile Major Harry C. Benson, acting superintendent, began overseeing park affairs. Irritated by driver disobedience of the strict regulations he had instituted for auto travel, and dismayed by plans for an impending trip to the valley by the Oakland Automobile Dealers Association, Benson secured approval from the Secretary of the Interior in 1907 to ban autos from Yosemite Valley. Lobbying efforts by various automobile associations to reopen the main roads of the park to motorists reached their peak in 1912, when a joint delegation representing the Automobile Club of Southern California, the Los Angeles Motor Car Dealers’ Association, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and other large organizations made an appointment to meet with Secretary of the Interior Walter L. Fisher in the park to personally appeal their case.15

[15. Richard G. Lillard, “The Seige and Conquest of a National Park,” American West 5, no. 1 (January 1968): 67-68; “To Seek Opening of Yosemite to Motorists,” 7 October 1912, in Los Angeles Real Estate Bulletin and Building News, Box 3, Washburn Papers, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

It was at this mid-October 1912 second National Parks Conference involving park superintendents, concessionaires, the Secretary of the Interior and other officials, and several interested groups and individuals, that John Muir was called upon for his opinion as to whether autos should be allowed in the parks. At that point Muir, with the same vision that characterized his views on the environment, pronounced that the era of automobiles had arrived. He believed that autos would allow more people to enter the valley and that no group of men could prevent them from becoming the means of travel for the future.16 All roads in and about Yosemite in 1913 had been built for horse-drawn vehicles and not designed as possible auto roads. Opposition from several quarters arose to the entrance of autos into the national parks, principally on the grounds that the unsuitable roads would cause many accidents between autos and horse-drawn conveyances.

[16. “Yosemite Retrospect and Prospect,” speech given by William E. Colby, Camp 14 Anniversary Program, 30 June 1939, in Separates File, Y-4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

On 30 April 1913, Secretary Franklin Lane rescinded the order barring automobiles from Yosemite National Park, stating that

This form of transportation has come to stay, and to close the park against automobiles would be as absurd as the fight for many years made by old naval men against the adoption of steam in the navy. . . . I want to make our parks as accessible as possible to the great mass of people.17

[17. “Lane Opens Up Yosemite Park to Automobiles,” Fresno (Calif.) Republican, 30 April 1913, in Miscellaneous Facts File, Wawona Road, Y-20d, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The immediate question from interested parties in nearby counties concerned the number of roads to be opened to autos. The Interior Department decided to first open only the Coulterville Road—a route in such poor condition that even horse-drawn vehicles rarely used it. The department feared that if all roads opened at the same time without proper regulation, the resulting number of accidents could seriously retard the entire process. Eventually it would open all roads to auto travel, but only gradually and after careful study.

At the time of Secretary Fisher’s conference at Yosemite Valley in October 1912, he concluded that it would not be safe for autos to enter Yosemite Valley over the Wawona Road, although they could safely travel to the rim of the valley over the Wawona-Chinquapin-Glacier Point road. The Madera County Chamber of Commerce particularly desired to have the Madera-Wawona road opened to auto traffic as soon as possible and determined to ask for a federal appropriation to improve the road from near Fort Monroe to the valley floor. It feared that the initiation of auto traffic to the park over other roads would adversely affect Madera County’s economy and depreciate the value of the Wawona toll road.

On 5 August 1913, the Interior Department published regulations governing the admission of automobiles into Yosemite National Park. The inadequate surfaces of the park roads and their many narrow stretches and abrupt turns that complicated auto travel necessitated strict rules regarding the acquisition of permits, the hours of entrance and departure, and time and speed allowances for reaching destinations. Autos could approach the park only by the Coulterville and Big Oak Flat roads. Those traveling on the latter had to turn west at Crane Flat and get on the Coulterville Road to enter the valley. Once on the valley floor, cars were restricted ‘to the road north of the Merced River.18

[18. Lewis C. Laylin, Asst. Secretary of the Interior, “Regulations Governing the Admission of Automobiles Into the Yosemite National Park,” 5 August 1913, Box 3, Washburn Papers, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The Coulterville Road opened to automobiles on 23 August 1913, and during that season the army established additional outposts for checking auto traffic at Merced Grove and Cascade Creek. By the summer of 1914, an allottment of $2,500 allowed repair work on the Wawona Road between the valley floor and Fort Monroe. After completion of that work, establishment of a telephone checking system, and the publication of regulations for their use, the Wawona Road and the road to the Mariposa Big Tree Grove also opened to auto traffic, on 8 August 1914. The Big Oak Flat Road opened on 16 September of that year. Cars remained restricted in usage by a variety of regulations until 1916, when the glorious era of horse and stagecoach rides to Yosemite ended.

The memoirs of early auto visitors to the park seem to focus mostly on the narrowness and steepness of the roads. Because the time restrictions on travel within the park often left people stranded at park entrance stations after closing hours, rangers learned to keep extra supplies of cots and canned goods on hand. They also had to care for pets, which were not allowed in the park, until their owners’ return and retain any firearms brought in.

In February 1913 the Madera, Yosemite, Big Tree Auto Company was organized and replacement of stagecoaches by buses began. In 1915 this company, under agreement with the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, formed the “Horseshoe Route” stage line running from Raymond to Mariposa Grove, Wawona, Glacier Point, and Yosemite Valley. Auto travelers to Yosemite who wished to see as much as possible in one trip often availed themselves of the Horseshoe Route. It entered the valley via the Mariposa Big Tree Grove and Inspiration Point and left it by way of El Portal. The Horseshoe Route stage line ultimately sold out to the Yosemite Park and Curry Company in 1926.

During the automobile era, J. R. Wilson devised another interesting way to see the park. In 1913 he constructed a six-mile road of eight percent grade, costing $40,000, that ran behind the Del Portal Hotel in El Portal and on to the Merced and Tuolumne groves. Referred to as the Triangle Route because it led from El Portal at one corner to the Merced and Tuolumne groves at another, and to Yosemite Valley at the third, it passed through extremely scenic country, which made it a favorite with tourists. As an added thrill, autos could pass through the hollowed-out tunnel in the Dead Giant Tree in the Tuolumne Grove. From the Big Trees the route led to Yosemite Valley via the Big Oak Flat Road. After crossing the Merced River over El Capitan Bridge, autoists could turn west and head back to El Portal. Wilson had a permit to operate three auto stages over this road during the 1913 season.

A. B. Davis, who had a permit for that route in 1915, also obtained a permit in July 1914 to construct the four-mile “Davis Cut-off.” Davis, one of the promoters of the Foresta subdivision, conceived of this route linking Foresta with Crane Flat as an additional way to attract buyers. That route began northwest of Big Meadow and ran north beyond its junction with the Coulterville Road to Crane Flat and the Big Oak Flat Road, enabling tourists to visit Foresta, tour the Tuolumne Grove, and then descend into Yosemite Valley. Davis also organized the Big Trees Auto Stage Company.19

[19. Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, 22. Sargent states the road was built in the early summer of 1914. Other sources have stated a year later.]

On 1 June 1915 the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company replaced its old horse-drawn stages with an automobile service that transported tourists between the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Village. This new, faster mode of transportation, however, also enabled visitors from the valley to visit the grove and return in one day without having to stay overnight at the Wawona Hotel. On 16 July 1915 rental auto service began on the valley floor to carry tourists from camp to camp and around the valley and to make special trips over the Tioga Road. One of the reasons for the service, in addition to restricting the volume of traffic on the poor valley roads, was to pacify tourists who were not allowed to run their personal autos around the valley floor. The Department of the Interior had decided upon that policy because the average tourist’s unfamiliarity with the valley’s turnouts, sharp curves, trail junctions, and stage schedules increased the chance of accidents.

e) Effects of Auto Travel in the Park

Few people, especially in the Interior Department, realized the impact the auto would have on the national parks, indeed on the country as a whole. The auto enabled a new class of tourists to visit the park—those who had never before been able to take a vacation, who often lacked any knowledge or appreciation of America’s unique scenic areas, and who had little education or understanding of how to properly enjoy such areas: “For the first time, the under-privileged family of small means, by the use of an automobile was able to take advantage of our great national playgrounds and at last the original conception of the National Park movement was on a fair way to being realized.”20

[20. Paper delivered by Donald Tresidder before a meeting of the Conservation Forum in Yosemite National Park, 1935, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Even in the early days of the auto, congestion became common at the park entrances, along its roadways, and in parking areas. On summer evenings, cars solidly lined the valley roads as their owners gathered to watch the firefall. Although cars alleviated some of the pressure on valley meadows by lessening the need for cultivation of stock feed, enabling those areas to develop into scenic attractions, they still managed to inflict severe damage by driving and parking on them. Campgrounds overflowed into Stoneman and Leidig meadows and later even onto the Ahwahnee Hotel grounds. Because Yosemite Valley contained a high concentration of scenic values within a small area, the influx of motor travel threatened havoc on its scenic integrity. Trampled grass and shrubbery, scattered litter, traffic congestion, air pollution, the lack of adequate traffic control, overcrowded facilities, and unhappy visitors finally forced park officials to realize they needed a management plan for growth and development to ensure maximum enjoyment of the area with minimum damage to the resources.

Although the Park Service did over the next few years reassess its objectives and develop a group of experts in landscaping, engineering, sanitation, traffic control, and education who studied the new problems and formulated plans for the proper use and preservation of the national parks, some problems created by auto travel remain to plague park administrators. By the late 1960s, the ever increasing visitation to Yosemite, brought about by the popularity of auto travel and improved road surfaces, raised traffic congestion again to unacceptable levels, causing the Secretary of the Interior to note as late as 1969 that “the private automobile is impairing the quality of the park experience.”21

[21. George B. Hartzog, Jr., “Clearing the Roads—and the Aii—in Yosemite Valley,” National Parks & Conservation Magazine (August 1972): 16.]

Little realizing the problems that lay ahead of them, officials in the fledgeling National Park Service only gradually began to see that the arrival of the auto would drastically change visitation numbers and patterns in Yosemite and the course of park development. For many Americans, auto touring became a recreation in itself, prompting the need for better road access to popular sites and some method of traffic control. Because people could get to the park faster, they often intended to stay longer. If they planned on staying two weeks, they usually wanted something to do besides look at scenery. Most of them also desired all the amenities they could get at home. As the park provided more accommodations, more restaurants, better food and dry goods services, and other support facilities, it also required more employees who needed housing and various community services, such as schools and hospitals. In an attempt to provide these, as well as a variety of recreational and educational experiences, the federal government and the concessioners embarked on a period of construction and development that would markedly change both the visitor experience in Yosemite and the historic landscape.

f) The Federal Government Acquires the Tioga Road

The outstanding legacy of the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company was its wagon road, which increased the accessibility of the Tuolumne Meadows region. It never carried rich silver shipments, and the new heavy machinery purchased for use in the Sheepherder tunnel that should have passed over it was instead sold at auction in San Francisco after the mine closed.

As previously alluded to, upon the wagon road’s completion, its owners obtained a fifty-year franchise to charge toll for travel over it between Tuolumne and Mariposa counties. They never erected collection gates for tolls, however, and tourists, stockmen, and army patrols freely passed over the road. After the mining company ceased operations, it remained open, but received only periodic maintenance. It remained passable despite occasional fallen trees, washouts, and numerous rough spots. There was increasing sentiment, however, for its purchase by the federal government because of its importance as a patrol road. Some even believed that the road already belonged to the government by default because it had never been a toll road and appeared to have been literally abandoned by the owners for years. But had it been?

The story of the changes of ownership of the Great Sierra Wagon Road is as complicated as that of the Tioga Mine itself. William Swift obtained the road toll franchise from Road Superintendent William C. Priest at the same time he acquired the properties of the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company. Upon Swift’s death, his brother Rhodolphus acquired both the mine properties and the road, which remained the property of his heirs until 1915.

During that period the law firm of Wilson and Wilson handled business pertaining to the road for its owners. The attorneys believed that the light travel on the road was responsible for its eventual neglect and argued that if the road were completed down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, traffic would increase and the owners would resume collecting tolls to finance maintenance work. In the meantime, campers and other heavy users of the road performed necessary repairs such as bridge replacement. The attorneys claimed, nonetheless, that the owners had regularly expended some money on repairs and annually paid their property taxes. Despite the controversy over the road’s status, the federal government never pursued its threat of condemnation and the owner’s lawyers continued to maintain that the government had no claim to the road except by purchase.

The opening of Yosemite to automobile traffic raised again the subject of acquisition of the Tioga Road, which, since 1890 and the establishment of the national park, had remained a private enterprise. Attempts through the years to get Congress to appropriate money to purchase the right-of-way had failed. The Interior Department, therefore, remained unable to repair the road and open it to tourist use. On 21 January 1915, a Californian, Stephen T. Mather, became Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, with jurisdiction over the national parks.

One of the Mather’s most notable projects at Yosemite involved the purchase of the Tioga Road. In casting about for a project to lead off his administration of the parks, Mather turned to Yosemite, which, in view of two international expositions scheduled for the state of California, was destined to receive increased visitation. Because the old mining road constituted the only potential auto route across the Sierra, its ownership and improvement by the federal government would be extremely popular with Californians and economically beneficial both to the state and the federal government.

The Tioga Road’s owners still held the right-of-way and toll privileges handed down from the original owners. Mather, therefore, decided to acquire the outstanding but valid toll road rights from the Swift estate. Aided by leaders of the Sierra Club, especially William Colby, Mather managed to contact the owners of those rights, who eventually offered to sell them. Interested parties east of the mountains, meanwhile, undertook to secure state cooperation to improve the road up Lee Vining Canyon from Mono Lake to the park line. As noted earlier, recommendations had previously been made for a route up the eastern slope of the Sierra to connect with the Great Sierra Wagon Road, replacing the treacherous horse trail down Bloody Canyon that connected the Tioga Mine with Mono Valley. A new route to the east had been touted as not only facilitating mine haulage from the mountains but also providing accessibility to Yosemite Valley and the High Sierras. In 1902 construction had begun on the Tioga Pass-Lee Vining route, and by 1905 all but five miles east of the pass had been finished. Although that stretch was finally completed by 1908, the Tioga Road lay in such a state of disrepair that the trans-Sierra route as a whole was practically impassable.

Mather and his friends ultimately raised the funds necessary to acquire the Tioga toll road rights. Mather spent several thousand dollars of his own money on the purchase, while philanthropists, civic groups, the Sierra Club, and private individuals provided the rest. Mather then discovered that no law existed under which the Secretary of the Interior could accept a gift of this kind. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee turned down Mather’s request to Congress for authority to accept gifts for the benefit of the national parks. Ultimately Senator James Phelan and Congressman William Kent of California succeeded in securing the requested authority to accept gifts for Yosemite. Mather transferred formal title to the Tioga Road and the toll rights and easements to the federal government on 10 April 1915. As soon as Congress accepted the Tioga Road, Mather allocated national park funds to repair bridges, culverts, and the roadbed. Park crews rushed work through the summer. By mid-July the Tioga Road was passable, and opened to auto traffic on 28 July 1915.

Horace M. Albright, then an administrative clerk in the office of Assistant Secretary of the Interior Mather, years later recalled the drive up to Tioga Pass for the dedication ceremony marking the opening of the road. What later provided a humorous anecdote, at the time constituted a hair-raising experience probably endured by many early travelers over the old, single-lane Tioga Road:

Will L. Smith was the driver of the car—a Studebaker, I think—in which three of us rode; Mr. McCormick [vice-president of the Southern Pacific Railroad] in front with Will Smith; Emerson Hough [Saturday Evening Post writer] and I in the rear seat, Hough on the outside; that is, overlooking the gorge, and I behind McCormick. Will Smith had been over the road many times and knew every turn, but we did not know this. He wanted us to see everything so he would describe scenes for us, even rising in his seat to point them out and sometimes turning around and pointing back, but never stopping the carl Whenever he did this, I would open the car door and put my foot on the running board, so when the car went over I possibly might fall on the road’s edge. Mr. Hough would be right on top of me ready to fall out with me. About the third time this happened, Hough said hoarsly in my ear, “Damn this scenery-lovin’ S. O. B.”22

[22. Horace M. Albright, “Horace Albright Recounts Opening of Tioga Road,” Inyo Register (Bishop, Calif.), 15 June 1961. See Keith A. Trexler, The Tioga Road: A History, 1883-1961, rev. 1975, 1980 (Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1961), for a comprehensive history of the road and its construction.]

g) The Big Oak Flat Road Becomes Toll Free

Another important event took place in July 1915 when Tuolumne County purchased the Big Oak Flat Road leading into Yosemite Valley for $10,000 with the intention of making it toll free. It gave the portion from the park boundary to Gentry’s to the federal government. After the state and county repaired their portion of the old highway by regrading and eliminating sharp curves and steep grades, the trip to Yosemite over that route became much easier. Assistant Secretary Mather then announced that the portion of that road within the park would also be repaired. The federal government had formerly declined to spend money on its improvement as long as private parties held any part of the road.23 The government also established a checking station at Gentry’s and one on the valley floor.

[23. Leon J. Pinkson, “Tuolumne Secures Road to Yosemite,” San Francisco Chronicle, 27 June 1915.]

C. Buildings and Construction

1. Army Camp
An inspection report on Camp Yosemite in 1909 noted that its buildings, of the most temporary character, proved suitable for occupancy only during the summer months. The troops and officers quartered in wooden-floored tents. Soldiers performed most camp construction work. The army stables had only roofs, their sides and ends open to the weather. Saplings cut near the camp formed the framework of the stables and of two large storage tents. Two dining rooms exhibited similar construction. Only the headquarters, the bakery, the quartermaster and commissary storehouses, two company kitchens, the blacksmith shop, the guardhouse, and the officers’ mess had been enclosed. Those buildings had walls of rough pine boards and battens, shingle and shake roofs, rough floors, unfinished interior walls, and half-sash stationary windows. They stood on temporary wooden foundation sills. The Chief Quartermaster of the Department of California recommended that if Camp Yosemite continued in that locality, more substantial buildings be constructed. Any new buildings should be fashioned entirely of wood, with native mountain pine used for the exterior and interior finishes, with roofs and sides covered with unpainted shakes.24

[24. Robert R. Stevens, Chief Quartermaster, Department of California, Memo for Adjutant General, Department of California, 28 June 1909, in Office of the Quartermaster General, General Correspondence, 1890-1914, RG 92, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, NA.]

The War Department in 1911 began erection of two temporary barracks, two lavatories, and seven frame cottages at Camp Yosemite, as well as installation of a water and sewer system. These were still built to the old army summer residence standards and of the same design formerly found in tropical army posts. The buildings were completed and accepted 20 December 1911.25

[25. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year. Ended June 30, 1911, 591-92, 596.]

By 1912 day labor under the supervision of the resident engineer had built four small cottages “of an appearance appropriate to the environment” for the resident engineer, a clerk, and two electricians. Frame buildings adjacent to the military camp, they sat upon concrete foundations and had electric lights and plumbing. The army also erected a reinforced concrete magazine for the storage of high explosives on the north side of the Merced River opposite Bridalveil Meadow.26 During the 1913 season, the acting superintendent lived in the officers’ clubhouse at the army camp.

[26. Wm. W. Forsyth, Major, First Cavalry, “Report of Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1912, in Reports of the Department . of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1912. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913), 665, 669-70. The U. S. Army built residences 1, 2, 4, and 5 now within the Yosemite Village Historic District in 1911-12. The army barracks later served as the original Yosemite Lodge buildings. None of those structures remain. Joe Desmond also acquired tent platforms left by the army and used them in constructing the floor of the Yosemite Lodge dining room. Although frame army buildings were not unusual, Forsyth’s remark that they harmonized with the surroundings shows a continuing awareness of the principles that would later characterize the Park Service’s rustic architecture program.]

The need for adequate medical service in Yosemite Valley had been an issue for many years. In 1880 the Yosemite commissioners had urged that a doctor reside in the valley throughout the year and requested an appropriation for his income. The state legislature made no such allotment, however, and for many years Mariposa provided the nearest medical service unless a doctor happened to vacation in the valley during the summer. The army surgeons accompanying the cavalry troops during the period of army administration often also served the public. In 1912 the army constructed a temporary two-story, board-and-batten hospital building at Camp Yosemite. Commanded by an officer of the Medical Corps, the hospital admitted civilians during the tourist season. After troops withdrew from the park in 1914, the War Department authorized a civilian doctor employed by the Interior Department to practice medicine in the facility.

During the summer of 1915 two San Francisco physicians and surgeons opened the hospital building for the practice of medicine and the sale of drugs under authority of the Department of the Interior. The old War Department building was slightly remodeled and provided with a new operating room. Despite the small staff, accident victims and sick cases could be adequately cared for. This facility served as the valley hospital until 1929.
2. Yosemite Village

Acting Superintendent Benson, in his 1908 report to the Department of the Interior, described the status of buildings in Yosemite Village. By that year the valley contained forty-six buildings, all of them frame except for the stone LeConte Memorial Lodge. The buildings comprised the residences, barns, stables, and outbuildings used by the concessioners and the Department of the Interior. The barns and stables appeared to be in good shape. Benson thought all the valley residences unsightly, except for John Degnan’s house, and unsuited to the valley. The park supervisor, Gabriel Sovulewski, lived in the log cabin that J. M. Hutchings had built forty years earlier and that appeared in danger of collapsing. The hotels looked old and dilapidated, while the park superintendent’s frame office, the most recently constructed building in the valley, comprised a patched-over but still serviceable structure moved in from another locality. “The village, so called, has grown up since 1900, and resembles the temporary houses built for a county fair more than the residences and offices of a government institution,” Benson complained.27

[27. Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1908, 431.]

In 1910 workers completed an attractive cottage designed to replace Park Supervisor Sovulewski’s log cabin residence. After Army headquarters moved to Yosemite Valley, Acting Superintendent Benson requested that Gabriel Sovulewski, employed by the Quartermaster Department in San Francisco, report for duty in Yosemite Valley as park supervisor, the man who would work with the troops during the summer and continue to tend to park management and operations during the winter months. Sovulewski arrived on 12 August 1906 and, as a year-round resident, was housed (or at least cooked his meals) in the old Hutchings cabin, an uncomfortable domicile showing the wear and tear of years of neglect. It was razed in 1910 with construction of Sovulewski’s new residence, the first one built in the valley by the Department of the on Interior. It stood in a prominent location in front of Yosemite Fall.28 Workers also enlarged the blacksmith shop in 1910 and made minor repairs and improvements on nearly all park buildings used by the government.29 In 1911 Major Forsyth reported that the building used by the superintendent as a residence and office had been remodeled and enlarged, but remained unsuitable as living quarters. He recommended that the building serve only administrative purposes and that a separate residence be constructed for the superintendent. The army also constructed a new barn that year, in about the same location as the current government barn. It included a tack room, equipment warehouse, shoeing platform, and another small building.30

[28. Pavlik, “The Hutchings-Sovulewski Homesite,” 5-9.]

[29. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1910, 467.]

[30. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1911, 591. This barn became the center of park operations’ up into the 1920s. An arsonist burned the structure in 1972, destroying a variety of historical cavalry equipment.]

By 1913 Yosemite Village served as the focal point of settlement and activity in the valley. There visitors could find souvenirs and entertainment as well as groceries, rooms, and tourist information. At that time the village area north of the South Road, from west to east, contained a general store and post office, Boysen’s and Foley’s studios, the administration building, Best’s Studio, the dance and lecture pavilion, offices, the Cosmopolitan Bathhouse, Ivy Cottage, River Cottage, and the Sentinel Hotel. On the south side of South Road, west to east, stood the chapel, Pillsbury’s Studio, a butcher shop (later used for meat and beer storage by the Curry Company), John Degnan’s house, Degnan’s bakery, the Wells Fargo office, Rock Cottage, Oak Cottage, and Cedar Cottage. Scattered about the village were miscellaneous residences, tents, and outbuildings. Jorgensen’s Studio stood across the river and the Masonic^31 Lodge west of the village behind the chapel. During the 1913 season, the old Lick House, the former boardinghouse near the stables, was repaired to accommodate civilian rangers Oliver R. Prien and Forrest Townsley.

[31. Allan Kress Fitzsimmons, “The Effect of the Automobile on the Cultural Elements of the Landscape of Yosemite Valley,” MA thesis, San Fernando Valley State College, 1969, 37. According to Laurence Degnan, the Masonic Lodge building originally served as a warehouse for Nelson Salter’s general store, which Salter had acquired from John Garibaldi, who had succeeded Mrs. Angelo Cavagnaro and had moved the store from its original location in the fork of the road north of the present chapel site. The warehouse probably had a post-1900 construction date. Laurence V. Degnan to Wayne W. Bryant, Jr., Park Naturalist, 30 November 1953, in Separates File, Y-4b, #24, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In June of that year, Acting Superintendent Maj. William T. Littebrant recommended to the Secretary of the Interior that he send a board comprised of one landscape architect, one structural architect, and one civil engineer to the park to formulate a plan for its further improvement. He pointed out that so far improvements from year to year had depended upon the individuality and particular qualifications of each acting superintendent. Littebrant believed that park improvement should be a continuous process in accordance with a well-considered plan so that improvements one year became a continuation of those of the preceding year. As the system existed now, each superintendent had to renew the request for appropriations each year, making it uncertain as to whether work unfinished one year would be pursued the next. Also whenever a new superintendent arrived, he reformulated plans, and that practice did not lead to cohesive park planning.

Littebrant emphasized that the park was entering a new era, but that

The buildings in the Yosemite village are little more than a lot of shacks without architectural beauty, placed without plan or with careless, well designed absence of plan. . . . Any new constructions should be in harmony with the grandeur of the cliffs and the delicacy of the falls. The coloring of the buildings should not be in violent contrast with the grey of the rocks or the beauties of the pine and cedars. Concessioners should not be allowed to erect buildings designed by different architects without knowledge of the general plan- . . . The plan of the new village will call for artistic talent.32

[32. Major William T. Littebrant, Acting Superintendent, to Secretary of the Interior, 18 June 1913, in Central Files, RG 79, NA, 3. Basically, Littlebrant was requesting that buildings be constructed in the rustic style later developed and refined by the Park Service during the 1920s and 1930s.]

Littebrant suggested that in the future, stables, garages, and warehouses be placed on the north side of the Merced River and below the army post, far enough to permit expansion of the latter. Arguing that points of interest in the valley lay mostly above the army post and the Sentinel Hotel, Littebrant called for removing everything in that area that detracted from the beauty, grandeur, and harmony of the scene and rebuilding in a new location permanent structures following a selected design. Littebrant wisely discerned that the recommendations of a board of specialists such as he suggested would carry more weight with the Secretary of the Interior and with Congress than would those of the various acting superintendents.

This idea of Littebrant’s appealed to the Interior Department, and Assistant to the Secretary Adolph C. Miller duly conceived a program for the betterment of the park, which would include selection of the best locations for future roads, trails, and bridges; the clearing and trimming of wooded areas to provide attractive vistas; the proper location and arrangement of a new village in the valley; and general beautification. Although he attempted to follow through on this comprehensive general plan for development of the valley floor by appointing an advisory commission of talented and public-spirited citizens of standing in California, who agreed to provide their services with only reimbursement for expenses incurred, he ran up against a stumbling block.

Section 9 of the Sundry Civil Act of 4 March 1909 stated that no part of the public moneys or of Congressional appropriations would be used to pay expenses of any commission unless its creation was authorized by law. Unfortunately, no such authority could be secured at that time. The matter of an advisory board, therefore, lay in abeyance; in order to keep the project moving, however, Miller appointed Mark Daniels Landscape Engineer in 1914 and entrusted him with the task of working out a plan for the landscape treatment of Yosemite Valley.33

[33. Adolph C. Miller, Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, to Mark Daniels, 24 January 1914, and Miller to Leslie W. Symmes, 16 April 1914, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

During the 1915 season, conditions on the valley floor were studied with the intent of finding ways to relieve the congestion around the village as well as of designing a properly planned new village. Three plans were drawn regarding that subject, while studies continued on new hotels for the valley floor and Glacier Point and tentative plans took shape for twelve new carefully designed village buildings. The Department of the Interior also began to consider a new plan of concession operation in the park that would grant a concession to one large operator who would build a grand hotel on the valley floor, a smaller one at Glacier Point, and fifteen mountain inns in the high country. Under the terms of the proposed agreement, the concessioner would receive a permit of twenty years’ duration and share his net profits with the government.34
[34. Mark Daniels, “Report of the general superintendent and landscape engineer of national parks”; George V. Bell, Superintendent, “Report of the Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 1 October 1915;] Gabriel Sovulewski, Park Supervisor, “Report of Park Supervisor”; and David A. Sherfey, Resident Engineer, “Report of the Resident Engineer,” 30 September 1915, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915, 848-50, 853, 907-8, 912-14, 916, 918, 923, 925-26.]

In 1915 the acting superintendent provided a room in the administration building to house a collection of the different varieties of animals, birds, insects, woods, and flowers indigenous to Yosemite. Dr. Joseph Grinnell, director of the museum of vertebrate zoology of the University of California, supplied the exhibits, while the park ranger force helped secure and stuff birds and animals and assemble the wild flowers. The collection became of great interest not only to visitors, but also to the ranger department and park employees. This innovative exhibit became the cornerstone upon which the National Park Service constructed its later interpretive and museum programs for the park. The room housing these exhibits, the Bureau of Information, was established in the superintendent’s office in Yosemite Village during the 1915 season. In addition to providing information regarding road, trail, and camp conditions and scenic points of interest, it helped map trips, assign visitors to camps, handle correspondence related to tourist queries, collect auto fees, issue permits authorizing the entrance of autos over park roads, and keep statistical reports on travel.

3. Park General
a) Schools

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, in 1897 valley Guardian Galen Clark had reported to the Yosemite Valley commissioners the need for a new schoolhouse and had suggested using the abandoned stage/telegraph office for that purpose. That building, constructed only a year earlier, stood on the road between the Sentinel Hotel and the Stoneman House, at the site of the present LeConte lodge. By 1907 it had evolved into a good public school attended by a dozen or more students, “including a few bright Indian children.”35 In 1909 the army

Illustration 58.
Map showing residence 5 (#2) built in 1912 by the U. S. Army near the present intersection of the shuttlebus and residence roads. The Park Service moved it in 1921 to the residential area where it is still used for employee housing. The schoolhouse (#3) moved to the north side of the Merced served as a residence after completion of a new school in 1918 until torn down in 1956.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 59.
Crane Flat ranger patrol cabin, now at Pioneer Yosemite History Center, Wawona.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

moved the building across the Merced to a spot near the forks of the road about 300 yards southwest of the present Park Service headquarters (see earlier discussion of this action in Chapter II, p. 163). The formation of the El Portal School District resulted in construction of a school there in 1911-12. That non-extant one-room frame building with a large covered porch and a bell tower, stood in upper El Portal on present Foresta Road.

[35. Foley, Foley’s Yosemite Souvenir and Guide, 1907, 65-66.]

b) Powerhouse

In 1909 work began on fixing up the valley power plant, which needed to be replaced by one with a greater capacity. The iron pipe furnishing water to the plant ran through a tunnel of loose earth and stone, which had begun to cave in. During the 1910 season, a large appropriation enabled opening of a new trench for the pipe around the old tunnel. In 1911 laborers installed a new Pelton wheel in the power plant and a power-transmission system from Camp Ahwahnee to the rock quarry near Pohono Bridge. That enabled the water tank pumps and the rock crusher to operate during the summer by electric power. The two pumping stations in the valley and the pipeline along the El Portal road, necessary for the operation of the sprinkling wagons along that route, appeared to be operating successfully.36

[36. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1911, 591, 596.]

c) Miscellaneous

In 1910 park crews constructed cottages with barns and stables at Cascade Creek and Arch Rock for the use of road laborers and the drivers of road-sprinkling wagons.37 In 1911 a granite seat, a memorial to Galen Clark, was completed and placed about a quarter of a mile south of the foot of Yosemite Fall. In 1912 workers built rubble masonry wing dams along the Merced River where its banks suffered on heavy erosion.38

[38. Forsyth, “Report of Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1912, 670.]

[37. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1910, 467.]

d) Wood-Splitting Plant

During the 1914 season, a wood sawing and splitting plant was installed in Yosemite Valley to cut logs into firewood. Thicket clearing, an important part of work on the valley floor, protected growing trees from fires and destruction by rapid-growing dense undergrowth. The Interior Department sold the wood obtained in this manner to campers, concessioners, and department employees, and also used it in connection with sanitation projects and in public buildings. The plant consisted of a drag-saw, circular saw, wood splitter, and emery wheel, driven by an electric motor.39

[39. Sovulewski, “Report of the Park Supervisor,” and Sherfey, “Report of Resident Engineer,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1914, 732, 735.]

e) Fire Lookouts and Patrol Cabins

In 1915 construction plans included two triangulation stations to be used as fire lookouts. Their locations on Mount Hoffmann and Sentinel Dome would make it possible to locate a fire within the district instantly and ascertain its exact location. (Ruins of the Mount Hoffmann lookout are still visible.) Other important additions to the park during the 1915 season consisted of three new patrol cabins—at Crane Flat, Hog Ranch, and the Merced Grove. The four-room log cabins with shake roofs measured thirty-two feet three inches by twenty-five feet and functioned as outpost checking stations. The checkpoints became necessary after the removal of U. S. Army troops, the entry of autos, and the employment of civilian rangers to protect the park. Tuolumne County’s purchase of the Big Oak Flat Road and the elimination of tolls increased the need for control stations on the park entrance road to regulate traffic, register cars, and collect fees. Each patrol cabin also had a twelve by twenty-foot shed stable of native poles and shakes.

D. Campgrounds

The popularity of camping persisted in Yosemite Valley even after hotels and commercial camps came into existence. Originally there had been no restrictions on where camps could be struck or on site use in Yosemite Valley and horses could be grazed anywhere in the open meadows. The first campgrounds had been established by traditional use, primarily along the Merced River. Later, as stores and other services sprang up at the eastern end of the valley, the state commissioners tried to establish formal public campgrounds near them in order to free the rest of the valley floor for stock grazing and farming.

After the recession of the Yosemite Grant, Park Supervisor Sovulewski immediately became involved in a multitude of park administrative problems related to visitation. For instance, no sanitary or toilet facilities of any type existed in any of the campgrounds below Yosemite Village, so that camping in campgrounds nos. 1 to 5 west of the village was discouraged. Gradually those camps were entirely abandoned. The unfortunate conditions at certain campsites finally forced the superintendent to restrict camping to designated areas in the upper valley by the early 1900s.

After Benson left the park in October 1908 to relieve the commanding officer in Yellowstone National Park, Sovulewski took charge of the park and army property as Custodian. In May 1909 Col. William W. Forsyth took command of the park. He pondered the question of numbering campgrounds in the valley and decided to leave the old numbers and start with new ones to avoid confusing old-time park visitors. The original camps in Yosemite Valley consisted of:

Camp No. 1—EI Capitan Meadow. Early campers needed meadows for pasturing their horses and mules. Abandoned for sanitary reasons soon after 1906.

Camp No. 2—Bridalveil Meadow. Used almost exclusively by army troops when in the valley between 1890 and 1906. Abandoned for sanitary reasons soon after 1906.

Camp No. 3—west of Yosemite Village on the south side of the Merced River in the trees at the west end of the meadow near Galen Clark’s house. Abandoned for sanitary reasons soon after 1906.

Camp No. 4—Leidig Meadow, including portion of present Yosemite Lodge grounds. Retired from public use upon establishment of army headquarters in the valley. Abandoned for sanitary reasons also soon after 1906.

Camp No. 5—east of Yosemite Creek bridge, extending as far as the apple orchard and Hutchings’s cabin, including the area later occupied by the park supervisor’s home. Abandoned for sanitary reasons soon after 1906.

Camp No. 6—very old site. Later used by government and Yosemite Park and Curry Company employees. Located south of present park headquarters on north side of the Merced River.

Camp No. 7—still in original location along Merced River north of Camp Curry. Eventually divided by new road, creating two separate camps. East portion became No. 15.

Camp No. 8—located above Royal Arch Creek and included present Ahwahnee Hotel grounds. Erection of the hotel in 1926 forced its abandonment.

Camp No. 9—old site on Tenaya Creek adjacent to and including Royal Arch Meadow. Known as the “Organization Camp.”

Camp No. 10—near Iron Spring on Tenaya Creek, south of the old Mirror Lake Road. Contained only limited space, and camping was discouraged as demand for space in the area grew. Abandoned with change of road alignment to Mirror Lake in the administration of Superintendent Washington B. Lewis.

Camp No. 11 —originally intended to include the area now occupied by the Curry Company stables and extending eastward, but that area never functioned as a public campground. Number 11 was then assigned to its present site south of Camp 14 on the road to Happy Isles.

Camp No. 12—located across the Merced River from Camp No. 14, near Yosemite Park and Curry Company stables.

Camp No. 13—never existed for reasons of superstition.

Camp No. 14—still in original location, northeast of Camp Curry.

Camp No. 15—one-half of original Camp No. 7.

Camp No. 16—originally open to auto camping, but then reserved for visitors desiring rental equipment and housekeeping facilities. Northwest of Camp Curry on south side of Merced River.

Camp No. 17—known at one time as “Camp Tecoya,” later utilized for permanent residences of employees of Yosemite Park and Curry Company. (Now commonly referred to as Lower Tecoya)

Camp No. 18—later occupied by post office and photographic studios in New Village.

Camp No. 19—formerly a public campground, then used exclusively by government employees. Located about 600 feet southwest of Sentinel Bridge. Beginning in 1912, the gradual segregation of employees and park visitors in campgrounds began.

Camp No. 20—now occupied by the Church Bowl.40

[40. Sovulewski, “The Story of Campgrounds in Yosemite Valley,” 82-84.]

E. Visitor Service Operations Expand

1. The U. S. Army Becomes Involved in Business Concessions
As described in an earlier chapter, enterprising individuals began constructing tourist accommodations and providing visitor services soon after the first party of sightseers entered Yosemite Valley in 1855. Those first crude but usually serviceable cabins and hotels were subsidized by individual enterprise and, after 1864, subject to the whims and caprices of the Board of Yosemite Valley Commissioners. In 1866 the commissioners disallowed private claims upon lands in the valley, and after that time business concessions could only be established in accordance with the regulations of the commissioners and through state contracts. During their administrative period, the Yosemite Valley commissioners had authorized a variety of concessions including hotels; photographic studios; camps; a bakery; grocery stores; curio stores; toll trails; livery, transportation, and blacksmithing services; and saddle horses. They had also entered into agreements with toll road builders and stage route operators. After Congress accepted the recession of the Yosemite Grant in 1906, the Department of the Interior assumed responsibility for the smooth and equitable operation of business concessions throughout the valley, grove, and backcountry. In fulfilling that responsibility, the U. S. Army officers who administered the national park became responsible for contracts with business concessioners.41

[41. Homer W. Robinson, “The History of Business Concessions in Yosemite National Park,” 14 March 1947, typescript, 9 pages, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1-3. Also Robinson, “The History of Business Concessions in Yosemite National Park,” Yosemite Nature Notes 27, no. 6 (June 1948): 83-90.]
2. Concession Permits in Operation During That Time

At the time of the recession, a number of leases were in effect for the provision of visitor services for the period 1 November 1905 to 31 October 1906. Lessees included:

Len C. Fish, who ran a bowling alley immediately west of the dance hall;

J. B. Cook, proprietor of the Sentinel Hotel;

B. F. Sears, who ran a studio and transacted business in a portable tent;

Galen Clark, who lived west of Yosemite Village;

David A. Curry, who ran Camp Curry at the foot of Glacier Point and also utilized about thirty acres of land around the Lamon orchard;

J. B. Cook, proprietor of Camp Yosemite at the foot of Yosemite Fall. In 1909 the federal government, having decided to officially name the military post in the valley “Camp Yosemite,” requested that Cook change the name of his camp to avoid confusion. It then became “Camp Lost Arrow”;

Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, which operated stables and transacted station business in the valley;

Coffman & Kenney, operating stables at Kenneyville and providing saddle and transportation services around the valley. The Kenneyville complex stood on the road connecting Camp Curry with the north valley road. By 1913 an extensive group of stables, corrals, livery, shops, and residences lined the road. Coffman and Kenney also operated the valley blacksmith shop.

J. T. Boysen, operator of a studio and general photographic business;

Nelson L. Salter, who occupied two buildings and ran a grocery store and general merchandise business and a laundry and who rented tents and outfitted campers. (William D. Thornton later took over the ); business);

Yosemite Transportation Company, which operated stables and ran a stage line to and from the valley;

J. B. Cook, operator of the Glacier Point Hotel;

Hallett-Taylor Company, which occupied the Studio of the Three Arrows, conducting a general photographic business. (About 1907 Hallett-Taylor sold the business to the Pillsbury Picture Company of Oakland);

B. M. Leitch, who occupied a cabin at the Mariposa Big Tree Grove and sold curios, photographs, etc.;

Mrs. John Degnan, who sold bread;

John Degnan, who occupied a house in the village;

Charles B. Atkinson, who lived in Sinnings’s cottage;

D. J. Foley, who operated the Yosemite Tourist Printing Office and Studio and ran a general photographic business;

Chris Jorgensen, who occupied the Jorgensen Studio and grounds between the road crossing Sentinel Bridge and the road running toward Kenneyville and the river;

George Fiske, photographer, who occupied the former Sierra Cottage;

Mrs. Elizabeth Glynn, who occupied a residence in the village;

D. S. Tyer, who did curio work;

Ben W. Sears, who ran a studio;

R. B. Dexter, who occupied the former Julius Starke Studio (since 1903) immediately west of the Studio of the Three Arrows and sold artistic woodwork and curios; and

H. C. Best, who occupied a studio immediately east of the Guardian’s cottage and sold photographs and paintings.42

[42. “Leases in Yosemite Valley Now in Effect, the Names of the Lessees, For What Purpose Issued and the Premises Leased, Date of Expiration and Amount of Yearly Rental,” no date (1905), in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

Illustration 60.
Plat of land leased to J. B. Cook, Chris Jorgensen, and Coffman and Kenney, plus locations of Camp Yosemite and Camp Curry.
H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 22 October 1906, Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.

[click to enlarge]

In early October 1906 Benson reported that the barroom adjunct to the Sentinel Hotel (Ivy Cottage) had been closed in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s instructions. It occupied one-third of a nice building just east of the post office and between it and the hotel. The other portion of the building served as a billiard room and barber shop and included a sleeping room for the barber.43

[43. H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 9 October 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

When sending a plat of the land leased to J. B. Cook, Chris Jorgensen, and Coffman & Kenney, together with the locations of Camps Yosemite and Curry, to the Secretary of the Interior (see Illustration 59), Benson noted that Camp Yosemite lay outside the land leased by Cook as did the Cosmopolitan, then occupied by a post office and express office, the rear of which contained sixteen bedrooms. That building, the former Guardian’s office, had been used by the hotel since 1900, when it was turned over to them after a new Guardian’s office was built in 1899.44

[44. H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 22 October 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.]

Shortly after the federal government took control of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, it instructed the acting superintendent to advise all holders of yearly concessions that renewals would be granted for the 1907 season under the same conditions as before, although the rates might be changed in some instances to make them more uniform for like privileges. Permits were accordingly granted for the next year to Best, Boysen, Clark, Coffman & Kenney, Cook, Curry, the Degnans, Fiske, Foley, the Hallett-Taylor Company, Leitch, and Salter. The Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company and the Yosemite Transportation Company also renewed their permits.45

[45. Report on Yosemite National Park, in “National Parks and Reservations,” in Annual Reorts of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906, 200-202.]

Major Benson was not at all pleased with the concession situation when he entered duty in the park in 1906. He noted then that concession privileges up to that time had depended on whether the applicant had influential friends on the state board of commissioners. The unequal amounts paid for similar privileges by different people showed that favoritism had influenced the granting of privileges. Benson stated frankly to the Secretary of the Interior that “The place has, during the last few years, come to resemble Coney Island. In my opinion most of these concessions are totally unnecessary and should not be renewed.”46

[46. H. C. Benson, Acting Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, to Secretary of the Interior, 6 August 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1.]

Benson recommended that only the leases for the following persons or companies be continued:

Coffman & Kenney blacksmith shop, which provided an essential service shoeing the hundreds of horses entering each summer and repairing wagons and autos;

John Degnan, a laborer in the valley and a twenty-year resident;

Yosemite Transportation Company and Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, which provided regular stage service from railroad terminals to the valley;

B. M. Leitch, a justice of the peace and the only person residing in the Mariposa Grove, where he answered tourist questions. His presence there added greatly to the grove’s security;

Galen Clark, a gentleman more than eighty years of age, whose concession allowed him to live in a small house in the valley;

George Fiske, whom Benson considered the most desirable of the photographers with franchises. He had lived in the valley for more than thirty years and was one of its few permanent residents; and

Camps Yosemite and Curry, whose franchises Benson recommended be continued for the next season, although he thought the camps should be removed as soon as sufficient accommodations could be provided in more permanent buildings.47

[47. Ibid., 1-4.]

By late summer 1906, Benson decried the fact that cheap buildings filled the valley, their occupants considering themselves tenants of the government and expecting large federal outlays on their buildings and surroundings. The longer the government allowed many of those people to stay, Benson warned, the harder it would eventually be to get rid of them. Benson cited several examples of flimsy construction work in the valley;

Best’s Studio—A one-story building measuring fifteen by forty-eight feet, Best’s Studio stood twenty feet east of the superintendent’s office. Constructed of undressed lumber and covered with roofing paper, the building’s exterior had been painted to simulate stone;

Boysen’s Studio—A sixteen by thirty-four-foot building of undressed lumber with battens, the studio included an addition of the same material measuring thirty-four by twenty-six feet. It stood eighty-five feet west of the superintendent’s office, between Foley’s Studio and Salter’s store;

Galen Clark’s residence—This one-story building of undressed lumber with battens, measuring ten by thirty feet, had been built forty years earlier. It stood on South Road, one mile west of the superintendent’s office;

John Degnan residence—This two-story frame cottage with porch, constructed of lumber with battens, was painted white. The main structure measured thirty-two by thirty feet, a wing measured sixteen by twelve feet, and a one-story addition in the rear, eight by thirty feet;

R. B. Dexter—Dexter occupied the former Starke Studio, a one-story shake building measuring fifteen by sixty feet;

D. J. Foley—Foley conducted business at the Yosemite Tourist printing office and studio, a shake building measuring twenty-four by eighteen feet. A front room measured twelve by twenty feet. It stood twenty-five feet west of the superintendent’s office;

Hallett-Taylor Company—This company operated out of the Studio of the Three Arrows, a one-story, painted-board building measuring forty by twenty feet. It stood opposite Salter’s store;

N. L. Salter—Salter leased a two-story building, twenty-five by forty feet, with a one-story addition in the rear measuring twenty-five by fifteen feet. The lower story was built of surfaced lumber and the second story of shakes. It stood twenty-four feet west of Boysen’s Studio on the north side of the main street at its west end; and

George Fiske—Fiske’s shake residence measuring twenty by forty feet, had a separate studio of the same size and material and several outbuildings. The structures stood about 200 yards west of Galen Clark’s residence.48

[48. H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 18 August 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-2, and H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 28 September 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1-2.]

3. Camp Curry Continues to Grow

Word of the David Currys’ new enterprise had spread quickly among their friends and professional acquaintances over the past few years, and the arrival of the Yosemite Valley Railroad at El Portal in 1907 provided just the impetus Camp Curry needed to grow and thrive. In addition to increasing travel to the park, the railroad facilitated bringing in supplies and making improvements to the physical structure of the camp.

After the recession of Yosemite Valley in 1906, Curry continued to- be granted yearly permits for his operation. Camp Curry, which could accommodate more guests than either the Sentinel or Glacier Point hotels, was also far more popular, quickly becoming the dominant housing unit in the park. Even after the establishment of Camps Lost Arrow and Ahwahnee, Camp Curry maintained its popular appeal. In 1907, and every succeeding year, Curry applied for a long-term franchise, but the Department of the Interior did not grant a five-year lease until 1917, the year Curry died. During those intervening years, however, the department granted his applications for additional privileges, so that by 1915 Camp Curry provided many services in addition to housing and food that had been unavailable in 1906. They included a laundry; a store selling bread and pastry to the public; a fruit stand; a cigar, candy, and news stand; a bathhouse and swimming tank; and a barber shop.

In 1911 the Department of the Interior authorized the Curry Camping Company to provide accommodations for 100 people in addition to the 400 previously authorized. More than 3,500 guests showed up that year. On 18 October 1911, Curry officially incorporated the “Curry Camping Co.,” with all stock owned by the Curry family. On 18 July 1912, fire partially destroyed the camp, originating in the laundry adjoining the dining room where several hundred guests were enjoying lunch. Pines that caught fire spread blazing needles among the camp tents, destroying about seventy of them along with personal effects. The guests aided in fighting the fire until a troop of cavalry arrived and took charge. Although the office, dining room, and most of the tents were saved, the loss amounted to about $20,000.49 Although the Currys had no insurance, they determined to rebuild.

[49. “Camp Curry Burned in Yosemite Valley,” Riverside (Calif.) Daily Press, 19 July 1912. The loss included the laundry building, the ice and meat house, damage to the bakery and storeroom, plus the destruction of linens, meats, lumber and shakes, tents, tent equipment, and tent platforms. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Curry Camping Company,” 1.]

At the end of October 1912, buildings at Camp Curry consisted of an office, twenty-four by thirty feet; a dining room and kitchen, forty by eighty feet; a bakery with bake oven, thirty-eight by forty-three feet; and the old bathhouse. In 1913 the department approved plans for the construction of an auditorium, eighty-six by sixty-four feet, and a new bathhouse. The company completed a new sewer system and swimming pool in July of that year, the latter located adjacent to the dining room and measuring ninety feet nine inches long by forty feet wide by eight feet deep. The new pool featured a cobblestone railing, a diving platform, and a cobblestone bathhouse. The bathhouse, rail, and platform no longer exist. That year more than 4,000 visitors utilized the 254 guest tents. Forty-six other tents housed employees. In 1914 the Park Service ended one of Camp Curry’s best-loved traditions by banning the Glacier Point firefall due ostensibly to its artificiality and the publicity surrounding it, which did not seem harmonious with national park interests. It was also due in large part to the friction that had developed between the Department of the Interior and David Curry over concession control. Foster Curry built the original rustic Camp Curry “Welcome” sign that same year. By 1915 the camp had a visitor capacity of 800 to 900 people, with a total guest count of more than eight thousand.50

[50. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Curry Camping Company,” 1-2.]

4. The Camp Idea Expands to Other Areas

The success of Camp Curry spurred competition. In 1901 Camp Yosemite, operated by J. B Cook near the foot of Yosemite Fall, began service. Located on a sandy slope in a grove of black oaks, on the former site of the Hutchings sawmill, the operation continued until 1915. Renamed Camp Lost Arrow in 1909, it contained a few office buildings, a dining room and kitchen, and bathhouses and lavatories. Its tents, accommodating 250 guests, had board floors covered with canvas and contained three-quarter or double beds, washstands, mirrors, and chairs.

Camp Ahwahnee, owned by W. M. Sell, at the foot of Four-Mile Trail facing Yosemite Fall, opened on 1 May 1908 and continued operations until about 1917. The first camp reached by the stage entering the valley from El Portal, it boasted modern conveniences such as bathrooms with hot and cold water. The dining room, a large, airy, frame building, offered superb views of nearby scenery.51

[51. “Different Routes Lead to Valley,” San Francisco (Calif.) Chronicle, 25 June 1916.]

5. The Washburn Interests

In mid-May 1908 E. P. Washburn called Major Benson’s attention to the need for a shed near the stable in Yosemite Valley to protect the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company’s vehicles that had to remain in the valley overnight. He suggested that a structure measuring forty-eight by twenty-four feet would be adequate. Evidently Washburn hoped the government would erect the building, but the Secretary of the Interior responded that the department had no objection to the stage company’s erection of the shed at its own expense, on a site selected by the superintendent, provided that it became government property upon completion.52

[52. E. P. Washburn to Major H. C. Benson, 14 May 1908, and Washburn to Benson, 18 May 1908, in Box 24, Misc. Correspondence, Washburn/ Wawona, “Misc. Corr. 1908”; and Benson to Washburn, 24 June 1908, in Box 3, Washburn Papers, “File of Misc. Army Correspondence,” in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

By the end of May 1908, E. P. Washburn had nearly completed installation of an electric light plant, powered by a water-driven pelton wheel, that would furnish light for the Wawona Hotel, cottages, and outbuildings. A month later the plant was working to everyone’s satisfaction.53

[53. Unsigned letter to J. B. Davis & Son, 30 May 1908, in Box 24, Misc. Correspondence, Washburn/Wawona, “Misc. Corr. 1908,” in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; unsigned letter to A. Everett Ball, 29 June 1908, in Box 24, Misc. Correspondence, Washburn/Wawona, “Misc. Corr. 1908,” in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In replying to questions about his properties in 1910, Washburn described the buildings then located at Eight-Mile, Eleven-Mile and Chinquapin stations and at Grouse Creek and Glacier Point. He stated that the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company owned eighty acres of patented land and the buildings thereon at Eight-Mile Station and sixty acres of land and its buildings at Chinquapin Station. The former consisted of a house and a barn, while at the latter stood two barns, a shed, and a residence. The stage company also used the buildings on patented land at Eleven-Mile Station belonging to the Wawona Hotel Company. They included one barn and a small employee’s house. Structures at Grouse Creek and at Glacier Point stood on government land. The former consisted of a large barn and a dwelling, while the latter site held only a barn.54

[54. Unsigned (E. P. Washburn?) to Thomas Turner, 22 April 1910, and unsigned (E. P. Washburn?) to Major Wm. W. Forsyth, 17 May 1910, in Box 24, Misc. Records and Correspondence, Wawona/Washburn, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1911 the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company leased its staging business from Yosemite Valley to Glacier Point, Wawona, and the Mariposa Grove to Frank G. Drum and the Yosemite Transportation Company. The deal included 175 horses, twelve eleven-passenger stages, twelve eight-passenger stages, two five-passenger stages, and

Illustration 61.
Map of Wawona Hotel and points of interest in vicinity, ca. 1909-1912.
From Washburn Papers, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

[click to enlarge]

forty-seven sets of horse harness, plus stables, barns, and other equipment.

By 1912 Superintendent William Forsyth wanted to move the barns and stables, the coach shed, and the cottage in the valley belonging to the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company to a less objectionable location. At the time they stood only a few hundred yards from the village on one side and Camp Lost Arrow on the other, within 200 yards of the schoolhouse and the cottages of the supervisor and electricians, and within 100 yards of the storehouses and workshops of the department. Their location in the center of the populated part of the valley, and the fact that their unsanitary premises attracted bothersome flies, prompted Forsyth to select another site for them near the barns and stables of the Yosemite Transportation Company at the upper end of the valley. In November 1912 Forsyth ordered the stage company to move by 1 May 1913.

In that latter year Frank Drum decided not to operate the valley stage line again, and so the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company reapplied for a permit.55 Drum, meanwhile, in accordance with government regulations, estimated the revenues and expenses of the stage company during his lease period ending 31 October 1912. He included a list of the property he had used during that time, which adds further information on the size of the buildings described by Washburn in 1910:

[55. Notes on “Stage Companies,” in Separates File; Wm. W. Forsyth to Secretary of the Interior, 25 October 1912, and Forsyth to Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., 11 November 1912, in Box 63, Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Yosemite Valley-horse shed, 16’ x 32’
house, 24’ x 48’ [these figures appear to be reversed]

Grouse Creek—barn, 46’ x 48’
house, 14’ x 32’

Chinquapin — barns, 42’ x 40’ and 32’ x 40’
horse shed, 16’ x 40’
house, 16’ x 32’

Glacier Point—barn, 38’ x 32’

Eleven Mile—barn, 24’ x 42’
house, 16’ x 24’

Eight Mile—barn, 40’ x 42’
house, 16’ x 32’

Four Mile—barn, 40’ x 42’
house, 16’ x 32’

Wawona—barns, 58’ x 96’ and 32’ x 80’
granary, 16’ x 32’
harness shop, 16’ x 68’
wagon shed, 26’ x 126’
blacksmith shop, 24’ \J8l
paint shop, 24’ x 80’56

[56. A. S. Mann, Secretary, Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, to Colonel W. W. Forsyth, 1 March 1913, in Box 63, Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Company, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. In 1909 the Secretary of the Interior, after inspecting Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, became convinced that the government needed to adopt a more advanced policy in regard to park maintenance, improvements, and operations. He believed that the transportation lines, hotels, and other concessions in those parks could no longer be considered experimental because of the steady stream of visitors that frequented them and the large profits they realized. The secretary decided, therefore, that a reasonable share of those profits should be devoted to park maintenance. He subsequently imposed on all concessioners a franchise or use tax based on gross earnings for the enlargement of the maintenance fund. He also instituted a system of accounting and inspection for the government’s protection. Drum probably submitted this report in accordance with the new directives. Excerpt from Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1909, under “National Parks and Reservations,” in Notes and Correspondence, Sierra Club Bulletin 7, no. 3 (January 1910): 197.]

6. The Yosemite Transportation Company

From 1908 on, after completion of the wagon road from El Portal to Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite Transportation Company, later a subsidiary of the Yosemite Valley Railroad, ran horse and auto stages from the terminus of the railroad at El Portal to the various camps and hotels in Yosemite Valley. As mentioned earlier, by 1912 the company had leased the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company’s routes within the park. The D. J. Desmond Company purchased the Yosemite Transportation Company on 1 September 1916.57

[57. Notes on “Stage Companies,” in Separates File, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

7. The Yosemite Valley Railroad Company

In 1909 the Department of the Interior granted the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company permission to erect a building in Yosemite Valley, to be known as the “Transportation Building.” The railroad company intended to rent space to representatives of all valley transportation operations. Additional groups to be housed in the building included the telephone company, Wells Fargo, and possibly representatives of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads. The company planned a log building, about twenty by thirty feet, similar to their depot at El Portal. The building would provide a central place for the obtainment of transportation information. 58 It also functioned as a horse and motor stage terminal for visitors arriving from the El Portal railroad depot.

[58. O. W. Lehmer, Supt. and Traffic Mngr., Yosemite Valley Railroad Co., to E. P. Washburn, 22 December 1909, in Box 69, Wawona/Washburn Correspondence, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

A year later, in 1910, Acting Superintendent Forsyth reported that the Yosemite Transportation Company had built an attractive office building in Yosemite Village, nearly opposite the superintendent’s office. The twenty-four-foot square structure’s exterior consisted of pine poles and cedar bark. The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company occupied part of the building.59 Because it served as a telegraph and express office, the name “Wells Fargo” became associated with it. The building, now in the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, is an exceptional example of the rustic style of architecture as first developed in the Yosemite region before creation of the National Park Service. Its builders used cedar bark strips in decorative patterns as exterior sheathing material on the wood frame. It was similar in construction to the Yosemite Valley Railroad depot at El Portal, no longer extant; the Curry and Tresidder cabins and the original Curry Company registration office at Camp Curry; and to the Pohono Studio in the New Village.

[59. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1910, 467.]

8. The Shaffer and Lounsbury Garage

In 1913 Richard Shaffer and E. Lounsbury opened the first automobile garage in Yosemite National Park, opposite the army headquarters. Needing more room, they erected a canvas garage in 1914 on a site near the front of the present Yosemite Museum. The garage utilized a drill press, emery wheel, lathe, air compressor, and other equipment that operated off a long shaft powered by a gasoline engine. It had also a complete blacksmith shop and a variety of bench tools. The prosperous business employed eight or nine mechanics. The garage operated on a yearly basis, under a government lease, from 1913 to 1915. The garage closed in 1916, when the Desmond Company took over most of the park concessions. In 1918 Shaffer and his brother Harold opened another garage in the old army stables, which operated for only about one year until the Yosemite National Park Company took it over.60

[60. “The First Garage in Yosemite,” data supplied by Dick Shaffer in interview with C. P. Russell, 22 April 1951, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

9. The Desmond Park Service Company

Stephen Mather began to worry by early 1915 that the park would be completely incapable of handling the increased tourist trade as a result of the California expositions of that year. To remedy the situation, he persuaded California busnessmen in San Francisco and Los Angeles to put up capital resulting in formation of the D. J. Desmond Company. In 1915 the Department of the Interior granted the D. J. Desmond Company a one-year lease to operate a hotel and camp, under the name of Camp Yosemite, and to operate an auto sightseeing service on the floor of the valley. The permit stipulated that if the season’s operation were successful and satisfactory to the Department of the Interior, it would grant Desmond a twenty-year contract. The permit allowed him to occupy 4-1/2 acres that held two large remodeled barracks buildings with attached cottages, two bath and lavatory buildings, and 156 canvas bungalows.

Dick Shaffer, an early partner in the enterprise, recalled that the Desmond Company had first held meetings in the San Joaquin Valley to interest people in its concession project for Yosemite and to sell stock. Joe Desmond, whose name was used for the company, had been a caterer in Los Angeles. When the Owens Valley Aqueduct project got underway, Desmond managed the construction messhalls. He gained much publicity through that job and became well known. A. B. C. Dohrmann and Larry Harris, who were pushing the Yosemite concession project, subsequently decided to bring him in on their plans.61

[61. “Some Historical Facts Regarding the Desmond Company,” C. P. Russell interview with Dick Shaffer, 2 July 1951, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16c, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The Interior Department ultimately adopted the policy of preferential contracts favored by Stephen Mather because of the large investments required to provide the quality and extent of services and facilities needed for the ever-increasing tourist trade. That type of contract reduced investment risks and thereby gave concessioners some financial protection. This policy of having one strongly favored public utility operator in each park also enabled the government to more easily control and supervise their activities so that tourists would not be constantly subjected to competitive selling efforts by rival concessioners. By giving the Desmond Company this one-year lease, the Interior Department hoped that it would prove responsible and efficient and eventually absorb all other concession operations.62

[62. Charles Nordhoff, as early as 1873, remarked in regard to the better management of Yosemite Valley that the state of California should ask Frederick Olmsted to draw up a plan for the improvement and management of the valley,

and then offer to any responsible company a lease for twenty, or even fifty years, of the whole Valley, subject to such conditions as might be prescribed in the law or agreement to be drawn up by Mr. Olmsted. . . . a corporation with a lease of twenty or thirty years could very well afford to put up large and commodious hotels, and spend a hundred or even two hundred thousand dollars in beautifying this “National Park;” because their profit would be certain, and the sale of their improvements to a successor, at the end of the lease, sure. The value of their improvements would be permanent and constantly increasing. It would be only necessary for the State to guard sufficiently their character.

Nordhoff, California, 78.]

F. Patented Lands Again Pose a Problem

1. Timberlands

a) Lumber Interests Eye Park Timber Stands

Interior Department policy concerning the acquisition of private patented lands within national park boundaries remained nebulous. The first Congressional purchase of patented holdings, in Sequoia National Park, did not occur until 1916. Regarding Yosemite, specifically, as mentioned in the previous chapter, Congress believed that the private timberlands remaining in the park after the 1905 boundary change lay too high in altitude and too remote from industry to ever become a menace to the park’s integrity. Early in the present century, however, the prospective timber values of forested areas rapidly gained importance. By 1907 the patented timber claims in Yosemite were becoming an increasing source of controversy.

Acting Superintendent Benson pointed out in that year that some of the finest sugar pine timber in California lay within the park along the line of the Wawona Road from Wawona to Chinquapin Station. Michigan lumbermen had already inspected it and obtained an option on its purchase. The large tract of timber excluded by the 7 February 1905 act had already been bought and a railroad constructed into the stand. The Sugar Pine Lumber Company, formerly operating forty miles south of the park, had by then completed a steam-powered, narrow-gauge logging road to within two miles of the former southern park boundary and was rapidly denuding the mountains. By 1907 the Yosemite Valley Railroad was within a’ mile of the western park boundary, threatening future logging activity in private timber stands within the park. Clearly something had to be done to protect the park’s principal scenic features and the viewsheds along its main highways. Benson again urged the immediate purchase of patented lands in the park before logging began, noting that one of the primary purposes of the recommendations of the congressional commission of 1904 had been to reduce the number of private claims in the park to an extent that would justify the government purchasing the remaining ones.63

[63. Benson, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1907, 559. Benson reported that the timberlands transferred to the forest reserve by the 7 February act had been sold to the Sierra Railroad, which constructed its line from Chinese Camp to Hodgdons to carry out the timber cut by the West Side Lumber Company. H. C. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, 5 June 1906, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA, 1.]

Major Forsyth, in 1912, repeated the urgent recommendations of previous years that the government extinguish titles to all patented lands in the park. By that time the Yosemite Lumber Company had built its logging railroad from El Portal to the park boundary near Chinquapin and was cutting timber and shipping the logs to its Merced Falls sawmill. The company had already surveyed a route to continue the railroad through the park to Alder Creek where it claimed an additional 6,000 acres of timberlands. Forsyth warned that the clear-cutting in the vicinity of Chinquapin would spread to all patented timberlands in the park in the near future unless the government purchased them.

b) Congress Authorizes Land Exchanges

On 9 April 1912, Congress passed Public Act No. 117, S. 5718: An Act to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to secure for the United States title to patented lands in the Yosemite National Park, and for other purposes. This act had been designed to facilitate the acquisition of patented forest lands in Yosemite by offering in exchange equal values in decayed or matured timber that could be removed from the park without affecting its scenic beauty. It also authorized acquisition of private forests near public roads by giving in exchange timber of equal value on park lands in less conspicuous parts of the park so that logging activities would not be visible to park visitors.

An act of Congress approved 13 May 1914, designed to preserve scenic features and consolidate certain forest lands belonging to the United States within Sierra National Forest and Yosemite National Park, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to exchange government-owned lands in the national forest for privately owned timberlands of approximately equal area lying within the boundaries of the national forest and the national park. The act also provided that the lands acquired by the government in the Sierra National Forest would become a part of the park. Those timber exchange acts enabled National Park Service Director Stephen Mather to make a number of exchanges of park lands for private lands in Yosemite.64 Between 1915 and 1923, the federal government acquired the privately owned timberlands bordering the Wawona Road for a distance of sixteen miles and also screened portions of the Big Oak Flat Road. In accomplishing this, the government permitted the cutting of timber on 6,000 acres of federal park lands and received in return 6,100 acres of timberlands in fee, 6,100 acres of lands already cut over or on which stood timber reserved for cutting, and 610 acres of standing timber.

[64. Robert Sterling Yard, “The Problem of Yosemite Forests,” National Parks Bulletin 9, no. 55 (May 1928): 1-2; “National Parks,” in Sierra Club Bulletin 9, no. 4 (January 1915): 316.]

c) The Yosemite Lumber Company

One of the reasons for construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad had been the potential for a profitable timber-hauling revenue generated by the immense stands of sugar pine that grew on each side of the upper Merced River canyon. Many coveted that particular wood for homes, furniture, wood carving, and other uses that required texture and durability. Railroad officers endeavored to persuade logging interests to invest in those forests, an effort culminating in August 1910 in formation of the Yosemite Lumber Company, headed by F. M. Fenwick, a prominent lumber operator on the West Coast. After purchasing 10,000 acres of timber between El Portal and Wawona, the company pondered how best to retrieve the logs that lay in the mountain regions opposite El Portal. The most practical method of tapping its holdings seemed to be by means of an incline railroad. In addition, the company completed a modern mill in 1912 at Merced Falls, a stop on the Yosemite Valley Railroad that also contained drying and storage yards, a planing mill, a finishing plant, and the company town.

The incline rose 8,300 feet in a straight line to a height of 3,100 feet above the Merced River canyon floor with a 78% grade in one section. It branched from the Yosemite Valley Railroad tracks on a Y and crossed the Merced River on a trestle. Construction had almost ended by the summer of 1912. The lumber company also built a logging railroad extending back from the top of the incline on Henness Ridge into the timber stands and eventually to Empire Meadow. The hoist house area at the top of the incline became Camp One, the starting point for the logging railroad. Initial cutting took place at Camp Two, about two miles farther back along the line. As timber was cut, the railroad was pushed farther back and new camps built. Logging usually lasted from April to November, or until the heavy snows hit. The mill operated on a year-round schedule.

Cables and donkey engines hauled the felled timber to the logging railroad where men loaded the logs onto standard-gauge flatcars equipped with a bulkhead in front to keep logs from sliding off while on the incline. Shay (gear-driven) locomotives delivered the loaded cars at the top of the incline where a cable and steam hoist lowered them to El Portal for transport via the Yosemite Valley Railroad to Merced Falls. The special flatcars used ensured that the logs did not have to be transferred enroute from the forests to the mill. The faint trace of this logging incline, which operated from 1912 to 1923, is still visible on the hillside across from the present El Portal store. Its route is now used as a television line right-of-way.

In May 1913 the lumber company reorganized and bought 20,000 acres of timber on the north side of the Merced River, where it also built a logging incline and railroad. By late 1913 the company began logging its holdings in the Sierra National Forest immediately west of the park boundaries and contemplating initiating cutting on its lands inside the park during the 1914 season. Those holdings adjoined or included the Yosemite Valley-Wawona road for a distance of more than twelve miles between Grouse Creek on the north and Alder Creek on the south. The possible clear-cutting of this stretch concerned the Interior Department because that road formed the principal thoroughfare for travel into the park from the south and constituted probably the most scenic drive within the park. The clear-cutting of timber there would severely affect the beauty of the park. Interior Department concerns focused on public viewing of the slash and devastation caused by logging operations; it believed that timber cutting in less visible areas did not materially injure the park.

To prevent the depressing effect that such activity would have on visitors, the Interior Department suggested an exchange of the

Illustration 62.
Collapsed trestle at top of north side incline, Yosemite Lumber Company.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Yosemite Lumber Company holdings along the Wawona Road for vacant lands in inconspicuous localities in the park and adjoining national forest. The two parties traded timber to preserve the scenery along the Wawona Road in February.

d) The Madera Sugar Pine Company

The activities of the Madera Sugar Pine Company also concerned the park. Incorporated on 8 May 1899, the company had selected an area south of Fish Camp and about one mile east of the Yosemite stage road for its main mill site and named the lumber camp “Sugar Pine.” The company began operations in 1900 on timber it owned in Madera and Mariposa counties, later purchasing or leasing more tracts as needed. It constantly relocated an extensive system of rail lines to reach new timber areas each season.

By the early 1900s the company had extended logging operations north from the mill into the timber along Big Creek near Wawona. By 1909 E. P. Washburn expressed concern over timberland owned by the company along the road between Wawona and the Big Tree Grove. It comprised a half-mile stretch between Four-Mile Station and the entrance to the grove and extended about one mile west of that point. Because the beauty of the drive from Wawona to the grove depended on the forest through which it passed, the cutting of any part of those woods, Washburn believed, would detract from the interest and pleasure of the experience. Such concerns lasted until the depression of the 1930s ended the company’s operations in 1933.65

[65. Hank Johnston, Thunder in the Mountains (Los Angeles: Trans-Anglo Books, 1968), 29-31, 49, 51, 90; unsigned [E. P. Washburn?] to H. W. Fairbanks, 25 August 1909, Box 24, Misc. Correspondence, Wawona/Washburn, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

2. Private Properties

a) Foresta

Articles of incorporation for the Foresta Land Company were filed at Sacramento, California, in December 1912. A closed corporation with only three stockholders—Milton E. Morris, Charles P. Snell, and Seymour Lee—the company took possession of 200 acres of patented land purchased from the estate of the late James McCauley, who had obtained it long before it became part of the national park. The Foresta tract, on the western park boundary about twelve miles from Yosemite Valley, had been included within the park in 1890. The early homestead grants were originally deeded to Snell, his wife Cora L. Snell, and V. W. Lothrop in 1912, who deeded them to the Foresta Land Company. The name “Foresta” designated the area as a forest tract.

The company staked, numbered, and blocked about 1,200 lots, measuring 50 by 100 feet in size, and sold them at one hundred dollars each as vacation lots for camping during the summer in what hopefully would become a permanent, high-class summer settlement. As mentioned, the group also built a six-mile-long wagon road from El Portal to the subdivision in 1913 after initiating a campaign of high-pressure real estate ads in May 1912. Although the company sold a large number of lots, its promotion scheme eventually failed. Summer assemblies similar to the popular chautauquas of the day, an attempt to attract intellectuals to Foresta, were possibly held during 1914 to 1916 but, if so, were sparsely attended. Little is known of Foresta activities during 1915.

b) McCauley Ranch

Near the community of Foresta, near Crane Creek, and outside the western boundary of Yosemite National Park, on property purchased by the Park Service from Horace Meyer, is a small sawmill plant. It employed a circular saw and a traveling carriage powered by a “stove-top” semi-diesel engine housed in an open wood frame shed cut into the hillside. The shed is open on the north and south ends and on the downhill (west) side. Built about 1913 by Fred and possibly John McCauley after the death of their father in 1911, it functioned initially as a gas engine-powered mill. About 1915, however, the McCauleys purchased a second-hand semi-diesel engine from an El Portal mine. They sold much of their lumber to Camp Curry and in Foresta as well as in El Portal.

c) The Cascades (Gentry Tract)

By 1915 problems with patented lands in Yosemite continued to draw the Secretary of the Interior’s attention. Even the limited success of the Foresta development encouraged other owners of patented lands to contemplate establishing similar tourist operations. Those landowners possessed all the advantages of government administration without paying anything toward park maintenance, as required of concessioners on public land in the park.

C. B. Hollingsworth, who had come into possession of the property about 1914 or 1915, tried to exploit this 150-acre tract on the Big Oak Flat Road. According to government records, he subdivided it into lots and laid out a townsite called “The Cascades” with the intent of establishing a summer resort similar to Foresta. The site lay about one-quarter mile west of the Gentry checking station.66

[66. C. G. Thomson to the Director, 21 October 1930, in Central Files, RG 79, NA. According to Shirley Sargent, Charles Snell had been one of the original purchasers, in 1911, of the land near the Gentry entrance station and had laid out The Cascades townsite. It was mortgaged in 1913, and that is possibly when Hollingsworth acquired it. Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, 13.]

d) Tuolumne Meadows (Soda Springs)

Through the years, the Sierra Club has acquired various properties in the California mountains. They included undeveloped lands as well as lodges or huts, either on their own property or on sites leased from the federal government. The club has received some parcels of land as gifts and has purchased others to protect certain important holdings from exploitation or use as building sites. The lodges serve as recreation centers for members and their guests, as sources of mountaineering information, or as emergency shelters.

In the fall of 1911, J. J. McCauley decided to sell his property at the Soda Springs in Tuolumne Meadows. A large number of Sierra Club members contributed the necessary funds in 1912 to purchase it, to prevent undesirable development there. The club acquired the land in fee simple on 13 June 1912. The club then raised a subscription to erect a small lodge in the meadows, and drew plans in 1913. With the death of Sierra Club director Edward ‘Taylor Parsons after a short illness in 1914, the club decided to dedicate the lodge as a memorial to Parsons. It would commemorate his devoted work in behalf of the Sierra Club and his strong opposition to the Hetch Hetchy Project, as well as his contributions to conservation and the mountaineering work of the club, which Parsons had directed for many years. It was built during the summer of 1915.

A stone building with a single large room with fireplace, it served as a reading room and library and as a gathering place in the evenings in connection with the Sierra Club camp for members and their families established on the surrounding property in the meadows during the summer of 1915. The lodge also served as headquarters for members of the club who visited the meadows. During the summers, a custodian lived in the McCauley cabin adjacent to the lodge. The Lembert cabin and its surrounding fences had by that time been crushed by snow or otherwise deteriorated.

Bernard Maybeck, well-known American architect (1862-1957) who designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and several buildings on the University of California campus at Berkeley, designed the lodge, assisted by Mark H. White of the firm of Maybeck and White, San Francisco, California. Maybeck did all the original designs and sketches and White developed them in detail. The structure has functioned through the years as a meeting place, emergency shelter, and information base for visitors to Tuolumne Meadows.

Placed in an alpine setting, Parsons Lodge appeared more relaxed in style than the LeConte Memorial Lodge. It perfectly reflected its natural setting in terms of texture, color, and shape. New building methods resulted in inserting concrete cores in the battered stone walls,

Illustration 63.
Parsons Memorial Lodge, Tuolumne Meadows.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

creating an impression of having used pioneer building techniques but adding stability. In the late 1920s the Ahwahnee Hotel would utilize this same construction philosophy.67

[67. In 1979 information forwarded to the curator at Yosemite National Park suggested that Bernard Maybeck served as the architect-designer of Parsons Lodge rather than Mark White. The latter served as Maybeck’s assistant. In the firm of Maybeck and White, Maybeck performed all the original design work. White then developed the designs. He did not do any original designs or take any independent commissions during their association from 1902 to 1938. Marilyn M. Fry, “Parsons Memorial Lodge, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park,” 1978, typescript, 2 pages and letter, Marilyn M. Fry to Jack Gyer, Curator, Yosemite National Park, 17 July 1979.]

G. Insect and Blister Rust Control

1. Beetle Depredations

As early as 1869, John Muir had seen “ghost forests” north of Soda Springs, which he believed fire had caused. Twenty-five years later, Lieutenant McClure noted a “dead forest” through which the troops marched. In 1903 rangers noted “white flies” on the pine trees, and by 1913 the Department of the Interior realized the need to wage a campaign against beetle depredations in park forests. The control of damage by needle borers and bark beetles continued for the next several years as part of Yosemite’s regular park operations. The Bureau of Entomology of the Department of Agriculture cooperated with the park in protecting the sugar, yellow, and Jeffery pine stands and the lodgepole forests.

Each lodgepole needle-miner caterpillar, which matures into a tiny moth, eats, or hollows out, several pine needles, causing them to yellow and die. Heavy infestation results in a forest of dead trees similar to the ones seen by Muir and others early in Yosemite’s history. Although the Park Service has treated the needle-miner as a pest, some entomologists have believed the insect acts as a control device, keeping pine forests healthy by thinning them out. The mountain pine beetle will frequently attack trees that the needle-miner has already weakened. Beetle epidemics follow patterns, outbreaks having occurred from 1910 to 1922 and 1933 to 1940, causing extensive ghost forests.68

[68. Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 63-64.]

2. White Pine Blister Rust

White pine blister rust, which became one of the most serious fungal diseases of native coniferous forests, arrived in northeastern North America through stock imported from European tree nurseries more than eighty years ago. As early as 1908 imported rust-infected pines were planted on the eastern seaboard. By the time state officials became aware of the presence of the blister rust fungus, it had become solidly established in America and had advanced beyond the point of eradication.

Under favorable conditions and within a short period of time, a few infected pines easily spread the disease by spores to distant ribes plants (currant and gooseberry bushes), which acted as hosts and infected healthy pines near them. Foresters attempted to control blister rust through ribes eradication, thinking that the elimination of wild currant and gooseberry bushes would slow or stop the spread of the rust altogether.

It became apparent, however, that the spread of the blister rust was fast becoming a national problem, one that would require coordinated efforts on the part of the federal government as well as individual states and private individuals. In the fall of 1915 the Interstate Committee for Suppression of the Pine Blister Rust was organized and $50,000 requested from Congress to fight the disease. With that money the committee began a survey to determine the infection’s extent. In 1916 the committee reorganized as the Committee for the Suppression of Pine Blister in North America, and later as the American Plant Pest Committee. 69 This type of mobilization would eventually lead to a blister rust control program within Yosemite National Park and environs.
[69. Ray R. Hirt, “Fifty Years of White Pine Blister Rust in the Northeast,” Journal of Forestry 54, no. 7 (July 1956): 435-38.]

H. The Hetch Hetchy Water Project Plan Proceeds

1. The Garfield Permit

The Hetch Hetchy Project, which had lain dormant for the past few years, surfaced again during this period. The issue would become more heated, because by 1908 a few more tourists were visiting Hetch Hetchy Valley, which had become one of the more popular side trips of a visit to the park. Numerous short trips around Hetch Hetchy—to Lake Eleanor, Lake Vernon, Rancheria Mountain, and Tiltill Valley—could be made within a day’s ride from Yosemite Valley. Slightly longer overnight trips could be made to Tilden Lake, Pleasant Valley, and Jack Main Canyon. This new interest in that area meant that the city of San Francisco would encounter more opposition as it pursued its plan to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley.

In 1907 Theodore Roosevelt’s new Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, reopened the question of granting reservoir rights-of-way in the Hetch Hetchy Valley and at Lake Eleanor to the city of San Francisco. The secretary granted a hearing at San Francisco and, after extended conferences and the submission of briefs pro and con, reinstated the Phelan application on 11 May 1908, granting the option the city desired until the matter could be submitted to the voters and definite action taken. That approval, known as the “Garfield Permit,” granted the city rights-of-way for dams, reservoirs, and aqueduct lines. The reinstatement depended upon the filing of certain stipulations that afforded protection to the park lands and to the rights of the Modesto and Turlock irrigation districts relevent to the use of the flow of the Tuolumne River. The stipulations also provided that the -Lake Eleanor site would be developed to its full capacity before development began on the Hetch Hetchy site. The people of San Francisco showed their support for the project by voting a $600,000 bond issue in 1908 for the purchase of privately owned lands and water rights.

In rendering his decision, Secretary Garfield reiterated that the water supply of San Francisco was inadequate and unsatisfactory. He believed that domestic purposes, especially in terms of a municipal water supply, constituted the highest use to which water and storage basins could be put. The next best use of water and water resources, he stated in his decision, was for irrigation. Despite the beauty of Hetch Hetchy Valley, Garfield believed it to be less of a wonder than Yosemite Valley. Furthermore he stated that the valley would not be destroyed by this use, only its character changed. Instead of an “unusable” meadow floor, the valley would contain a beautiful lake.

This partial loss of scenery in the park would result in many advantages to the public: a pure water supply to San Francisco and other Bay areas, water for irrigable land in the Tuolumne and San Joaquin valleys, a cheap and bountiful supply of electric energy, a public highway built by the city reaching into that section of the park, and a patrol for the Hetch Hetchy area, furnished by the city, which, in protecting the water supply, would also guard against forest fires.70

[70. Decision of the Secretary of the Interior, James Rudolph Garfield, re Application for Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy Valley Reservoir Sites, 11 May 1908, in “Notes and Correspondence,” Sierra Club Bulletin 6, no. 5 (June 1908): 321-27.]

2. Antagonism to the Project Continues

Despite the Secretary of the Interior’s views, thousands of mountaineers, nature-lovers, and naturalists remained staunch in their opposition to the water project. In John Muir’s opinion,

This use of the valley, so destructive and foreign to its proper park use, has long been planned and prayed for, and is still being prayed for by the San Francisco board of supervisors, not because water as pure and abundant cannot be got from adjacent sources outside the park,—for it can,—but seemingly only because of the comparative cheapness of the dam required.71

[71. John Muir, “The Hetch-Hetchy Valley,” in Sierra Club Bulletin 6, no. 4 (January 1908): 216-17.]

Muir presented many arguments against the proposal. First, the Hetch Hetchy Valley served as a delightful campground. Because of its position relative to other high country park features, hikers used it as a starting point for excursions into the surrounding mountains and canyons. Submerging the Hetch Hetchy Valley would make it inaccessible as well as the Tuolumne River canyon passageway and the main part of the Tuolumne River valley. Muir argued that rather than being a “common” meadow, the floor of Hetch Hetchy comprised a natural landscape garden worthy of preservation. Contrary to becoming a beautiful mountain lake when filled, it would become a reservoir whose level would periodically fluctuate, exposing ugly mud banks and drifting waste. Muir also questioned the purity of Hetch Hetchy water because of the campground sewage draining into it, especially from Tuolumne Meadows. He concluded his lament for the valley’s future by stating: “Dam Hetch-Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”72 Unfortunately, the city of San Francisco could more easily demonstrate an immediate need for fresh water than the preservationists could the importance of the Hetch Hetchy and Tuolumne canyons to tourists.

[72. Ibid., 220. The Sierra Club, in seeking allies in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, exchanged support with the American Civic Association, which was leading a campaign against harnessing the Niagara River in New York for hydroelectric power. This east-west alliance helped formation of a national preservation movement.]

3. The City of San Francisco Begins Acquiring Land

In connection with preliminary work on the dam at Lake Eleanor, by 1909 the city had surveyed a dam site in Section 3, Township 1 North, Range 19 East, and had begun to clear and explore for foundations for the structure. It had also established a camp site and temporary buildings for laborers. The Department of the Interior approved preliminary canal surveys in February 1909.73

[73. Forsyth, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1909, 426.]

Having acquired a permit to the lands and waters tributary to the Tuolumne River in the northern part of the park, the city of San Francisco began to acquire lands in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. It purchased from private owners 1,100 acres of patented lands within the park and adjacent forest reserves, 600 of which lay on the valley floor. The other Hetch Hetchy Valley lands, about 500 acres, belonged to the federal government. Later a congressional bill provided for the exchange of those 500 acres for an equal number of acres owned by the city outside of the reservoir sites and within the national park and adjacent reserves.

Properties within Yosemite National Park that the city of San Francisco acquired over the years in connection with the dam project included lands at: Hetch Hetchy reservoir, below the ultimate flow line, 571 acres, acquired in 1908 and 1909; Hog Ranch (Mather), 328 acres, acquired in 1909, required for use in connection with the Hetch Hetchy Railroad operation and as a sawmill site (a 1 June 1930 boundary change placed the easterly 80 acres of that tract within the park boundary); Lake Eleanor, below the ultimate flow line, 656 acres, acquired in 1910; Lake Vernon, 121 acres, acquired in 1918; Miguel Meadow, 160 acres, acquired in 1918, which was held by the city as a possible site for a headquarters in connection with future reservoir and aqueduct construction in that area; Poopenaut Valley, 80 acres, acquired in 1918 by condemnation proceedings against the Yosemite Power Company, located almost entirely within the site of a proposed reservoir to be constructed in the future; Mather, the Dudley property, 320 acres, acquired in 1919 and 1920, adjoining the national park boundary as it existed prior to 1930 (the 1 June boundary change placed the easterly 160 acres of that tract within the park)74

[74. M. J. Bartell, “San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Hetch Hetchy Water Supply, Lands Now and Formerly Owned by City and County of San Francisco in Yosemite National Park and Vicinity,” September 1937, in Box 85, Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1-2.]

4. A New Secretary of the Interior Questions His Predecessor’s Actions

On 4 January 1910, the people of San Francisco authorized the issuance of $45,000,000 in bonds for the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Project. That same year, however, a new Secretary of the Interior under President William Taft, Richard A. Ballinger, entered office, and certain groups of environmentalists started a movement to revoke the portion of the Garfield Permit relating to Hetch Hetchy Valley. Ballinger left office after issuing an order directing the city of San Francisco to show cause against this revocation. Because of the possibility that the city would always be subject to the whims of different Interior Department administrations, city authorities asked Congress for an outright grant of the desired privileges.

President Taft ordered an investigation, and the Secretary of War detailed an advisory board of U. S. Army Engineers to the Secretary of the Interior to exhaustively examine all alternative sources of water for the city’s use. A final hearing on the matter was held before the Secretary of the Interior during 25 to 30 November 1912. On 19 February 1913 the army board submitted its report to the secretary who transmitted it to Congress.

The board’s report to Walter L. Fisher, Ballinger’s successor, recommended the Tuolumne supply as the cheapest and most economical for the city’s use and as affording the greatest hydro-electric development possibilities. It stated the necessity of using Hetch Hetchy Valley as a reservoir site to conserve the full flow of the upper Tuolumne River. Because the board foresaw that sooner or later irrigation needs would demand the use of that valley as a reservoir, it saw no reason to delay its construction until the Lakes Eleanor and Cherry sources had been fully developed. An editorial in the Sierra Club Bulletin protested that the board of army engineers had in fact found several satisfactory water sources, water from any one of which would have been sufficient in quantity and quality for use by the city of San Francisco. Because the determining factor in the selection of Hetch Hetchy Valley had been cost savings,

the passage of the Hetch-Hetchy bill must be regarded as the first act in a movement to break down our national park policy, and to expose the parks to commercial exploitation by municipal politicians and engineers.75

[75. W. F. B., “The Hetch-Hetchy Situation,” in Editorials section, Sierra Club Bulletin 9, no. 3 (January 1914): 174.]

Although it realized that this project could probably not be stopped, the Bulletin added that
The widespread and vigorous expressions of public sentiment in the press and elsewhere in opposition to the unnecessary invasion of the National Parks for commercial and utilitarian projects has been of permanent value in making similar projects more difficult if not impossible in the future, and our National Parks as a whole,, are more secure as a result of the Hetch-Hetchy fight.76

[76. Ibid., 176.]

5. The Raker Act

After taking testimony and examining all reports, Secretary Fisher opined that Congress alone had the power to grant the privileges sought by San Francisco. After much argument in Congress, both houses finally passed the Hetch Hetchy Grant, known as the “Raker Act,” and President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law on 19 December 1913. Wilson stated that he had signed the bill “because it seemed to serve the pressing public needs of the region concerned better than they could be served in any other way and yet did not impair the usefulness or materially detract from the beauty of the public domain.”77 Through the Raker Act, named for California Congressman John Edward Raker, the city’s rights were forever vested in 420,000 acres of the public domain.

[77. President Woodrow Wilson, statement on signing of Hetch Hetchy bill, 19 December 1913, in Box 84, Hetch Hetchy: Gen’l 1910-1916, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. House bill 7207 granted authority to the city and county of San Francisco to secure water from Yosemite National Park, under certain conditions, and certain rights-of-way through the park.]

The Raker Act granted to San Francisco rights-of-way and the use of public lands for the construction, operation, and maintenance of reservoirs, dams, conduits, and other structures necessary to the development and use of water and power. It also, however, imposed many conditions and obligations upon the city, such as:

constructing scenic roads and trails in Yosemite National Park and donating them to the federal government (described earlier in this chapter);

enforcing sanitary regulations within the watershed;

recognizing prior rights of the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts to the water;

completing the Hetch Hetchy Dam as rapidly as possible;

developing electric power for municipal and commercial use;

not diverting beyond the San Joaquin Valley any more of the Tuolumne River water than required;

not selling or giving Hetch Hetchy water or power to private persons or corporations for resale;

and paying an annual rent of $15,000, rising to $30,000 after twenty years.78

[78. City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Water and Power, 10.

Although John E. Raker’s name is forever tied to the controversial Hetch Hetchy bill, it should be noted that this representative in Congress of the 2d California district played a major role in some important and beneficial national park legislation during his career. Judge Raker’s congressional work began in March 1911, at which time he began taking an interest in national park affairs. Particularly interested in the sequoias and coast redwoods, he introduced the first bill in Congress to establish Redwood National Park and secured the final enactment of a bill designed to save the Calaveras Grove of Big Trees.

The lack of a directing force in national park administration bothered him a great deal, as did the lack of proper machinery in Washington to care for park interests. When President Taft finally urged Congress to establish a bureau to administer the national parks, Raker early in 1912 introduced H. R. 22,995, “A Bill to Establish the National Park Service, and for other Purposes.” The bill did not pass, largely because of disagreement on the appropriation features of the measure.

In April 1913 Raker again introduced his Park Service bill, H. R. 104. It also failed because of the matter of expenses. Meantime, the Raker Act passed. He had introduced it because Yosemite National Park lay in his district, but he did attempt to insert some provisions to protect the park landscape. Soon after Stephen Mather became Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior in 1915, he conferred with Raker regarding National Park Service legislation. In December of that year Raker introduced H. R. 434, similar to others he had fostered. Congressman William Kent of California introduced a second bill, not realizing the existence of Raker’s bill. The House Committee on Public Lands drafted a new measure combining the best features of both bills. The new bill was reported favorably and became law on 25 August 1916—the organic act of the National Park Service.

Judge Raker later proved very active in behalf of the National Park Road Act of 9 9, 1924, under which Congress appropriated seven and a half million dollars for road and trail construction in the parks. He also became involved in legislation in 1912 and 1914 authorizing timber exchanges in Yosemite to preserve the beauty of the Wawona and Big Oak Flat roads. An important advocate of America’s national parks throughout the period of their organization and policy development, he died in 1926. Horace M. Albright, “The Late Congressman Raker as a National Park Legislator,” 8 February 1926, in Central Files, RG 79, NA, 7 pages.]

As it turned out, then, the “aesthetic” conservationists, who believed that aesthetic values should not be subordinated to utilitarian ones, allied with various nature lovers and supported by another loyal group who championed the wilderness as representing all that is good in the American character, were unable to prevail despite their articulate concerns. The concept of multiple-purpose planning and the regulation of development of natural resources on the public domain, supported by President Theodore Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, proved a formidable foe. This latter coalition gained additional support from Franklin K. Lane, who, prior to becoming Secretary of the Interior, had committed himself to the completion of the Hetch Hetchy Project as city attorney of San Francisco. His arrival in the fray spelled eventual success for the new utilitarian-minded conservationism geared to the needs of a rapidly expanding American industrial economy.79

[79. Donald C. Swain, Wilderness Defender: Horace M. Albright and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 318; Robert Shankland, Steve Mather of the National Parks, 3d ed., rev. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), 48. Water development proposals would become a continuing battleground between environmentalists and developers. William Mulholland, who brought water to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley in the early 1900s, did not hesitate to tell Park Service Director Horace Albright exactly what he would do with Yosemite Valley:
. . . what I would do, if I were custodian of your park, is I’d hire a dozen of the best photographers in the world. I’d . . . pay them something and give them all the film they wanted. I’d say, “This park is yours. It’s yours for one year. . . . And then I’d leave them be. And in a year I’d come back, and take their film, and send it out and have it developed. . . . And then I would print the pictures in thousands of books and send them to every library. . . . And then . . . do you know what I would do? I’d go in there and build a dam from one side of that valley to the other and stop the goddamned waste!”

Marc P. Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Disappearing Water (New York: Viking Press, 1986), 95.]

Ultimately the irrigation districts and even the Spring Valley Water Company ended up supporting the Hetch Hetchy plan once their rights were assured. The city ratified the act in 1914 and the Hetch Hetchy construction program began. Consolation for the defeated opponents of the Raker Act lay in the fact that a newly aroused constituency had become involved in the fight for conservation of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, signalling a new and vital growth in the national park movement. Hopefully those advocates of wilderness preservation would unite again in the future to prevent similar attacks on the parklands. They did join forces again before long in pushing enactment of the National Park Service Act of 1916.

6. Construction Begins

The impending construction job on the Hetch Hetchy water project posed immediate problems for the city of San Francisco, which was still rebuilding after the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. In addition to the engineering challenges involved in constructing such a system over vast distances and through mountains to inaccessible locations, the rise in prices during World War I threatened rapidly escalating costs. Other problems, such as political interference and slow appropriations, could be less easily controlled by engineering solutions. Some of the finest engineers of the period willingly accepted the challenge, however, because they believed in the task and because they respected the leadership of City Engineer Michael M. O’Shaughnessy. A graduate of Royal University in Dublin, O’Shaughnessy had more than twenty-five years’ experience in engineering work in California and Hawaii to his credit.

City Engineer C. E. Grunsky and his successor Marsden Manson drew up plans for the Hetch Hetchy Project. When O’Shaughnessy came to the city in 1912, he engaged the services of John R. Freeman, a well-known consulting engineer, to prepare a preliminary design of the entire project, with estimates. O’Shaughnessy and his staff made some important changes to this “Freeman Plan” to add to the system capacity, ease supply and construction problems, and lessen taxpayer expenses. Although no immediate need existed for the Hetch Hetchy water supply, electric power development was of vital importance. San Francisco wanted to generate power as soon as possible so that the revenue from power sales could pay interest and redemption charges on bonds.

The city decided, therefore, to first build the Hetch Hetchy dam to about three-quarters of its final height and develop about 60% of its ultimate capacity. An aqueduct westward would be completed to Moccasin Creek and a powerhouse put in operation there as soon as possible. Another section of the aqueduct would be built from Alameda Creek across the bay to Crystal Springs Reservoir, which would later carry Hetch Hetchy water as the system progressed westward. The rest of the aqueduct would be built in time to have the mountain water ready for delivery when Spring Valley sources proved no longer adequate.80

[80. City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Water and Power, 12-13.]

The Hetch Hetchy water supply project contemplated Hetch Hetchy Valley as its principal reservoir site. The new system was designed with a view to ultimately furnish 400,000,000 gallons of water daily to San Francisco and the other cities of the Metropolitan District in the San Francisco Bay region. On its way to San Francisco, the water would pass through several large power plants, generating continuous horsepower that would materially assist in the development of the industrial and agricultural regions of which San Francisco was the financial center.80

[81. Nelson A. Eckart and Leslie W. Stocker, “San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Water Supply,” Part I: Sites for Three Reservoirs Including Tributary Watersheds Will Have an Area of 652 Square Miles—Construction Planned to Extend Over a Number of Years, in Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 8 (August 1922): 208, 210.]

7. General Character of the System

The city of San Francisco secured three reservoir sites by congressional enactment and by purchase of privately owned lands and rights. Hetch Hetchy, Lake Eleanor, and Cherry Valley would together have a storage capacity of 570,000 acre-feet. The engineers located the headworks of the main aqueduct twelve miles down the Tuolumne River from Hetch Hetchy dam at a point called Early Intake. From there a conduit would take the water to a tunnel terminating at the Priest Reservoir, serving the Moccasin Creek power plant. This stretch from Early Intake to Priest Reservoir became the Mountain Division of the aqueduct.

The Foothill Division covered another seventeen miles of tunnel extending through the Sierra foothills to the east side of the San Joaquin Valley. Water would cross that valley in three parallel lines of steel pipe to a tunnel through the Coast Range to Irvington gatehouse. From there it would be distributed to the three principal divisions of the Metropolitan Water District through three branches, one going west to the San Francisco peninsula, one northwest to Oakland and other East Bay cities, and the last south to San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley. The system op employed gravity flow from the mountains to San Francisco.82

[82. Ibid., 210-11.]

8. Elements of the Hetch Hetchy System

a) Hetch Hetchy Railroad

Groveland, a small mountain town on the Big Oak Flat Road into Yosemite, became field headquarters for the Hetch Hetchy water supply system. There the city of San Francisco erected an office, machine shops, car repair shops, warehouses, a hospital, and employee dwellings, completely revitalizing the community.

Before work could commence on the initial phases of the construction program, transportation for men and equipment had to be supplied. The nearest railroad lay fifty-five miles from Hetch Hetchy by rough mountain roads and trails that would be impassable for wheeled vehicles in winter. How could the estimated 300,000 tons of cement and other structural materials needed be brought in most efficiently and economically? Motor trucks would be too expensive to operate. The best method of ensuring completion of the project within cost estimates appeared to be construction of another rail line.

The new Hetch Hetchy Railroad connected with the Sierra Railway at Hetch Hetchy Junction, twenty-six miles east of Oakdale, where the city located a roundhouse and supply depot. From there the line extended sixty-eight miles east into the Sierra to the rim of Hetch Hetchy Valley at the site of the proposed dam. Built on the ridges, the line enabled a downhill haul of supplies to the construction site. Leaving Hetch Hetchy Junction, the line descended into the Tuolumne River canyon, which it followed upriver, crossing the Tuolumne on a steel bridge below Jacksonville. At Moccasin Creek the railroad began the steep climb to the summit, via Grizzly Gulch to Priest and on to Big Oak Flat and Groveland. It then continued east past Hamilton Station, descended to the South and Middle forks of the Tuolumne River, past Hog Ranch to Poopenaut Pass. From there it descended six miles to Damsite. Much of the old route is now the highway to the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

The first construction on the project consisted of a nine-mile road from Hog Ranch to Hetch Hetchy, formerly only a trail. Construction started late in 1914, with the roadbed built wide enough that it could be converted to a highway following the construction years, in accordance with provisions of the Raker Act. The road was completed in 1915 and put in operation as a truck and auto route. Later the city laid rails on it and completed the entire Hetch Hetchy Railroad line by the end of 1917. Of the total trackage, only five miles were level, the rest characterized by long, steep grades. Thirteen wood trestles and two large steel bridges spanned gulches and the river.

The standard-gauge road, costing approximately $2,000,000, served the main dam construction site and all working points on the thirty miles of main aqueduct east of the Sierra Railway and the power development on Moccasin Creek. Steam locomotives navigated the many sharp curves and steep grades on the route. In addition, the line offered several gasoline rail-busses for passenger service. Given a choice, the city would have avoided operating the railroad itself, but it could not interest the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, or Sierra railroads in taking over management. The Hetch Hetchy Railroad became, therefore, the first steam railroad of any extent built and operated by a municipality and one of only two operating in a national park (the other at Grand Canyon). A rather unusual, but highly functional, line, it employed several innovative practices and became highly successful despite being run by city engineers rather than professional railroad men. Operated as a common carrier, it aided in developing the country through which it passed by providing relatively cheap freight transportation. It also carried out lumber from private sawmills along the line. Through these services it helped reduce the cost of the water project to the taxpayers. Additionally, the railroad resulted in great savings in dam equipment shipping costs, hauling the tons of supplies needed for only one-tenth the cost of motor trucks.83

[83. “History of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad,” The Western Railroader 24, no. 10, Issue No. 262 (October 1961): 2-12; Ted Wurm, Hetch Hetchy. and Its Dam Railroad (Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North Books, 1973), passim, provided much information on the railroad and the construction of O’Shaughnessy Dam.]

b) Sawmills

With its extensive land purchases, the city of San Francisco acquired valuable timberlands near its construction sites that provided lumber for Hetch Hetchy development work. It built a large steam-powered sawmill at Canyon (Canon) Ranch, near Hetch Hetchy, in April 1915. When timber supplies there gave out, a larger mill started operations at Hog Ranch (renamed “Mather” in 1919), adjacent to the railroad line and nine miles from the dam site. The mill turned out 20,000 board feet of lumber daily, which went to the various construction camps along the Mountain Division of the aqueduct for concrete forms, camp buildings, flumes, tunnel timbering, railroad ties, and other uses. (The Mather mill pond later became a swimming pool, part of the city of San Francisco’s recreational facilities at Camp Mather.) A small sawmill at

Illustration 64.
Lake Eleanor Dam, view to west.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Lake Eleanor produced lumber for various construction jobs as workers cleared that reservoir site.

c) Lake Eleanor Dam

A small hydroelectric plant at Early Intake on the Tuolumne River generated all the power for construction work between Hetch Hetchy and the Moccasin Creek powerhouse. Water to turn the wheels at the powerhouse came from Lake Eleanor, connected to Hetch Hetchy by a twelve-mile, thirteen-switchback road built in 1916-17. At Lake Eleanor workers completed the first dam of the Hetch Hetchy system in 1918. A buttressed, multiple-arch concrete structure 70 feet high and 1,260 feet long, it contains twenty forty-foot-span arches.

A small dam diverted water from Lake Eleanor and the natural flow of Cherry River into the Lower Cherry Aqueduct, which terminated on the hill above Early Intake powerhouse, turning its flow into a penstock which led to the Pelton-Francis turbines. From there electricity was transmitted to the many construction sites throughout the Mountain Division. This pioneer powerhouse, a frame building with walls and roof of corrugated, asbestos-protected metal, continued in operation until 1960, adding its electric production to that of Moccasin. After that time, Lake Eleanor’s waters were diverted through a mile-long tunnel into the Lake Lloyd Reservoir on the Cherry River.

d) Hetch Hetchy Dam

As stated earlier, the city’s plans called first for construction of the Hetch Hetchy dam to about three-fourths of its final height. It would be completed when the demand for increased water and power development justified the additional investment. The dam would block the Tuolumne River at the narrow gorge where the stream flowed from the valley, backing water up for about seven miles. Engineers designed the dam as a concrete, arched gravity type structure with five vertical contraction joints sealed by strips of sheet copper.84 Preliminary work in preparation for construction of the major impounding reservoir of the Hetch Hetchy system began in 1915. Erection of camp buildings took place in September on a flat overlooking the valley above the dam site, and a mile-long wagon road blasted out of the cliff led from there into the valley below, where another camp stood.

[84. City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Water and Power, 14, 16, 18-19; Eckart and Stocker, “San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Water Supply,” Part II: Details of Some of the Constructional Facilities That Are Helping in the Execution of This Titanic Task, in Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 9 (September 1922): 247-50, and Part III: The Structural Features of the Dams for the Lake Eleanor and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoirs, in Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 10 (October 1922): 283-88. Part IV of this series is entitled “Details of the Aqueduct Tunnels and of the Mechanical Facilities Employed in Their Construction.” Vol. 27, no. 11 (November 1922): 315-20.]

I. Completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad

Workers laid the last rail on the Yosemite Valley Railroad, connecting Merced with El Portal, on 25 April 1907, thereby providing easier and faster access to Yosemite National Park. The original line never changed except for the relocation of 16.7 miles in 1924-26 from Merced Falls to Detwiller to make way for water backed up by the newly built Exchequer Dam. As originally laid, the track between Merced and El Portal contained 505 curves. As mentioned, although railroad construction stopped at El Portal, the railroad company spent $73,260 building a wagon road from El Portal into Yosemite Valley. Before the completion of the Ail-Year Highway in 1926, the Yosemite Valley Railroad ran a profitable passenger and auto-ferry business, building special loading ramps in Merced and El Portal. The railroad located its headquarters in the new Merced depot and built a smaller, rustic station at El Portal.

The first hotel to serve tourists in El Portal comprised a tent camp that the Yosemite Valley Railroad established in 1907 north of present Foresta Road (original railroad bed), across from the present library. Two years later it built the Hotel Del Portal to cater to

Illustration 65.
“Portion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad showing the Yosemite Lumber Co. R. R. and the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Co. R. R. since 1907,” drawn by Robert L. La Plaine.
From Johnston, Railroads of the Yosemite Valley.

[click to enlarge]

well-to-do excursionists to Yosemite who arrived at El Portal on the evening train and had to stay overnight before continuing on to the valley. (Later David Curry sued the railroad company and forced it to institute a daylight train from San Francisco so passengers could stay in Yosemite the same night.) The Del Portal stood on land leased from Capt. A. H. Ward, who had long advocated a railroad up the Merced Canyon. Ward had earlier participated in naming the little town of El Portal.

The luxurious four-story Hotel Del Portal contained a big lobby, an office, two dining rooms, a music room, a barber shop, a pool room, a bar, and a large kitchen on the ground floor. The upper floors held more than 100 guest rooms and the bathrooms. A wide covered porch extended the length of the ground floor. On the east end of the building stood a loading ramp where tourists boarded horse stages for the trip to Yosemite Valley. The hotel had the form of a U, with the front part facing south. The two wings of the hotel, the same height as the front of the building, had gable roofs on the top floor. A patio with lawns, flowers, and a fountain filled the space between the two wings.

A short battle for the tourist trade ensued between the new railroad and the previously unchallenged horse-drawn stages, but the faster rail line seemed preferable to most visitors. In 1907 D. K. Stoddard, a Merced stagecoach operator, moved his business to El Portal and carried train passengers into the valley under a five-year contract. The railroad bought that stage line in 1911 and began using autos on a limited basis in 1912. Secretary of the Interior Lane granted this Yosemite Transportation Company permission to use autos, and in November 1913 the first auto stage made the run from El Portal to the valley. By the spring of 1914, the company had added three new auto stages.

J. Growth of El Portal

The village of El Portal, north of the Merced River and at the western boundary of Yosemite National Park, contains about eighty-five structures built after 1905 when survey and construction work on the Yosemite Valley Railroad began. The older section of El Portal served as a residential area for railroad workers. Three railroad employee houses built about 1908 still exist although they have had minor alterations. They are one-story, two-bedroom, frame buildings with covered front porches extending their full width. Located north of Foresta Road across from the present library, they are still used as residences. The railroad company also constructed a two-story frame store around 1909. It ceased operating in 1915 when its contents were moved to the Hotel Del Portal. The town served as an overnight stop and transfer point for tourists visiting Yosemite Valley by rail. After staying overnight at the Del Portal Hotel, they could take wagons, and later automobiles, into the park. The town continued to grow with the addition of the Yosemite Lumber Company operations.

A state sanitary inspector described the village of El Portal to the California Board of Health in 1915. He mentioned that it consisted of the Hotel Del Portal and several cottages and tents used as dwellings and several buildings used as stables, garages, and the like. Although only thinly populated during the winter, the town’s population ballooned during the summer months as thousands of train travelers poured into Yosemite Valley. The inspector noted several hog pens owned by the hotel located on the bank of the Merced River about one-quarter mile below the hotel. The hotel also had a number of tents connected with it, on the hillside several hundred feet away, used as sleeping quarters by employees. A lumber and canvas hotel laundry stood several hundred feet downhill from the hotel. Its Chinese employees cooked, ate, and slept in the structure. Several other cottages and tents located near the stable owned by the Yosemite Transportation Company were occupied by employees of that operation.85

[85. Edward T. Rose to W. A. Sawyer, 6 September 1915, Sanitary Report No. 251, in Bates and Wells, Late Aboriginal and Early Anglo Occupation of El Portal, 39-40.]

K. Growth of Interest in National Parks and Need for Better Organization Leads to Establishment of National Park Service

1. Change in Administration of the Parks

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, on 10 March 1914, the Interior Department commissioned Mark Daniels as landscape engineer in the park, with the important duty of preparing a comprehensive general plan for the development and improvement of the floor of Yosemite Valley. Later, in an attempt to increase the efficiency of administration of the various national reservations and reduce the cost of superintendence, the department commissioned Daniels on 4 June 1914 as General Superintendent and Landscape Engineer of the National Parks under the Department of the Interior. The title of the various officers in charge of the immediate work in the parks changed from superintendent to supervisor. Because Daniels’s additional duties compelled him to be absent from Yosemite most of the time, immediate supervision of that park fell to Park Supervisor Gabriel Sovulewski.

Even though, as pointed out earlier, army troops and their officers had often welcomed detail in the national parks, for several years their superiors had believed that such duty eroded army discipline and robbed the men of important training time in military matters. The army had accomplished what it had needed to do. It had kept order, built roads and trails, and fought threats to park integrity. Because of the expense to the War Department of maintaining details of troops in the parks for peaceful protective purposes and the drain on park revenues due to their presence, and because the conditions that had led to the authorization of troops had radically changed, the federal government decided that a military presence was no longer required in the Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant national parks.

Beginning in 1914, the Department of the Interior assumed management of the park, and civilian rangers replaced the military troops. To this group of men fell the tasks of enforcing park rules, registering tourists, confiscating firearms, guarding against poachers and cattlemen, supervising automobile traffic, and fire fighting. In addition to the five regular rangers already employed, the Interior Department engaged ten temporary ones to help fulfill the above duties. In 1915 park rangers fell into two classes: mounted men, or park rangers of the first class, and unmounted automobile checkers, or park rangers of the second class.

These new employees were temporarily housed in buildings previously used by the War Department at Camp Yosemite, all of which were turned over to the Interior Department. Further need was seen, however, for an administration building, a storehouse, a superintendent’s residence, outpost quarters, and rescue lodges.

2. Proposal for a Bureau of National Parks and Resorts

As early as 1910, the Secretary of the Interior, noting the increased importance of national parks in America, recognized that setting apart those areas for the people remained the only practical means of preserving their grandeur from human desecration. Certain parks, he stated, were even worthy of being called national institutions, Yosemite among them. Increased travel to the parks evidenced the growing interest in those areas by people both in the United States and foreign countries.

The secretary recommended that definite policies for the maintenance, supervision, and improvement of existing parks be established, enabling them to better serve the convenience and comfort of tourists and campers as well as ensuring preservation of their natural features. They should include comprehensive plans for roads, trails, telegraph and telephone lines, sewer and water systems, hotel accommodations, and transportation systems. Realizing that such plans would require liberal appropriations as well as some sort of departmental organization to administer them and provide efficient field administration and inspection of public works and concessioner operations, the secretary proposed creation of a bureau of national parks and resorts. A commissioner would head the bureau, aided by superintendents, supervising engineers, landscape architects, inspectors, park guards, and other employees as needed. The supervision of the national parks, a duty that had grown in volume and importance, could no longer be satisfactorily handled by the small force available in the Secretary of the Interior’s office.86

[86. “Report of the Secretary of the Interior,” from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1910, in Sierra Club Bulletin 8, no. 1 (January 1911): 58-63.]

Again in 1911 the Secretary of the Interior recommended that because many of the problems in park management were the same throughout all of the national parks, it would be advantageous and economical to group all the national parks and reservations under one administrative bureau. Beginning in 1911, the first of several National Park conferences, this one at Yellowstone, involving Department of Interior officials, acting superintendents, and other key individuals, discussed the common problems, development, and administration of the parks. Yosemite and Berkeley hosted other conferences in 1912 and 1915. Those meetings greatly influenced the eventual establishment of the National Park Service, because a concensus gradually developed that due to changing conditions, military protection did not meet park needs. The individual operation and maintenance of parks; the conflicting jurisdictional responsibilities between the Interior, Agriculture, and War departments; and the resultant lack of policy coordination, resulted in sloppy and ineffective management. Due to that haphazard method of administration, no effective national park policy toward conservation could develop. Only a separate bureau, lobbying solely for their welfare, could get the parks the money, publicity, and protection they required.

For several years also conservationists and military superintendents had been trying to obtain congressional approval for a bureau to oversee park affairs. The path had been difficult because many congressmen still could not see the advantages of preserving vast, remote western areas simply for the sake of “zealous knots of wilderness enthusiasts.” The idea of a system of parks remained new and little understood. Constitutents and their representatives alike saw such actions as a dangerous extension of government authority over rich lands that could be opened to grazing and mining. After all, few people yet could afford to visit those areas and appreciate the variety of scenic landscapes needing preservation. That situation would change, however, as automobiles made the population more fluid.

A special lobbying effort by the American Civic Association about 1910 won over President William Howard Taft and resulted in a special congressional message on 3 February 1911, in which he recommended the establishment of a bureau of national parks as being essential to proper park management. Meanwhile, Secretaries of the Interior Walter L. Fisher, under President Taft, and Franklin K. Lane, under President Woodrow Wilson, both sympathetic friends of the parks, resorted to interim measures to straighten out park affairs. By 1911 W. B. Acker, assistant attorney in the Office of the Secretary, was instructed to devote part of his time to park business. In 1913 Lane upgraded park supervision to the assistant secretary level and put Dr. Adolph C. Miller, chairman of the Department of Economics at Berkeley, in charge of national parks. The next year he assigned Landscape Engineer Mark Daniels direct administrative responsibility over the parks, although on only a part-time basis. After Daniels’s resignation, Robert C. Marshall of the U. S. Geological Survey became the first full-time national parks administrator.

3. Establishment of the National Park Service

In 1915 Secretary Lane named Stephen T. Mather, a wealthy Chicago borax tycoon, philanthropist, and lover of the Sierra, to replace Miller as assistant secretary. Finally, on 25 August 1916, President Wilson signed a congressional act establishing the National Park Service. The new bureau began functioning when Congress approved funds in April 1917. Mather became the first director of the new bureau, authorized to regulate and promote the national parks, monuments, and reservations, while conserving scenery and wildlife. Horace Albright became Mather’s second-in-command, serving as acting director from 1917 to 1918 and as director after 1929.

During his fourteen-year tenure, Mather shaped national park administration for the future by laying down policies and precedents that have endured through the years. By means of his famous and lavish backcountry mountain trips, on which he feasted and feted influential editors, writers, conservationists, and others who could most ably promote the national park idea, Mather sold preservation of America’s resources to Congress and the general public.

Mather had a powerful impact on Yosemite, his favorite park. He organized an advisory committee of experts to safeguard the park’s natural features and concentrated his efforts and his resources on trying to retrieve the Minarets-Devils Postpile region eliminated in 1905; on acquiring the Tioga Road; on providing more and better facilities -for visitor and employee use; on starting interpretive and other educational programs; on eliminating private holdings; on locating a new, less intrusive village site; and on superintending the consolidation of rival concessioners.

U. S GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1987—773-038/60,006 REGION NO. 8

historic resource study
VOLUME 2 OF 3
historical narrative

YOSEMITE

NATIONAL PARK / CALIFORNIA

Historic Resource Study

YOSEMITE: THE PARK AND ITS RESOURCES

A History of the Discovery, Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California

Volume 2 of 3
Historical Narrative
(Continued)

by
Linda Wedel Greene
September 1987

U. S. Department of the Interior / National Park Service

CHAPTER V: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ADMINISTRATION OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, 1916-1930: THE MATHER YEARS

A. Overview 523
B. Roads, Trails, and bridges 531
1. Season of 1916 531
a) Existing Roads and Trails 531
(1) Government-Owned Roads 532
(2) Non-Government-Owned Roads 533
(3) Government-Owned Trails 533
b) Anticipated Visitation Requires New Construction 537
c) John Muir Trail 541
2. Season of 1917 542
3. Seasons of 1918-19 547
4. The 1920s Period 548
a) Improvement of Roads and Trails Continues 548
b) Hetch Hetchy area 550
c) Auxiliary Valley Roads 551
d) The Park Service Initiates a Road-building Program 552
e) Improvement of Wawona Road and Relocation of Big Oak Flat Road Contemplated 554
f) Reconstruction of Wawona Road Begins 555
g) Valley Stone bridges Constructed 560
h) Trail Work Continues 560
5. Some Valley Naturalization Begins 565
C. Construction and Development 568
1. The Park Service Slowly Builds Needed structures 568
2. A New Village site is Considered 577
3. The 1920s Period involves a Variety of Construction Jobs 581
4. The New Hospital and Superintendent‘s residence 585
5. The Indian Village in Yosemite Valley 590
6. More Construction and Removal of Some older structures 591
D. Educational and interpretive Programs 595
1. Nature Guide Service 595
2. LeConte Lectures 597
3. Yosemite Museum Association 597
4. Zoo 603
5. Indian Field Days 605
6. Interpretive Publications 606
7. Yosemite School of Field Natural History 606
8. Research Preserves 607
9. Development and Importance of Educational Work at Yosemite 607
E. Concession Operations 612
1. The Desmond Park Service Company (Yosemite National Park Company) 612
a) The Desmond Company Receives a Concession Permit 612
b) Desmond Constructs forerunners of High Sierra Camps 615
c) Yosemite National Park Company formed 618
d) Bear Feeding Expands 624
e) High Sierra Camps Reestablished 626
f) Yosemite National Park Company Holdings, 1924 630
2. The Curry Camping Company 652
a) The Company Continues to Grow 652
b) Mrs. Curry Has the LeConte Lodge Moved 652
c) New Construction activity 653
d) Yosemite Park and Curry Company formed 658
e) The Company initiates a Winter Sports Program 663
f) Concession Atmosphere Changes with Increased Tourism 671
3. The Wawona Hotel Company 671
4. Best Studio 675
5. Pillsbury Studio 676
6. Fiske Studio 676
7. Baxter Studio 676
F. Patented Lands 677
1. Yosemite Lumber Company 677
2. Foresta Subdivision 684
3. Big Meadow 687
4. Aspen Valley Homesites 687
5. Cascade Tract 688
6. Gin Flat and Crane Flat 688
7. The Cascades (Gentry Tract) 688
8. Hazel Green 688
9. White Wolf Lodge 689
G. Hetch Hetchy 695
H. El Portal Mining 699
I. Yosemite Valley Railroad 713
J. Natural Resource Management 715
1. Stream Control 715
2. Meadows 717
3. Fire Control 718
4. grazing 720
K. Fish Hatcheries 721
L. Stream Flow Measurements 723
M. Snow Survey 728
N. Establishment of Yosemite Advisory Board 729

A. Overview

Stephen T. Mather, having accepted the challenge of his old college friend Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane to take over the direction and unification of the national park system, devoted his next fourteen years to America’s national parks. Closely linked with Mather’s name during this period was that of Horace Albright, the young Interior Department lawyer who became Mather’s assistant. Mather served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for two years, beginning in 1915, and as Director of the National Park Service from 1917 until 1929. Albright then served in that capacity until his resignation in 1933 to become president of the American Potash Company. During the crucial early years of the Park Service, Mather and Albright proved phenomenally successful in acquiring increased appropriations and the public support necessary to develop more and better park facilities:

Indeed the effectiveness of their promotion was not due to new ideas per se; John Muir, J. Horace McFarland, R. B. Marshall, Mark Daniels, and others had long since laid the rhetorical basis for justifying the national parks in an urban, industrial society. Mather’s and Albright’s original contribution was the institutionalization of the national park idea within the political and legal framework of the federal government. Henceforth an attack on a reserve would not be an affront to it alone, but to the very fabric of American society.1

[1. Runte, National Parks, 102.]

From the beginning, Mather determined to closely link in the public mind the relationship between national parks and the American economy. He believed it imperative to fully and efficiently develop park resources for the pleasure of the public, which would in turn result in profits for the public through increased tourist dollars. In view of the strong influence of utilitarian-minded preservationists, it seemed necessary in order to strengthen the position of the national parks to associate scenic protection with economic growth. Aesthetic conservationists still hoped to find ways to use scenic areas without destroying their basic values. They realized, however, that some concession had to be made to provide for the comforts and convenience of tourists in order to get them into the parks for longer periods of time so that they would come to appreciate them and rally to their defense.2

[2. See discussion of preservationist thinking after the Hetch Hetchy defeat and establishment of the National Park Service in ibid., 84-103.]

In his endeavors to popularize the national park idea, Mather’s practical business experience proved invaluable. He was, once again, selling a product to the American public, although scenic beauty would prove a somewhat harder commodity to sell than borax. Based on the argument that national parks would ultimately stimulate the economy if properly managed, Mather’s first steps involved streamlining his organization, handling estimates and appropriations in a businesslike manner, installing trained park personnel and nonpolitical superintendents, and improving the visitor experience by eliminating toll roads, admitting autos, improving accommodations, and inaugurating educational facilities and opportunities. His educational program became a direct outgrowth of this need to help people better understand the phenomena represented in the various national parks. The auto camps and housekeeping camps in the national parks resulted from his desire to provide accommodations for all classes of visitors. In Yosemite, ultimately, accommodations included the plush Ahwahnee Hotel, the medium-class Yosemite Lodge, the permanent tent camp at Curry, which also offered housekeeping facilities, and the seasonal camps of the High Sierra—ensuring something for everyone’s tastes.

One of the most important accomplishments of Mather’s tenure involved recognizing problem areas and organizational deficiencies and establishing divisions in his new bureau to address and correct them. Both Mather and Albright recognized the need for broader and sounder policies based on serious study of the issues and current data. One of the more important of these new divisions was that of landscape architecture, established to ensure the harmonization of park structures with their environment.3 That unique advisory group concerned itself with devising ways of constructing buildings, campgrounds, roads, and the like with minimal sacrifice of natural scenery. Their advice on engineering projects and other scenic questions, such as vista-cutting, would prove invaluable. The various chiefs of that division in Mather’s time—Charles D. Punchard, Daniel R. Hull, and Thomas C. Vint, all trained architects—accomplished designs of maximum harmony with the landscape using native stone and timber.4

[3. Horace M. Albright, “Stephen T. Mather—The Organizer of Parks,” 1932, typescript, 4 pages, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

[4. Shankland, Steve Mather, 254-56.]

The changes in Yosemite during Mather’s administration of the Park Service proved to be dramatic and beneficial to the visitor, many of them being precedent setting in terms of policy and programs. The purchase of the Tioga Road has been mentioned to improve access and sightseeing opportunities, as well as the establishment of the D. J. Desmond Company in an attempt to remove concession haggling and put Yosemite’s visitor services on a stable footing. Other significant actions from 1916 until his death included the improvement of roads, the relocation of Yosemite Village, construction of the Rangers’ Club—an architectural prototype for future park structures, and initiation of an interpretive and educational program that would be emulated by all other parks. Mather’s approach to the national parks is best described as visitor oriented. His attempts to increase the attractions of Yosemite resulted in the encouragement of

Illustration 66.
Automobile map of Yosemite National Park, 1917.
From Report of the Director of the National Park Service, 1917

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 67.
Automobile guide map of roads in Yosemite Valley, 1917.
From Department of the Interior pamphlet, “Automobile Guide Map Showing Roads in the Yosemite Valley,” 1917.

[click to enlarge]

outdoor sports, such as hiking, fishing, skiing, and camping, and the endorsement of more artificial entertainments such as dancing, tennis, golf, and swimming. This philosophy of the director resulted in extensive expansion of the recreational aspects of the valley and high country.

In 1916 Washington B. “Dusty” Lewis became the first administrator of Yosemite under the new National Park Service bureau. Originally with the U. S. Geological Survey, he became

one of the most popular superintendents in national-park history. A good engineer . . . handsome and personable and blessed with a handsome and personable wife, he was exactly what Mather wanted for Yosemite . . .5

[5. Ibid., 246.]

Lewis stayed in Yosemite for eleven years and guided into place many of the elements of today’s modern park system as conceived of by Stephen Mather.
B. Roads, Trails, and Bridges

1. Season of 1916

a) Existing Roads and Trails

In the fall of 1916 Washington B. Lewis, Supervisor of Yosemite National Park, sent the Superintendent of National Parks a list of all the existing roads and trails within the limits of the park:

(1) Government-Owned Roads

Name of Road

Between

Length
in Miles

Pohono Rd.

Pohono Bridge & Bridal Veil Checkpoint Station

.90

Bridal Veil Rd.

Bridal Veil Checkpoint Station & El Capitan Bridge

.65

Cathedral Rocks Rd

El Capitan Bridge & Camp Ahwahnee

2.70

Ahwahnee Rd.

Camp Ahwahnee & Sentinel Bridge

.85

Happy Isles Rd.

Sentinel Bridge & Happy Isles

2.10

Mirror Lake Rd.

Happy Isles & Mirror Lake

1.60

Royal Arch Rd.

Mirror Lake Rd. & Indian Creek

1.60

Le Conte Rd.

Kenneyville & Camp Curry

.70

Lost Arrow Rd.

Indian Creek & El Capitan Camp

1.20

Sentinel Bridge Rd.

Sentinel Bridge & Grizzly Hotel site

.20

El Capitan Rd.

El Capitan Camp & El Capitan Bridge

3.20

Black Springs Rd.

El Capitan Bridge & Pohono Bridge

1.40

Clark’s Bridge Rd.

Camp Curry & Mirror Lake Rd.

.40

Sequoia Lane

Sentinel Bridge & Kenneyville

.90

El Portal Rd.

El Portal & Pohono Bridge

8.00

Wawona Rd.

Bridal Veil Checkpoint Station & Ft. Monroe

3.30

Big Oak Flat Rd.

El Capitan Bridge to park line near Tuolumne Big Trees

13.90

Tioga Rd.

Aspen Valley Checkpoint Station to Tioga Pass

44.60

Mariposa Big Trees Rd.

Within Mariposa Grove

10.00

(2) Non-Government-Owned Roads

Name of Road

Between

Length
in Miles

Wawona Rd.

Ft. Monroe & park boundary (Washburn)

17.00

Glacier Point Rd.

Chinquapin to Glacier Point (Washburn)

14.00

Coulterville Rd.

Yosemite Valley & Hazel Green

12.00

Crane Flat Cut-off Rd.

Crane Flat & Hazel Green. (Mariposa Co. Rd.)

3.00

Davis Rd.

El Portal & Crane Flat (Big Trees Auto Stage Co.)

3.00

Hetch Hetchy Rd

Hog Ranch to Hetch Hetchy Valley (Built by C. & Co. of S. F. Govt. property on completion of HH project)

7.40

(3) Government-Owned Trails

Name of Trail

Between

Length
in Miles

Glacier Point Short

Camp Ahwahnee & Glacier Point

3.5

Glacier Point Long

Glacier Point & Happy Isles via Nevada Falls

8.5

Clouds Rest

Nevada Falls & Clouds Rest

6.0

Yosemite Falls

Floor of valley and Porcupine Flat via Yosemite Point, including branch to Eagle Peak

13.00

Lake Tenaya

Mirror Lake & Lake Tenaya

12.00

North Dome

Junction with Lake Tenaya Trail at Snow Creek & Yosemite Point

8.00

New Hetch Hetchy

Top of Yosemite Falls & old Hetch Hetchy trail near Canyon Ranch

17.0

Sunrise
Mono Pass

Clouds Rest Trail and Tuolumne Soda Springs via Sunrise Mountain
Tioga Rd. above Soda Springs and Mono Pass

18.0
5.0

Lyell Fork

Soda Springs & junction of Lyell Fork and Ireland Creek

7.0

Donohue Pass

Junction of Lyell Fork and Ireland Creek and Donohue Pass

7.0

Rafferty Creek

Mouth of Rafferty Creek & Tuolumne Pass

7.0

Vogelsang Pass

Tuolumne Pass & Merced Lake via Vogelsang Pass & McClure Fork of Merced

16.0

Loop

Fletcher Lake & McClure Fork of Merced via Fletcher Creek

7.0

Isberg Pass

Junction with Vogelsang Pass Trail at McClure Fork of Merced & Isberg Pass via Lyell Fork of Merced

14.0

Washburn Lake

Mouth of McClure Fork of Merced & mouth of Lyell Fork

6.0

Merced Lake

Sunrise Trail & Merced Lake

6.0

Mt. Clark

Junction with Merced Pass Trail & Merced Lake via Mt. Starr King & Mt. Clark

10.0

Merced Pass

Junction with Mono Meadow Trail & Moraine Meadows via lililouette Creek and Ottoway Creek

12.0

Mono

Glacier Point Trail near Nevada Falls & Glacier Point Rd. via Mono Meadows

7.0

Buck Camp

Junction with Glacier Point Rd. & Buck Camp via Grouse, Crescent, & Johnson lakes

14.0

Ostrander Lake

Junction with Buck Camp Trail near Glacier Point Rd. & Ostrander Lake

4.0

Fernandez Pass

Buck Camp & Fernandez Pass via Moraine Meadows

8.0

Chiquito Pass

Junction with Fernandez Pass Trail east of Buck Camp & Chiquito Pass

3.0

Johnson Lake

Wawona & Johnson Lake

8.0

Chilnualna

Wawona & Chilnualna Falls

7.0

Alder Creek

Junction with Glacier Point Rd. & Wawona via Alder Creek

18.0

Pinoche Peak

Wawona Rd. between Chinquapin & Eleven Mile & park boundary

1.0

Henness

Wawona Rd. two miles south of Ft. Monroe and park boundary

5.0

Pohono

Ft. Monroe & Glacier Point

12.0

El Capitan

Eagle Peak & Gentry’s via El Capitan

7.0

White Wolf

Tamarack Flat & White Wolf

10.0

Aspen Valley

Aspen Valley & White Wolf Trail

4.0

Carlon

Aspen Valley & Hog Ranch Rd.

1.0

Smith Meadow

Ackerson Meadows & Smith Meadows, including branch to Hog Ranch

10.0

Old Hetch Hetchy

Hog Ranch & Hetch Hetchy

12.0

Poopenaut

Hetch Hetchy Trail, 2 mi. east of Hog Ranch & Lake Eleanor

9.0

Lake Eleanor

Lake Eleanor & Hetch Hetchy

11.0

Flora Lake

Lake Eleanor & Flora Lake

8.0

Beehive

Junction Lake Eleanor Trail & junction Lake Vernon & Jack Main Canyon Trail on Moraine Ridge, including loop to & around Laurel Lake

8.0

Beehive Short

Junction Lake Eleanor Trail & Beehive Trail

2.0

Lake Vernon

Junction Beehive & Jack Main Canyon Trail & Tiltill Valley via Lake Vernon

8.0

Jack Main Canyon

Junction Beehive & Lake Vernon trails & Bond Pass & Dorothy Lake via Jack Main Canyon

20.0

Tilden Lake

Junction Tilden Lake & Jack Main Canyon Trail & Tiltill Valley via Tiltill Mountain

16.0

Jack Main Cut-Off

Jack Main Canyon Trail & Tilden Lake Trail

4.0

Tiltill Valley

Hetch Hetchy Valley & Tiltill Valley

6.0

Rancheria

Tiltill Valley at Rancheria Creek & junction Kerrick Canyon Trail

20.0

Pleasant Valley & Rodgers Canyon

Junction Rancheria Trail & Matterhorn Canyon via Pleasant Valley, Rodger’s & Smedberg Lake & Benson Pass

18.0

Benson Lake

Junction Rodger’s Canyon Trail & junction Kerrick Canyon Trail via Benson Lake & Seavy Pass

9.0

Kerrick Canyon

Junction Tilden Lake Trail & Buckeye Pass via Stubblefield & Kerrick canyons

16.0

Burro Pass & Rock Island Pass

Junction Kerrick Canyon Trail & Miller Lake Trail in Matterhorn Canyon via Rock Island & Burro passes

20.0

Miller Lake

Matterhorn Canyon & Virginia Canyon

6.0

Virginia Pass

Junction McGee Lake & Cold Canyon Trail & Miller Lake Trails & Virginia Pass

7.0

McGee Lake & Cold Canyon Trail

Lake Tenaya & junction Miller Lake Trail in Virginia Canyon via McGee Lake, White Cascades, and Cold Canyon

16.0

Alkali Creek

White Cascades & Cold Canyon Trail at Elbow Hill via Alkali Creek

5.0

Mt. Conness Branch

Alkali Creek Trail & Mt. Conness Trail

3.0

Mt. Conness

Soda Springs & Mt. Conness

8.0

Dog Lake

Soda Springs & Dog Lake

1.0

Soda Springs

White Cascades & Soda Springs via Tuolumne River

5.0

Forsyth Pass

Lake Tenaya & Cloud’s Rest

6.5

Sunrise Branch

Forsyth Pass & Sunrise trails

2.5

Tioga Road

Yosemite Falls Trail at Castle Rocks & Tioga Rd. near Porcupine Flat

4.0

Ten Lakes

White Wolf & Ten Lakes

10.0

New Buck Camp

Glacier Point Long Trail, 2 miles south of Glacier Point & Buck Camp via Buena Vista Mountain

16.0

Water Wheel Falls

White Cascades & Point within one-half mile of top of Water Wheel Falls Trail^6

3.0

[6. W. B. Lewis, Supervisor, Yosemite National Park, to Superintendent of National Parks, Department of the Interior, 28 October 1916, in Separates File, Yosemite-Roads, Y-20, #8, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. (Lewis did not yet serve as superintendent of Yosemite National Park. Because Congress did not fund the National Park Service until 1917, a new organization could not be formed until that time, even though President Woodrow Wilson had signed the act creating the Park Service in August 1916.)]

b) Anticipated Visitation Requires New Construction

Both Assistant Secretary of the Interior Mather and Secretary of the Interior Lane determined early in 1916 that tourists should be induced to visit the nation’s parks, not only during but after the war. Mather, especially, recognized early the automobile’s potential to increase use of the national parks and thereby strengthen their position in American society. The Park Service eventually followed the policy that the minimum number of roads needed in a park would be built, but of as good a class as could be obtained. This would be, of course, dependent on government appropriations. To give the parks higher visibility, Mather conducted an educational campaign with the help of Robert Sterling Yard, former editor of The Century Magazine, and the Sunday New York Herald, and newly appointed publicity director for the parks. Until 1911, the Interior Department had only published park regulations and superintendents’ annual reports. Yard’s National Park Portfolio and a stream of enthusiastic articles dramatically increased travel to the parks during 1916.7 Mather and Lane believed that travel could be further encouraged by providing accommodations for tourists of all economic levels and perfecting means of travel to and through park areas.

[7. Mather and Yard later split over several issues concerned with park management. Yard criticized both Mather’s predator extermination program and the “honky-tonk” atmosphere of Yosemite’s concession operations. Fox, John Muir and the American Conservation Movement, 203-4.]

Road conditions in Yosemite at this time posed a major problem. Of the approximately 103 miles of road that the government controlled in 1916, only about one mile had a good hard surface. The two miles of “water-bound” macadam road on the valley floor contained bad ruts, while the approximately five miles of road surfaced with river gravel, which pulverized quickly under wear, required heavy sprinkling to keep down the dust. The remainder of the park road system consisted of narrow, dirt tracks with sharp curves and steep grades. Reconstruction of the El Portal road continued during this time. The one-way travel restriction on valley roads rigidly adhered to at the beginning of the 1916 season was gradually phased out as workers eliminated dangerous curves and widened narrow stretches. (One-way traffic continued to be enforced on the Big Oak Flat and Wawona grades because of their steepness.) Although speed limits remained in effect, every relaxation of restraints brought in more motorists who stayed longer. Park officials began suggesting at this time that the increasing travel required dignified gateways at the several entrances to the park, particularly where the Wawona, El Portal, and Tioga roads entered the boundaries. These would not appear, however, for several more years.

After improved roads brought them into the national parks and improved accommodations persuaded them to stay awhile, visitors would begin looking around for the best way to see the area’s sights. One of the primary emphases of the National Park Service in its early years in Yosemite concerned continuation of the backcountry trail-building program initiated earlier by Major Benson and carried out by Gabriel Sovulewski in an effort to introduce tourists to the backcountry. It differed from earlier army efforts in that trails were designed less for access and patrol purposes than for recreational use by tourists. Laborers placed trails in more scenic places, such as river canyons, and built them to higher standards, so that they often resembled roads in terms of width and method of construction. Explosives reduced labor costs and solved topographical problems. Modern machinery gradually facilitated trail construction and maintenance, and the earlier work in native stone and timber gradually gave way to steel, cement, and prefabricated wooden construction.

As workers dispensed with the old methods, however, characterized by skilled labor, hand tools, and draft animals, backcountry trail work became more environmentally incompatible. The new trails not only changed the character of backcountry use, but also severely impacted the ecology of the region. Little consideration existed for the effects of that type of trail building on the wilderness, and over the next several years, a variety of trails — relocations or newly built ones—began to impact the wilderness along with backcountry patrol cabins and High Sierra camps. Although occasional individuals raised questions about trail width and drainage and the long-term effects of construction activity in the backcountry, conservation of a pristine wilderness was not then the critical issue it is today, and attitudes changed slowly. Not until a new period of trail reconstruction and restoration began in the early 1970s, using a blend of old methods and tools and new ideas, did Yosemite backcountry trail work become flexible enough to adapt to the difficult problems posed by the rough Sierra terrain and inexpensive enough to be used under severe budget restrictions, while at the same time managing o to please wilderness lovers concerned with environmental compatibility.8

[8. See James B. Snyder and Walter C. Castle, Jr., “Draft Mules on the Trail in Yosemite National Park,” The Draft Horse Journal (Summer 1978): 10-13, for a detailed description of backcountry trail construction and maintenance techniques.]

In 1916 only about 175 of the 650 miles of park trail were considered in good condition, requiring only minor improvements. In fact some of the trails, such as those to Yosemite Fall, Nevada Fall, and up Tenaya Canyon, were considered of first-class construction. One hundred forty-five miles of park trail were judged only fair, while the remaining 280 miles needed reconstruction. Those were principally in the northern part of the park, north of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, an area just beginning to show measurable visitation. The park recommended three new trail projects: an extension of the Washburn Lake trail to join the Isberg Pass trail near Harriet Lake; a trail from the McClure Fork of the Merced, three-fourths of a mile above its junction with the latter, to Tuolumne Pass, via Babcock and Emeric lakes; and replacement of the trail from that same point of origin to Tuolumne Pass via Vogelsang Pass.9

[9. The former McClure Fork of the Merced River appeared as Lewis Creek on USGS maps in 1944. Named for W. B. Lewis, former park superintendent, it had been called Maclure Fork, the name also of a tributary of the Lyell Fork flowing from Maclure Glacier about one mile southeast. The new name eliminated some of the confusion engendered by the duplication. Decisions of the United States Geographic Board, No. 30—June 1932, Yosemite National Park, California (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1934), 14; Browning, Place Names, 134. The Board of Geographic Names ratified the name Vogelsang Pass in 1932, although it does not appear on maps. It is one-half mile south of Vogelsang Lake. Ibid., 228.]

During the 1916 season, laborers constructed about five miles of footpaths on the valley floor, primarily paralleling the existing roads but also closely following the contour of the land, so that they often possessed steep grades and sharp curves. As time passed and the roads were improved, sprinkled, and later paved, foot traffic became disinclined to use the paths and switched to the smoother roads. That did not pose a serious problem in the early days of light traffic, but as autos increased, the combination of hikers and motor cars on the roads began to cause problems. It ultimately became essential to provide paved walks alongside the roads in the valley.

During the 1916 and 1917 seasons, workers also laid out several miles of bridle paths on the valley floor. Those narrow trails again followed the contour of the country. Because they were dusty and only accommodated single-file traffic, horseback riders also began leaving the bridle paths and following the sprinkled, and later paved, roads, creating dangerous situations. At the same time, reconstruction of valley roads often wiped out many stretches of path. It became obvious the park needed a more modern system of horse routes.

Bridges in the valley posed another problem. In 1916 only the El Capitan Bridge, a combined steel and wood truss structure, had a safe loading capacity of more than six tons. Sentinel Bridge, on the other hand, over which most valley traffic passed, had been condemned three years earlier for loads over three tons. This caused great inconvenience to the park maintenance staff, because heavy road building and sprinkling equipment could only pass from one side of the valley to the other over the El Capitan Bridge. That resulted in excessive cost to transportation companies in the park as well, who had to send all freight trucks and heavy passenger vehicles bound for destinations on the north side of the valley via the LeConte Road and Stoneman Bridge—an extra two-mile haul.

c) John Muir Trail

Work on the John Muir Trail continued in 1916, during which time crews began working up the Middle Fork of the Kings River to a point just south of Muir Pass. In 1917 a $10,000 appropriation enabled construction of two bridges across the San Joaquin River and more work south of Muir Pass. Although the 1919 and 1921 legislatures voted additional appropriations, Governor Stephens vetoed both measures and work stopped. No more funds came until 1926, which subsidized seventeen more miles of trail north from the Selden Pass area. In 1927 and 1929 crews accomplished trail work across Silver Pass, Fish Creek, and past Virginia and Purple lakes to Devils Postpile National Monument. The stretch of trail from Crabtree Meadows to the summit of Mt. Whitney was completed during 1930. Work also began that year on a new, more direct crossing of the Kings-Kern Divide at Foresta Pass, boundary between Sequoia National Forest and Sequoia National Park. The original route selected by McClure had been followed closely, with only minor relocations.10

[10. Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 44; Huber, “The John Muir Trail, “41-5]

2. Season of 1917

The year 1917 proved important in Yosemite history, producing general improvements parkwide relative to roads and trails, visitor accommodations, travel facilities and transportation services, campgrounds, and utilities and sanitation. Those accomplishments had been made possible by an increase in tourism, resulting in greater revenues, and by larger congressional appropriations as that body responded to the mounting popular interest in national parks. Officials expended the bulk of the funds available in 1917 in construction, maintenance, and improvement of the park road and trail systems, both on the valley floor and in outlying areas. Several thousand dollars enabled continuing work on the El Portal road, which would connect at El Portal with a road constructed by the state and cooperating counties as part of the state highway system. In connection with that work, in 1917 the lower wooden timber truss bridge over Cascade Creek, built in 1907-1908, was replaced by a concrete structure. The upper bridge, built at the same time, was also in process of replacement.

Another benefit accrued to Yosemite travel in the summer of 1917. At that time the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company turned over to the Department of the Interior, in return for certain transportation privileges in the park, title to the Wawona toll road system connecting Wawona with Fort Monroe, including its lateral to Glacier Point from the old Chinquapin stage station. The department then eliminated travel charges, except for the automobile fee.11 The Mariposa County Board of Supervisors declared the Coulterville Road free to the public about 1917, and performed a small amount of improvement work on it over the next two years. Later the former owners won back title to the road, but subsequently did not make repairs or collect tolls. Ultimately the portion of that road inside the park became abandoned. Mariposa County continued to maintain the road outside the park, from Coulterville to Hazel Green and Crane Flat.

[11. Report of the Director of the National Park Service, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1917. Volume 2. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. ‘(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 841-49.]

During this 1916 to 1930 period, California’s highway system was undergoing rapid development and improvement for automobile traffic. When the federal government took over the Big Oak Flat and Tioga roads in 1915 and the Wawona Road in 1917, it made only such improvements as seemed necessary to make them passable. As fast as money could be obtained from Congress, those mountain roads, which obviously were not suitable for the increased auto travel using them, were improved. As stated earlier, prior to the late 1920s, roadwork consisted only of repair, maintenance, and minor improvement because of the expense of paving and lack of sufficient appropriations. The improvements were undertaken in connection with maintenance work only and primarily involved widening the roadway to provide turnouts so that two cars could pass, reduction of some of the sharpest curves and steepest grades, and replacement of old cutouts and bridges. No funds existed to relocate or rebuild roads.

Tourist visitation to Yosemite had always occurred on a seasonal basis. By long tradition, Yosemite’s waterfalls had been a major spring

Illustration 68.
Map of Yosemite Valley and adjacent region. Note the Carlin Trail, used by cattlemen, from Aspen Valley to Ackerson Meadow. Hall also mentions a seldom-used “Packers’ Trail” beginning about one mile north of Aspen Valley and bearing north to Hetch Hetchy.
From Hall, Guide to Yosemite, 1920.

[click to enlarge]

tourist attraction, with much smaller patronage in the valley during the summer months. In 1917 the Park Service made a concerted effort to publicize other attractions in the park during other times of the year. Motorboating on the Merced River was allowed in the summer of 1917 for the first time in an effort to expand visitor activities, and the famous Glacier Point firefall was again authorized in an attempt to draw more crowds. It seemed logical that, with the park open in winter to motorists and train travelers and with a new hotel projected for the valley floor, Yosemite might soon even become famous as a winter resort.

3. Seasons of 1918-19

By 1918 practically all the primary park roads had been gravel covered and widening and straightening of routes had begun. During the 1918 season, construction began on three new trails: because snow often covered Vogelsang Pass, crews constructed an alternate route between Merced Lake and Tuolumne Meadows via Babcock and Emeric lakes to the divide at Tuolumne Pass; another new trail left the Tioga Road at the Yosemite Creek bridge and proceeded eight miles to Ten Lakes Basin on the south rim of Tuolumne Canyon; the last, the Ledge Trail, climbed Glacier Point behind Camp Curry, an improvement of the earlier, exceedingly steep trail that nevertheless cut the distance between the valley and Glacier Point to less than two miles. Finally in 1918 workers built a new Sentinel Bridge across the Merced River just east of Yosemite Village. Of reinforced concrete beams and native granite, the three-span, two-lane bridge measured ninety-seven feet long and twenty-three feet wide. The superintendent noted during that season increased visitor appreciation of the high country north of the valley, as evidenced by extensive camping throughout the higher mountains.

In the 1919 season the Sierra Club enabled climbers to more easily scale Half Dome by providing a stairway to the summit. It consisted of two sections, the first a 600-foot stretch of zigzag trail and stone steps on the small dome. On the second, 800-foot section up the incline on the large dome, a double handrail of steel cables set into a double line of steel posts set in turn into sockets drilled in the granite every ten feet assisted the ascent. Experts from the Sierra Club accomplished the work with the park meeting part of the expense.

4. The 1920s Period

a) Improvement of Roads and Trails Continues

Trail marking has always been a difficult task. The state of California had used painted signs, white on blue and green on white, to mark trails. Many of these continued in use into the late 1920s. Possibly because of the loss of several of them, the civilian rangers began tacking shakes to trees at each trail junction displaying directions printed on them with lumberman crayons. The Sierra Club marked trail junctions with painted coffee can lids in the mid-1920s to make them easier to find. In the 1920s trail measuring involved attaching an odometer to a bicycle wheel. A long handle attached to the spokes reached to the saddle. Subsequent marking involved nailing small round tin tags with numbers and letters on them identifying specific trails. In 1927 the Park Service made green signs of porcelain-covered metal. A few of these still mark restrooms and maintenance roads. In 1930 the old signs at the Mariposa Grove were removed and replaced with wooden slabs bearing the names of important trees and necessary statistics.

During the 1920-21 season, work crews completed trails from Harden Lake on the Tioga Road to Pate Valley in the bottom of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River and down that canyon from Glen Aulin to the lower of the Waterwheel Falls. In addition to constructing trails in the Tuolumne Canyon, laborers completed two bridges for saddle and pack animals: a fifty-foot double-span one at Glen Aulin seven feet wide and a fifty-five-foot single-span one at Pate Valley also seven feet wide. A masonry-faced arch bridge over Yosemite Creek in Yosemite Valley and a reinforced concrete beam bridge over the Merced River near Happy Isles were among the improvements of the 1921 fiscal year. The North Road across El Capitan Meadow was raised in 1922 to prevent its flooding and the road from Camp Curry over Clark’s Bridge to Mirror Lake was widened in 1923.12

By 1923 the highway from Merced to the gateway of Yosemite National Park had been paved through Merced County and graded and graveled in Mariposa County to its termination at Briceburg.

[12. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 54. See Hall, Guide to Yosemite, for a description of roads and trails at that time.]

In 1924 the California State Highway Commission installed a convict camp at Briceburg on the Merced River, whose residents began construction on the last seventeen-mile section of the Ail-Year Highway to El Portal. Also that year the park reopened the section of the Pohono Trail between Fort Monroe and the Pohono Bridge that had been abandoned for many years. This action enabled visitors from the valley to make the trip to Glacier Point on foot or horseback without using the Wawona Road. A new bridge on the trail was erected over Bridalveil Creek. This same year workers cut a stone stairway out of the rock wall to replace the wooden stairs on the Vernal Fall Mist Trail. Laborers also finished most of the trail from Pate Valley to Waterwheel Falls through the Tuolumne Canyon that year. In addition they built a new two-span bridge over the Tuolumne River on the trail to Soda Springs, a single-span structure over Rodgers Canyon Creek on the Tuolumne Canyon trail, and a bridge over Return Creek. The park also reconstructed approximately three miles of the Mariposa Grove road system, while the remaining three miles remained essentially as when constructed in the 1870s. In 1925 trail crews completed two miles of new trail from the junction of the Pohono Trail at Bridalveil Creek on the south rim of the valley to the junction of the Glacier Point-Wawona trail via Alder Creek. A branch extended to Bridalveil Meadow and the Glacier Point road. By April workers had almost completed the trail through Muir Gorge so that hikers could pass from Waterwheel Falls down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne to Pate Valley. (The Sierra Club had regularly used this canyon trail for years and had marked their own route and installed a register at Muir Gorge.) An improved trail through there had been one of John Muir’s greatest wishes, and through the urging of the Sierra Club, Director Mather had become interested in the project, construction of which had been directed by Gabriel Sovulewski. The Tuolumne Canyon trail was finally completed in September. New bridges included one on the Snow Creek Trail, one for saddle and pack animals over a branch of the Tuolumne River at Pate Valley, and another one over Rancheria Creek on the trail to Tiltill and Hetch Hetchy valleys.

b) Hetch Hetchy Area

Another problem that Mather faced near the start of his parks administration revolved around the city of San Francisco’s road and trail responsibilities under the Raker Act, which city and county representatives had in 1913 declared their willingness to perform. After the war Mather began insisting that the city meet its obligation by constructing good concrete roads. He and City Engineer O’Shaughnessy talked considerably of the matter but had not resolved the impasse by the time of Mather’s death in 1930.

During the summer of 1925 the board of supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco passed a resolution directing the city Board of Public Works to remove the Hetch Hetchy Railroad tracks and related apparatus between Mather and Damsite and to resurface the roadway to make it available for vehicular traffic. The park deemed this an important action from an administrative standpoint and also to open up the northern part of the park to tourist travel. Since June 1923, according to park superintendent W. B. Lewis, the railroad had only been used for propoganda purposes, bringing in people who used the city’s services to impress them with the importance of the reservoir as a water supply and to build up public opinion against utilizing the Tuolumne watershed for tourist purposes. The Park Service then wanted the city to construct a scenic road around the north side of the reservoir (never constructed) to provide access to the trail system leading up the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and into the northern part of the park.13 The Park Service and the city decided not to allow tourist travel over the steep and narrow roadbed from Hetch Hetchy to Lake Eleanor, which contained dangerous switchbacks. On 19 September 1925 the new nine-mile auto road between Mather Station and the Hetch Hetchy dam officially opened to the public, an event regarded as heralding a new era of development for the Hetch Hetchy region.

[13. W. B. Lewis, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, to the Director, National Park Service, 18 May 1925, including “History of Hetch Hetchy Project,” typescript, 14 pages, in Box 84, Hetch Hetchy “Gen’l 1923-24-25,” Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 13.]

c) Auxiliary Valley Roads

The auxiliary valley roads received little attention prior to 1920 when the park constructed a new road behind the present New Village to the government barns and storehouse. Also that year a new road was completed west of Yosemite Lodge and in 1921 an access road was provided for new employee cottages.14 In 1919 the Mirror Lake road had been realigned. The road through Camp 7 was built in 1921, dissecting the camp, and another ran across Cook’s Meadow by 1924.15 The New Village construction of the mid-1920s resulted in additional road building in that area, including auxiliary roads to the government barns, shops, and housing. Roadways in the campgrounds were also extended in the mid 1920s. The alternate route to the Old Village—the south branch of the South Road—became an auxiliary route as traffic to the Old Village decreased. The most significant era in increasing total miles of auxiliary roads occurred from 1929 to 1938. Final construction of auxiliary roads in the lower valley included a new route to the river from the North Road at the east end of El Capitan, a new road into Bridalveil Meadow, and an access road to the new sewage plant opposite Bridalveil Fall. The alternate route to the Old Village site was finally eliminated.16

[14. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 57.]

[15. Ibid., 51.]

[16. Ibid., 58-59.]

One of the main objectives of the development program initiated by construction of the New Village was to move facilities off the main valley highways. ‘The present main circuit roads on both sides of the valley and crossing the valley resulted from this planning. The new Ahwahnee Hotel would be placed on a spur road. The new South Side Road was built at a distance from Camp Curry with a spur road into the camp. In the same way, the New Village was built on a loop road so that only those desiring services there had to enter the area. The main road bypassed that village.17

[17. Frank A. Kittredge, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, Memorandum for the Regional Director, Region Four, Re: Development in Yosemite Valley, 25 June 1947, in Box 78, “Box A-NPS Files,” “Development - Part IX,” Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 2.]

d) The Park Service Initiates a Road-Building Program

By 1924 Yosemite auto travelers still suffered over 138 miles of rutted wagon road, as did visitors to all of the national parks. Puny Congressional appropriations over the past several years did not begin to cover the costs of maintaining or building roads in rugged mountain terrain, during short working seasons, and under the extreme care that had to be taken to preserve scenic values. By 1924, however, need for better roads had become acute. Finally, after some astute lobbying, the 1924 Congress voted the Park Service its first real road-building authorization — seven and a half million dollars for a three-year program. Although this appropriation would not begin to cover the cost of roads of the standard needed in the future, Mather intended to use the money as far as it went to improve current roads by widening, reducing grades, and eliminating curves, and to build roads in parks where none existed.

All national park road planning since 1917 had emanated from the office of George E. Goodwin, Chief Engineer of the National Park Service in Portland, Oregon. Around 1925, however, the Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads made an agreement under which major park roads would be built and maintained. The Bureau’s Senior Highway Engineer Frank A. Kittredge, who ultimately became Chief Engineer of the Park Service after Goodwin’s departure, and also liaison with the Bureau of Public Roads, drew up in 1926 a road program for the entire National Park System.18 Because of the great increase in travel to national parks and because the State Highway Commission was building roads leading to Yosemite to a higher standard than those the park had originally contemplated, the construction program had to be revised and a policy adopted of building within the parks roads of the same standards as those leading into them.

[18. Shankland, Steve Mather, 152-59. Herb Evison pointed out the type of relationship that existed between the Bureau of Public Roads and the National Park Service:

. . . almost from the beginning, the maintenance of close relations with the Bureau [of Public Roads] has been a function of landscape architecture rather than engineering. The competence of Bureau engineers has seldom been subject to question; on the other hand, Service concern in road design and in road construction practices has been with fitting these “necessary evils” into the landscape with the least damage, unobtrusively, softening the lines of demarcation between road construction and the bordering undisturbed landscape.

This has called for the special skills of the landscape architect. Thus the flattening and rounding of cut slopes, the provision of natural-looking vista clearing, and the wedding of the road margins with the adjacent land through carefully planned planting of native vegetation have given a special and widely copied character to park and parkway roads.

S. Herbert Evision, “The National Park Service: Conservation of America’s Scenic and Historic Heritage,” 1964, typed draft, 663 pages, in Library and Archives, Division of Reference Services, Harpers Ferry Center, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, 454.]

In 1925 then, Director Mather announced a radical change in the Yosemite road building program, including immediate steps to relocate both the Wawona and Big Oak Flat roadbeds to provide a gentler grade and to realign and reconstruct the Tioga Road. Mather stated that the Park Service intended to build the best mountain roads that money and the science of highway engineering could devise. This was obviously in response to the imminent completion of the All-Year Highway, which park officials realized would cause an immense influx of new visitors and severely impact the substandard park roads. Beginning in 1925, work began on widening, improving, and paving the El Portal road while park crews prepared a site for a ranger station/residence and checking stations at Arch Rock to serve the expected flood of visitors upon the opening of the All-Year Highway. The road below the checking stations had to be widened to accommodate four lanes of traffic in 1928. Two roads connecting the North and Middle (Ahwahnee) roads in the valley were built in 1925. Other accomplishments around that time included completion of the Camp Curry bypass road and relocation eastward of the El Capitan Bridge and its approaches.19

[19. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 51.]

e) Improvement of Wawona Road and Relocation of Big Oak Flat Road Contemplated

In 1926 the National Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads signed a Memorandum of Agreement for the construction of major roads within the national parks. In California, the district engineer of the bureau in San Francisco assigned an engineer to do reconnaissance work in Yosemite and lay out an integrated road system enabling future work to be planned properly and undertaken systematically. The Bureau of Public Roads representative, Harry S. Tolen, first surveyed the Wawona Road, the most heavily travelled route in the park prior to completion of the Ail-Year Highway. Except for widening of the grade between the valley floor and Inspiration Point in 1924, and occasional drainage work, the road had never been improved.

Tolen found that the section of the Wawona Road between Yosemite Valley and Grouse Creek, which passed over the mountain at Inspiration Point, would never be a satisfactory grade. The point’s height above the valley floor and the short distance from there to Bridalveil Creek necessitated a very steep grade that would be hazardous during the winter months. After detailed study of that portion of the Wawona Road, Tolen determined that a satisfactory grade could be obtained only by running the road along the bluffs. Because of their steepness, it would be necessary to drive a tunnel through them, an innovation in highway construction in the parks. It would take two years to reach a decision on the location of this portion of the Wawona Road.

The Park Service determined to relocate the Big Oak Flat Road between Crane Flat and Yosemite Valley farther to the south, shortening the distance between the valley floor and Crane Flat and enabling it to be opened earlier in the spring. It proposed to abandon the Tioga Road from Crane Flat to Carl Inn and from Carl Inn to White Wolf and substitute a new alignment directly from Crane Flat to White Wolf via the upper reaches of the South Fork of the Tuolumne River. That would shorten the route to Tuolumne Meadows, save elevation, and provide a high-standard road.

f) Reconstruction of Wawona Road Begins

An event destined to have a major impact on tourist visitation to Yosemite took place on 31 July 1926—the official opening of the new Yosemite Ail-Year Highway to motor travel—a celebration coinciding with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Mariposa Battalion’s discovery of Yosemite Valley in 1851. The most important roadwork achieved during that time involved paving of the valley roads by the Bureau of Public Roads from 1927 through the early 1930s. The new roads greatly facilitated the park maintenance schedule by requiring less repair, less gravel to be dredged from the Merced River, and less sprinkling. This in turn released park crews and equipment for other necessary jobs. The rebuilding of the road system in the 1920s and the paving revolutionized travel conditions in the valley. It not only brought in increasing numbers of visitors, but made traveling safer and more pleasant, and improved scenery and vegetation along the roadside that was no longer obscured by the dust of passing autos. “The one act of rebuilding and paving the roads probably did more to return the Valley to its natural appearing condition than anything since the stagecoaches first churned up the dust many decades before.”20

[20. Kittredge memo to Regional Director, 25 June 1947, 3.]

In the summer of 1927 the Park Service assumed maintenance of the road between Mather Station and Hetch Hetchy and began to issue auto permits and collect fees. The good condition in which the park maintained the Wawona, All-Year, Big Oak Flat, and Tioga roads during this time resulted in a remarkable increase in travel to the park. On the valley floor road crews made good progress toward completing paving of another thirteen miles of roads, resulting in a total of twenty-nine miles of paved major roadways in the valley. The park opened four miles of oil macadam surfaced road between Yosemite Village and El Capitan Bridge.

Also that year the Park Service started planning for five new bridges in the valley. Two would replace the Pohono and Clark’s bridges, two would cross the Merced River near Kenneyville, and one would be a new bridge over Tenaya Creek. In accordance with President Wilson’s executive order of 28 November 1913 requiring that, whenever artistic questions arose on federal projects, proposed plans be submitted to the National Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D. C., for comment, a committee of that commission considered the Yosemite bridge designs. Director Mather believed that the design of bridges in national parks was one of the Park Service’s most important architectural problems. Because some existing structures in parks had drawn considerable criticism from architects, landscape engineers, and others, Mather determined to achieve in the future the best possible structures in terms of both design and execution for particular location.

Trail and associated bridge work continued in 1927. Crews constructed two bridle bridges over the lower and upper crossing of McClure Fork on the trail to Washburn, Babcock, and Boothe lakes. They also rebuilt the bridge over Illilouette Creek on the Vernal and Nevada falls-Glacier Point Trail at a new location upstream. Yosemite National Park’s first nature trail was laid out in Yosemite Valley in 1927, succeeded by a permanent trail in 1929. Clifford Presnall developed this “Lost Arrow Nature Trail, “which was used until 1933. Presnall also developed nature trails along the Sierra Point and Ledge trails, the latter abandoned after two seasons due to vandalism.21

[21. Richard R. Wason, “Yosemite Nature Trails,” Yosemite Nature Notes (September 1953).]

In 1928 Director Mather and the Bureau of Public Roads decided to begin reconstruction of the Wawona Road, postponing relocation of the Big Oak Flat Road at least one year. They made that decision for several reasons: first, the state had no immediate plans to construct the Buck Meadows-Crane Flat link that would insure that the entire Big Oak Flat Road could be used within a reasonable period of time after the park had completed its section; second, the road work around Hetch Hetchy required of the city of San Francisco under the Raker Act had to be coordinated with the Big Oak Flat Road work, and so far the city had given no indication as to when it would carry out the requirements; and third, more time was needed to work out landscape details on the Big Oak Flat Road where it ascended the north wall of the valley to prevent marring of the cliffs. The Park Service believed that a timely reconstruction of the Wawona Road would result in some immediate benefits to the park. The improved road would make the Mariposa Grove an all-year attraction, add to the winter sports lure of the park, and open up camping areas along the Glacier Point road that would relieve the crowded conditions in the valley. 22

[22. Stephen T. Mather, Memorandum Re Wawona and Big Oak Flat Roads, 19 April 1928, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

Illustration 69.
Happy Isles Bridge, built 1929. Note tunnel for bridle path Photo by Linda W. Greene, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

g) Valley Stone Bridges Constructed

By the end of 1928 a system of hard-surfaced roads extended over the valley floor, necessitated by the increased travel due particularly to the opening of the Ail-Year Highway into the park. Road work at this time included the five bridges mentioned earlier. A total of eight granite-faced, concrete arch bridges were constructed on the floor of Yosemite Valley between 1921 and 1933. All were of similar design, with variations in size and configuration. Built of reinforced concrete veneered with native granite, they each had either one or three arches with finely cut keystones. The structures include the Yosemite Creek Bridge built in 1922; the Ahwahnee Bridge (Kenneyville #1), crossing the Merced on the Mirror Lake Road; Clark’s Bridge, crossing the Merced on the Curry stables road; the Pohono Bridge, crossing the Merced at the beginning of the road to El Portal; the Sugar Pine Bridge (Kenneyville #2), crossing the Merced on the Mirror Lake road; and the Tenaya Creek Bridge, all built in 1928; the Happy Isles Bridge built in 1929, which had underpasses on each side of the river for bridle paths; and the Stoneman Bridge, built in 1933. Designed by the senior highway bridge engineer of the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads in collaboration with the Landscape Division of the Park Service to accommodate all classes of traffic and to harmonize with their natural surroundings, they had been endorsed by the National Commission of Fine Arts. In 1928 workers also replaced two bridges on the Tioga Road, one at the Yosemite Creek crossing and the other at the lower crossing on the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River, and constructed a bridge across Cascade Creek on the Big Oak Flat Road.

h) Trail Work Continues

Because of a lack of funds and as a matter of general policy, the Park Service during the mid- to late 1920s did not feel justified in building separate trails for hikers and riders, but followed the practice of building trails suitable for both classes of travel. The bulk of trail construction at that time concentrated on dust-proof paths. During 1928-29 workers built three or four miles of dust-proof trails to points of interest along the valley walls, reaching elevations sufficient to enable extensive views of the valley. One such path extended through the Lost Arrow section to the foot of Yosemite Fall, another led to the Royal Arches, and another climbed to a lookout point above and west of Camp Curry. During 1928 the Park Service reconstructed the Four-Mile Trail some distance from the old one as well as several sections of bridle path in the valley. Other work included reconstruction of the Mist Trail, mostly along its old route. Steps had been installed in the steep areas, and a pipe rail was to be placed along the most dangerous portions of the trail by 1929.

During the 1928-29 travel season in Yosemite, the Park Service noted a year-round movement of people rather than just summer visitation. Winter sports played a large part in attracting visitors during what had once been considered a dull season in Yosemite. The improvements made to roads entering and in the valley also increased the popularity of valley travel. The Big Oak Flat Road from Gentry to Gin Flat was being widened, surfaced, and dustproofed. Some curves and grades were reduced at the same time. At the same time, the Park Service and the concessioner slowed their building programs, both organizations believing that development on the valley floor had reached its peak. By 1929 the valley contained twenty-nine miles of paved road; ten miles of bridle paths; fifteen miles of paved walks; fifteen miles of oiled roads; six new road bridges; two large, paved parking areas (at Happy Isles and Mirror Lake); and several small footbridges across the Merced River (between camps #12 and #14, camps #7 and #16, camps #6 and #16, and between old Camp Ahwahnee and Yosemite Lodge).

In addition to continuing work on the Four-Mile Trail in 1929, crews rebuilt and shortened the Merced Lake trail between the valley floor and the lake. They also improved the Vogelsang Pass trail from Merced Lake to Tuolumne Meadows, which had been abandoned a few years previously because of its dangerous condition. Laborers then relocated the Firefall Point foot trail near Glacier Point and built a masonry wall at Firefall Point. Four new trail bridges were built in 1928-29, and workers replaced the old Vernal Fall bridge of the Glacier

Illustration 70.
Map showing roads in Yosemite Valley, ca. 1929.
Central Files, RG 79, NA.

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Point Eleven-Mile Trail. During this time park officials began considering installation of an aerial cableway system to Glacier Point, which would transport visitors, via suspended cars, to that famous overlook in eight minutes. The Committee of Expert Advisers for Yosemite believed that rapid mechanical transportation would greatly increase the public’s enjoyment of the park. In addition to causing far less physical disturbance to the landscape than other construction, such as the Wawona Road, the cableway would provide quick access to the valley from the rim and encourage more people to stay in campgrounds and other accommodations outside the valley. The committee, however, finally reluctantly concluded that the cableway would detrimentally affect the look of the valley wall and suggested instead the possibility of providing mechanical connection with the rim by installing a less intrusive device behind the granite wall. The idea of a cable tramway to Glacier Point persisted into the late 1960s.

5. Some Valley Naturalization Begins

During the 1930 season, a crew began obliterating old roads across the meadows on the south side of the valley floor, changing them whenever possible into bridle paths, and then landscaping the area. The digging of ditches to prevent autos from driving across meadows in the valley helped improve the park’s appearance. In April 1930 the collapse of the upper member of its western truss destroyed the El Capitan Bridge, constructed in 1915. Park officials immediately condemned the structure and barricaded the road. They proposed installation of a new structure one-half mile east of the old site. Workers restored the site of the old bridge to as natural a condition as possible as part of an ongoing program to obliterate the most unsightly spots on the valley floor.

Bridge construction in the 1930 season included replacement of the Silver Apron Bridge below Nevada Fall with a new log structure, repair and reconditioning of the Swinging Bridge in the valley, and replacement of one span on the footbridge to Yosemite Village. Laborers also installed a bridge on Tenaya Creek above Mirror Lake in connection with a new trail there.

Illustration 71.
Map of Yosemite National Park, 1929.
From Circular of General Information Regarding Yosemite National Park, California (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1929).

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The new Four-Mile Trail (actually 4.62 miles long) was completed in June 1930. The trail crew then moved to Nevada Fall to begin work on that section of the Merced Lake Trail. That work involved relocating and reconstructing the old trail from Happy Isles, past Vernal and Nevada falls, through Little Yosemite and Lost valleys, to Merced Lake. In places where workers had to cut into the granite ledge, they treated the walls chemically to restore the color. A trail change also took place near Boothe Lake after the Curry Company moved its hiker’s camp east to a point near Upper Fletcher Lake for sanitary reasons. Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur authorized the city of San Francisco to begin construction work on the scenic trail around the north side of Hetch Hetchy reservoir from O’Shaughnessy Dam to Tiltill Valley and Lake Vernon in 1930. In connection with that project, bridges were constructed across Tiltill and Falls creeks.

C. Construction and Development

1. The Park Service Slowly Builds Needed Structures

Building construction progressed slowly in Yosemite during the first few years of Park Service administration. Immediate reasons for the lack of development included division of the nation’s attention and resources to the World War I effort and the multitude of organizational and funding questions confronting the new bureau’s leadership. At the same time, the Park Service needed to formulate a clear, long-term development policy before expending vast sums of money on construction. During the winter of 1915-16, the wagon shed used by the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company in Yosemite Valley collapsed under the weight of heavy snows and was damaged beyond repair. In the spring of 1916 the company gained permission to erect a portable office building in the valley.23 Up until 1917 the area between the later New Village and the north valley walls and between Yosemite and Indian creeks held few permanent structures. Beginning in 1917 the government constructed a complex of service buildings north of the cemetery, including barns, shops, and storage sheds.

[23. Gabriel Sovulewski to Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., 14 March 1916; W. B. Lewis, Supervisor, to S. G. Owens, Manager, Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., 18 April 1916, in Box 63, Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Co., Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The first housing for government employees in Yosemite consisted of the cottages formerly used by the War Department at Camp Yosemite—renamed the Yosemite Falls Camp, which had been sealed to make them usable during the winter season. Government barns and a wagon shed, frame with shakes, were built in 1916. A new schoolhouse built in 1917-18 accommodated fifteen to twenty pupils, mostly children of government personnel, although the children of park concessioners and their employees attended it in the early fall and late spring. It stood near the northeast corner of Hutchings’s old farm. Laborers also erected a machine shop near the other government shops and barns during the 1917-18 season. In June 1917 the park established a government mess. After one summer in the inadequate tent quarters, however, the operation moved into the old Jorgensen cabin near Sentinel Bridge, which the artist had vacated after relinquishing his concession. A committee of three men appointed by Superintendent W. B. Lewis made the studio into a clubhouse for members of the mess by converting it into a kitchen and dining room.

The Sundry Civil Act of 1 July 1916 contained $150,000 for the erection of a new power plant in the park. Park officials considered the plant an absolute necessity because of increasing demands for power, light, and heat by the park concessioners. The sale of electric current would also provide substantial revenue for the park. In general, the Interior Department believed that the federal government should own and control power plants, water and sanitation systems, and telephone lines in national parks so that concessioners could invest all their money in further development of their own enterprises and because, as public

Illustrations 72-73.
Examples of early structures in Yosemite Valley maintenance yard.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustrations 74-76.
Water intake and penstock of Yosemite Valley power plant.
Photos by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustrations 77-79.
Interior of powerhouse and Cascade residence #101 and garage #333.
Photos by Gary Higgins and Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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works, such systems could yield additional revenue for the Park Service.24

[24. Information on 1916 NPS activities is found in “Report of the Superintendent of National Parks” and “Excerpts from reports of supervisors of national parks” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1916. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917), 762-63, 789-94.]

The park located the small diversion intake dam for the plant at the head of the rapids in the Merced River near the Pohono Bridge and the powerhouse near Cascade Creek, the latter designed to be as inconspicuous as possible. When completed, the plant would generate enough power to light all Park Service buildings, all camps, the new hotel, and all the main roads and footpaths in the valley. It would also provide for heating and cooking at the hotel and permanent camps. The Interior Department carried out the work under the supervision of the Superintendent of National Parks, through Galloway and Markwart, supervising electrical engineers in San Francisco.

Because of unexpected difficulties during excavation of the division dam—the first component of the plant built—the cost of the structure increased. Congress made an additional $60,000 available in 1917 to complete the plant; its generating capacity was also increased from 1,000 to 2,000 kilowatts. Beginning operations on 28 May 1918, the plant included the timber crib diversion dam spanning the Merced River about one mile below the Pohono Bridge at the intersection of State Highway 140 and the Big Oak Flat Road. The penstock, or conduit, that transports the water under pressure to the power plant, begins just past the intake and screens in the north abutment of the diversion dam. It consists of concrete, redwood stave, and riveted steel sections. The wooden portion, supported on wooden trestles, runs along the hillside north of the Merced, from the dam west to the powerhouse. Within the powerhouse, located about one mile west of the dam on the north bank of the Merced alongside Highway 140, two General Electric 1,000-kilowatt dynamos connected to two Pelton turbines. The Park Service dedicated the plant to Henry Floy, the New York electrical engineer whose voluntary study of the power problem and subsequent report and presentation of the project before the Congressional House Appropriations Committee resulted in the project’s successful conclusion. Sequoia National Park received the old electric plant above Happy Isles, which the park removed in 1919. During 1917-18 workers constructed three cottages to house operators at the new power plant. These still stand in The Cascades area and are used for employee housing.

Crews constructed the one-story frame ranger station at Aspen Valley on the Tioga Road in 1918, as well as the Gentry Ranger Station on the Big Oak Flat Road, and the Mariposa Grove and Chinquapin ranger stations. The park eliminated four of its early campgrounds between 1919 and 1925. The Mirror Lake road realignment. of 1919 resulted in abandonment of Camp 10; the Church Bowl took over the site of Camp 20 in 1920; the New Village post office rose on the site of Camp 18, which was eliminated in 1923; and the Ahwahnee Hotel was constructed on Camp 8 grounds in 1925-26.25

[25. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 106.]

2. A New Village Site Is Considered

Director Mather and other Park Service officials considered it essential to build a new administrative area in Yosemite Valley because of the rapidly growing volume of traffic in the summer. Commercial and service activities of the park still centered in the early village at this time. The increased tourist volume, however, was rapidly making that area obsolete. The necessity for all campers to register and receive camp assignments at park headquarters in the village resulted in heavy congestion on the main street. In addition, the administration building was too small to handle the large crowds and the village site as

Illustration 80.
Map of Yosemite Village.
From Hall, Guide to Yosemite, 1920.

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“At the U. S. National Park Service Administration Building are the offices of the Park Superintendent, Chief Ranger and other executive officers. In front of the building is a free information bureau with a park ranger in charge. Government maps and bulletins may here be obtained free or at a very nominal cost. Adjacent is a motorists’ information bureau maintained by the California State Automobile Association. At the left entrance is the telegraph and telephone office maintained by the government. The Yosemite Museum, which contains many excellent exhibits of the flora and fauna of the region is temporarily housed in this building.”

a whole contained no room for expansion. The shabby appearance of the buildings also influenced the decision to phase out services in that area. During a study for new locations for that facility, the north side of the valley appeared more climatically and scenically agreeable and less susceptible to flooding. Considerations of improved landscaping, architecturally attractive buildings, and possible expansion also entered into the decision to ultimately remove the existing village.

Landscape Engineer Charles Punchard spent 7-1/2 months during 1918-19 in Yosemite, which Director Mather had chosen to be his showplace of the national park system. One of Punchard’s primary tasks involved locating a new village site, in addition to rearranging campgrounds and landscaping existing facilities. At the same time he studied landscape problems in other western parks. Punchard also began working on one of Mather’s pet projects, which involved providing a dormitory for the Yosemite rangers. The design of the completed Rangers’ Club pleased the director so much that he announced it would serve as a model for new construction in the park.

During this period Yosemite Valley became headquarters for the Park Service landscape program. Buildings erected beginning in 1921 to plans devised by this Landscape Engineering Division were the first examples of a new Park Service rustic style involving natural materials that harmonized with their particular environment. By late 1922 Landscape Engineer Daniel Hull, who had taken over after Punchard’s death, recommended to Mather that architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood be hired to develop ideas for the -new Yosemite administration and post office buildings. The Fine Arts Commission, however, rejected his designs as being inappropriate and too complex. Mather brought in another architect, Myron Hunt of Los Angeles, who developed an acceptable design for the administration building and also helped Hull and Mather complete a final plan for the valley redevelopment.26 The unified architectural design of the new administration center would feature battered stone veneers, shake siding and roofs, exposed logs, and hip roofs, long, horizontal lines would blend into the rock cliffs behind the village.

[26. William C. Tweed, “‘Parkitecture’: Rustic Architecture in the National Parks,” November 1978, draft, 133 pages, 29-32, 34, 39-40.]

The new Yosemite Village residential district was located among the trees and brush against the north valley cliffs. It consisted of curved streets and residences built to be environmentally harmonious with their environment. Punchard performed much of this early planning work. Part of the development called for moving three of the early army structures into the new group of residences and out of their intrusive locations in the meadow. An appropriation of $35,000 for construction of the new administration building and approval by the Post Office Department of plans for the construction, under a lease arrangement, of the new post office building started the relocation process.

3. The 1920s Period Involves a Variety of Construction Jobs

During the 1920-21 season, construction projects included four employees’ cottages, two auto sheds in the shops and barn group on the valley floor, a roadhouse and barn at Bridalveil Creek on the Glacier Point road, and a checking station at Gentry’s at the top of the grade on the Big Oak Flat Road. Activity during the 1921 fiscal year also produced a modern sewer system, preliminary improvements to the water system, additional sanitary provisions in the public camping grounds in the valley, and initial improvement of sanitary conditions in the camp in Tuolumne Meadows. In that same year Park Service Director Stephen Mather donated money for the Rangers’ Clubhouse—a personal gift to the officers and rangers of Yosemite—containing a large kitchen, dining room, lounge, and dormitory. To personalize the structure, each ranger with a record of two years of continuous service in Yosemite could nail a shoe from the hoof of his favorite horse on the lounge wall.

In 1923 the park erected ten comfort stations in the public campgrounds in a further effort to improve the sanitary situation. Similar work projected for fiscal years 1924 and 1925 would eliminate the serious sanitary situation that had prevailed in the public camps for the past several years. Additional structures built at this time included four more employees’ cottages in the valley and a frame bunkhouse at Chinquapin on the Wawona Road. After dam construction ended at Hetch Hetchy in 1923, the Park Service hoped to secure a barn, bunkhouse, mess house, and office located in the city of San Francisco’s construction camp. The city decided to retain its caretaker’s building and guest cottage, but turned the rest of the buildings over to the Park Service for their salvage value. Although the Yosemite Park and Curry Company proposed establishing a lunchroom and boat service at the dam, the city and Park Service ultimately agreed that the government would not encourage developments near the dam that might become a menace to the purity of the water supply. People would only be encouraged to visit and view the dam.

During the 1924 travel season crews began installing a ranger station, checking kiosk, and public comfort station at the foot of the Wawona grade in the Bridalveil area and started work on similar units at the Alder Creek station on the Wawona Road and at the El Capitan station at the foot of the Big Oak Flat grade. (Workers moved the old ranger residence at the El Capitan checking station to a new location and reconstructed i t.) Additional work included a ranger station and a small administrative headquarters—consisting of a comfort station, a house for the road maintenance crew, a mess house, a barn, and ranger living quarters—at Tuolumne Meadows on the Tioga Road. The ranger station was built to serve also as a contact station and entrance station into the park from Tioga Pass. It ceased to function as an entrance station with the construction in 1931 of a new one at the Tioga Pass summit several miles east, and its visitor contact function moved to a new building in 1936. It continued to serve as a ranger residence and office. Nine more comfort stations were added in 1924 in the public campgrounds. That same year construction began on a rough stone lookout station at Glacier Point, housing field glasses, to serve during the summer months as headquarters for a nature guide. This structure was an important aspect of the park’s new interpretive program and is discussed later in this chapter.

In November 1924 Director Mather presided over the dedication of the new administration building and the laying of cornerstones for the new museum, post office, and Pillsbury’s Pictures, Inc., Studio in the new Yosemite Village. This occasion marked the first step in the abandonment of the old village. The administrative, post office, and museum buildings, plus the Rangers’ Clubhouse would form the nucleus of the civic center, which would eventually include other studios and stores. After moving various units of the old village to the new site, the old buildings no longer needed, including the Sentinel Hotel, would be razed and the landscape restored.

In 1925 work crews completed a kiosk at Grouse Creek as part of a new checking station, and finished similar structures at Alder Creek and El Capitan. On 30 May 1925, the California Conference of Social Workers unveiled a tablet in memory of John Muir, marking the site of his sawmill and cabin. Earlier, on 19 May, a memorial plaque honoring Dr. Bunnell, member of the party that discovered the Yosemite Valley, had been placed on a large boulder in Bridalveil Meadow, a gift of the California Medical Association. Superintendent Lewis noted that this was the first time that any of the points of historic interest in the park had been permanently marked.27 Other work that year included relocation of the old ranger station at Tuolumne Meadows, constructing steps over the granite rock to the new Glacier Point lookout station, moving the ranger station structure from the Bridalveil checking station to a new location in the Lost Arrow residential group, and constructing a new four-room cottage from the material obtained from the wrecking of the old administration building. Also that year Director Mather decided to locate the ranger station on the El Portal road at Arch Rock, necessitating construction of a by-pass road on the north side of Arch Rock to accommodate outgoing traffic. J. W. Boysen started construction on a new studio in the New Village in 1925. [Editor’s note: the correct spelling is J. T. Boysen (Julius T. Boysen)—dea]

[27. W. B. Lewis, “General Statement,” in “Superintendent’s Annual Report,” 1925, n.p. (22?), in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Workers completed the new Arch Rock ranger station/residence in 1926. Construction during 1927 included moving the checking station at Arch Rock to the righthand side of the road for incoming cars, building an entrance gate at the park line on the Hetch Hetchy road, putting finishing touches on two new employee cottages in the valley, building the form work for a new detention building in the valley, establishing a ranger station and barn on the South Fork of the Merced River near Wawona, and constructing the Merced Lake patrol cabin to aid in snow surveys. In November of that year a fire in the stock room of Pillsbury’s auditorium destroyed the workrooms and theatre portion of the building along with two darkrooms and developing rooms.

In 1928 a change in the Arch Rock station general plan due to unexpectedly heavy traffic necessitated moving the two checking buildings from their location above the rangers’ living quarters to a site a short distance below the residence. A small building architecturally similar to them was moved from the El Capitan station and placed in the center of the Arch Rock group to facilitate the traffic flow.28 The park addressed the need for better housing for Yosemite schoolteachers by beginning construction of a suitable building on the school grounds at the end of 1928.

[28. John B. Wosky, Jr., Landscape Architect, to Thomas C. Vint, Chief Landscape Architect, 27 June 1928, in Box 28, YP&CCo. Architectural Reports, 1927-1939, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Further development during the 1929 season involved a comfort station in the Glacier Point campground. One of the oldest Indians in Yosemite Valley, John Brown, had accomplished most of the stone masonry work on that structure. In Yosemite Valley, construction consisted of a new hospital building; an employee cottage; a women’s dormitory; two frost-proof toilet buildings in the newly established winter campground in the area now known as Sunnyside, or Camp 4; and remodeling of the superintendent’s residence, garage, and laundry. At the same time, a stone wall creating a pool at the outlet of a spring adjacent to the Merced Lake trail near Happy Isles, about where the Sierra Point trail intersected it, was nearing completion.

4. The New Hospital and Superintendent’s Residence

The building used as a hospital in Yosemite during the early Park Service years was the same facility that the War Department had used, slightly remodeled. It contained three rooms for patients, a small operating room, a nurse’s area, and a reception/consultation facility. The physician’s family used three other rooms as living quarters. Heavy tourist travel and the park’s distance from major hospital facilities increased the need for first-class service in the park. During the 1920-21 season a small addition to the hospital had made it possible to furnish better dental service.

By 1923 the park considered new hospital facilities absolutely essential because of increased visitation from all parts of the country, leading to the rapid spread of contagious diseases, and the unfamiliarity of most visitors with the rugged terrain of the park, resulting in many accidents. During the summer tents often had to be utilized for patient care, while other individuals ended up on the hospital porch. Many needy people often had to be turned away for lack of space.

In the 1928 Interior Department Appropriation Act, Congress granted money for the construction of a new hospital. The structure, dedicated in 1930 and later named for former park superintendent Washington B. Lewis, filled the long-felt need for modern medical, surgical, and dental facilities in the park. Located on the north side of the valley, halfway between the New Village and the Ahwahnee Hotel, the frame building, stone veneered below the first floor, had both a ward and

Illustration 81.
Lewis Memorial Hospital, Yosemite Valley.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 82.
Paint shop in Yosemite Valley maintenance yard (former Indian Village residence).
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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administrative wing. The latter contained a reception room, treatment rooms, a dental office and lab, the doctor’s office, an operating room, and an X-ray room. The department also spent several thousand dollars on new equipment and supplies.

The new superintendent’s residence, a two-story frame structure, was erected on the same site as the previous one. Workers basically tore down the earlier army structure, leaving only the framework of the dining room, kitchen, pantry, breakfast nook, one bedroom, and a bath, which were incorporated in the new house. The garage and laundry building had burned in the early summer and also had to be replaced. The new laundry unit was attached to the house. Work on this modern six-room structure ended in October 1929. The convertible women’s dormitory completed during the year was a four-room cottage.29

[29. Edward A. Nickel, Assoc. Structural Engineer, “Report on Building Construction, Season of 1929,” 8 February 1930, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

5. The Indian Village in Yosemite Valley

During 1929 Superintendent Charles G. Thomson took a census of the inhabitants of the old Indian village, located in the area now occupied by the Yosemite Medical Group (former Lewis Memorial Hospital). He found sixty-seven Indians living there in makeshift dwellings formed from ragged tents, old boxes, and other cast-off materials. Although these residents possessed no formal rights to a reservation and had no legal rights entitling them to reside in the valley, the Department of the Interior and the superintendent agreed that those who had been born in the valley and could trace their ancestry to either the Miwok or Mono Paiute Indians had a moral right to continue living there. The village had to be moved to another location, however, because of the impending construction of the new hospital on that site. Superintendent Thomson also considered the old village too unsightly and unhealthy to remain.

Accordingly Thomson selected a new village site about one-half mile west of Yosemite Lodge. The superintendent assigned the small, three-room cabins to selected Indians, under special use permits, who rented them at a nominal monthly fee. Only those Indians living in Yosemite in 1929 who could trace their ancestry to early inhabitants of the area were considered for housing. Furthermore, government policy dictated that quarters be assigned only to the man as head of the family or to a woman whose husband had died or left her. If a woman remarried, she lost the right to live in the new village and was obligated to move unless her new husband had a moral right to reside there. The moral right was passed on to the first male child in each family. Relatives and other Indians from outside the valley could not reside in the new village for long periods. The Park Service considered supervision of the community life of the Indians one of its administrative responsibilities.30

[30. Harold E. Perry, “The Yosemite Indian Story: A Drama of Chief Tenaya’s People,” 1949, typescript, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 6-8.]

6. More Construction and Removal of Some Older Structures

Building construction, repair, and relocation during the 1930 season included, in Yosemite Valley, erection of a four-family employees’ residence and a staff residence as well as replacement of the wooden trestles on the hydroelectric pipeline. A new raised platform in Camp 15 provided a stage for the public entertainment presented each weeknight during the summer.

Crews also accomplished repair work, reshaking, and painting on the Yosemite chapel in the Old Village. New entrance signs for campgrounds 7, 14, and 15, electrically illuminated to show up at night, were constructed and erected. The park then set aside several areas of the valley floor as picnic sites: Indian Cave, Happy Isles, beaches in the vicinity of the Giant Yellow Pine, a spot adjacent to the old bear pits

Illustration 83.
El Portal entrance boundary marker.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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on the south side of the Merced River, and beaches adjacent to the Swinging Bridge. Also in 1930 workers tore down the night watchman’s house at the government stables, the old firehouse by the jail, and the old barn at Bridalveil Creek.

Outside the valley, the park completed erection of a boundary marker at the El Portal entrance, subsidized with funds donated by James H. Schwabacher of San Francisco, and accomplished landscaping around its base. The park had dismantled the earlier stone entrance pillars in 1926. Workers also tore down the old barn and corral downhill from the Glacier Point Hotel and began establishing three new patrol stations, at Benson Lake in the northern section of the park, at the South Fork of the Merced near Wawona, and at Buck Camp near the southern boundary of the park. Because of the location of the new Wawona Road at a considerable distance from the former one, it became necessary in 1930 to move the checking station or kiosk about sixty-five feet from the center of the old road to the center of the new one.

The removal of buildings in the Old Village proceeded slowly. Galen Clark’s home west of the village came down in 1921. By 1926 the old Boysen, Best, and Foley studios had been slated for destruction pending removal of those services to the New Village, but they managed to hang on a while longer. Destruction of the Old Village began accidentally with the Pillsbury movie house fire of 1927, followed by the Cosmopolitan Bathhouse fire in 1932. Planned removal began later in the 1930s, when from 1938 to 1941, the park removed the Rock, River, Oak, Ivy, and Cedar cottages and the Sentinel Hotel. The loss of its visitor accommodations resulted in a lessening of importance of the Old Village, which had already experienced a reduction in business as a result of the continuing growth of Yosemite Lodge and Camp Curry. The opening of the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1927 further increased visitor activity in other areas.

The New Village became the administrative center of the park, initially lacking commercial activity except for the studios. It has never offered visitor accommodations, but began providing food in the 1950s. Both the Park Service and concessioner had recognized the importance of abandoning the Old Village structures and the old Yosemite Lodge in order to relieve congestion. To that effect they had even signed an agreement in 1925 calling for the removal of the Old Village store and construction of a new one in the New Village within one year and removal of the old army barracks/Yosemite Lodge and construction of a new facility in a different location within five years.31 As it turned out, however, as late as the 1950s the Old Village still contained a studio, the pavilion (movie house), chapel, and the store, in addition to a few employee residences.32

[31. Kittredge memo to Regional Director, 25 June 1947, 3.]

[32. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 70-72, 74.]

D. Educational and Interpretive Programs

1. Nature Guide Service

When Stephen Mather assumed the directorship of the National Park Service in 1916, he determined to provide park visitors with information on natural and historical features. Educational programs were part of his agenda from the beginning. Interpretation, an attempt to broaden human understanding of the physical, natural, and historical processes exemplified by varied Park Service properties, has been undertaken by that agency for many years. As early as 1904, Acting Superintendent James Bigelow, Jr., was attempting to educate people on the flora of the park and envisioned a much broader program. Director Mather also perceived that this type of education would give added dimension to the park experience and help gain support for Park Service programs.

Yosemite was not the first park to begin interpretive programs nor did the Park Service invent most of the fundamental interpretive techniques it adopted, such as the campfire program or guided nature walks. By 1919, interpretive activities were well underway within the National Park System. They included the newly instituted LeConte memorial lectures at Yosemite as well as campfire talks long offered by the Sierra Club; talks by Milton P. Shinner at Yellowstone National Park on its flora and fauna; campfire talks at Mesa Verde National Park by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of Ethnology, who was undertaking archeological work there; and nature guide work in Mount Rainier and Rocky Mountain national parks.33

[33. Evison, “The National Park Service,” 397-98.]

The organized interpretive programs of the National Park Service, however, began in 1920 with initiation of Nature Guide services at Yosemite. The idea originated with Charles M. Goethe of Sacramento, who, with his wife, observed nature guides in Switzerland prior to World War I. Upon further investigation they found that several European countries successfully used trained guides to instill in their citizens a knowledge of nature studies.

The Goethes made intensive field studies of each country’s program, and, after the war, personally funded a nature guide program at Lake Tahoe to serve resort guests. That experimental program, designed to test the reaction of vacationists to nature talks and trips, became highly successful. Naturalists participating in the program were Harold C. Bryant, with the California Fish and Game Commission, and Loye Holmes Miller, of the University of California at Los Angeles. In the summer of 1919 Director Mather observed the guides and, impressed by their program, decided to introduce the concept at Yosemite. Mather hoped to prevent over-commercialization of the park by emphasizing its natural beauties. By promoting a deeper understanding and appreciation of the park’s values, Mather expected to inspire its visitors to contemplate the wonders of nature and how best to preserve them. In 1920 Bryant and Miller arrived in the park to organize a nature program.

Appointed as temporary rangers assigned to special duty as naturalists, they offered the first public interpretive services of the National Park Service. Their field trips and evening campfire talks proved highly popular. Dr. Carl P. Russell, who diligently researched the Park Service’s initial interpretive activities, wrote:

I think it is not necessary to go back further than the Goethe-Mather invention to recognize the first organized interpretive work in the parks. I believe that the Yosemite programs headed by Bryant, Miller, and Ansel Hall constitute the beginnings of coordinated and continuous interpretive work in the parks. The pioneer programs in Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone and Mount Rainier are to be recognized as contemporary with (or even earlier than) the Yosemite program but at first they were seasonal and not set up under a year-around National Park Service employee. M. P. Skinner [Yellowstone] did precede Hall in attaining park naturalist status . . . but Skinner seems to have functioned without the aid of ranger naturalists, while Hall had a small staff of seasonal employees and thus established a continuing tradition. . . . I feel that the Yosemite program of 1920-22 set the pattern, generally, and led the way for park naturalist programs throughout the Service.34

[34. Carl P. Russell to Daniel B. Beard, Chief of Interpretation, NPS, 1961, cited in Evison, “The National Park Service,” 396-97.]

2. LeConte Lectures

The establishment of the LeConte Memorial Lecture series at Yosemite by the University of California in 1919 slightly preceded installation of the Nature Guide Service. In memory of Professor Joseph LeConte, every year the Extension Division of that university sent eminent western scholars to Yosemite during the summer months to lecture on the natural history, geology, art, ethnology, and history of the region. In 1920 the Sierra Club and the National Park Service jointly erected an outdoor log auditorium 400 feet east of the LeConte Lodge.

3. Yosemite Museum Association

The success of the Nature Guide program inspired other educational work. The next task involved establishing a formal museum where natural, scientific, and historical specimens of the Yosemite and High Sierra region could be exhibited for study by the visiting public. The museum would serve as a public contact point and headquarters for the park interpretive program. The movement to establish a museum in every national park gained its momentum from Yosemite’s success in that area.

As stated earlier, in 1915 the acting superintendent at Yosemite had established a small museum in the administration building in Yosemite Valley where Chief Ranger Forrest S. Townsley’s taxidermy specimens formed the nucleus of the bird and mammal exhibits. The growing popularity with the public of the displays of natural history specimens, enthnographic materials, and other items of interest finally necessitated a larger building and a change of location. Ranger Ansel F. Hall was detailed from the park ranger force to begin the new museum project.35

[35. Ansel Hall, the first naturalist in Yosemite National Park, had graduated in forestry from the University of California. After engineering and forestry work in France for the army, Hall became Information Ranger at Yosemite in 1919 and Acting Park Naturalist in 1920. Hall, basically on his own initiative, began the Yosemite Museum, constructing geological models, assembling native crafts, and mounting natural history specimens. Shankland, Steve Mather, 259-60. Evison, “The National Park Service,” has stated that Hall “established a record as probably the greatest innovator of interpretive activities in Service history,” 395.]

In the summer of 1920 the old Chris Jorgensen art studio, abandoned by the artist in 1917 and acquired by the Park Service in 1919 and used as a rangers’ clubhouse, was designated the Yosemite Museum, and in 1922 the much-expanded park collection moved into six exhibit rooms in the 1899 bungalow. At the same time, the superintendent established a Park Naturalist Department, supervised by Hall, to operate the museum, conduct the Nature Guide Service, and supervise all educational activities. Similar educational and museum programs soon got underway in all major scenic parks and archeological areas. The American Association of Museums even sent Hall to study museums in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. In 1923 Hall became the first Chief Naturalist of the Park Service, with offices in Berkeley, to coordinate and direct the interpretive work in all parks. At Yosemite, meanwhile, the museum collection grew quickly. Chris Jorgensen donated his extensive Native American basket collection to this interpretive effort in 1923. The collections had been further augmented by beadwork and other archeological materials from other sections of the country, by objects of historical value, and by additional natural history and geological specimens.

Realizing the impossibility of acquiring an appropriation for a proper museum building at that time, Chief Naturalist Hall in 1922 had suggested to Acting Director Arno B. Cammerer that an association be created to work toward that end while at the same time disseminating information on the park’s natural history and fostering the arts, customs, and legends of the remaining Indians of the Yosemite region. On 4 August 1923, the Yosemite Museum Association was organized under the auspices of the American Association of Museums with the goal of securing funds for the erection of a fireproof museum building in the park and promoting among the visiting public a better knowledge of the natural history of the region. The Yosemite Museum Association, predecessor of the Yosemite Natural History Association, became the first cooperating association established in the National Park System to further a park museum program.

In August 1924, in line with the director’s recommendation to establish small branch museums at points where special features of natural history could best be demonstrated, plans were made for the erection of a small trailside museum at Glacier Point that would be a branch of the Yosemite Museum and also serve as a lookout station. Designed by Park Service Architect Herbert Maier and Ansel Hall, and undertaken with the cooperation of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, the Park Service, and the American Association of Museums, the building was completed in September and planned as a Nature Guide station. The small observation

Illustration 84.
Glacier Point overlook.
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

pavilion has arched openings on the west, north, and east sides. The first trailside museum in the National Park System, the structure enabled views of the valley and its walls that further enhanced the visitor’s knowledge of the forces shaping the valley and high country.36 Another small branch was established at Parsons Memorial Lodge in Tuolumne Meadows and manned by a Nature Guide.

[36. Private funds, especially Mather’s, financed the Yosemite naturalist program for the first few years until its success became apparent. The effectiveness of the Yosemite Museum as headquarters for the park educational staff convinced the American Association of Museums to make further efforts to establish a general museum program in the national parks. New museums were built with additional funds from the Rockefeller foundation. The American Association of Museums lent strong support to the fledgling Yosemite educational project in the form of recognition of work well done and in financial support for continued development. The steady growth of educational services, centering around new museums in Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon and other interpretive facilities, developed a public conscience of the good resulting from such activities in the national parks. These programs became. models for future work. Their success resulted in approval of plans for future services and, most importantly, in regular appropriations to implement those plans. The American Associaton of Museums continued to foster interpretive facilities throughout the National Park System. Public Works Administration funds in the 1930s further aided development of the museum program. A Museum Division of the Park Service was established in 1935. C. P. Russell, “A ‘Good-Bye’ and a ‘Hello,’” Yosemite Nature Notes. Carl Russell succeeded Hall as Yosemite park naturalist and as the Service’s Chief Naturalist. Also see Shankland, Steve Mather, 257-62, for a discussion of the beginnings of park interpretation and education, and Russell, 100 Years in Yosemite, 129-45.]

At the recommendation of the American Association of Museums and the Park Service, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation made a substantial donation to aid in the construction of a new Yosemite Museum in 1925, with exhibit rooms opening to the public in May 1926. Also designed by Maier, it was one of the first permanent national park museums. The Yosemite Museum Association, which had in 1925 become the Yosemite Natural History Association, transferred title to the building to the National Park Service. The new association concerned itself with developing the new museum; establishing subsidiary units, such as the Glacier Point lookout; aiding the development of the Nature Guide Service; and maintaining a library in the valley of volumes of historical, scientific, and popular interest to the public; promoting scientific investigations; and gathering and disseminating information on the cultural and natural history of the area. The group has continued to this day to make an influential contribution to the educational projects of the National Park Service in Yosemite. The native stone museum building, with its large wooden beams and shakes, harmonized well with its environment and became a model for other Park Service areas. The two-story structure contained exhibits, a library, storage facilities, a classroom, offices, and caretaker’s quarters.

An important part of the museum’s early educational program was the demonstration of Native American lifeways by local Indians. In the late 1920s Maggie “Tabuce” Howard, a Mono Lake Paiute woman, began demonstrating basketry and food processing techniques of the native peoples in a re-created Indian village behind the museum. In addition, a Southern Sierra Miwok man was hired to do traditional dances and demonstrate fire making and arrow manufacturing.

4. Zoo

Another more questionable attempt at public education began in 1918 with the display of three orphaned mountain lion cubs, whose mother had been killed, in an enclosure in Yosemite Valley. A brown bear cub captured during that season was added to this exhibit of Yosemite wildlife. By the late 1920s the park questioned the legitimacy of exhibiting live animals in captivity, except in exceptional cases in accordance with a well-considered educational policy and as an adjunct of the museum. In addition, the zoo’s location between the government residential and utility areas attracted visitors to a location that should have been closed to the public.37

[37. During Mather’s administration, predators, including mountain lions, coyotes, and wolves, were ruthlessly hunted down in many of the western national parks with the help of the Bureau of Biological Survey (later Fish and Wildlife Service). Mather believed in strong reductions of numbers but not complete elimination of native species. Shankland, Steve Mather, 269-70.]

Although not part of the zoo, an elk herd once grazed in Yosemite Valley. About 1921 it was feared that Tule elk, once numerous in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, stood in danger of extinction due to reduction of their grazing areas. When only one wild herd remained, in Kern County, wildlife groups became greatly concerned over the animals’ future. In an effort to save them, interested parties captured a few individuals and shipped them to various parks in California.

The California Academy of Sciences, through the efforts of M. Hall McAllister, chairman of conservation, obtained permission to place twelve elk in Yosemite, between the New and Old Villages, in a wire fence paddock eight feet high enclosing twenty-eight acres of meadowland. This effort to reestablish a species native to the region at first seemed in accord with the park policy of maintaining original wildlife conditions. Here scientists hoped the elk would increase in number as well as provide pleasure and an educational experience for visitors. By 1933 the herd had increased to twenty-seven animals. Because the elk were actually exotic to the high country and National Park Service policy prohibited the introduction of non-native species, because of the unsightliness of the high fence, and because the animals’ grazing had detrimentally affected the meadow, the park transferred the elk to the Owens Valley in Inyo County that same year.

5. Indian Field Days

From 1917 to 1924, the National Park Service held Indian Field Days in Yosemite Valley in mid-summer, featuring a parade, horse races, Indian baby beauty contests, and prizes for the best Indian regalia. Miwok, Paiute, and other Indians attended to display their basketry, participate in rodeos, prepare Indian foods, and perform ceremonial dances. The Park Service even erected fake wigwams painted with pseudo-Indian designs to provide the “proper” atmosphere. It created an oval race track for the horse races in the middle of Leidig Meadow, which became an eyesore for several years. Many activities were obviously designed to cater to the visitors’ preconceived notions of Indian life and were of questionable authenticity. The Committee of Expert Advisers for Yosemite saw it as

essentially a white man’s race-meet or rodeo, in which some part is taken by Indians to whose Yosemite forebears such things were wholly unknown. In so far as the “Indian Field Day” is useful in maintaining the interest and morale of the Government and company employees some other device not disregardful of the landscape of the Valley could presumably be found. In so far as it is regarded as one of the “attractions” for visitors to the Valley it seems to us to have little more excuse than the introduction of a county fair or a full blown commercial circus.38

[38. “Draft of Report: Meeting of the Committee of Expert Advisers, Yosemite National Park, at Yosemite Valley, April 24th and 25th, 1930,” in Central Files, RG 79, NA, 18.]

The festivities did, however, provide some recognition of the Indian contribution to the development of the area, probably fostered some feeling of unity among the Indian population, and aided the Park Service cause by promoting a healthy tourist traffic during the off-season. The field days ended during the 1930s depression.39
[39. Craig D. Bates, “Ethnographic Collections at Yosemite National Park,” American Indian Art Magazine 7, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 28-30.]

6. Interpretive Publications

In 1921 G. P. Putnam’s sons published Handbook of Yosemite National Park, compiled and edited by Ansel F. Hall. The park produced a popularized mimeographed booklet entitled “Yosemite Nature Notes” in 1922 to correlate the educational activities of the park and to cater to the needs of a public becoming increasingly interested in nature and history studies. The “Notes” appeared in 1926 as a printed journal and was published monthly until 1961. In 1924 the University of California Press published Animal Life in the Yosemite, by Joseph Bird Grinnell and Tracy Irwin Storer, a major inventory of park resources and an important contribution to the park’s nature study program.

7. Yosemite School of Field Natural History

Nature trails also became an important part of the park interpretive program. By 1925, however, it was evident that field-trained naturalists for park positions were at a premium and that most university-trained botanists and zoologists lacked field experience. Much knowledge had to be gained first-hand before it could be interpreted to the public. To fill the need for better-trained park naturalists—a direct outgrowth of the Nature Guide program—Dr. Bryant established the summer-long Yosemite School of Field Natural History. Its emphasis lay on field experience, involving observation and identification of living things in their natural environment, rather than on lectures and books. Started under the joint auspices of the Park Service and the California Fish and Game Commission, its staff consisted of park naturalists and other specialists in the field of natural history. Daily trail trips enabled students to study geology, plant and animal life, and ecology first hand. The school also studied park resource management efforts. For many years it furnished candidates for Civil Service naturalist positions, nature study teachers, and scout camp positions. The school continued until World War II. It resumed after the war for five years, finally closing in 1954. It provided valuable training in interpretation and in teaching of the natural sciences.

8. Research Preserves

In 1926 an area of seven square miles in the high country, along the Sierra crest and north of Tuolumne Meadows, was set aside as a reservation within which the flora and fauna would be left in their primitive state. All domestic animals, camping, and fishing were excluded for the purpose of making scientific studies of plants, animals, and geologic and other natural features under primitive conditions. The only reserve of its kind in the United States at the time, it became the subject of keen scientific interest. Yosemite became the first national park to establish an absolute nature reserve to be open only to naturalists and scientific students.

9. Development and Importance of Educational Work at Yosemite

Interpretive efforts in Yosemite developed slowly but steadily. In 1928 the park undertook interpretation at the Mariposa Grove, culminating in construction of the present museum there in 1930. The third structure to stand on that site in the grove, it continues the use of Galen Clark’s original cabin as a shelter and information center for visitors. The present structure is a reconstruction, or replica, of its predecessor, built by the state of California in 1881 but deteriorated by the 1920s.40 When the building had to be replaced, the superintendent ordered its reconstruction with special emphasis on a faithful exterior duplication because the structure was of great historic interest and familiar to a multitude of visitors. The resulting building was more substantial and durable than the old one, but still retained the historic atmosphere of that location.

[40. For further information on the Mariposa Grove Museum, see National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form prepared by Leslie Starr Hart, NPS Cultural Resources Specialist, in 1975.]

A Junior Nature School began in 1930 to enhance children’s nature study experiences in the park. That same year, for the first time, the Educational Department of the National Park Service directed the

Illustration 85.
Old log cabin at Mariposa Grove.
Photographer and date unknown.

[click to enlarge]

nightly lectures on the habits of Yosemite bears at the valley feeding platforms. Development of a wildflower garden behind the museum began with a monetary gift from Miss Marjorie Montgomery Ward in 1931. A lecture area in Camp 14 served as the principal location for Park Service evening programs in the valley during the summer beginning in 1932 with construction of a stage, platform, and benches for 1,500 people. Prior to that time, programs had been held in various other camp areas, utilizing meager facilities successively outgrown as the popularity of the programs increased. Both regular and seasonal employees continued to contribute to the storehouse of scientific knowledge about the park. In 1929, for instance, George M. Wright, assistant park naturalist at Yosemite, organized a central unit of wildlife investigators to survey the wildlife problems of the Park Service and recommend a broad policy of wildlife management. His work demonstrated the need for a Wildlife Division in the Washington office, created in 1933 and directed by Wright.

In 1928 the Secretary of the Interior, Hubert Work, aided by another Laura Spelman Rockefeller foundation grant, appointed a six-man Committee on Study of Educational Problems in the National Parks to evaluate the accomplishments of the Park Service’s educational programs, recommend improvements, and determine further opportunities for educational service to the public in the national parks. This group of distinguished scientists and educators outlined basic Nature Guide principles, made recommendations on the organization and development of programs, and pointed out the Park Service’s responsibilities and opportunities for education and research in the fields of history and science.

The committee recommended establishment of an advisory body to advise the director on educational matters and establishment of a division of education in the Washington office. In response, the next Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur, established the National Park Service Educational Advisory Board to which he appointed most of the committee members, although the committee also continued to function.41 Also upon their recommendation, Park Service Director Horace Albright established a Branch of Research and Education in the Washington office to administer educational programs in the parks. He appointed Dr. Harold C. Bryant Assistant Director of the National Park Service in charge of the Educational Department in 1930.

[41. Evison, “The National Park Service,” 404-405.]

Albright had a strong interest in educational and interpretive programs. He spent much of his time trying to convince park superintendents to organize museums and interpretive programs. In 1930 and 1931 he secured increases in the Park Service appropriations for interpretive activities, including historical and scientific research projects. Under Bryant and Albright, the Park Service’s educational program thrived and became a major function of the bureau.42

[42. Swain, Wilderness Defender, 201.]

The educational advisory committee finally disbanded in early 1931. The Educational Advisory Board eventually merged into a permanent Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments. Congress authorized that board in 1935 through the Historic Sites Act to assist the Secretary of the Interior and the Park Service in formulating administrative policies and a broad program of study and preservation for the nation’s outstanding scenic, scientific, and historic areas. The board consisted of eleven members distinguished in specialized fields such as natural history, history, architecture, conservation, and planning.

The pioneer interpretive program inspired by the Goethes and launched at Yosemite became a highly significant conservation force by helping visitors understand and appreciate the chief features of national parks. It served as an example for all future educational development in this country’s parks. Through the years, as the benefits of educating the public became clear, similar interpretive programs expanded into state and municipal parks and organized education programs were instituted in every major national park and monument. The educational program of the Park Service became an official and major function of the organization and gave new importance to the professions of historian, archeologist, and naturalist.

At Yosemite, further efforts to not only display the resources of the park but also interpret them for greater understanding and enjoyment through the years have resulted in establishment of a central museum and visitor center, a major research facility, a nature center at Happy Isles, and the Pioneer Yosemite History Center at Wawona. The support to the park’s interpretive program from the Yosemite National History Association has furthered research efforts, expanded museum collections, and disseminated wider knowledge of Yosemite. Campfire circles, trailside museums and exhibits, and nature trails further inform park visitors about their surroundings and instill in them a stronger desire to protect our country’s natural, historical, and archeological resources.43
[43. Carl Russell, “A 40th Anniversary,” in Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 153-55; C. M. Goethe, “Nature Study in National Parks Interpretive Movement,” in Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 156-58; Loye H. Miller, “The Nature Guide Movement in National Parks,” in Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 159-60; Harold C. Bryant, “The Beginning of Yosemite’s Educational Program,” in Yosemite Nature Notes, 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 161-65.]

E. Concession Operations

1. The Desmond Park Service Company (Yosemite National Park Company)

a) The Desmond Company Receives a Concession Permit

As stated previously, Stephen Mather disliked the competitive nature of park concessions up to this time. He believed strongly that the ruthless competition and resultant pressure exerted on tourists, and the shoddiness of most of the park business operations, detracted from the visitor’s park experience in addition to being totally uneconomical. One licensed operator carefully supervised by the government, on the other hand, would result in less duplication, reduce the amount of park land tied up in business operations, and result in a stronger concession system. New capital could only be attracted to the parks, where normal business risks were compounded by short seasons, adverse weather, and peak-load problems if there were a guarantee of profit, such as could be ensured under a strictly regulated monopoly.44 The monopoly franchises Mather developed for the parks extracted either a fixed sum or one based on the number of customers or the amount of gross income as the fee for operating rights. Yosemite’s contract contained an alternative profit-sharing plan.45

[44. Shankland, Steve Mather, 120-21.]

[45. Ibid., 126. Mather made every effort to keep his chosen concessioner operating in the black. As the Yosemite National Park Company began to falter economically, Mather personally loaned it $200,000 to try to keep it going. He retrieved the loan after formation of the Yosemite Park and Curry Company and never suffered particular criticism for what some considered an unwise political move. Ibid., 133.]

In 1916 the Interior Department granted the newly organized Desmond Park Service Company a twenty-year concession to operate camps, stores, a dairy and garage, a saddle horse service, and transportation facilities in Yosemite National Park. Other provisions of the 1916 permit included construction of a hotel in Yosemite Valley and one at Glacier Point, maintenance and operation of at least three mountain “chalets” outside the valley, and construction of a new store and dairy, all to be ready for use no later than the beginning of the 1917 travel season. The destruction of the Black and Leidig hotels in 1888 and of the Stoneman House in 1896 had drastically depleted the number of visitor accommodations in the valley. For that reason, the old Sentinel Hotel had continued in use despite its decrepit condition.

The Desmond Company agreed to operate the old Sentinel Hotel until completion of its modern facility on the valley floor. That new structure would inaugurate General Superintendent Mark Daniels’s plan for a new Yosemite Village that would have more unity of design and compatibility with its environment than the old one. The Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows chalets, a new class of visitor service, would provide accommodations for travelers on the Tioga Road, which the Department of the Interior planned to fully develop over the next year. This entailed the first step towards consolidation of a hodge-podge of individual permits into an organized concession operation controlled by one company.

The Desmond Company immediately purchased Camps Lost Arrow and Ahwahnee, the Yosemite Transportation Company (1 September 1916), J. W. Coffman’s saddle horse business (9 May 1916), W. D. Thornton’s store in the Old Village (1 August 1916) and S. Cummings’s meat market (1 August 1916), and the assets of the Sentinel and Glacier Point (Mountain View House) hotels. Desmond discontinued camps Lost Arrow and Ahwanhee and established the new Yosemite Lodge, on the site of the old army camp, as a center of valley activity. Some of the buildings in the Yosemite Lodge area were moved from the Los Angeles aqueduct camps in Owens Valley around 1916 and used as rental units (the U-shaped and L-shaped units now used for employee housing). In April 1916 the Gutleben Brothers Construction Company converted an old army building at the former Camp Yosemite into lounge and dining facilities, constructed a laundry building and steam plant, a bathhouse, a swimming pool, temporary garage facilities, tennis courts and dance facilities, employee housing in Camp Tecoya east of the new lodge, and converted another old government building into the company’s valley storehouse. That same year the firm erected the foundation and substructure for the Grizzly Hotel, the company’s new valley accommodations, just south of the present government residential area.46 (The company never pursued the hotel’s completion. In February 1924 park laborers recovered the stone in the old hotel foundation and filled in the basement excavation.) Also in 1916 Desmond established the new El Capitan Camp, although its dining room and lobby burned down the next season. Thereafter the tents in that camp were rented through Yosemite Lodge.47

[46. “Outline of Work Performed in Yosemite National Park By Gutleben Brothers of San Francisco, April 1916-1952,” typescript, 6 pages, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

[47. Frank A. Kittredge to Einar Wismer, 26 November 1941, in Separates file, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16c, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. According to A. B. C. Dohrmann, a financial backer of Desmond, the 1917 fire destroyed all the main buildings of the El Capitan Camp, necessitating providing for all its guests and employees in the dining room and other buildings of Yosemite Lodge. Because it happened at the height of the tourist season and in the midst of Desmond’s financial difficulties, it resulted in a second breakdown of Desmond’s health and his consequent replacement by T. E. Farrow. A. B. C. Dohrmann, Chairman, Reorganization Committee, “History of the Yosemite National Park Co. and it’s [sic] predecessor the Desmond Park Service Company. From the time of their financial embarrassment in 1916 up to the re-organization and re-financing as of January 1, 1920,” in Report of Yosemite National Park Company—Successor to Desmond Park Service Company for years of 1917-1918-1919, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3.]

b) Desmond Constructs Forerunners of High Sierra Camps

Desmond also began construction of his mountain chalets, forerunners of the present High Sierra camps, in 1916. Until establishment of those facilities, the few tourists who ventured into the backcountry had to rely on a packtrain and packer or carry their equipment on their backs. The first method was costly and the second tiring. Mather’s publicity trips into the high country to gain support for the parks had always been characterized by good food and various other creature comforts. It was this ability to view the beauties of nature without the attendant hardships of setting up camp and cooking that Mather wished to provide for all tourists. Heretofore, however, concessioners had been loathe to establish extensive camping accommodations in isolated sections of the park because of the expense and uncertainty of patronage. The newly created National Park Service, however, requested the camps in an attempt to draw visitors to the

Illustration 86.
Barracks moved from Owens Valley to Yosemite Lodge.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 87.
Glacier Point Hotel, constructed in 1917.

[click to enlarge]

Yosemite high country and thus relieve the growing congestion in Yosemite Valley. Construction was rushed to complete lodges at Merced Lake, Tenaya Lake, and Tuolumne Meadows for the summer 1916 season.

Each “chalet” consisted of an eighteen by eighty-four-foot combination lounge, dining room, and kitchen building, largely frame roofed with canvas. Guest tents surrounded the main building. Staff at each camp consisted of a manager, cook, and fisherman.48 Although the first two lodges were well patronized during the 1916-17 season, few visited the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, which Desmond closed early with the intent of removing it to a better site.

[48. Lloyd B. Dennis, “The High Sierra Camps,” Bay Views (July/August 1980): 65.]

c) Yosemite National Park Company Formed

Desmond’s financial difficulties began in the fall of 1916, as a result of building beyond the money available, and the company attempted recovery through formation of a reorganization committee. After Desmond went to pieces mentally and physically in July 1917, the reorganization committee designated Thomas E. Farrow to manage operations for the balance of the 1917 season. The Gutleben Brothers Construction Company constructed the Glacier Point Hotel on the rim of Yosemite Valley between 1916 and 1917. They accomplished the difficult task of transporting building materials to the site with the cooperation of the manager of the Yosemite Lumber Company. He ensured that materials arriving at El Portal over the Yosemite Valley Railroad were transferred to the special flatcars and pulled up the cable tramway to the top of the ridge above the Merced River. From there a shay locomotive took them over the logging railroad to Chinquapin, where a receiving and reloading station was established. There men loaded the material into wagons for the fourteen-mile haul by mule team to the hotel site.49 Early in July 1917, the Desmond Company opened the hotel, which proved very popular because of its panoramic view of the Yosemite gorge, its tributary canyons, Vernal and Nevada falls, and the high, rugged Sierra peaks. The valley power plant transmitted electrical energy for lighting. The shingle-covered structure resembled a Swiss chalet in design, possessing a steeply pitched roof, several gables, and balconies. Because of the unfavorable reputation acquired by the Desmond Park Service Company due to its inferior service in 1917, the company changed its name to the Yosemite National Park Company on 12 December 1917. At that time Desmond resigned and severed all connection with the company.

[49. C. T. Gutleben to John C. Preston, 8 June 1964, in Separates File, Yosemite—Concessions, Y-16c, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Early in 1918 insufficient capital remained to carry on the business. The High Sierra camps closed in that year.50 A Receiver took charge of the company on 26 February 1918 and operated the property until January 1920. Because there were insufficient funds to operate in the 1918 season, the Receiver contracted with the Shaffer brothers, who leased the properties from the Receiver to operate for the season of 1918 with an option to purchase at the end of that time. Dick Shaffer and his brother Hal put up $50,000 to enter the business, which involved running the El Portal stage line; sightseeing buses; an auto garage and shop; the Sentinel Hotel; Yosemite Lodge; the village store; pack trains and stables; the Merced Lake, Tenaya, and Tuolumne Meadows lodges; a barber shop; and a bake shop. The Shaffers ran them from 1 April to 1 October 1918. The Shaffers offered the company $400,000 for the Yosemite business, but Dohrmann and the other directors wanted
[50. The Tuolumne Meadows camp on the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River reopened in 1922. The largest and most popular High Sierra camp, it offers a store, a post office, a gas station, stables, and a public campground. The Merced Lake camp also reopened in 1922 as a sports-oriented boys camp with two tennis courts, two basketball courts, and a baseball diamond. The Curry Company rebuilt and expanded it in 1928. The Tenaya Lake camp closed in 1922. Some question exists as to whether each of the camps originally had stone kitchen structures. The Glen Aulin stone lodge was not built until 1935, while a 1923 inventory states Tuolumne Meadows had a frame and canvas lodge.]

Illustration 88.
Map of Big Trees Lodge site, 17 July 1920, revised 1923.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

$450,000.51 The properties then reverted to the Receiver at the close of the 1918 season.

[51. “Some Historical Facts Regarding the Desmond Company,” C. P. Russell interview with Dick Shaffer, 2 July 1951.]

During the 1919-20 season, the Yosemite National Park Company erected a large garage and automobile repair shop and an attractive unit of wooden bungalows with bath facilities at Yosemite Lodge. It also erected Hetch Hetchy Lodge at Mather, which later became part of the Mather Recreation Camp, and a tent camp in the upper section of the Mariposa Grove (Big Trees Lodge), consisting of a rustic central cafeteria building around the base of the Montana tree and a group of portable wooden cabins and tents.

After much reorganization effort, including a new contract with the Department of the Interior and help with financial support from a group of men in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the receivership was lifted and a new board of directors elected, the reorganized company taking active charge on 1 January 1920.52

[52. Homer Robinson, “Desmond Park Service Co.,” April 1951, in Box 60, Museums, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; Dohrmann, “History of the Yosemite National Park Co. and it’s [s\£] predecessor the Desmond Park Service Company,” 1-7; and Memorandum for the Press: New Hotels for the Yosemite, Department of the Interior, 22 November 1915, in Box 3, Washburn Papers, “File of Misc. Army Correspondence,” Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

During August 1920 the company closed the Sentinel Hotel and made extensive improvements in the form of additional baths and electrical heating and cooking installations in an effort to attract winter travel to Yosemite Valley. In 1921 the Yosemite National Park Company owned the Glacier Point Hotel, the Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Lodge, a print shop, a garage, a general office building, Hetch Hetchy Lodge, a store, a photo studio, a meat market, the village post office, an equipment warehouse, and a main warehouse. In 1922 the Yosemite Lodge complex included the main building, 35 double redwood cabins with bath, 30 single redwood cabins with bath, 116 redwood cabins without bath, and 198 canvas cabins, as well as 50 tents and one dormitory. The Big Trees Lodge had 14 wooden cabins.53

[53. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Yosemite National Park Co.,” n.p.]

d) Bear Feeding Expands

The increased visitation to Yosemite caused a variety of natural-resource related problems, not all of which concerned fire protection, meadow degradation, or river control. Attracted by campers’ foodstuffs and the ever-expanding park garbage pits, bears began to make nightly camp raids. A barrage of visitor complaints prompted the National Park Service to begin a bear scrap feeding program in an effort to lure them away from visitor use areas. This basically comprised government institutionalization of a practice already followed by some of the early hotel owners as a popular form of visitor entertainment.

Knowing that they would be fed later in the day, bears began hanging around near the garbage pits during the day, begging from cars along the. main park highways to fill the time between feedings. In 1923 the Yosemite National Park Company built a special feeding place for bears near the Merced River bank a mile below Old Yosemite Village. Hundreds of visitors collected there very night to watch the bears eat and play on an electrically-lighted platform. Park Service rangers even began putting on interpretive programs there in the evenings before the bears ate. By the early 1930s, bear feeding had become one of the summer’s prime attractions.

The large number of bears and the large numbers of people were bound to start getting on each other’s nerves. Careless visitors began to resent being scratched or clawed as they tried to feed the furry beggars and the valley hospital staff kept busy each season binding the wounds resulting from this interplay. Bears became less a “cute” attraction and more of a pest to the visiting public. In an attempt to reduce the accident rate and reintroduce the bears to wild food gathering, the Park Service prohibited feeding, teasing, or molesting the animals. The valley, however, simply did not contain enough natural resources to feed the number of bears living there. Also, as long as the pits and camp foodstuffs were available, the bears had no intention of moving on, and visitor-bear contact continued to pose problems.

Eventually the Park Service perceived the bears, which had lost their fear of man, as a significant threat to visitor safety. Coupled with an increased awareness of Park Service responsibilities for the preservation of wildlife in its natural state, this resulted in a phasing out of the scheduled, interpreted feeding of bears in the fall of 1940. At that time rangers also began trapping bears and moving them out of the valley.54

[54. Ferris H. Scott, The Yosemite Story, (Santa Ana, Calif.: Ferris H. Scott, Publ., 1954), 54. The trapping of bears was largely an incidental assignment for park rangers and lacked proper organization and expertise for several years. An Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 63.]

The Park Service’s practice of dumping garbage in open pits and the later inadequate solid waste collection program resulted in an increase in black bear population numbers, wider distribution, and in continuing alterations of their natural wild habits. Even after bear feeding stopped, camp foodstuffs continued to attract bears, leading to property damage and personal injuries, resulting in turn in destruction of some bears and constant relocation of others. Efforts to prevent man-bear conflicts have consisted of public education, removal of artificial food sources, enforcement of bear feeding regulations and proper food storage; control of problem bears, and continuing research on black bear population dynamics and their interrelationship with humans.55

[55. Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 24, 26.]

e) High Sierra Camps Reestablished

Also in 1923 Superintendent Lewis advocated reestablishment of the High Sierra camping service providing simple, cheap accommodations at minimum operating expense. T. E. Farrow of the Yosemite National Park Company accordingly projected plans for a series of “Hikers’ Camps” Lewis sent his new park naturalist, Carl P. Russell, into the backcountry to locate appropriate campsites. Because of the beauty of their surroundings, the availability of water, and the fact that they were within a day’s walk of each other, he selected campsites for the project at Little Yosemite Valley, Merced Lake, Boothe Lake (later Vogelsang, in a different location), the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne, Tuolumne Meadows, Glen Aulin, and Tenaya Lake.

The Yosemite National Park Company proceeded to build the camps, and, by 1924, all of them except Lyell Fork and Glen Aulin consisted of a mess and cook tent and dormitory tents for men and women. Attendants and cooks worked at each place, and mules brought in equipment and supplies. Because the company offered these facilities at a low price, they became very popular. In 1925, after the merger of the Yosemite National Park Company with the Curry Camping Company, the camps were retitled High Sierra camps because of their growing popularity with saddle parties as well as hikers. A new camp beside White Cascade at Glen Aulin began operating in 1927. Because of a mosquito problem, the camp later moved to a valley to the east. The camps were not money-making ventures, but profits in overall concession activity covered the losses, which the company deemed acceptable because of the convenience and service such facilities afforded the public.

The High Sierra camps have been significant as an innovative concept luring more people into the backcountry and represent a successful joint effort by the National Park Service and the concessioner to encourage travel beyond the roads and thus enhance visitor appreciation of the wilderness areas of the park. Their establishment also helped implement the Interior Department’s policy of making remote areas of the park more accessible. Another aspect of the 1923 reopening of the camps involved Steven Mather’s strong desire to implement the Park Service’s interpretive responsibilities in the high country. The park established a pattern of interpretive service there by initiating backcountry Nature Guide trips to the camps. Despite the initially small number of visitors exposed to this service, Mather and park officials believed that a naturalist talking to the same people day after day, amidst the superlative peaks and meadows of the backcountry, could probably exert a strong and long-lasting influence on the formation of positive visitor attitudes toward national parks and conservation in general.

There are today seven camp locations, two of them—at White Wolf and Tuolumne Meadows—accessible by auto. The other five camps—May Lake, Glen Aulin, Sunrise, Vogelsang, and Merced Lake—comprise the highly popular High Sierra Loop. Each of the camps is located in a beautiful setting, usually near water or on the edge of a mountain or meadow, and each one provides comfortable accommodations in the form of permanent beds in cement-floored tents, a dining tent, and hot showers and flush toilets. Since 1925 the the Yosemite Park and Curry Company has owned and operated the camps. They have been criticized in recent years because of the sanitation problems they pose, the impact on backcountry trails of large numbers of campers, the resulting erosion, and their generally negative impact on the area’s ecology.56

[56. The camps have accomplished the purpose of enticing visitors out of the valley, but many environmentalists now believe attempts should be made to remove these areas of intense concentration and disperse people more throughout the backcountry. They question whether this is legitimate backcountry use or even a genuine backcountry experience. Interestingly enough, Chief Naturalist Car! Russell once stated:

It is unthinkable that any camp shall become so popular as to render it a saturated center overrun by people. Heavy use, of course, would ruin the atmosphere which distinguishes the favored spots and actually would destroy some of the natural attributes which make the High Sierra Camp experience delectable.

Carl P. Russell, “High Sierra Camps and Their Place in the Yosemite Interpretive Scheme,” 1961, typescript, 6 pages, in Separates File, Yosemite-High Sierra Camps, Y-43, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 4.

Initially the lack of “entertainment” such as visitors experienced at Camp Curry, the rather primitive accommodations, and the sometimes arduous trip to reach the camps kept down the number of visitors. With the initiation of interpretive work in the camps and on the trails between them, however, it became inevitable that ever-increasing numbers would come. This has created new demands on the facilities, such as expanded sewage treatment, that would eventually compromise their existence.]

Illustration 89.
May Lake High Sierra camp, showing stone cookhouse and dining room.
Photo by Paul Cloyd, 1986.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 90.
Merced Lake High Sierra camp barn, still in use.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 91.
Merced Lake High Sierra camp ice house.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

f) Yosemite National Park Company Holdings, 1924

In 1924 an appraisal inventoried the Yosemite National Park Company holdings. In the Old Village these consisted of the Sentinel Hotel; River, Ivy, Locust, Cedar, Oak, Bluebird, Oriental, Fox, Rock, and Hope cottages (see Appendix F); plus various employee quarters, a general office, an architect’s office, a general store and warehouse, a print shop, an ice house, an employee laundry, a store manager’s residence, a meat market, Wiggle Inn, an employee dormitory, and a toboggan slide.

The Yosemite Lodge wood section consisted of the administration building, auto shelters, a bathhouse and dressing rooms, a laundry and boiler house, a laundry office and tailor shop, a linen room, a barber shop, a public bath and employee quarters, a motion picture booth, a stage, a linen supply room, toilets, a storehouse, a dance pavilion and music stand, and a swimming tank. The lodge canvas section contained men’s and women’s bathhouses, linen rooms, toilets, a telephone and ticket office, and a tennis court.

Camp Tecoya had a cafeteria and kitchen, an employee laundry, toilets, employee quarters, an office, a linen room, a women’s recreation room, a storeroom, a pump house, and a covered walk. The Glacier Point Hotel group consisted of the hotel, an annex, a gas and oil house, a barn, and outhouses. At that time the company’s Warehouse Group included an office and warehouse, two other warehouses, a warehouse and print shop, a lumber shed, a paint shop, a storage shed, employees’ quarters, and an electric, plumbing, and carpenter shop. Its Garage Group consisted of a garage, a gas and oil station, car sheds, a paint shop, and toilet buildings. Housekeeping Camp 17 contained the main housekeeping building, a curio and cigar stand, and two warehouses. The Stable Group contained an office, a blacksmith shop, employees’ quarters, various sheds, stables, storerooms, and saddle houses, along with a gas station and stalls and feed racks.57

[57. The American Appraisal Co. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), “Appraisal Inventory of the Yosemite National Park Co.: Group A: Yosemite Village (vol. 2); Group B: Yosemite Lodge Wood Section (vol. 4); Group C: Yosemite Lodge Canvas Section (vol. 5); Group D: Camp Tecoya, and Group E: Tecoya Annex (vol. 6); Group F: Warehouse Group, Group G: Garage, Group H: Housekeeping Camp 17, Group J: Stables (vol. 7); and Group Q: Glacier Point Hotel (vol. 8), 30 June 1924, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The Ahwahnee row houses built during the 1922 to 1924 period in Housekeeping Camp 17 are a series of six houses originally built with the same interior plan but different exterior fabrics — hollow tile, boards and rails, stone, processed metal, stucco, and rustic logs and boards. They were built by the Yosemite National Park Company as employees’ quarters, although the reason for the different exterior coverings is uncertain. Possibly they were a test of weathering action on different surfaces or of methods of insulation.

Illustration 92.
Plat of Group A, Yosemite Village, showing operations of Yosemite National Park Company, 30 June 1924. This and the following plats are from the appraisal inventory of the Yosemite National Park Company by the American Appraisal Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP A
Yosemite Village
Building Designation and Occupancy

Building

A/1

Sentinel Hotel

A/2

Toilet Room

A/3

River Cottage

A/4

Employees Quarters

Rear
Building

A/4

Building

A/5

Ivy Cottage

A/6

Locust Cottage

A/7

General Office

A/8

Architects Office

A/9

Employees Quarters

A/10

General Store and Warehouse

A/11

Cedar Cottage

A/12

Oak Cottage

Rear
Building

A/12

Building

A/13

Bluebird Cottage

A/14

Print Shop

A/15

Oriental Cottage

A/16

Old Ice House

A/17

Fox Cottage

A/18

Employees Laundry

A/19

Rock Cottage

A/20

Store Managers Residence

A/21

Hope Cottage

A/22

Meat Market

A/23

Wiggle Inn

A/24

Employees Dormitory

A/25

Toilet

A/26

Vault

A/27

Toboggan Slide

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 93.
Plat of Group B, Yosemite Lodge wood section, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP B
Yosemite Lodge
Wood Section

Building

B/1

Yosemite Lodge Administration Building

B/2

Auto Shelter

B/3

Auto Shelter

B/4

Bath House and Dressing Rooms

B/5

Laundry and Boiler House

B/6

Laundry Office and Tailor Shop

B/7

Linen Room

B/8

Barber Shop, Public Bath and Employee Quarters

B/9

Motion Picture Booth

B/10

Stage

B/11

Linen Supply Room

B/12

Toilet Building

B/13

Toilet Building

B/14

Toilet Building

B/15

Store House

B/16

Dance Pavilion and Music Stand

B/17

Swimming Tank

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 94.
Plat of Group C, Yosemite Lodge annex, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP C
Yosemite Lodge
Canvas Section

Building

C/1

Mens Bath House

C/2

Linen Room

C/3

Womens Bath House

C/4

Linen Room

C/5

Linen Room

C/6

Linen Room

C/7

Linen Room

C/8

Linen Room

C/9

Womens Toilet

C/10

Mens Toilet

C/11

Telephone and Ticket Office

C/12

Tennis Court

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 95.
Plat of Group D and E, Camp Tecoya and Camp Tecoya Annex, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP D
Camp Tecoya

Building

D/1

Cafeteria and Kitchen

D/2

Employees Laundry

D/3

Mens Toilet

D/4

Boiler Room and Ladies Toilet Building

D/5

Womens Toilets

D/6

Employees Quarters

D/7

Employees Quarters

D/8

Tecoya Office

D/9

Linen Room

D/10

Womens Recreation Room

D/11

Ladies Toilet Building

D/12

Storeroom

D/13

Toilet Building

D/14

Employees Quarters

D/15

Employees Quarters

D/16

Employees Quarters

D/17

Pump House

D/19

Covered Walk

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 96.
Plat of Group F, Construction and Equipment Warehouses, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP F
Warehouse Group

Building

F/1

F/2

Warehouse

F/3

Warehouse and Print Shop

F/4

Warehouse

F/5

Lumber Shed

F/6

Paint Shop

F/7

Storage Shed

F/8

Employees Quarters

F/9

Electric, Plumbing and Carpenter Shop

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 97.
Plat of Group G, Garage Group, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP G
Garage

Building

G/1

G/2

Gas and Oil Station #1

G/3

Car Shed

G/4

Car Shed

G/5

Car Shed and Paint Shop

G/6

Toilet Buildings

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 98.
Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP H
Housekeeping Camp 17

Building

H/1 Housekeeping and Main Building

H/2

Curio and Cigar Stand

H/3

Warehouse

H/4

Warehouse

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 99.
Plat of Group J, Stables, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP J
Stables

Building

J/1

J/2

Employees Quarters

J/3

Employees Quarters

J/4

Shed

J/5

Office

J/6

Stable

J/7

Stable

J/8

Shed

J/9

Storeroom

J/10

J/11

Stable

J/12

Employees Quarters

J/13

Employees Quarters

J/14

Saddle House

J/15

Saddle House

J/16

Gas and Oil Station

J/17

Toilet

J/18

Outside Stalls and Feed Racks

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 100.
Plat of Group Q, Glacier Point Hotel site, Yosemite National Park Company, 1924.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

GROUP Q
Glacier Point Hotel

Building

Q/1

Q/2

Hotel Annex

Q/3

Q/4

Gas and Oil House

Q/7

Barn

Q/8

Outhouse

Q/9

Outhouse

[click to enlarge]

Illustrations 101-4.
Ahwahnee row houses. Stone structure and residences #1 and #6. Photos by Jo Wabeh, 1986.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

2. The Curry Camping Company

a) The Company Continues to Grow

By 1916 Camp Curry’s capacity had grown to 1,000 guests, with a total guest count of more than 10,000 for the season. Two significant structures—the Foster Curry cabin (1916) and Mother Curry’s Bungalow (1917)—were constructed at that time. Jennie F. Curry managed and operated Camp Curry after the death of her husband David in 1917. Her son, Foster Curry, aided her in that task, although not always beneficially. Horace Albright, acting director in 1917, sympathized with Mrs. Curry’s desire for a five-year contract and the restoration of the popular firefall, and persuaded Secretary Lane to grant both wishes. After that, relations between the Curry operation and the federal government remained fairly stable.

b) Mrs. Curry Has the LeConte Lodge Moved

By 1918 the Curry Company was growing increasingly at odds with the Sierra Club, whose members often camped behind the LeConte Memorial Lodge to hear the nature programs, many of them Curry-sponsored. The problems began when Sierra Club members began using some of the Camp Curry facilities without paying, and the situation became even more strained when the Currys acquired the privilege of building canvas bungalows with baths, which they decided to locate in the area near the lodge. In the face of strong objections by the Sierra Club that such a project would be intrusive on the LeConte lodge area, Mrs. Curry paid the Gutleben Brothers Construction Company to move the memorial to a new site across from the Curry housekeeping unit, which it did in 1919.

Because the entire granite structure could not be moved, only the roof and some of the building stones went to the new location, where the Gutlebens erected a structure that was half original and half replica. Today it has walls faced with coursed ashlar granite and a steeply pitched hip roof of hand-split cedar shingles. The smaller wings at each side, centered on a walled, stone-paved entrance terrace, each contain a small room. Also in 1919 the University of California instituted free LeConte Memorial Lectures to be given during the summers at the lodge.

The original walls, floor, steps, and fireplace left behind at Camp Curry became the scene of Mary Curry’s wedding to Donald Tresidder in June 1920. The walls ultimately fell, but the steps remained visible for a while, south of the “Kiddie Kamp.” Today only crumbling vestiges of them remain.

The northern terminus of the John Muir Trail, the LeConte Lodge is the oldest of the Sierra Club lodges, housing a small mountaineering library, historical and educational photos, Galen Clark’s personal library, and general information on conservation, national parks, and the High Sierra. David A. Curry and Francois Matthes arranged another memorial by collecting rocks from various glacial moraines and placing them in a cairn marking the spot where LeConte died. Years later the rocks were moved near Mrs. Curry’s bungalow, where they remain.58

[58. “Lodges and Lands,” Sierra Club Bulletin 52, no. 11, Handbook Edition (December 1967): 30; Sargent to Kuhn, 1 July 1974.]

c) New Construction Activity

In 1918 new construction at Camp Curry consisted of the bungalow cottages, a studio, a storehouse, a repair shop, an office addition, and a bowling alley and social hall. Actually the company built forty-eight bungalow units with baths between 1918 and 1922, designed in the rustic style as smaller versions of the Mother Curry bungalow and the Foster Curry cabin. The 1919 season brochure also mentioned such amenities as the modern bathhouse, the swimming pool, a barber shop, manicure and hair dressing parlors, and a modern steam laundry.59 As mentioned, after repeated applications for a longer concession term and additional privileges, the Curry Company finally acquired from the

Illustration 105.
Sites occupied by permittees in Yosemite Village, May 1924.

[click to enlarge]

Interior Department a contract for a nineteen-year period beginning in January 1920. In that year improvements consisted of a new transportation office, a movie booth, an ice plant, a bathhouse, a 200-car storage garage, an auto repair shop, a post office building, a linen building, a telephone and telegraph station, a transformer building, and two new bungalows, plus office and sawmill additions.60 In the autumn of 1921, Foster Curry’s two sisters and their husbands, backed by the financial supporters of the company, effectively eliminated him from further connection with the company because of his unsatisfactory management of business affairs. At that time the husbands, Don Tresidder and Robert Williams, became assistant managers under Mrs. Curry, who remained president and general manager of the operation. In 1921 the tent bungalows were altered to frame structures. Assets in 1922 included an office, dining room, bakery, ice plant, candy kitchen, studio and soda fountain, laundry, bathhouses, pool, auditorium, bowling alley and pool hall, women’s club, men’s dorm, storehouses, a linen building, a post office, and bungalows.61 During 1923 the Curry Company erected a new store building. One-room, non-bath, wooden frame cabins and more tent frames were added in 1924.

[59. “Yosemite National Park—Camp Curry,” pamphlet, 1919 season, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.]

[60. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Curry Camping Company,” 3-4. The original post office was a log structure with a shingle roof overhanging a veranda that encircled the building. It has been altered several times, and in the mid-1950s a space was added on the north side to house the registration office. The post office function has since moved to the lounge. USDI, NPS, Western Regional Office, “Design Criteria for the Camp Curry Historic District, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California,” 1980, typescript, 13 pages, 2.]

[61. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Curry Camping Company,” 50.]

When the Interior Department gave the Desmond Park Service Company its comprehensive contract in Yosemite, it also allowed the small businesses operating in the park to continue during the lives of their owners. Those businesses included Degnan’s bakery and the Pillsbury, Foley, Boysen, and Best studios. The department also allowed Camp Curry to continue independently because it was a family operation, although unlike the others it was large in size and extremely competitive. Originally the department thought that Desmond would absorb Camp Curry, but that never came to pass. Allowing two large, independent concessioners to compete for tourist dollars did not lead to a stable concession situation. It undoubtedly led to the failure of the Desmond Company and created many problems for the Park Service.

d) Yosemite Park and Curry Company Formed

During 1924 discord between the Yosemite National Park Company and the Curry Camping Company rose to the surface, taking the form of constant bickering, numerous petty complaints, and unpleasant accusations. Irritated by this constant turmoil, Superintendent Lewis, Park Service Director Mather, Assistant Director Albright, and the new Secretary of the Interior, Hubert Work, in accordance with Interior Department policy to establish soundly financed companies in the parks, decided that the rival companies should merge. In fact, Work gave Mather an ultimatum—either the companies merge or be replaced. Albright carried out the final negotiations.62

[62. Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, 82.]

In 1925 the Yosemite National Park Company and the Curry Camping Company combined to form the Yosemite Park and Curry Company (YP&CC). Don Tresidder became president and general manager. The Interior Department authorized the company, on a preferential right basis, to handle transportation, saddle and pack horses, meals, hotels and camps, photographic supplies, stores, garages, a laundry, and all other services needed or prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior. (Although today the Yosemite Park and Curry Company conducts practically all the Yosemite business enterprises, the Secretary of the Interior regulates and controls its business, by limiting its commercial activities, specifying the location of facilities, defining the standards of service, and approving rates.) Tressider immediately put the business on a corporation basis and made efforts to standardize services for the sake of economy. The permits of smaller concessioners were still tolerated, by permission of the new company, on the understanding that those smaller operations would not be enlarged and would lapse upon the death of their holders. The new company purchased the assets of Pillsbury upon his retirement and of Boysen upon his death. The Foley operations gradually discontinued after Mr. Foley’s death, while Degnan’s and Best’s continued to operate.

In 1925 the newly organized Yosemite Park and Curry Company kept busy planning construction of a new hotel on the site of the Kenneyville stables. After the consolidation of the two companies, the laundry equipment at Camp Curry was moved to Yosemite Lodge, where the company built extensions on the building. It also constructed a new stable in Camp 12. A 1925 appraisal of the Camp Curry operation inventoried the following structures in the complex: a studio, store, and soda fountain; a dining room and kitchen; a vegetable room; a main office; a laundry and bathhouses; a swimming pool; a transportation building; an auditorium; a pool hall; a dormitory; a repair shop; residences for Mrs. Curry, Mr. Tresidder, Mr. Charles H. Petersen (company auditor), and a Mr. Carrol; toilets; a clubhouse; a sawmill; a co cabinet shop; and bungalows.63

[63. The American Appraisal Company (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), “Appraisal Summaries of the Camp Curry. Yosemite National Park, Yosemite, California,” vol. 1, 30 July 1925, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1926 fire partially destroyed the dining room wing of Yosemite Lodge. In that same year the Yosemite Park and Curry Company bought out the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company interests. The six-story, all-year Ahwahnee Hotel opened in 1927 on the former site of Kenneyville, near Royal Arches. Scheduled to provide an additional 300 bungalows in the surrounding grove, it became an important asset to the newly formed company, finally meeting visitor demands for the finest
Illustration 106.
Plat, Camp Curry. From appraisal summary by the American Appraisal Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 30 July 1925, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

SCHEDULE
Showing
Building Designation and Occupancy

Buildings

Occupancy

Building

A/1

Studio, Store and Soda Fountain

A/3

Dining Room and Kitchen

A/3-A

Vegetable Room

A/4

Main Office

A/5

Laundry and Bath House

A/6

Swimming Pool

A/7

Transportation Building

A/8

Auditorium

A/9

Pool Hall

A/10

Dormitory

A/11

Repair Shop

A/12

Mrs. Curry’s Residence

A/13

Toilet and Bath House

A/14

Toilet

A/15

Toilet Building

A/16

Club House

A/17

Mr. Tresiddor’s [sic] Residence

A/18

Toilet

A/19

Sub-station

A/20

Garage

A/21

Mr. Peterson’s Residence

A/22

Saw Mill

A/23

Lumber Storage

A/24

Cabinet Shop

A/25

Mr. Carrol’s Residence

A/26

Shake Storage

A/27

Housekeeping Toilet

A/28

Toilet

Bungalows

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luxury hotel service possible. Architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood of Los Angeles constructed a beautiful building of reinforced concrete and steel with a visual appearance suggesting timber and granite that blended well with the environment. The outstanding decorative American Indian motifs that have been worked into the interior of the hotel, and its conformity on the exterior with the rugged granite walls of the surrounding cliffs, make it one of the finest hotels in any national park in America, a milestone in the rustic architecture movement.

In 1928 the Interior Department approved plans for four dormitories, a heating plant, and a laundry in the Tecoya area, designated for Curry employee housing, and for seventeen bungalows at the Ahwahnee. Construction also started on six-room cottages in Camp 17, a reinforced concrete bridge over Indian Canyon Creek, and four garages. The department approved plans for a new Curry dining room, kitchen, and cafeteria that same year. The structures were finished a year later.64 In early 1928, A. C. Pillsbury decided to sell his Yosemite interests rather than rebuild his theatre after the heavy loss he sustained by fire. The Yosemite Park and Curry Company agreed to purchase his holdings. The open-air dance floor in the Old Village, which had been enclosed as a meeting place, subsequently served as the valley movie theater.

[64. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” “Yosemite Park & Curry Co.,” n.p.]

e) The Company Initiates a Winter Sports Program

The problem of how to sustain winter operations became a serious one for the new company with the completion of the Ail-Year Highway to Yosemite in 1926 and the opening of the Ahwahnee Hotel. Its directors decided to undertake winter sports development to promote more travel and make it possible to keep the new hotel functioning year round. In 1920 Tressider had hired a Swiss, Ernst des Baillets, who had been successful promoting winter development at Lake Pladd in New York State, to organize skiing, skating, ice hockey, and other winter sports.

Illustration 107.
Tecoya employee housing area, 1930.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

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Illustration 108.
Plat, Camp Curry, 1930.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

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Illustration 109.
Snow Creek cabin, view to southwest.

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Illustration 110.
Snow Creek cabin, view to northeast.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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The YP&CC formed the Yosemite Winter Club in 1928, the pioneer California winter sports organization. Its objects were the general development of winter sports, the promotion of amateur competition, and continued improvement of Yosemite’s winter facilities. Other improvements included an ice rink formed by sprinkling the Camp Curry parking area and a new toboggan slide built in 1927 west of the camp. The older slide became the enjoyable ride referred to as “Ash-Can Alley.” During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the company kept horses in the valley for sleighing and ski-joring in Stoneman Meadow, which also provided a field for dog teams. Figure skating contests and ice carnivals were held frequently. Tresidder developed the moraine near Tenaya Creek Bridge into a temporary ski hill and later installed a jump. Areas along the Big Oak Flat and Tioga roads catered to skiers when the valley had insufficient snowfall.

The Yosemite Park and Curry Company believed that High Sierra ski tours would greatly increase the scope of winter sports in Yosemite, and, in entering that pioneer field, devised crosscountry ski tours of two to six days, the first time such tours were attempted in the United States. It remodeled the little Glacier Point Mountain House for winter use and, in 1929 built an experimental ski cabin on the shoulder of Mount Watkins above Snow Creek, initiating the first hut system for ski-mountaineering in the Sierra. The cabin was enlarged in 1930. The hut would function as a starting place for tours of the High Sierra camps, which would also be developed with a series of ski huts similar to those used in the European Alps. Eldridge T. Spencer of San Francisco drew the cabin plans, with Dr. Tresidder making suggestions drawn from a book of pictures and plans of Swiss mountain huts. Visitors arrived at the cabin on horseback, snowshoes, foot, and skis for the start of ski tours, which ran from Mount Watkins to Snow Flat and from the cabin to Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows. The Park Service allowed the Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows ranger cabins to be stocked and used in the winter as bases for those skiing expeditions. A ski school started at Yosemite in 1928, with professional instructors and ski guides providing competent ski instruction. As it turned out, ski touring did not catch on as expected, while downhill skiing on packed slopes became ever more popular. The park even made a bid in 1929 to host the 1932 Olympics, but was turned down in favor of Lake Placid.

f) Concession Atmosphere Changes with Increased Tourism

Some critics found the developments at Camp Curry during the 1920s disturbing. The consolidation of companies in 1925 resulted in an increase in size and activity that changed the former homey, wholesome, and delightful camp atmosphere. The area next to the valley’s south wall that had gracefully accommodated the original small tent camp had trouble accepting increased numbers of tents and other structures. Many of those structures, such as the new dining room and cafeteria, were intended to attract not only Camp Curry customers but guests from other units and the campgrounds. The early evening campfire programs that gained their traditional appeal from guest performances, singing, and storytelling, were soon invaded by paid entertainers. The increased number of people seemed to call for more amusements and a carnival atmosphere developed with the addition of exotic types of entertainment such as dancing to draw and hold crowds.65
[65. Kittredge, Memo to Regional Director, 25 June 1947, 4.]

3. The Wawona Hotel Company

The directors of the Wawona Hotel Company met in San Francisco in the summer of 1917 and agreed on the need for more improvements to the complex. That decision resulted in the addition of a nine-hole golf course, of a swimming pool, and construction of the, Annex, completed in the spring of 1918. A tennis court had also been built by 1917. The improvement program of 1917-18 comprised an attempt by the hotel’s owners to attract the patronage of automobile travelers, a new class of visitor demanding more modern amenities than earlier tourists.

Illustration 111.
Wawona slaughterhouse.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

[click to enlarge]

Also in 1917, the Hill Studio became a clubhouse, with the section facing the tennis court becoming a soda fountain and the middle section serving as a dance hall. Clarence Washburn noted that the Big [Tree?] Creek Bridge was finished in October 1917 and the Indian Bridge in July 1921. The latter might have been the new bridge over to the fish hatchery, although Washburn later wrote that that particular structure had not been completed until August 1921. The old Wawona laundry also came down, in 1919.66

[66. Wawona Washburn Hartwig, comp., “Clarence A. Washburn Diaries—Repairs-lmprovements (Buildings and Grounds, 1914-1934),” in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. This document states that the company was erecting a new slaughterhouse and tearing down the old one in the summer of 1927, although other sources state the new slaughterhouse did not go up until 1929.]

In March 1920 the hotel’s directors decided on further improvements to the Wawona group, including demolition of the old store and construction of three new buildings, none of which is extant. The company began work on the men’s bunkhouse and a refrigerator plant in April 1920. It also started the Girl’s House, later known as the Sequoia Building, that month, northeast of the main hotel, and finished it two months later. Designed to house the hotel’s female employees, it served as a dormitory during 1920-25. In 1926 it opened to the public, along with a coffee shop, but due to a drop in business, in 1931 again began housing seasonal employees. Fire destroyed it in November 1977.

A second store, begun in March 1920 on the approximate location of the first one, contained a butcher shop and smokehouse, it burned about 1943-44. Another tennis court, constructed in 1922, along with a.. croquet court added in 1914, provided additional recreational opportunities for guests. The tennis court was probably demolished in 1937 when a new one was built.67

[67. Crosby and Scrattish, Historic Structure Report, Wawona Hotel, 31, 40, 197, 203, 206-207, 220.]

A nearby competitor for the Wawona Hotel—the Sierra Lodge—was established by Jack Menniceni in 1920 in Section 35. Most of the improvements on that tract had been constructed by Ed Quigg about 1912, who used the premises for dining, dancing, and saloon purposes. Menniceni bought the property in 1920 and built an addition to the dance hall. He then established a camp for summer visitors. The venture proved unprofitable. A bank took over the property and in 1929 sold it to Sara Scroggs as a summer youth camp. The Park Service acquired the property in the late 1940s and razed the buildings.68

[68. Information from Sara Scroggs file, Wawona, Drawer 14, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; Whittaker, Archeology in Yosemite National Park, 28. The Park Service had considered installing a housekeeping camp on the property.]

In 1923 the Shell Oil Company established a service station at Wawona, which, along with a garage and repair shop, enabled the complex to better serve the touring public. The first aviation field in the High Sierra was established on the Wawona meadow in 1925, to be used as an emergency landing field for army aviators and as a regular landing field for government forest patrol flyers. In 1926 daily airplane service from San Francisco commenced. A new slaughterhouse, later turned into a tool shed at the end of the golf course, built in 1929 processed the hotel’s cattle, sheep, and hogs. It evidently replaced one built in 1920 that in turn had replaced an older structure.69

[69. Whittaker, Archeology in Yosemite National Park, 27-28.]

4. Best Studio

Snow destroyed the Best Studio in 1921, but the Bests rebuilt it. In 1923 Best incorporated the business. The New Yosemite Village plan of 1923, which would place administrative and commercial activities on the north side of the valley, incorporated H. C. Best’s Studio. Construction on the three studios in the New Village began the end of 1925, with the studios in the Old Village razed in early 1926. Structures in the Best Studio complex included a darkroom, two duplex residences, and a garage. The couple’s daughter, Virginia, married Ansel Adams, destined to become a renowned photographer, in 1928. After Best’s death in 1936, the Adamses returned to the valley to run the studio. It still operates today as the Ansel Adams Gallery, offering photographs by Adams, books on the Yosemite area, and Indian goods.

5. Pillsbury Studio

In 1907 Arther C. Pillsbury bought out the interests of the Hallett-Taylor Company and changed the name to “Pillsbury’s.” After a fire destroyed his theater, Pillsbury sold his photo studio to the Yosemite Park and Curry Company in early 1928. It became the Lost Arrow Studio at the New Village.

[Editor’s note: the correct spelling is Arthur C. Pillsbury (Arthur Clarence Pillsbury, 1870-1946)—dea]

6. Fiske Studio

In November 1918 George Fiske committed suicide at his studio on the Merced River north of the foot of the Four-Mile trailhead. Fiske was the last great Yosemite photographer of the nineteenth century, for by the late 1800s, the introduction of Eastman Kodak cameras was making tourist-oriented photo studios obsolete.70 ’ 0 By special permission of the National Park Service, Fiske was buried in the Yosemite Valley cemetery, between his wife and Galen Clark. Later the Curry Camping Company purchased all Fiske’s personal property, including the stock on hand in his studio and his negatives and cameras. Fiske was a well-known figure in Yosemite for thirty years and highly respected for his mountain pictures.

[70. Orland, Man & Yosemite, 78.]

7. Baxter Studio

In the 1920s, Ed Baxter ran a studio and photo shop in the old Galen Clark cabin near Big Trees Lodge.

F. Patented Lands

1. Yosemite Lumber Company

During 1916-17 the federal government, continuing the exchange of timber it owned in remote park areas for land and timber owned by the Yosemite Lumber Company and the city and county of San Francisco along park highways and in other scenic spots, acquired nearly 7,000 acres, or more than thirty percent of the privately owned lands in the park. Through these congressionally authorized exchanges, the government tried to protect the scenic beauty of Yosemite’s roads. It also attempted to protect Yosemite’s forests by specifying that timber traded to the lumber companies be logged under strict supervision and in ways that insured an immediate second-crop growth. The time was rapidly approaching, however, when there would no longer be sufficient government land available to effect such exchanges. Furthermore, the first public pressure for the elimination of logging operations in the park began to be felt.

During the 1923 season the government acquired a 160-acre tract in Little Yosemite Valley, owned by the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, through an exchange agreement with the Yosemite Lumber Company by which the government transferred title to timber in the western portion of the park in the Cottonwood Creek section. The government had long wanted to acquire the Little Yosemite Valley land for administrative purposes—to serve as a Happy Isles-Vernal Fall-Little Yosemite Valley-Tioga Road connecting link. Civilian Ranger Archie Leonard had deeded this land, also known as the Washburn quarter-section, to the stage company in October 1891.

By the fall of 1923, Yosemite Lumber Company logging crews had exhausted the timber supply on the south side of the Merced River, and the company made plans to move operations to the north side of the canyon. A new incline, less steep than that on the south side but still about 8,300 feet long, finished in 1924, extended from a point across from Indian Flat almost to the top of Trumbull Peak. Because of the difficult construction and resulting high cost—nearly one million dollars—

Illustration 112.
Yosemite Lumber Company holdings, 1923.
Box 88, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

[click to enlarge]

(CPGA = California Peach Grower’s Association)

it was said to comprise the greatest logging feat in the country. A smaller incline, 1,600 feet long, extended above the main one to reach the timber. An extensive logging railroad then ran north toward virgin cutting areas at Crane Flat and Ackerson Mountain.

The company’s modern equipment wiped out everything in its path, threatening to destroy the magnificent sugar pine forest encircling the Merced Grove of Big Trees. In 1926 Willard Biggs Van Name voiced the first major opposition to logging in the park. In a circular, Van Name, a conservation advocate, criticized the Park Service and the lumber company for denuding the forests. He accused the government of attempting to hide the full extent of the ravages by trading timber stands along highways for less conspicuous forests. Van Name did not manage to interest many in the problem, however, and logging continued.

Also fearful of wholesale destruction of the sugar pine forests in the park, however, Director Mather worked out a tentative plan to exclude from the park more than 12,000 acres, largely timbered, including 5,500 acres of privately owned timberlands. He proposed to use the 6,700 acres of government land to be excluded as a basis for exchange for more important timber holdings within the proposed modified park boundaries. In 1926 the President’s Commission on the Coordination of National Parks and Forests, after studying the situation on the ground, tentatively agreed to the plan as the only feasible method of excluding logging operations from the park. Although the Tuolumne and Merced groves would be removed, the commission expected that they would be protected under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Forest Service.

The proposed modification of the boundary would throw about seventy percent of the privately owned lands out of the park, the only large block left being that owned by the Yosemite Lumber Company in the Cottonwood Creek area north of Aspen Valley. By 1927 the government had proposed a timber exchange with the company by which it hoped to acquire the Cottonwood Creek and other holdings in return for timberlands along the western boundary of the park that would eventually be eliminated under the proposed boundary exchange and become part of Stanislaus National Forest. The plan later, however, appeared disadvantageous to the government, because the timberland received from the lumber company would not be equal in value to the timber conveyed by the government. The latter rejected the plan with the recommendation that further effort to effect an exchange be undertaken.

At that point the general public finally became interested in the situation, and Nicholas Roosevelt, editorial writer and special correspondent of the New York Times, visited the park. After studying the problem on site, he wrote that the timber exchange plan should be discouraged. After conferring with Park Service officials, however, Roosevelt advocated in the paper outright purchase of the timberlands in question, opposing any plan to delimit the park for exchange purposes. The Times became instrumental in developing public opinion in favor of the preservation of the Yosemite forests.

The Yosemite Lumber Company, meanwhile, had suddenly ceased operations in 1927, when the White & Friant Company, which owned timber intermingled with that of the Yosemite Lumber Company, refused to let the latter use White & Friant land to reach its timber unless it purchased the land. The Yosemite Lumber Company refused. The company’s Merced Falls mill lay idle until May 1929 when the Sugar Pine Lumber Company of Pinedale reopened it, having purchased the assets of the Yosemite Lumber Company a few months earlier.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., became interested in the Yosemite situation and sent a representative to the park to investigate. When the Sugar Pine Lumber Company bought the holdings of the Yosemite Lumber Company and of White and Friant with the intention of logging them, the situation became critical, and Rockefeller immediately pledged one million dollars to help save the forests. Louis C. Cramton, chairman of the Subcommittee on Appropriations for the Interior Department, then included in the bill appropriating money for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1930 an authorization of funds for the purchase of all privately

Illustration 113.
Map of timber stands acquired in 1930 through Rockefeller purchase.
Separates File, Yosemite-Boundaries, Y-37, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

[click to enlarge]

owned lands in national parks and monuments on the condition that federal expenditures be matched dollar for dollar by private contributions. At the same time, in order that certain timberlands of unusual park value might be included in Yosemite National Park, Congressman Harry L. Englebright of California secured the enactment of a bill (Johnson-Englebright) authorizing the extension of the park’s western boundary to include an additional 9,000 acres of contiguous national forest land. Rockefeller immediately donated the amount required as a matching fund for the specific purpose of clearing up this particular problem and thereby enabled the speedy conclusion of negotiations for federal acquisition of that beautiful forest.

That purchase was important as the first substantial accomplishment under the plan approved by Congress to eliminate private landholdings in the national parks. It brought the finest remaining stand of sugar pine trees into government ownership and marked the discontinuation in the park of the logging operations that had plagued park administration and protection for the past twenty years; it greatly reduced the total area of private holdings in the park; and it provided protection to the Tuolumne and Merced groves of giant sequoia that lay in the heart of the newly acquired forest. Park Service administration of that area had become critical in light of the projected relocation of the Big Oak Flat Road and construction of the new Crane Flat-Hetch Hetchy road. The Sugar Pine Lumber Company ultimately gave up the Yosemite Lumber Company subsidiary when the depression ruined the lumber market at the start of 1931. The company finally went out of business two years later.

2. Foresta Subdivision

About 1917 the cookhouse at Foresta burned and Alfred B. Davis, proprietor of Foresta and manager of the Foresta Land Company, moved camp operations to another location. A new spring became the chosen site for the Foresta Assembly grounds and a community center. In the spring of 1917 workers dug a deep reservoir around the spring and constructed an all-purpose building containing a kitchen and screened dining room. A powerhouse, containing an electric light plant and boilers, supported a large wooden water tank on its roof. Two bath and toilet houses, storage sheds, and one or two cabins, along with thirty-seven floored tents, completed the complex. Investors continued to buy lots on installment plans, but, when payments ceased, many properties either reverted to the original owners or were sold for taxes. The economics of World War I undoubtedly affected sales and buyer interest.

In mid-August 1918, fire destroyed the new Foresta dining room. Horace and George Meyer and the park’s civilian rangers managed to contain the blaze. Davis, beginning to run out of development money by the fall of 1918, dropped his association with Foresta in the summer of 1919. Simoneau & Company of Los Angeles took over from the Foresta Land Company. It stressed the idea of mutual interests and exclusivity for the area, noting that several professors on the faculty of the University of California owned Foresta property as well as such notable members of the Foresta Assembly as John Muir, Jack London, and George Wharton James. Despite these efforts, this company’s selling campaign also lacked success. Davis sold his remaining holdings to his daughters shortly before his death in 1922, and they organized the Yosemite Valley Land Company to continue property sales.

The completion of the Ail-Year Highway from Merced to Yosemite Valley in 1926 and proposed construction of a new Big Oak Flat Road from Yosemite Valley to Crane Flat revived interest in Foresta, and publicity resumed. John J. Michaelsen, a San Francisco real estate agent, who had become president of the Yosemite Valley Land Company, began selling Foresta lots in November 1926 under the title of the new Foresta Land Company, and invoked the ire of the park superintendent because of his misleading sales literature. Superintendent Lewis took exception, for instance, to advertising statements made in company literature to the effect that owners of Foresta property were entitled to unrestricted park privileges and were exempt from the restrictions placed on general park patrons. Lewis had been receiving inquiries for some time about the soundness of such an investment from prospective buyers and people who had already purchased. To each individual Lewis stated his belief that the development proposition for the area remained unsound and that Foresta could never be turned into a successful resort operation.

Lewis believed at the time that no development of the tract had occurred since 1918 when the former owners had gone into bankruptcy. To substantiate this, he sent E. C. Solinsky to the Foresta townsite to scout out the situation. Solinsky found that the property contained five permanent buildings and one portable structure similar to those used at Yosemite Lodge as sleeping quarters for guests. Of the five buildings, two functioned as bathhouses and one as a boiler house. Additionally the area contained thirty-seven tent platforms and a concrete reservoir for storing water from a spring on the property. Solinsky could see remains of the 1918 fire that had destroyed the dining room and kitchen on the townsite. Those buildings had not been rebuilt and all the extant buildings appeared unused, indicating a lack of activity since the fire. No work toward grading of streets or roads had yet been accomplished and weather and vandalism had taken a toll.71

[71. E. C. Solinsky, Forester, to W. B. Lewis, Superintendent, 2 June 1922, and W. B. Lewis to the Director, National Park Service, 7 June 1922, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

Ultimately Michaelsen, after selling about 200 lots and running into the problem of delinquent payments, sold W. S. Wright, the land company’s general manager, the remaining lots, roads, and right-of-way in January 1929. Wright then took over as president of the Foresta Land Company. The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression resulted in a decline of sales and installment and tax payments. In 1929, William Setchell donated his Foresta lots and the historic George Anderson cabin to the Park Service—the first act of a volunteer program to help the government acquire property in the Big Meadow area. Foresta’s rejuvenation during the 1920s had been short-lived. By 1931 the Foresta Land Company was finished.72

[72. Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, 26-27, 33-34, 38-40, 42-44, 50.]

3. Big Meadow

The McCauley sawmill operated steadily until 1922 and sporadically after that. The Meyers bought the McCauley property in 1924 and continued to operate the mill. They hauled logs by horse team from their cutting site to the mill, where they dumped them onto skids and rolled them along onto a movable carriage that held the log, carrying it back and forth past the saw blade. The Jast lumber sawed in that mill served in rebuilding the McCauley house at Big Meadow in 1937-38.

4. Aspen Valley Homesites

In the fall of 1922, Robert Bright, a son-in-law of T. G. Hodgdon, began erecting buildings at Aspen Valley on the Tioga Road, on land owned by Hodgdon. Bright intended ultimately to erect an eating establishment, a small store, and a gas station. This became the first development work of that kind actively underway on private park land during that time. 73 During the 1920s Aspen Valley became a busy tourist stop on the Tioga Road. In 1927 the Tuolumne County engineer subdivided part of the original Hodgdon homestead. The Park Service perceived the cabin sites to be more an effort by T. J. Hodgdon, who owned the Aspen Valley Lodge, to bring in summer residents to bolster his lodge business than to develop a prosperous and dignified summer community. Neighbors and friends of the original owners appeared to comprise the subdivision’s clientele. The design of the community was poor, with most of the cedar to be used for the buildings—acquired from a mill a few miles away—subject to dry rot. No sanitary facilities existed, so most of the garbage had to be buried. The front of all the lots sold faced the meadow on which the Hodgdon cows grazed. Hodgdon also intended to subdivide the East Meadow area if the government did not purchase it.

[73. W. B. Lewis, Superintendent, to the Director, National Park Service, 7 September 1922, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

5. Cascade Tract

The east line of this property stood at the west end of the Wildcat Creek Bridge on the El Portal highway. During the 1920s the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation held a permit from the Federal Power Commission for water power development on the South Fork of the Merced River. In the summer of 1928 an agreement was reached under which the National Park Service would attempt to get an extension of the power company’s permit in return for that company’s purchasing the private Cascade holding and deeding it to the government. The government, in turn, would grant the company forty acres on the southeast boundary of the park that it needed for a reservoir site on the South Fork. The deal never materialized because too many problems prevented the company from exercising the rights of its South Fork permit. First, the dam project required a portion of the park to be flooded, as well as large tracts of private land, such as that owned by the Wawona Hotel. In addition, the company began to think that oil power would probably be cheaper than water development.

6. Gin Flat and Crane Flat

In 1928 the Yosemite Park and Curry Company purchased the 520 acres of private land at Gin and Crane flats along the Big Oak Flat Road and turned them over to the National Park Service upon reimbursement of half the cost. Park Service officials considered those areas of vital importance to the administration and enjoyment of the park.

7. The Cascades (Gentry Tract)

By 1930 this tract, although laid out in blocks and with some actual grading of streets, had turned out to be a wildcat scheme similar to the Foresta subdivision.

8. Hazel Green

In the 1920s Mrs. David Curry owned about 120 acres at Hazel Green, along the Coulterville Road, on which the old Hazel Green stage station stood. From about 1925 to 1927 she operated a small sawmill on the property.

9. White Wolf Lodge

With the purchase of the Tioga Road by Stephen Mather and its ensuing rehabilitation by the National Park Service under Sovulewski’s supervision, traffic over the route increased to such an extent by 1926 that John D. Meyer, who now owned the White Wolf property, and his wife, Alice, decided to convert their home into a lodge. They had previously operated a hotel in Groveland during the course of the Hetch Hetchy project. Certainly the operation of a resort at White Wolf would be difficult due to its isolation, but that did not stop the Meyers from converting their home into a dining room, sitting room, and kitchen, and erecting two duplex cabins and twelve wood-floored, wood-framed tents. A small electric light plant completed the complex. Across the road from the lodge stood a soda fountain with a single gasoline pump. (That building was later enclosed and moved behind the lodge where it is now used for linen storage.)

Accommodations at White Wolf were primitive. A commercial laundry service from Sonora visited three times a week. Grocery shopping had to be done two or three times a week because of the lack of refrigeration. The Meyers stored meats and other perishables in a screened cooler. The lodge attracted only small numbers of travelers at first, generally because of a lack of information regarding the Tioga Road route and its facilities. Those who did stop at the lodge undoubtedly found it a welcome respite from the dust and long, hard grades of the road. As California motorists became more familiar with the route, it would become increasingly popular and be used considerably by eastern traffic driving over the Lincoln Highway to Lake Tahoe and on to Yosemite.

By 1930 the lodge with its improvements consisted of a building containing the main dining room, lobby, and kitchen; two cabins, each with two rooms and bath; a service station with a pump; a small store; and nine tent platforms with tents. It could accommodate about thirty guests.

Illustration 114-16.
White Wolf Lodge, guest cabin, and storage shed (former soda fountain)
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 117.
Map of Hetch Hetchy water supply, 1925.
From Wurm, Hetch Hetchy and Its Dam Railroad.

[click to enlarge]

G. Hetch Hetchy

Construction of the Hetch Hetchy dam took nearly four years and was viewed by large groups of Yosemite Valley campers who took buses over the Big Oak Flat Road to Mather Station on the Hetch Hetchy Railroad. From there special railroad cars carried them to Damsite, and an inclined cableway dropped them to the floor of the valley. The narrow-gauge Valley Railroad then took them to view the various phases of construction. Sometimes those tourists stayed overnight at the park’s Hetch Hetchy Lodge at Mather; others returned directly to the valley. The Yosemite excursions lasted until the summer of 1925. Two years later San Francisco bought Hetch Hetchy Lodge and opened it as part of a new summer resort.

Problems presented by the dam construction were many. To divert the Tuolumne River around the dam site, workers drove a 900-foot-long tunnel through the solid granite of the south canyon wall. A timber-crib diversion dam forty feet high turned the water into the tunnel. Excavation on the dam could then be carried out with little difficulty.

Derricks on the dam site handled the material from the deep excavations. Operating in conjunction with them, a railroad line on the south abutment connected with the valley railroad system north of the river by crossing on the diversion dam. Another track lay at the same elevation on the north abutment.

A cableway with a span of 903 feet, supported on tall towers, extended over the dam site to transfer machinery, industrial locomotives, and other heavy equipment, lumber, and timbers from cars on the Hetch Hetchy Railroad to the narrow-gauge cars of the contractor’s construction railroad on the valley floor. The industrial Valley Railroad extended from the dam site to the head of the valley, about four miles, terminating at the Rancheria Creek sand pit, serving along the way the Falls Creek gravel pit, the Wapama Falls rock quarry, the crusher, and the sand-screening plants. It served to haul excavated material from the dam foundation to the valley dump, to bring sand and rock from natural

Illustration 118.
Plat of O’Shaughnessy Dam camp site, showing roads and buildings, 1925.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

[click to enlarge]

deposits and from the dump and quarries to the crusher plant for screening and crushing, and to haul the crushed rock and clean sand to the concrete-mixing plant at the dam.

The rock-crushing plant stood on the valley floor, one-half mile upstream from the dam, with the sand plant for screening sand nearby. Sand and rock brought to the dam site by train from the washing and crushing plant were fed into cement mixers. A four-compartment, timber elevating tower distributed the mixed concrete into the forms.

Mayor James Rolph, Jr., and a group of distinguished visitors dedicated the O’Shaughnessy Dam, named in honor of San Francisco’s chief engineer, on 7 July 1923. It loomed 226-1/2 feet above the original streambed and measured 298 feet thick at its base and 15 feet thick at the top. It became the largest single structure on the West Coast and the second highest dam in the United States, impounding 206,000 acre-feet of water. As the Utah Construction Company began clean-up efforts, Superintendent Lewis requested that he be allowed to look over the buildings in the vicinity of the dam site for possible use by the Park Service. He anticipated that increased travel to Hetch Hetchy would require a ranger station and a small administrative unit there. The city of San Francisco intended keeping three of its cottages for the dam caretakers.

In 1926 the city engineer gave the government permission to tear down a cabin, garage and storeroom, and barn at the dam site—buildings 23 to 25 (see Illustration 116). He also gave permission for an administrative unit on the land across the main roadway southwest of the city’s headquarters buildings. The city would then tear down buildings 27 (bus shed) and 29 to 35 (shed, storehouse, ice house, and bunkhouses). The city did, however, need sleeping quarters for its road construction and maintenance crews at the dam site. Therefore, it decided to retain the bunkhouses on the hill back of its headquarters. It also needed mess halls 19 to 20 as well as warehouse building 4, store building 26, and powder house building 36.

The city gave the Park Service permission in May to use buildings 2 and 6 temporarily for administrative purposes. Park authorities originally intended to raze buildings 23 to 25 to permit erection of a feeding unit by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, but later decided not to, as explained earlier. In August the Park Service, in an effort to make the dam site more presentable to the public, requested the removal of store building 26, depot building 13, warehouse building 4, bunkhouse 12, and dining room building 28 (the only building left south of the road in the meadow). It also stated that it would tear down the public toilets then in use and provide more suitable facilities as soon as possible.74 In May 1929 the Department of the Interior accepted a deed from the city and county of San Francisco to certain lands at Canyon Ranch; at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and dam sites; adjacent to the Lake Eleanor reservoir site; and in and adjacent to Tiltill Valley in compliance with certain provisions of the Raker Act.

[74. Robert M. Searls to W. B. Lewis, 19 January 1926; M. M. O’Shaughnessy to W. B. Lewis, 19 May 1926; O. G. Taylor to M. M. O’Shaughnessy, 3 August 1926; in Box 84, Hetch Hetchy, “General, 1926-1927,” Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

H. El Portal Mining

Barite was discovered near El Portal in the 1880s on the north side of the Merced River. In 1915 the El Portal Mining Company worked the deposits about one mile downriver from El Portal. Ore cars trammed the ore downhill to a bin at the railroad tracks and to one at the quarry. By 1928 the Yosemite Barium Company operated the deposit, which had been worked at different periods by both the El Portal Mining Company and the Western Rock Products Company of San Francisco. The deposit on the north side of the river was the first and, for a long period, the only barite mined commercially in California. The ore was shipped to oil fields where it helped prevent blowouts in the oil wells. Drillers used the heavy metal to “weight” drilling muds to prevent the drills from blowing out of the well casings. This was also the only deposit in the U. S. producing commercial shipments of the carbonate called witherite.

Illustration 119.
O’Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy.

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Illustration 120.
Mess hall and dormitory, Hetch Hetchy
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 121.
Damkeeper’s residence, Hetch Hetchy.

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Illustration 122.
Assistant damkeeper’s residence, Hetch Hetchy.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustrations 123-24.
Residences, Hetch Hetchy.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 125.
Ranger station/residence, built by City of San Francisco, Lake Eleanor.

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Illustration 126.
Storage building west of above residence, Lake Eleanor.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustrations 127-28.
Rancheria Flat houses built by National Lead Company.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustrations 129-30.
Murchison house (Yosemite Research Center) and assay office (laboratory), El Portal.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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In 1927 development of a barite deposit south of the river began, by drifting and stoping. The National Pigments Company, Inc., purchased the deposit between 1928 and 1930. The Merced River canyon, the Yosemite Valley Railroad, and the new Yosemite Ail-Year Highway all cut directly across the barite lode. The National Lead Company started operating in December 1928 after purchasing the mill site and barium mine on the south side of the Merced. An aerial tramway carried ore buckets across the highway and river to the mill for processing and loading into railroad cars. After the Yosemite Valley Railroad discontinued service, the mine shipped its product by truck. That proved too expensive, and the company folded in 1951.

One of the more interesting structures in the area is the Murchison house, which now harbors the Yosemite Research Center. It was built in 1929 as a residence for Earl H. Murchison, who superintended the El Portal barium mine for the National Lead Company. Fire destroyed an assay office on the flat below the house, near the present sand pit. The company built a second one to the right of the entrance road to the house, which today is used as an archeological and biological research laboratory. A wooden footbridge built in 1929 across the Merced River below the house provided access to the company’s mill on the other side. The flood of December 1937 destroyed the bridge, and the large galvanized steel mill structure, open on all four sides, was torn down about 1959-60. After the Park Service acquired the land and buildings in 1959, it used the Murchison house briefly as offices for Park Service and General Services Administration employees.

According to Jack Murchison, Earl’s son, barium sulfate was mined on the south side of the river, and barium carbonate on the north side. The mine was considered a godsend during the depression because it utilized many men during a time of widespread unemployment. Murchison also stated that the El Portal Mining Company used convict labor in the mine, secured from San Quentin for a minimal fee.75

[75. Robert C. Pavlik, phone conversation with Jack Murchison, 25 June 1984. For further information on houses in El Portal, see the El Portal Historical Survey completed in 1981.]

I. Yosemite Valley Railroad

On 1 October 1917, after its operations in the park had closed for the winter, the Desmond Park Service Company moved its general office staff and records to the Hotel Del Portal. Although the hotel was owned by the railroad company, the Desmond Company operated it, and the stage line between El Portal and Yosemite Valley, under a lease arrangement. On 27 October a fire, starting from a defective attic flue, completely destroyed the hotel and its contents, including the Desmond Company’s records. (The site of the hotel is now covered by residences on Cedar Lane and Buckeye Road.)76 Adding to the Yosemite Valley Railroad’s problems, restrictions during World War I prevented any expansion of equipment or service. In April 1918 the twenty-room, two-story, less elaborate El Portal Inn replaced the Hotel Del Portal. Located opposite the present library and near the location of the first tent hotel, it was operated by the Yosemite Terminal Company, a subsidiary of the Yosemite Valley Railroad, the Desmond Company having failed in early 1918. During the war years, train travel declined as people had less money to spend on trips and expensive accommodations. Automobile use continued to affect the line’s tourist business. The advent of the auto stage in 1914 had already lessened the hotel’s trade, enabling tourists to go directly from the train to Yosemite Valley for the night. The line still, however, carried a particularly heavy passenger load up until 1926, and carried on a lucrative auto-ferry business.

[76. Dohrmann, “History of the Yosemite National Park Co. and it’s [sic] predecessor the Desmond Park Service Company”; Jim Law, Historic Resources Inventory, State of California—The Resources Agency, Department of Parks and Recreation, Hotel Del Portal (Site), 24 June 1981.]

Between 1923 and 1926, the building of the Exchequer Dam by the Merced Irrigation District and the completion of the All-Year Highway between Merced and the park drastically affected the line. The former structure harnessed the waters of the Merced River and rerouted them in the canals of the irrigation system, necessitating the relocation of about seventeen miles of main line of the Yosemite Valley Railroad. Convict labor completed the final section of the Merced-El Portal road from Briceburg east in 1926, which cut drastically into the business of the railroad as the Yosemite Transportation Company began offering bus trips beginning at Merced at lower rates than the rail fare. In terms of passenger service, the railroad would ultimately be defeated by both auto and bus competition.

The Yosemite Portland Cement Company, incorporated in 1925, opened a lime rock (cement) quarry at Emory in 1927, and the Yosemite Valley Railroad began hauling the rock from there to the company’s Merced mill. Railroad traffic further diminished in November 1927 when the Yosemite Lumber Company, which had provided a major portion of the railroad’s revenue, closed its mill because of a decreasing market. In December 1928 the Sugar Pine Lumber Company of Pinedale purchased the Yosemite Lumber Company’s assets and briefly resumed operations. The railroad also began hauling for several smaller mines and quarries and transported mail and freight for the park. The National Lead Company began mining barites in El Portal in 1929, its deposits providing ninety-six percent of all barites used in California drilling operations. It became an important shipper on the Yosemite Valley Railroad. When the depression hit full force in late 1930, however, the Merced Falls lumber mill closed for a five-year period, and in the early 1930s, the Portland Cement Company drastically curtailed production, bringing on some lean years for the railroad company.77

[77. Hank Johnston, Short Line to Paradise: “The Story of the Yosemite Valley Railroad” (Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1962), 19-22, 26-30, 37. Also see The Western Railroader, Issue No. 257, vol. 24, no. 5 (May 1961): 3-4, 8-9, 11-12, and Issue No. 310, vol. 38, no. 11 (November 1965), and Johnston, Railroads of the Yosemite Valley, 21-77.]

J. Natural Resource Management

1. Stream Control

According to James Milestone, during the years of Park Service administration, stream control has passed through three intense periods of construction. Two of them are mentioned in this chapter. During the years 1916 to 1927, the “Sovulewski Years,” Gabriel Sovulewski was general foreman of maintenance in charge of the construction and planning of front-and backcountry trails. He also continued the Yosemite commission’s efforts to halt the lateral erosion of the Merced River banks by constructing bridges, clearing channels, and installing riprap. Future Park Service policies on stream control became well entrenched during this time.

A second distinct period of Park Service stream control, that of the “Landscape Architect,” lasting from 1928 to 1938, emphasized landscape architecture. Landscape architects became more concerned with making the river aesthetically pleasing than continuing natural processes. To accomplish that objective, the Park Service performed more bank revetment, channel clearing, dam building, pipe laying, and bridge construction. During most of that period, the Civilian Conservation Corps performed the majority of the stream control actions, removing log jams, sloping and revegetating undercut river banks, excavating river gravel, and dredging Mirror Lake. Many of the projects Hall had recommended in 1882 were finally carried out, including the construction of five large stone bridges, all of which unintentionally restricted the size of the channel and acted as dams during floods. The last phase of Park Service stream control, the “Preventative Nature Design Years,” from 1955 to 1967, developed after the devastating 1955 flood and will be discussed in the final chapter.

A selected chronology of Park Service construction centering around the Merced River, including stream control measures, from 1916 to 1930, follows:

1916 - placement of water-stage recorders near Happy Isles and Pohono Bridge

1917 - collapse of Clark’s Bridge and its rebuilding in concrete; construction of Indian Canyon Creek Bridge

1918 - construction of Sentinel Bridge; automatic water-stage recorder installed on Tenaya Creek

1919 - erection of dry rock wall on south side of Merced between valley footbridge and village road; construction of small bridge at Stoneman Meadow

1921 - installation of riprap near Stoneman Bridge

1922 - riprap along Yosemite Creek installed; Yosemite Creek road built; Yosemite Creek Bridge finished

1923 - removal of small bridge on Indian Creek and replacement with iron culvert; construction of dam and intake pipeline on Illilouette Creek

1927 - riprapping near Happy Isles; thirteen-plus miles of valley roads asphalted; two miles of roads paved with river gravel; Ahwahnee Hotel completed with gravel from Merced River used in concrete

1928 - construction of Ahwahnee, Sugar Pine, Clark’s, Tenaya Creek, and Pohono bridges with gravel from Merced River and valley-quarried granite; construction of Illilouette Creek Bridge

1930 - El Capitan Bridge falls^78

[78. Milestone, “Influence of Modern Man on the Stream System of Yosemite Valley,” 85-94. Milestone’s chronology is more detailed, although the writer’s information sometimes differs from the dates presented by Milestone and those changes are reflected here.]

In 1930 H. E. Williams, Special Agent, wrote a memorandum on Merced River erosion. Williams stated that although “the Merced River has been flowing through Yosemite Valley for a million years and may continue to flow for millions of years without destroying the Valley or all of the trees,” that fact “does not in any way lessen our opportunity to prevent further damage, provided such work can be done at a reasonable cost and . . . that it does not too greatly detract from the natural beauty of the Valley.”79 Williams’s primary concern centered around the number of trees lying in the river that had formed a foundation for river deposits, thus changing the current so that it undercut the banks on the opposite side. As a result of those natural dams, in some places the river had cut new channels, leaving unsightly exposures of trees, roots, and rocks covered with mud during parts of the year. Williams did not particularly approve of riprapping because of its cost and aesthetic objections, but admitted it would be better than letting these conditions continue. His main suggestions involved using a steam or gas shovel to open up the objectionable river deposits and using the excavated material for fill for parking places and campgrounds and in other construction work. Such action would not only open the Merced channel, change the currents, prevent erosion, and prevent much of the overflow into campgrounds, but also provide much needed material for development.80

[79. H. E. Williams, A Memorandum on Merced River Erosion, Yosemite National Park, 11 January 1930, 1.]

[80. Ibid., 1-3.]

2. Meadows

During the 1920s, valley meadow conditions gradually improved. Forest encroachment remained a continuing problem. In 1919 some portions of the meadows by camps 6, 17, and 18 were cleared of growth and three years later workers removed small evergreens from El Capitan Meadow. Clearing of trees would continue in an attempt to preserve remaining meadowlands. Up to that time, as mentioned earlier, the meadows had been severely impacted by cultivation, grazing, picnicking, parking, and various forms of recreation. The advent of the auto had resulted in a decline in the use of horses and horse-drawn conveyances and consequently in a decreased demand for hay and pasture, leading to a general decline in livestock and barn and feed facilities. This enabled the meadows to gradually begin reverting to a more natural state. The increased visitation, however, with its intensified land use, began forcing the Park Service to more clearly assess the use of the limited valley acreage.

The tule elk herd penned in Yosemite Valley beginning in the early 1920s resulted in much overgrazing of the area between the old and new villages. In 1924 more of El Capitan Meadow was fenced for stock grazing, the old pasture having become barren. By the mid-1920s, however, the Park Service began imposing limitations on meadow utilization. In 1924 fences around Leidig and Bridalveil meadows came down and the gradual phasing out of grazing began. By 1930 the valley dairy herds had been removed and the number of work stock much reduced. Beginning in 1929, park crews began digging ditches around the meadows and placing rock curbs to prevent cars driving onto the meadows.81 The ditches also, however, changed the valley drainage patterns by interrupting their flow.

[81. Fitzsimmons, “Effect of the Automobile,” 107, 110, 119.]

3. Fire Control

Until the 1920s, the Park Service had no central fire control organization. Fire control expertise primarily came from park rangers who had graduated from forestry school or who had transferred from the Forest Service and who propagated Forest Service beliefs about fire and control techniques. Many early parks, formed out of national forests, inherited the remains of the previous Forest Service fire organization, such as lookout towers, roads, trails, and the like. General Park Service fire policy has been discussed earlier, and only its specific applications during 1916 to 1930 will be discussed here.

The Park Service considered fire a threat to the scenic and recreational values of the parks, as had the commissioners and, with some notable exceptions, the army. The Service’s major fire control thrust was suppression, although no money specifically for that purpose had ever been appropriated. In 1922 the Park Service finally received a special fire control appropriation—an emergency account to be used only in case of fire. Four years later it was combined with other moneys into a general disaster fund to cope with emergencies and repair damage. No presuppression activities were allowed, however.

In 1926, while the forest fire danger continued to grow, Chief Naturalist Ansel Hall became head of a Park Service Division of Education and Forestry, headquartered in Berkeley. The position primarily was to be concerned with interpreting forest resources to visitors, but it soon included fire planning duties. In 1928 the actions of Park Service crews in fighting a large fire near Sequoia National Park brought much criticism and led to the creation of the post of fire control expert under the chief forester. A veteran Forest Service supervisor, John D. Coffman, was named to the new position. Under Coffman the Park Service and other members of the Forest Protection Board prepared a comprehensive fire prevention plan detailing the facilities and other requirements adequate for fire control within the National Park System. This laid the foundation for later Civilian Conservation Corps fire programs in the parks. Congress then made its first national appropriation of $10,000 for park fire protection and also stressed the need for presuppression capabilities, an activity which was actively carried out by the CCC. Fire lookouts op were not authorized until 1931.82

[82. Pyne, Fire In America, 296-98. Interagency experimentation with resource management on a national scale during the 1920s resulted in formation of the Forest Protection Board, which existed from 1927 to 1933. It functioned as an advisory body to ensure coordination of effort among federal agencies in examining all aspects of forest destruction, especially fire. Ibid., 317-18.]

4. Grazing

The question of park grazing arose at the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I on 6 April 1917 and prompted some heated disagreements between Secretary of the Interior Lane and Acting Park Service Director Horace Albright. The latter tried to persuade his supervisor, whose patriotism was clouding his conservation convictions, to keep park resources intact unless the war situation took a drastic turn for the worse. The crisis arose when western ranchers began agitating for the right to graze sheep and cattle on park lands. They would, they said, conform to the government’s request for conservation of food supplies. Although the possibility existed that the cattlemen hoped to use this argument as a means of gaining a foothold on park lands, in view of their strong demands, the Park Service opened certain areas of the parks to grazing, but only by cattle, which were thought to be less destructive in their grazing habits. In Yosemite, Secretary Lane wanted all the park lands above the valley opened to sheep. Albright reached a compromise with him, permitting cattle to graze on lands primarily in the western and northwestern portions of the park, north and south of the Tuolumne River, plus a small section in the southeast corner. Albright managed to forestall the department issuing large numbers of grazing permits for most of 1917.

The Park Service and California grazing interests discussed the continuation of grazing on park lands as war conditions continued during 1918. As a result of strong lobbying efforts by the California Cattlemen’s Association for increased grazing privileges over those granted at the beginning of the war, the Park Service opened about seventy percent of Yosemite to grazing during the period of emergency. The cattle grazing had immediate detrimental effects on the deer population, which began to suffer from lack of food.

In 1919 the Park Service decided to again close Yosemite to grazing because of the termination of the war and the ending of drought conditions. It restated that no reason existed for permitting commercial uses of the park during peacetime and also pointed out that the expected heavy tourist visitation that year made it desirable to keep the reservation as free as possible of activities inconsistent with the primary purposes of the park. Altogether, the national parks received little damage from grazing during World War I thanks to the efforts of Acting Director Albright, supported by various conservation groups.83

[83. Swain, Wilderness Defender, 73-75.]

K. Fish Hatcheries

During the 1916 season, the park more stringently enforced its fishing regulations and pursued with continued vigor the work of stocking lakes and streams. Fish conservation had become an important activity because fishing, particularly in the backcountry, had evolved into one of the main park attractions.

In the fall of 1917 the Galifornia Fish and Game Commission conducted a survey to determine a suitable site for a trout hatchery to serve Yosemite Valley and outlying areas. The commission reached an agreement with the Interior Department allowing the state to lease a site of approximately three acres at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley for a twenty-year period. The agreement provided that the state erect a building at its own expense, on the condition that if the federal government wanted to take it over after three years, it would reimburse the state for the original cost. The project appeared very advantageous to the state in that its interests were fully protected, the park would furnish water free from its distributing mains, and park personnel would distribute the fry without cost to the state. In addition, the hatchery offered an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to visitors the type of work the commission performed.

Subsequently the Fish and Game Commission established an experimental hatchery operation in the fall of 1918. Early the next year it acquired lumber for a building, and in the spring of 1919 it installed a temporary hatchery building on the site of the proposed permanent one. That same spring 400,000 rainbow, lahontan cutthroat, and steelhead trout eggs hatched. Although the site proved successful for breeding purposes, opposition to continuing the project arose because the erection of permanent buildings on leased land contravened state policy. The state therefore decided to abandon the project, and in the fall of 1919 the governor of California ordered the hatchery dismantled and removed. The equipment was transferred to Wawona and used to equip that station for more extensive operations.

Over the next few years the park continued to think that because of the rapidly increasing use of the park by the public and the accompanying increase in the use of fishing waters, more extensive stocking of park waters was necessary than was possible by shipping fry to the park from outside hatcheries. Finally, after the Federal Bureau of Fisheries, which operated hatcheries in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, began showing an interest in extending its activities to Yosemite, the state and the Park Service reached an agreement in 1926 for a permanent hatchery at Happy Isles. The hatchery building and two residences were subsequently built in 1927. The new hatchery played an important role in connection with the educational and nature study work being carried on in the park; in 1927 the park instituted Nature Guide services there.

The hatchery building, of local rock and heavy timber, contained 52 troughs for hatching and rearing the trout, and a smaller room held four 250-gallon aquariums where visitors could see rainbow, golden, and brown trout. The structure also held displays explaining the fishery program in Yosemite. A large show pond outside contained prize specimens of trout, while six circular concrete tanks raised “catchable” trout. Two family dwellings stood south of the hatchery, and a bachelor quarters was attached to the side of the building.84

[84. Robert C. Pavlik, “A History of Yosemite’s Fish Hatcheries,” 1984, typescript, 3 pages, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 2-3; E. C. Finney, First Asst. Secretary, Department of the Interior, to California State Fish and Game Commission, 10 February 1923, Central Files, RG 79, NA. The Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan 1977, 89, points out that the waterfalls formed during the Pleistocene glaciation acted as fish barriers, preventing fish from reaching streams and lakes in the high country. Man’s introduction of exotic fish has been contrary to a “natural area” concept and the park fishery, enabling fish planting in waters to which trout are not indigenous, basically served an alien function by prohibiting the restoration of aquatic ecosystems to their original condition. In addition, fish stocking in Yosemite has mostly involved genetically altered, hatchery strains of the native rainbow trout and other species alien to the park. Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 33.]

L. Stream Flow Measurements

During 1915 the Park Service established temporary gauging stations on the Merced River, one above Illilouette Creek and the other on the Illilouette near its confluence with the Merced. In August 1915 laborers placed a staff gauge at the Happy Isles Bridge, downstream from the power plant and near the fish hatchery. It eventually appeared that the powerhouse regulated the river’s flow and that the one or two daily staff readings were insufficient reflections of the daily mean flow with that regulation and did not accurately portray the often extreme fluctuation caused by melt-off from April through June. To remedy the situation, an automatic water-stage recorder replaced the Happy Isles staff gauge in November 1916. An attractive fourteen-foot-square enclosure with vertical log pillars and a high hip shake roof sheltered the new equipment. (After a falling tree destroyed it in April 1975, a smaller, less distinctive structure replaced it.)

Illustrations 131-34.
Water gauging station, Pohono Bridge, and gauge at Happy Isles with interpretive information. It states that this spot was selected as a national hydrologic benchmark because of its location in a national park on a stream largely unaffected by man. Recordings are made of water stages and temperatures and samples collected for analysis of dissolved minerals and gases, trace metals, bacteria, and suspended sediment.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985, and Linda W. Greene, 1984.

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At the same time workers installed a similar automatic Friel eight-day water-stage recorder on the Merced just upstream from the Pohono Bridge. The housing for that recorder, on the south side of the river, is still visible today from the El Portal road. A third water-stage recorder installed on Tenaya Creek in 1918 replaced the staff gauge that Chandler and Currie had erected there in 1904. The National Park Service provided materials and labor for the construction of the stilling wells and instrument shelters for the three recording stations, while the Geological Survey and the state of California provided the instruments, plans, and supervision. Continuous recorders replaced all the eight-day oc recorders in 1925.85

[85. Robert C. Pavlik, “Water Gaging Stations in the Merced River Drainage, 1904-1984,” 6 December 1984, typescript, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Stream-flow records have been obtained in two areas of the park other than the valley floor, but not directly in cooperation with the National Park Service. A station operated on the South Fork of the Merced at Wawona from 1910 until 1922. Also, in accordance with provisions of the Raker Act, the city and county of San Francisco, under the direction of the Geological Survey, operated gauging stations for several years on the Tuolumne River, Falls Creek, and Eleanor Creek.

The cooperation over many years between Yosemite National Park and the Geological Survey resulted in useful and valuable records of stream flow from Sierra Nevada streams in their natural state. A list of the stream-flow gauges established in Yosemite National Park follows:

Yosemite Creek—stream-flow recordation began here on 9 July 1904. The staff gauge was fastened to an alder tree on the right bank, fifty feet upstream from the bridge on the road between the Yosemite post office and Yosemite Fall and half a mile upstream from the confluence of the creek and the Merced River. Readings were taken from 1904 to 1909 and 1912 to 1926.

Merced River at Yosemite Creek—a staff gauge was established on 11 July 1904 at the bridge across the Merced River at the Sentinel Hotel, about one-half mile upstream from Yosemite Creek. It was fastened to the masonry of the left abutment on the downstream side. Readings were made irregularly to 1909 and from 1912 to 1918.

Tenaya Creek—a staff gauge was established 11 July 1904 at the highway bridge over Tenaya Creek about .7 mile upstream from its mouth. Early records describe the gauging station as at Tissaack Avenue bridge crossing Tenaya Creek on the road between the Yosemite post office and Mirror Lake. The stilling well and shelter for the automatic water-stage recorder installed in 1918 were built in the left bank about fifty feet upstream from the bridge. Readings were made from 1904 to 1909 and from 1912 on.

Merced River at Happy Isles Bridge—a staff gauge was established here on 20 August 1915, close to the powerhouse at the structure now used as a trail bridge. The gauge was bolted to a large boulder on the downstream side of the right bank pier. One of the first two automatic water-stage recorders used in Yosemite Valley replaced it on 2 November 1916. The well and shelter for the recorder stood on the right bank about twenty feet downstream from the bridge. Readings continued from 1915 on.

Merced River above Illilouette Creek—a staff gauge was established 20 August 1915 to determine the low flow for the season. The gauge was attached to a large boulder on the left bank about 1,000 feet upstream from the mouth of Illilouette Creek and one-fourth mile upstream from the point of diversion for the powerhouse. Readings were made from August through December 1915 and some in 1916. Illilouette Creek—a staff gauge was established 20 August 1915 at a point about 800 feet upstream from its mouth and one-half mile from the powerhouse, just downstream from Happy Isles. It was a temporary station established to ascertain the low water flow for the season. Readings were made from August through December 1915 and some in 1916.

Merced River at Pohono Bridge—an automatic Friel eight-day water-stage recorder was installed here on 2 November 1916 in a concrete well with a wooden shelter, built with the help of park personnel on the left bank of the river about 150 feet upstream from or the Pohono Bridge. Readings were made from 1916 on.86

[86. Revoe C. Briggs, District Engineer, Geological Survey, to Carl P. Russell, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, 20 May 1952, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

M. Snow Survey

Beginning in the mid-19205, rangers conducted snow surveys on a limited basis in Yosemite National Park. Although snow surveys were usually made to provide data needed to forecast runoff, which was important to storage operations connected with power production, irrigation, and domestic water supply, and to facilitate flood control, recreation, and avalanche forecasting, those made in the park at this time helped determine the opening date for high country roads and trails and predict the condition of the valley waterfalls during the tourist season.

The Park Service did, however, enter into an agreement with the Merced Irrigation District, which was interested in runoff because the Merced River fed directly into the district’s reservoir on the eastern side of the San Joaquin Valley. In 1926 a snow course was installed at Dana Meadow. In 1927 the district donated money to build a patrol cabin at Merced Lake to aid in snow surveys. The Park Service building could be used by the irrigation district in the course of snow survey travels. That cabin is used today as a ranger patrol cabin.

The state legislature appropriated funds in 1929 to be used by the Department of Water Resources in organizing a California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program to begin in January 1930. That program would coordinate snow surveys throughout the Sierra. The department provided funds for equipment, building construction, and occasionally for personnel to conduct the surveys. Agencies to be involved in the snow surveys included irrigation districts, municipalities, and public utility companies, as well as other state and federal agencies.87 The Park Service agreed to assist in the program. Once a month, from January through April, rangers traveled over the designated snow courses measuring the depth of snow and the water content.

[87. Robert C. Pavlik, “A History of Snow Survey in Yosemite National Park,” 30 November 1984, typescript, 2 pages, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1.]

N. Establishment of Yosemite Advisory Board

An important event with significance for future planning efforts in Yosemite National Park took place in 1927 with the formation of a Yosemite Advisory Board. The action related to a comprehensive study of the problems related to the use and enjoyment of the park and the preservation of its natural features that Congress authorized in the Interior Department Appropriation Act for fiscal year 1929. The first three men suggested for appointment as Expert Advisors were Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr., the nationally known landscape architect and planner; Duncan McDuffie of San Francisco, a member of the Coordinating Committee on National Parks and Forests; and John P. Buwalda, professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, all of whom were considered outstanding in their interest, knowledge, and judgment regarding national parks and conservation matters.

Ordinarily Park Service areas did not have advisory boards, but the Interior Department believed that Yosemite Valley, because of its extremely heavy visitor impact, had need of such a planning body to aid in questions of broad policy. The group’s task involved formulating a basic plan for the valley floor, including all of its administrative and service needs, taking into consideration the park’s fundamental values. Hopefully, after studying the unique features of Yosemite Valley and the surrounding country, the board could design a plan not only for the development of the valley floor but for the larger use of the park as a whole. The department considered this a good time to reclarify the educational and inspirational features of the area.

Coincidentally, Colonel Charles Goff Thomson came from Crater Lake National Park in 1929 to serve as Yosemite superintendent, succeeding W. B. Lewis. This period of park development, beginning with a reformulation of objectives and a restatement of ideals, required a dynamic, experienced, but visionary leader at the helm. Thomson fitted the requirements perfectly. Frank A. Kittredge later stated that Thomson’s

keen sense of the fitness and desire for the harmony of things in the national parks has made itself felt in the design of every road, every structure, and every physical development in the Park. He recognized the importance and practicability of restricting and harmonizing roads and structures into a natural blending of the surroundings. He has set a standard of beauty and symmetry in construction which has been carried beyond the limits of Yosemite into the entire National Park system. The harmony of the necessary man-made developments and the unspoiled beauty of Yosemite Valley attest to the Colonel’s injection of his refinement of thought and forceful personality, into even, n the everlasting granite itself of the Yosemite he loved so well.88

[88. Scott, The Yosemite Story, 50. Thomson served as superintendent until 1937.]

CHAPTER VI: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ADMINISTRATION, 1931 TO CA. 1960

A. Overview 731
1. Stephen Mather Steps Down 731
2. Public Works Programs Aid Completion of Park Projects 732
3. The Dissolution of Emergency Relief Projects Severely Impacts Park Conditions 750
4. MISSION 66 Revives Park Development 752
B. Roads, Trails, and bridges 758
1. Trail Construction in the early 1930s Results in Completion of John Muir Trail 758
2. Reconstruction of Park Roads Begins in early 1930s 762
a) Paving and Tunnel and bridge building Commence 762
b) Tioga Road 762
c) Wawona Road and Tunnel 763
d) Yosemite Valley bridges 769
e) Glacier Point Road 769
f) Big Oak Flat Road 771
g) Trail and Road Signs 771
h) Bridge Work Precedes Flood of 1937 778
i) North Valley Road Realignment Considered 784
j) Completion of New Big Oak Flat Road 785
k) Bridge Work Continues in the 1940s 785
I) Flood of 1950 795
m) Completion of the Tioga Road 796
n) Flood Reconstruction Work Continues 797
o) MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for New Big Oak Flat Entrance Road 802

C. Construction and Development 802
1. Season of 1931 803
2. Season of 1932 811
3. Season of 1933 815
4. Season of 1934 824
5. Season of 1935 839
6. Season of 1936 850
7. Season of 1937 851
a) General Construction 851
b) Flood Damage 852
c) New CCC Cascades Camp Constructed 853
8. Season of 1938 855
9. Seasons of 1939-40 859
10. Period of the Late 1940s 871
11. The 1950s Period Encompasses Many Changes 872
D. Concession Operations 884
1. The National Park Service Acquires Wawona Basing 884
2. Big Trees Lodge 894
3. Chronology of Later Yosemite Park and Curry Company Development 895
a) Company Facilities Need Improvement 895
b) Winter Sports Move to Badger Pass 901
c) Limited Construction Occurs 902
d) High Sierra Camps Continue 903
e) the U. S. Navy Takes over the Ahwahnee Hotel 904
f) The Curry Company Begins a New Building Program 905

E. Patented Lands 917
1. Remaining in 1931 917
2. Yosemite Lumber Company 922
3. Section 35, Wawona 923
4. Camp Hoyle 931
5. Hazel Green 931
6. Carl Inn 932
7. Foresta 932
8. Big Meadow 937
9. White Wolf 938
10. Soda Springs 939
11. Tioga Mine 944
a) Renewal of activity 944
b) Mine ruins 946
12. MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for Land Acquisition 947
F. Hetch Hetchy 948
1. O’Shaughnessy Dam Raised 948
2. Hetch Hetchy Railroad Revived 949
3. Construction and Security, 1930s-1950s 961
G. Yosemite Valley Railway 961
H. Research and Park Management 966
I. Natural Resource Management 967
1. River and Stream Control 967
2. Fire Control 974
3. Grazing 975
4. Insect Control 977
5. Blister Rust Control 979
J. Fish and Game 981
K. Water Monitoring 985
L. Snow Survey 985
M. El Portal 987
N. Summary 994

A. Overview

1. Stephen Mather Steps Down

The period covered by this chapter offered strong challenges and an exciting future to the National Park Service. After struggling to build a foundation for America’s park system based on sound policies and broad principles of resource conservation and park protection during the difficult years of World War I and its aftermath, the Park Service was well on the way to achieving its desired goals when two potentially devastating events took place.

In January 1929 Stephen Mather stepped down as director of the Park Service due to ill health, which resulted in his death in January 1930. The loss dealt a severe blow to the park system in America to which Mather had contributed so much time, effort, and money in an attempt to establish a solid and organized management system with a clear philosophical direction. Fortunately, Mather’s ideals and basic policies continued under Horace Albright, who, because of his long tenure with the Park Service, dating from before Mather’s time, and years of assisting Mather, made him practically a co-founder of our present National Park System.

Having functioned as Mather’s assistant for so many years in addition to serving as superintendent of Yellowstone for ten years, Albright could smoothly continue building on the achievements of the early Mather years. He was knowledgeable in governmental affairs and well-known and respected in Washington’s political arena. Of great benefit to his work was the fact that the park idea had become solidly entrenched in the American consciousness. Albright also enjoyed the support of Interior Department officials and the aid of a first-class staff in the Washington office and in the field. During his four-year tenure as director, Albright enlarged nine of the national parks, including Yosemite, and also gained three additional parks as well as several national monuments.

The biggest challenge facing Albright almost immediately involved the economic and social crises occasioned by the American stock market crash and the arrival of the Great Depression. With organizational skill and a masterful grasp of problems and solutions, Albright successfully guided the National Park System through this critical period and into the early part of the New Deal. Albright assumed the Park Service directorship just as Herbert Hoover was assuming the office of President of the United States. During Hoover’s administration the pall of the depression spread over the country, manifesting itself in long food lines, abandoned factories and businesses, rampant unemployment, and bank closures. The nation seemed headed toward complete devastation, with no means in sight of alleviating the distress.

2. Public Works Programs Aid Completion of Park Projects

In 1933, however, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President and immediately proposed a revolutionary legislative and social program designed to ameliorate the country’s economic situation. Between 9 March and 16 June 1933, Roosevelt proposed fifteen emergency acts destined to dramatically affect the nation’s social and political institutions for years to come. Elated at being presented with constructive legislation, Congress passed them immediately.

Roosevelt’s first concern involved the rampant unemployment in the country, especially among young people who remained unable to find jobs and who were gradually becoming embittered at their fate. Roosevelt perceived that family incomes had to be restored and the morale of young Americans raised at the same time. In his first hundred days in office Roosevelt introduced the idea of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program stimulated by his interest in forestry and conservation. The CCC work program, directed by the Emergency Conservation Work organization, received top priority in the early New Deal period. The act establishing the CCC became law on 31 March 1933, enabling the government to take thousands of unemployed young men off the streets and provide them with jobs and a cash allowance, in addition to board, medical attention, educational opportunities, and practical job training. In return, the men performed needed work in America’s federal and state forests and parks.

As the Interior Department’s representative on the CCC Advisory Council, a body composed of representatives of the departments of War, Labor, Interior, and Agriculture, Director Albright immediately began compiling estimates for road and trail work, physical construction, and forest protection and cleanup in the national parks. Because each park already had a master plan for development work, the Park Service was better prepared than most agencies to begin projects immediately.1 The council in the early weeks of the New Deal helped set up the CCC organization and programs and determine the role of participating agencies. The Department of Labor would select the CCC candidates, the army would transport the men to the camps, feed and clothe them, carry out their physical conditioning, maintain morale, and generally handle all camp matters, while the agencies of the departments of Interior and Agriculture for which the men worked would have technical supervision of them during work details.2

[1. Master plans are comprehensive land plans containing basic data relevant to specific park areas. They consist of maps and documentation describing the natural and cultural features, engineering aspects, road systems, -forest fire protection, maintenance problems, and all development that needed to be considered in planning for the area’s protection and public use. Conrad L. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 58.]

[2. James F. Kieley, CCC: The Organization and Its Work (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1938), 6-7.]

The federal government never considered the CCC a permanent measure, although many who saw its benefits, including Roosevelt, pushed for its continuation as a permanent organization. Entirely financed by emergency funds, it was organized within weeks, the Park Service having seventy camps in full operation by 30 June. The peak of CCC growth came in 1935 when more than 2,500 camps operated. The number gradually decreased up to World War II.3

[3. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 105; Kieley, CCC, 14.]

The emergency legislation passed in Roosevelt’s first hundred days, providing massive amounts of money and labor, enabled the Park Service to launch several long-term development projects that had been slowly dying for lack of money. The park projects undertaken were selected from each park’s development program. The CCC initiated the largest construction program ever undertaken in Yosemite, but other emergency and relief programs of benefit to the park were also enacted during the New Deal period. Civil Works Administration (CWA) activities took place between November 1933 and April 1934. This program also functioned as an emergency unemployment relief program, created to offset the lull in the business revival of mid-1933 and to soften economic hardships during the winter of 1933-34. It employed men and women in park development projects and used skilled workers as well as artists, painters, sculptors, and draftsmen.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) assumed the continuation of road and trail construction and other physical improvements and, because it necessitated topographical surveys, landscape studies, and wildlife protection policies, provided work for engineers, landscape architects, artists, and scientists. Beginning in 1935, the Park Service cooperated with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) established by the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, assuming responsibility for techncial supervision of its programs, involving resource conservation and recreational development. Although most of its projects needed manual laborers, arts projects enabled hiring of writers, actors, musicians, and artists. At the start of 1937, the various public works programs undertaken within the National Park System consolidated as Emergency Relief Act 4 Projects until 1941, when public works appropriations began to dwindle.4

[4. Harlan D. Unrau and G. Frank Williss, Administrative History: Expansion of the National Park Service in the 1930s (Denver: National Park Service, 1983), 94-101.]

The CCC, however, remained the largest conservation movement in history. Yosemite’s CCC camps were among the first organized in the West, beginning operations on 6 June 1933. The park hosted several camps, at Crane Flat, Eleven-Mile Meadow, and Wawona, and later at Empire Meadow, Tamarack Flat, and The Cascades.5 The Park Service located its CCC camps near the work project areas, preferably near railroads or highways and water sources, and in close proximity to lumber and other building materials. The earliest camps consisted of army tents, which were gradually replaced by more substantial, but still temporary, wooden buildings. By 1934 the army had designed a prefabricated structure with interchangeable panels that could be easily erected and transported and could serve multiple purposes. The army mass produced these by 1935.

[5. “Camp Boys Build Trails and Help Improve Park,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, Yosemite Valley edition, 81, no. 1: 12.]

Camps usually formed a U shape and contained recreation halls, a garage, a hospital, administrative buildings, a mess hall, officers’ quarters, enrollee barracks, and a schoolhouse. The space enclosed by the buildings served for group functions and sports. The wooden exteriors of the buildings were painted brown or green, creosoted, or covered with tar paper. In 1939, specific structures to be included in CCC camps consisted of barracks, a mess hall and kitchen, Technical Service quarters, officers’ quarters, a Technical Service Headquarters and storehouse combined, army headquarters and storehouse combined, a recreation building, a dispensary, a bathhouse, a latrine, garages, an oil house, a pump house, a generator house, a blacksmith shop, an educational building, and an equipment repair and maintenance building. Spike or stub tent camps sometimes sprang up separate from the main camp when a specific job too distant from the main for easy daily travel had to be completed or during fire hazard times so that the men could keep a close watch on forest conditions.6

[6. John C. Paige, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History (Washington: National Park Service, 1985), 70-72, f n. 8; 73.]

The first work of CCC enrollees in Yosemite consisted of forest cleanup and improvement, roadside clearing, construction of horse trails, erection of telephone lines, construction of two egg-taking stations, development of public campgrounds, creek and river erosion control, sloping and planting of cut banks and road fills, insect control, and other forestry work such as removal of undesirable plants and revegetation.7

[7. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1933, microfilm rol #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 26-32.]

Emergency Conservation Work in the national parks and forests in general included the above work plus the construction and maintenance of fire breaks, campground clearing, trail clearing, construction of fire- and recreation-related structures, road and trail building, forest fire suppression, survey work, plant eradication, bridge building, flood control, tree disease control, and landscaping.8 Prior to ECW, forest fires had posed the gravest threat to the parks, but the Park Service had always lacked sufficient fire fighting personnel and had been unable to implement fire protection programs in each park. Civilian Conservation Corps personnel managed to reduce park fire losses tremendously beginning in the first nine months of 1933. The men not only located and suppressed fires, but constructed fire towers and telephone lines as well as roads, trails, and other firebreaks. The following year, refinements were made to park fire fighting programs and specific enrollees were selected for fire protection training. In general, each park’s fire protection plan became better implemented by use of ECW enrollees.9 All CCC work in natural areas of the National Park System was planned and overseen by landscape architects, park engineers, and foresters.10

[8. Paige, Civilian Conservation Corps, 18.]

[9. Ibid., 98-99.]

[10. Unrau and Williss, Expansion of the National Park Service, 81]

In 1935 the Park Service Branch of Forestry began publishing circulars on various aspects of fire fighting and forest conservation to guide ECW supervisors. Civilian Conservation Corps camps not only suppressed fires on Park Service lands, but began to cooperate in the protection of adjacent forests. In 1936 the Branch of Forestry requested ECW regional offices to send descriptions of each park’s fire fighting program to Washington to be reviewed and evaluated so that effective training programs could be developed. Yosemite ultimately gave fire suppression training to all enrollees but designated small groups as primary fire fighting teams. Fire protection training increased in 1937 and resulted in another sharp reduction in fire loss in the national parks. Fire fighting training increased in 1938 with fire fighting schools established nationwide.11 Although the Park Service continued to receive regular appropriations for fire protection and forest preservation during these years, they were insufficient and had to be supplemented by CCC funds.

[11. Paige, Civilian Conservation Corps, 99-101.]

The ECW/CCC also waged an intense battle against insects and disease. As early as 1932, Albright had requested emergency funding for a five-year program to combat pine beetles threatening timber stands in several of the western parks. Infestations of mountain pine and bark beetles were brought under control by the ECW in portions of Yosemite in 1933, after enrollees succeeded in destroying egg masses and cocoons of

Illustration 135.
Map of CCC camp no. 1, Wawona, 1934.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

tree-damaging moths and cut and burned beetle-infested trees. Superintendent Thomson, however, opposed ribes eradication to control white-pine blister rust. Instead he recommended more research on the forest ecosystem before removal of all currant and gooseberry bushes. The blister rust program was reduced in 1939 due to a lack of funding, although the danger from blister rust still seemed to exist.12

[12. Ibid., 101-103.]

Because of some fears that the size and scope of ECW work and the make-work aspects of some of the other programs threatened the preservation policies of the Park Service and could result in damage to wildlife habitat, Director Albright placed certain restrictions on ECW activities. For instance, to prevent the removal of ground cover needed by wild animals, Albright insisted that underbrush and ground cover sufficient for small bird and mammal habitat be retained and clearing done only to the extent of removing serious fire hazards. The threat posed to park values by the introduction of exotic vegetation and artificial landscaping was assessed, with the result that a Department of the Interior manual on ECW work specified the use of native plants except in special cases. At Yosemite, then, revegetation consisted of sowing and transplanting native plant species along roadsides. Overdevelopment through new truck trails that provided access to primitive areas posed another danger. The Wildlife Division of the Park Service by the mid-1930s was feeling increased demand for scientific investigations and supervision of ECW projects involving conservation because of the perceived need to determine the impacts of those projects on wildlife and the natural environment. From the beginning of the ECW program until the end of 1935, an enlarged staff of biologists, foresters, geologists, and other specialists participated in making vegetation maps and conducting biological studies on birds, fish, and mammals at various parks, including Yosemite.13

[13. Ibid., 103-109.]

Illustration 136.
Map of CCC camp no. 2, Wawona, 1934.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

Altogether, New Deal emergency projects increased the National Park Service budget by nearly $218,000,000, which underwrote most of the Park Service expansion and development projects of the 1930s. In sum, those programs, and the CCC in particular, improved the morale of America’s unemployed; provided education and practical job training to thousands of young men; enlarged the state parks system; advanced the national reforestation program; strengthened forest fire protection systems; advanced a nationwide erosion control and soil conservation program; assisted reclamation; increased recreational opportunities in forests and parks; promoted national interest in wildlife conservation by expanding fish hatcheries, improving streams and lakes, building rearing ponds, and restocking streams; aided grazing; and constructed thousands of bridges, service buildings, and other structures.14 It has been determined that the CCC advanced forestry and development in the national parks by at least ten to twenty years.

[14. Kieley, CCC, 44-46.]

The United States declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941 and on Germany and Italy on 11 December. Immediate mobilization and national defense preparations forced a reduction in CCC camps beginning in April 1941, which resulted in a reduction in the number of camps allocated to the Park Service. The termination of emergency programs was accompanied by a loss of park staff and CCC personnel, as enrollees began leaving for higher paying defense industry work or for military service, while their officers were being recalled for military duty. In addition, gas rationing cut park travel drastically. Park development maintenance, and repair fell to an all-time low as the Park Service terminated all CCC projects not directly related to the war effort. The final steps were then begun to reduce and eventually eliminate the CCC. The final decision to liquidate it was made on 30 June 1942 with enactment of the Labor-Federal Security Administration Appropriation Act for fiscal year 1943. During fiscal year 1942, camps were cut back, the CCC to be

Illustration 137.
Sketch of Merced Grove CCC camp, 1935.
Yosemite National Park Research Library and Records Center.

[click to enlarge]

dissolved by 1 July 1943.15 The continuing expenses of World War II resulted in the divergence of remaining emergency recovery funds to the war effort. Construction in the parks stopped and maintenance and fire protection capabilities lessened dramatically.

[15. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 143-44.]

The act terminating the CCC stated that the War and Navy departments and the Civil Aeronautics Administration had first choice of CCC properties and materials. The various articles of office and construction equipment, autos, trucks, barracks furnishings, tools, and other items were to be inventoried and then transferred to the military for the war effort (i.e., as rest and relaxation camps or for conscientous objector work camps) or to the Park Service, other federal agencies, or state, county, or municipal agencies. Park Service policy dictated that CCC camp buildings either be used or torn down. After the war the Selective Service System transferred all former CCC properties it had received from the Park Service in the first months of World War II back to that agency for final disposition.16 Thus ended one of the great conservation programs in American history. The work projects of the New Deal had not only protected and conserved the country’s exceptional natural resources but had developed national and state park and recreational areas for the public benefit.

[16. Paige, Civilian Conservation Corps, 36-37. Following discontinuance of the CCC program in 1942, the Wawona CCC buildings were held for use as a possible public service camp. During the latter part of April 1943, authority was granted the army for the occupation of the former Wawona CCC camp by several hundred men of the 426th Signal Battalion, Camp Pinedale, California, for special training. During December 1943, negotiations were completed for the transfer of the former Wawona CCC camp to the Western Signal Aviation Unit Training Center, Camp Pinedale, and the army stationed a small unit at the camp to protect its property. U. S. Army Signal Corps units utilized Park Service facilities both at Wawona and Badger Pass as special summer training schools. Even prior to America’s formal entry into World War II, mechanized army units had conducted maneuvers in the park to break in new equipment and gain experience in motor convoys. They stayed in campgrounds 14 and 15. “U. S. Soldiers in Yosemite for Practice,” Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, May 1940.]

Former Director Conrad Wirth stated:

development by many years. It made possible the development of many protective facilities on the areas that comprise the National Park System, and also provided, for the first time, a Federal aid program for State park systems through which the National Park Service gave technical assistance and administrative guidance for immediate park developments and long-range planning. . . .

The Civilian Conservation Corps advanced park The National Park System benefited immeasurably by the Civilian Conservation Corps, principally through the building of many greatly needed fire trails and other forest fire-preventional facilities such as lookout towers and ranger cabins. During the life of the CCC, the areas received the best fire protection in the history of the Service. . . . The CCC also provided the manpower and materials to construct many administrative and public-use facilities such as utility buildings, sanitation and water systems, housing for its employees, service roads, campground improvement, and museums and exhibits; to do reforestation and work relating to insect and disease control; to improve the roadsides; to restore historic sites and buildings; to perform erosion control, and sand fixation research and work; to make various travel and use studies; and to do many other developmental and administrative tasks that are so important to the proper protection and use of the National Park System.

The CCC made available to the superintendents of the national parks, for the first time, a certain amount of manpower that allowed them to do many important jobs when and as they arose. Many of these jobs made the difference between a well-managed park and one “just getting along.”

3. The Dissolution of Emergency Relief Projects Severely Impacts Park Conditions

The tremendous progress of the 1930s relative to national park construction, protection, and conservation, however, virtually stopped cold in the next decade as the United States became actively involved in World War II. Yearly Park Service appropriations dropped from thirty-five million dollars in 1940 to less than five million dollars in 1945. The impact on the parks was drastic, as facilities deteriorated, visitation slowed to a trickle, and other government agencies and private industry
[17. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 147-48.]
attempted to use the excuse of a national emergency as a means of appropriating park resources. A steadfast leader was needed to oppose that onslaught and protect the ideals that had been furthered by the New Deal emergency programs.

Horace Albright had left the Park Service in early 1933 to become vice president and general manager of the U. S. Potash Company. Arno B. Cammerer, associate director under Albright, replaced him as director and Arthur E. Demaray become associate director. Both Cammerer and Demaray had worked under Mather. Harold L. Ickes had served as Secretary of the Interior during the boom period of the 1930s and oversaw the expansion of park and recreational activities. In 1940 the overworked Cammerer asked to be relieved of his duties, and Ickes replaced him with Newton B. Drury, a highly respected conservationist. Drury stood firm against all threats to park resources during the war years while also trying to deal with the economic and developmental crisis brought on by the termination of the emergency relief projects. Despite the fact that its roads and structures were being heavily damaged by lack of maintenance, the Park Service made important contributions to the war effort. It cooperated to the fullest extent with the military and with federal agencies involved in war activities without allowing its resources to completely deteriorate. It made many of its facilities, especially concession-owned ones, available to the military as rest areas for injured men. Some parks provided areas for mountain maneuvers and the training of ski tropps. At the same time Park Service officials managed to fend off encroachments by mining and lumber interests.

Park visitation began to increase rapidly as the United States demobilized after the war, due to increased leisure time, more prosperity, and improved transportation. By the 1950s, however, the lack of maintenance in the parks had caused such deterioration of roads, buildings, and other facilities that they were completely inadequate and desperately in need of replacement. Although the Park Service budget picked up after V-E day, grants-in-aid to other countries during the Cold War repositioning period of international compacts and defense agreements seriously limited the money available to the Park Service to rebuild and refurbish park facilities. Park visitation, on the other hand, started to increase. In 1951 Drury accepted the job of head of the State Parks of California. Demaray, who had continued as associate director, accepted the Park Service directorship for a year, the last “Mather man” to hold that position. In December 1951 Conrad L. Wirth replaced him, serving as director until January 1964.

By 1955 the parks situation had become drastic. Park visitation had increased threefold since 1940. Eighteen new areas had been added to the system, increasing its holdings by several million acres. In Yosemite both Park Service structures and concession facilities were in need of extensive renovation. Increasing numbers of park visitors were not only causing overuse of resources, but were experiencing less enjoyable stays. Something had to be done to awaken Congress and the public to the impending loss of important natural and historical resources. Only a large sum of money could repair the damage to the parks caused by a minimum budget over the last several years. Above all, Wirth refused to give in to pressures to close some of the parks, preferring instead to attempt to rebuild the entire park system.

4. MISSION 66 Revives Park Development

Wirth’s solution to the problem lay in MISSION 66, conceived of in 1956 as a comprehensive ten-year program to upgrade and expand national park facilities to accommodate anticipated visitor use by 1966, the fiftieth anniversery of the National Park Service. In addition to construction of needed housing and other service structures and provision of essential services, such as sanitation facilities and water, sewer, and electrical systems, the program aimed at providing adequate operating funds and field staffs and acquiring private lands for protection and/or use.18 Master plans again became important in drawing up the MISSION 66 program, for many of them contained projects that needed financing and MISSION 66 provided the momentum for their accomplishment. Many projects were completed that improved the protection and preservation of park values. Many involved major road construction that was handled by the Bureau of Public Roads working with Park Service landscape architects. Since the mid-1920s, U. S. Public Health Service sanitary engineers had worked with the design office and the parks to improve sanitary facilities.19

[18. Shankland, Steve Mather, 326-27. Development under this program was to proceed with paramount consideration being protecting park areas for the purpose for which they had been established. Another function of MISSION 66 was to determine what was needed to round out the National Park System.]

[19. As stated earlier, master plans had been prepared for each Park Service area in the 1930s, by resident landscape architects of the San Francisco planning office that were assigned to major parks or groups of parks. This Central Design and Construction Division headed by Tom Vint later dispersed to regional offices in 1936. In 1954 Vint’s planning staff was reorganized into Western and Eastern Design and Construction offices in San Francisco and Philadelphia. Although they continued to primarily prepare and update master plans, during MISSION 66 they also designed and supervised construction projects. These master plans ensured the preservation of natural features and the placing of necessary facilities on sites where they blended into the landscape as much as possible. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 60-62.]

Construction became an important element of the MISSION 66 program, involving replacing outdated, inadequate facilities with improvements designed to handle increased loads but to be located in such areas as to reduce impact on the environment. At Yosemite, MISSION 66 proposed to provide an adequate road and trail system, sufficient accommodations and facilities for visitors, and effective interpretation of the resources. Another necessary part of the program included facilities and personnel necessary for the administration, maintenance, and protection of the park and housing for them. MISSION 66 planning incorporated many of the thoughts of the Yosemite Advisory Board regarding resolution of Yosemite’s manmade problems.
The park undertook its development program with the intent of not diminishing existing wilderness areas by extending roads or other development beyond their defined limits at that time and vowed that developments thought to be necessary for wilderness use would be appropriate to that environment. In addition, visitor accommodations and related services would be limited to designated areas. Specific items of Yosemite’s MISSION 66 program included:

1. Protection of Yosemite Valley. The Park Service realized that:
The limited area of the Valley, in relation to the physical facilities essential to operate the park and to serve the tremendous number of park visitors attracted to it, is the heart of the problem. We can no longer continue to build, construct and develop operating facilities on the Valley floor without seriously impairing and ultimately destroying those very qualities and values which the National Park Service was created to preserve and protect for future generations. The more space taken up on the Valley floor for repair and maintenance shops, warehouses, incinerators, employee housing, equipment storage and other operating facilities means thatp^much less space available for visitor use and enjoyment.20

Specifically park authorities intended to limit valley facilities to those necessary to directly serve the visitor, with supporting facilities for parkwide operation located elsewhere, probably in El Portal. This would include removing the obsolete incinerator and public dump and replacing them at the new operating base.

[20. National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, MISSION 66 for Yosemite National Park, n.d. (ca. 1956), in Box 22, Backcountry, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 4.]

2. Completion of the road and trail system, primarily the Crane Flat and Tioga Road entrance routes. The influx of travel to the park primarily via the South and Arch Rock entrances had resulted in an imbalance in park development and an unequal distribution of visitor load. Several important trail connections needed completion and repair of trails closed due to lack of maintenance was required. Completion of this system would allow visitor-use development in other portions of the park and relieve the pressure on concession facilities and the congestion in Yosemite Valley.

3. Construction of new water and sewer systems for government and concession developments to conform to U. S. Public Health Service requirements and of visitor-use facilities.

4. Replacement of obsolete concession facilities in Yosemite Valley, improvement of others parkwide, and provision of additional accommodations in other areas to relieve overcrowding. Although the park’s concessioners had been willing before to undertake this additional investment, prior to MISSION 66 the Park Service had been unable to provide the prerequisite access roads, parking areas, and utilities.

5. Acquisition of private lands. At this time the remaining private lands were located in the few remaining park areas whose level character and adequate water resources made them possible sites for public-use development. The land acquisition program would be time-consuming and laborious because the larger tracts had been subdivided into smaller lots. Again it was stressed that privately owned lands conflicted with public enjoyment and that maximum public use dictated their acquisition.21

[21. See ibid, for a description of the MISSION 66 program in Yosemite National Park, including summaries of the problems, program, and cost.]

The MISSION 66 program gained immediate acceptance from the President, Congress, and the American public. Park Service appropriations began to flow and even increase. Construction accomplishments of the period included park roads, trails, parking areas, campgrounds, picnic areas, campfire circles and amphitheaters, utilities, administrative and service buildings, utility buildings, reconstruction and rehabilitation of historic buildings, construction of employee residences, dormitories, apartments, comfort stations, interpretive roadside and trailside exhibits, lookout towers, and entrance stations. Other important innovations included visitor centers to house interpretive programs and ranger training centers. The Stephen T. Mather Research and Interpretive Ranger School at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, for ranger historians and naturalists, was an outgrowth of the Yosemite Field School of Natural History. The Horace M. Albright Ranger School at Grand Canyon served the ranger protective force.22

[22. Shankland, Steve Mather, 329.]

Concessioners invested a great deal of their money in new cabins, lodges, stores, shops, service stations, and the like. MISSION 66 also took steps to move administrative facilities, government housing, utility buildings, and shops out of national parks to reduce interference with park enjoyment. In this regard, a new employee residential and service area was established at El Portal. At the same time, because MISSION 66 in Yosemite Valley called for moving all development out of the valley meadows, the concessioner moved all his operations to the side of the valley, helping in meadow naturalization and improving scenic values. Concessioners were recognized as an important part of the MISSION 66 program. Also during MISSION 66, the Park Service removed itself from the power and communications utility business, switching over to commercial service on a contract basis.

The MISSION 66 program was early criticized as being overly road- and development-oriented, with little accomplished in terms lines of natural resource protection. In Yosemite, especially, the program continued Mather’s thrust of more accommodations and facilities, increased access to remote areas, and expansion of interpretive programs and facilities. Even at this point, the Park Service was not grasping the critical nature of the imbalance being created between visitor use and preservation of the natural environment. Those aspects of the MISSION 66 program in Yosemite that concerned limiting developments within the valley to facilities necessary to directly serve the visitor, with supporting facilities located elsewhere, are still under study and implementation. The program did, however, succeed in supplying more adequate facilities and services to enable the Yosemite visitor to better use and enjoy the park. In ensuing years questions of overuse, noise, congestion, vandalism, crime, wilderness impact, commercialization, concession policy, and wildlife management, and development plans that included new valley accommodations, an aerial tramway, and a new winter sports area, would complicate further master planning efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. The conflicting demands of use and preservation imposed on the national parks by today’s urban-oriented society, accustomed to certain amenities and privileges, will not be easily resolved.

Beginning in the 1930s and amid renewed efforts to promote the parks and preservation in general, access to Yosemite’s backcountry became important in terms of expanding visitor enjoyment and use of the park. Consideration of it as an entity with its own set of administrative problems and environmental concerns was not yet a primary issue. New trails, in addition to the High Sierra camps and park patrol cabins, promoted more intensive backcountry visitation. Although plans were voiced for new trails to open up new vistas and areas of special interest, the economic stringencies of the Depression and World War II killed such proposals. Inroads on the wilderness did not appear again with any intensity until the 1950s, at which time principles of resource management began to influence the park’s view and subsequent use of that area. The backcountry’s operations have remained of secondary importance to those of Yosemite Valley throughout most of the park’s history, with little formal coordination of studies or development. The park did not establish a Backcountry Office until 1972, which attempted to coordinate activities of the ranger, maintenance, and research staffs and to fit them into broader environmental programs. Establishment of this office finally acknowledged the importance of lesser-used sections of the park and their resources.

Meanwhile, advocacy for the “wilderness” park experience gained momentum as park visitors began to realize the enjoyment of hiking and backpacking in the backcountry. More sophisticated camping gear and a deeper appreciation of the environment no doubt contributed to the popularity of this type of experience. It remained harmonious with the initial concept of national parks as a place of refuge and contemplation but involved very different types of activities and land use than those expounded by Mather’s generation. In place of camps and roads, wilderness enthusiasts called for no artificial conveniences or motorized access routes. The Wilderness Act of 1964 meant that some control could be exerted on undeveloped backcountry in our national parks, especially in the West. In Yosemite the move toward “wilderness” resulted, among other things, in discontinuance of the firefall in 1968 as inconsistent with national park values. The California Wilderness Act of 1984, restricting backcountry use and development, finally placed wilderness concerns on a more equal footing with other park operations and ensured that planning and management objectives would consider the overdevelopment and abuse of resources in Yosemite Valley and would prevent that from occurring on a parkwide basis as much as possible.23

[23. See Snyder, “Yosemite Wilderness—An Overview,” 3-4.]

B. Roads, Trails, and Bridges

1. Trail Construction in the Early 1930s Results in Completion of John Muir Trail

By the early 1930s Yosemite’s trail network was largely complete, and trail crews began concentrating more on maintenance than construction. Some new work continued to be accomplished, however. In 1931 park crews completed the trail from Happy Isles to Merced Lake, including a new section between Little Yosemite and Lost valleys, considered one of the finest examples of modern trail construction in the national parks. (This stretch should be inspected and evaluated during the backcountry trail survey recommended later in this report.) In addition to constructing a parapet wall on the Vernal-Nevada falls trail above Happy Isles, workers installed a counting device near the foot of the trail containing a photo-electric cell. The device proved only moderately successful because it counted people twice who returned to investigate the curious apparatus. Crews also constructed three new footbridges at Happy Isles. Backcountry trail work included construction of the Chilnualna Trail; of the Isberg Pass trail, including a bridge across the Lyell Fork of the Merced; and of a trail from May Lake to Ten Lakes.

The city of San Francisco constructed more than twenty-four miles of trail during 1930-31 at a cost of about eighty-six thousand dollars. The work included trails with a width of six feet and a maximum grade of about sixteen percent and five trail bridges, most of which the December 1937 flood destroyed.24 Trail construction by the city in 1931 involved the Rancheria Trail, a bridge across Rancheria Creek, the Falls Creek Bridge at the mouth of Lake Vernon, and the Lake Vernon trail. Also in 1931 workers completed the John Muir Trail section on the north side of Foresta Pass and opened several miles of new trail south to Tyndall Creek. Fifty-thousand dollars of state funds had been used on construction of the trail, which stood complete except for a section up Palisade Creek. Other trail work in 1932 consisted of replacing the Half Dome cables and log bridges at Yosemite Fall and in the Lost Arrow section. Finally, in 1938 U. S. Forest Service crews working on the Muir Trail built steep switchbacks (the Golden Staircase) up the cliff below Palisade Lakes and across to Mather Pass and the headwaters of the South Fork of the Kings River. Fifty-four years of difficult construction had resulted in the fulfillment of Theodore Solomons’s dream.

[24. Memo to the Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, from E. M. Hilton, Park Engineer, 30 September 1941, in Box 83, Trails—1941 to 1942, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Illustration 138.
Map of Yosemite National Park.
From Circular of General Information Regarding Yosemite National Park, California, USDI, 1931.

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2. Reconstruction of Park Roads Begins in Early 1930s

a) Paving and Tunnel and Bridge Building Commence

One of the major construction projects underway at this time involved driving of the new Wawona Road tunnel. By 1931 the two and a half million-dollar reconstruction program for the Wawona Road had begun, and crews had already vastly improved the stretch of highway from Wawona to Alder Creek. From that point to the valley, travelers still used the old road because of ongoing tunnel construction. Other road work in 1931 included paving by the city of San Francisco of the highway from Mather Station to Hetch Hetchy Valley, removal of the El Capitan Bridge in Yosemite Valley, and completion of a three-span, steel, I-beam bridge supported by cement rubble-masonry abutments and piers, over the South Fork of the Merced at Wawona.25

[25. Superintendents’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1931, microfile roll #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

The new El Portal road, meanwhile, was carrying a heavy load of traffic into the park both in the summer and winter. In 1932 forty-six turnouts were constructed along the road, and stretches of dry-laid rock retaining walls added to those already existing with attention paid to landscape values.26

[26. “Completion Report. Final Report: Account No. 501.37, El Portal Road Shoulders and Turnouts,” November 1932, in Maintenance Office, Yosemite National Park.]

b) Tioga Road

The mpost important missing link in the park’s road system remained the twenty-one-mile section of Tioga Road which had not been improved for auto travel since its construction in the 1880s. As the only route available for those wishing to enter the park from the east, its rehabilitation had high priority. As mentioned, the Raker Act, turning the Hetch Hetchy Valley over to the city of San Francisco, had provided that the city build certain roads, including one from Crane Flat to Mather and another from Mather to White Wolf to replace the existing Tioga Road section between those points. Under a later modification of the act, the city agreed to turn over to the Park Service one and a quarter million dollars in lieu of constructing those roads, the money to be used for construction of a new Tioga Road on any desired route. Reconstruction of the road began in the early 1930s with PWA funds. Close attention was paid to location of the roadbed and placement of alignments, grades, cuts, fills, and structures such as bridges, culverts, and parking areas to ensure harmony with the landscape. The project was continually reviewed and assessed by such groups as the Yosemite Advisory Board and the Sierra Club.27 The park decided to preserve portions of the old road for continued use as an alternate route and as access to primitive campgrounds that would then be opened in that portion of the park.

[27. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 358-59.]

Surveys of the new route began in 1931, with construction of the Tuolumne Meadows section from Cathedral Creek to Tioga Pass reaching completion in 1934. Surfacing of that section began in 1935 and ended in 1937. During 1938 oiling of the twenty-one-mile section of the old road from McSwain Meadows to Cathedral Creek took place, and with completion of fourteen and one-half miles of new road between Crane Flat and McSwain Meadows on July 1939, a new era began. It would be almost twenty-five years before workers replaced the twenty-one-mile central section of the old road, but at least now a fair portion of the road was dustless. Crews also constructed a single-span, steel, I-beam bridge on masonry abutments over the South Fork of the Tuolumne River in October 1937 in connection with this work.

c) Wawona Road and Tunnel

Work on the Wawona tunnel on the new Wawona Road ended in 1932. The new highway eliminated the steep grades, sharp curves, and switchbacks of the old road and the tunnel prevented defacing of the

Illustration 139.
Automobile guide map showing roads in Yosemite Valley.
From Circular of General Information Regarding Yosemite National Park, California, USDI, 1931.

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Illustration 140.
Stone steps on Mist Trail.

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Illustration 141.
Happy Isles Bridge.
Photos by Linda W. Greene, 1985.

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valley wall. The new highway left the valley near the foot of Bridalveil Fall, climbed a five-percent grade to the tunnel along the steep cliffs below Artist Point, and then swung back south around Turtleback Dome. The tunnel measured 28 feet wide and 4,230 feet from portal to portal. Workers used material from the tunnel to build the roadbed to the east and a large parking area, so that no debris would be sent over the banks. The tunnel was situated so that visitors passing through it from Wawona would have a sudden breathtaking view of Yosemite Valley from the east portal.

Because there were no galleries such as those in the auto tunnel at Zion National Park in Utah, three shafts drilled from the tunnel horizontally to the cliff face provided necessary ventilation. Carbon-monoxide recorders controlled three large fans in the largest adit. The recorders would register a buildup of traffic in the tunnel, with its subsequent increase in exhaust gases, and additional power would automatically be applied to the fans and continue as long as needed. The longest motor vehicle tunnel in the western United States at the time, it was considered a bold piece of engineering work that also managed to preserve the cliff walls and other landscape values. Construction on the section of the Wawona Road that included the tunnel had begun in November 1930, and the stretch opened to traffic in the spring of 1933.

With completion of the Wawona Road, interested parties began applying pressure to make the high country of the Tuolumne River more accessible for winter sports by constructing a tunnel road up through Tenaya Canyon. Herbert C. Hoover, on vacation in Yosemite before becoming President, had ridden horseback from the High Sierra camp at Tenaya Lake down the Snow Creek switchbacks into Yosemite Valley. Impressed with the scenery, he had suggested installing automatic elevators working by electrical power, possibly developed from waterwheels, that would take autos up and down alongside Snow Creek Falls.28 Hoover thought it would prove a great tourist attraction!

[28. Harry Chandler to C. G. Thomson, 10 August 1932, Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

Other road work in that year included rerouting of the road by the Grizzly Giant Tree in the Mariposa Grove in the spring of 1932 because the old road stood so close to the tree that vehicles ran over some of its roots. Gabriel Sovulewski also in that year made a spur road from Crane Flat to the Merced Grove by connecting the old Davis Cut-off with the railroad grade of the Yosemite Lumber Company that stretched from Camp 16 to Camp 15. During 1933-34 the Mariposa Grove’s road system was paved with asphalt.

d) Yosemite Valley Bridges

During 1933 the park accomplished some major bridge work in Yosemite Valley. In addition to completing a steel girder bridge on masonry abutments over Bridalveil Creek, workers finished replacing the Stoneman Bridge across the Merced River at the Camp Curry intersection. Another reinforced-concrete, arched structure veneered with native granite, it also featured two equestrian subways through its abutments. When it came to replacing the El Capitan Bridge over the Merced, connecting the North and South roads, Superintendent C. G. Thomson expressed his opposition to another arch bridge for that location. He believed the park had repeated the stone arch motif to the point of monotony and that this bridge’s location several miles from the group of stone-arch bridges permitted some flexibility in design. The new three-span bridge, therefore, had steel I-beams with a log veneer railing. Workers placed it about one mile upstream from the old bridge location.

e) Glacier Point Road

During this time the park began to study the most desirable road route from Chinquapin to Glacier Point. The existing narrow road, poorly aligned and plagued by steep grades, had by now become obsolete. The major proposals for rehabilitation consisted of widening the road, eliminating the most objectionable switchbacks, and creating parking areas at the end of the road and at Washburn Point.29

[29. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1933, microfilm roll #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1934 park CCC crews installed posts and replaced the old 3/8-inch Half Dome cable with a 7/8-inch one and also constructed a log footbridge for fishermen across the Merced River at Arch Rock, a small bridge across Crane Creek on the Coulterville Road, and a new concrete two-span road bridge across the Tuolumne River at Tuolumne Meadows. Road construction consisted of rerouting the Mariposa Grove road behind the museum and adding a parking area, and work on the new Glacier Point Road. The latter closely followed the old road from Glacier Point to near Bridalveil Creek. At that point the new route left the steep hills and followed wide, easy curves on a gentle grade around them. The park completed the road in October 1935 and Superintendent Thomson wrote the Park Service director:

It is difficiult to realize that the much-talked-of Glacier Point Road is now an actuality. You will recall the long studies and discussions of the feasibility of any modern road, the substitution of a tramway for the road, the loop road proposal, and the proposals to stop at Sentinel Saddle or at Washburn Point. This Glacier Point subject was precipitated practically upon my arrival here nearly 7 years ago, and into the picture we drew Mr. Albright, all of the Advisory Board, Dr. Hewes, Mr. Tolen, Mr. Roach, Dr. Matthes, Dr. Tresidder, Mr. Wosky, and at least a score of others with lesser interests. Riding over it today, I could not but recall the dozens of meetings, discussions, and the endless miles some of us have hiked in search of solutions. . . . So far as Yosemite is concerned, it easily marks the highest standard yet attained in road construction through difficult country.30

[30. C. G. Thomson to Director, National Park Service, 15 October 1935, in File 631-10, Glacier Point Road, 1934 to 1950, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

f) Big Oak Flat Road

In 1935 the park completed the Bridalveil Fall parking area and started work on the new Big Oak Flat Road out of Yosemite Valley. The planned route left the All-Year Highway a short distance below the floor of the valley, near the powerhouse diversion dam, and climbed the north wall of the Merced River canyon just above The Cascades. In the four miles to Meyer Pass, where the road would cross the rim of the canyon, two short tunnels and one long one would avoid defacement of the outstanding granite cliffs. Much of the work would be done by day labor under the close supervision of landscape engineers to safeguard the natural appearance of this stretch. Long sections of rock wall would hide unsightly scars from any deep cuts that would be necessary.

g) Trail and Road Signs

As stated previously, a trail measuring and signing program in the mid-1920s had involved running an odometer mounted on a bicycle wheel behind a horse and nailing small, round tin tags with numbers and letters to trees to identify trails. Later signs were of enameled metal with white backgrounds and green lettering. In 1934-35 the park began resigning park trails with locally manufactured embossed aluminum signs done on a Roover Press. In preparation for that work, rangers began securing accurate mileages and compiling a trail map. A common practice throughout the park by the 1940s involved painting large orange arrows on open granite expanses crossed by trails to direct hikers. Auto license plates, painted yellow and nailed ten to fifteen feet high on trees, helped designate trails to snow gaugers during winter storm conditions. Another sign type in the war years involved routing white-painted letters on 1-1/2-inch-thick redwood planks about four feet above the trail, but these also fell prey to bears, perhaps attracted to the oil used, as well as to hikers for campfires, souvenirs, or simply as

Illustration 142.
Wawona tunnel, east portal.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 144.
Stone wall on State Highway 140.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 143.
Wawona tunnel, interior.
Photo by Paul Cloyd, 1986.

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Illustration 145.
Map of Yosemite Valley floor, ca. 1935.
NPS, Western Regional Office files.

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Illustration 146.
Metal trail sign.

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Illustration 147.
Corduroy road along north side of Johnson Lake enroute to Crescent Lake.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984-85.

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acts of vandalism. A last resort in the 1950s involved burning lettering into iron plates and cementing the signposts into place.31

[31. Bert Sault to Jim Snyder, 9 July 1975, in Separates File, Yosemite-Trails, Y-46, #42, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. Evidently Landscape Architect Thomas Vint was not favorably impressed with the new iron signs for aesthetic reasons, but agreed that they were necessary to solve the problem of signage in the backcountry. Notes taken by Carl P. Russell, “Conference July 30, 1952,” in Box 78, Box A—NPS files, 1938-1953, Development Part XII, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. The metal sign program in Yosemite was initiated with designs by signmaker Lee Buzzini and welder Bill Kirk. Douglas H. Hubbard, “Yosemite Bears Chip Teeth,” Yosemite Nature Notes 34, no. 3 (March 1955).]

h) Bridge Work Precedes Flood of 1937

In July 1936 construction took place on the May Lake trail from the top of the Tenaya zigzags to the junction of the McGee Lake Trail. In 1937 workers built a new hikers’ bridge across Tenaya Creek below Mirror Lake. That same year, the park completed plans for a log footbridge at Wawona, crossing the South Fork close to the new Wawona schoolhouse, to provide access for children living on the south side of the river in Section 35 so that they would not have to use the longer route to school over the old covered bridge downstream.32

[32. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1936 and 1937, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

A disaster of unparalleled proportions in park history hit the area on 8 December 1937 when torrential rains continuing until 12 December caused severe flooding in the valley and washouts in other sections of the park. Particular devastation occurred in Yosemite Valley where the formation of an immense lake resulted in damage to road surfaces, businesses, and residences, and inundation of campgrounds 6 and 16. The force of the floodwaters surging down the Merced River canyon practically destroyed the diversion dam, intake, and penstock of the powerhouse, and severely damaged bridges at The Cascades, the footbridge and structures at the Arch Rock entrance and at the Cascades CCC camp, and portions of the El Portal road where sections of the stone guard rail and road slab slid into the river. Repairs began immediately, and the El Portal road, initially closed completely for the rest of December, remained one-way passage during the reconstruction period. Extensive sections of retaining and parapet walls were replaced and added with great effort.

The Mirror Lake road sustained heavy damage from Iron Spring to the parking area. Floodwaters washed away seventeen trail bridges on the valley floor, with the El Capitan Bridge sustaining heavy damage. Sections of the Wawona Road also were damaged. The new footbridge across the South Fork of the Merced to the new schoolhouse was completely wrecked by the flood.33

[33. “Monthly Narrative Report to Chief Architect by E. L. McKown, Resident Landscape Architect, November 25 to December 25, 1937, Region IV, Yosemite National Park, California,” 23 December 1937, Architectural Reports (1927-1939), in Box 28, Yosemite Park and Curry Company, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1-3, 5.]

The flood damage of December 1937 necessitated a multitude of repairs during 1938-39, including replacement of bridges near Yosemite Lodge, on the lower Yosemite Fall trail and at Rancheria Creek near Hetch Hetchy, and of the East Bridge at The Cascades on the Ail-Year Highway, and of the Coulterville and Davis Cut-off bridges across Crane Creek; of footbridges at Happy Isles, Yosemite Creek, Camps 7-16, Mirror Lake, and on the South Fork; and of horse bridges over the Merced River, Bridalveil Creek, Tiltill Creek, Snow Creek, Eagle Creek, Yosemite Creek, Tenaya Creek, and Mono Creek, and at Pate Valley and Glen Aulin. Repair work continued on the All-Year Highway at Devil’s Elbow, one mile below Arch Rock, in addition to repair of pavement, replacement of parapet walls, and removal of silt, mud, and assorted debris on valley roads.

Illustration 148.
Arch Rock office.

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Illustration 149.
Arch Rock comfort station.

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Illustration 150.
Arch Rock residence #106.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 151.
Wooden truss bridge over Yosemite Creek above waterfall, enroute to Yosemite Point.

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Illustration 152.
Cascade Creek Bridge, old Big Oak Flat Road.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985-86.

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The flood severely damaged the old Wawona Road from a point above the Bridalveil Fall parking lot to Old Inspiration Point. The park decided to limit repairs to reconstruction as a horse trail, and no longer maintain that route as a road. A new suspension bridge on the valley floor was rebuilt with material salvaged from the flood on the identical plan of the old structure but on a new site about 300 feet downstream. 34 In addition, repairs were needed on the wing walls and abutments of the Pohono, El Capitan, and Sugar Pine bridges. The flood of 1937 damaged or destroyed outlying trails and bridges as well as valley structures. Civilian Conservation Corps labor in 1937-38 was invaluable in ‘trail repair work, a force that would be sorely missed under similar circumstances in 1950.

During these years much new trail construction took place, including: new trail bridges at Wapama and Tueeulala falls on the north side of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, one across the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne River, one across Illilouette Creek on the Eleven-Mile Trail to Glacier Point, one across Snow Creek above Mirror Lake, and a new horse bridge at Yosemite Fall. In 1939 laborers reconstructed the Vernal Fall Bridge of prefabricated steel with log veneer, and a year later reconstruction work replaced the old hewn-log truss bridge on the Nevada Fall Trail with log-covered steel plate girders.

i) North Valley Road Realignment Considered

By 1939 park officials were discussing possible changes of location and alignment for the valley’s North Road. One of the most dangerous spots in the valley road system lay where the North Road ran through the midst of the Yosemite Lodge development. There the public highway suddenly became a congested main street crowded with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Because the main lodge needed replacement soon,
[34. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1938 and 1939, microfilm rolls #3 and #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]
it seemed a good time to decide what to do about the road, which had to be moved either farther south or north.

j) Completion of New Big Oak Flat Road

By 1940 the Big Oak Flat Road from Crane Flat to the valley floor had been completed. The first two miles out of the canyon from the All-Year Highway comprised the most difficult stretch of highway construction ever undertaken in Yosemite National Park. The project included the boring of three tunnels and the construction of three reinforced-concrete, open-spandrel arch bridges. The park converted the old route descending into Yosemite Valley into a one-way downhill scenic road. Visitors used it only until 1943 when a large rockslide made the road impassable to autos.

k) Bridge Work Continues in the 1940s

Work in 1941 included completing the reconstruction of the Nevada Fall Trail bridge; reconstructing the bridge across Cascade Creek on the old Big Oak Flat Road, which had deteriorated, to enable opening that road to one-way travel; and constructing a new trail across the Clark Range. Superintendent Frank A. Kittredge requested during this time the flagging of a trail between Glacier and Washburn points, in front of the Glacier Point Hotel, as a scenic naturalist walk.35 Kittredge also hoped that

whenever this emergency defense period is past, it will be possible to put some of the main line trails of Yosemite on a construction basis comparable to that of most of the other parks. . . . if we can just take advantage of some of the inspiration of some of this great back country, afoot or horseback, as is the Sierra Club, we are going to build up a group of nature lovers and conservationists which will form a bulwark of protection for our wilderness areas.36

[35. Memo for Park Engineer E. M. Hilton from Frank A. Kittredge, Superintendent 3 September 1941, in Box 83, Trails - 1941 to 1942, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

[36. Frank A. Kittredge, Superintendent to Richard M. Leonard, chairman, Outing Committee, Sierra Club, 1 October 1941, in Box 83, Trails - 1940 to 1942, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Illustration 153.
Tunnel No. 1, east portal, new Big Oak Flat Road.

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Illustration 154.
Stone wall along new Big Oak Flat Road.
Photos by Jo Wabeh, 1986.

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Illustrations 155-57.
Bridges, new Big Oak Flat Road.
Photos by Jo Wabeh, 1986.

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Illustration 158.
Road bridge over Tuolumne River.

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Illustration 159.
South Fork of the Tuolumne River bridge abutment.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 160.
Map of Yosemite National Park, 1948.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.
[Editor’s note: map by Della Taylor Hoss—dea]

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Workers in 1943 reconstructed the Yosemite Creek footbridge, which had collapsed. In 1945 they spent a great deal of time rebuilding bridle path bridges on the Yosemite Valley floor, including the three-span bridge at the foot of Yosemite Fall and a one-span bridge in the Lost Arrow section. In addition they rebuilt the two-span middle footbridge at Happy Isles. In 1946 replacement of the footbridge connecting Camps 7 and 16 got underway and replacement of the decayed footbridge near the fish hatchery at Happy Isles was completed. That same year progress continued on badly needed trail and trail bridge repairs. Crews rebuilt seven bridges in the vicinity of Echo Creek, Merced Lake, and Washburn Lake, including four short-span ones, and made the old Merced Lake Trail passable preparatory to closing the main trunk trail for bridge replacement. Work also proceeded on repairing the decayed Return Creek bridge.

Late in 1946 the bridge across Crane Creek on the Coulterville Road at Big Meadow collapsed. Work crews managed completion of a bridge across the Middle Fork of the Tuolumne on the Mather road and replacement of the Yosemite Creek bridge on the old Tioga Road. That year workers also accomplished replacement of Long Bridge and Twin Bridges across the Merced River on the Merced Lake Trail. In 1947 the footpath bridge on the Lost Arrow Trail, last replaced in early 1938, was again replaced, as was bridle path bridge no. 14, one or two miles above Mirror Lake.37

[37. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1943 to 1947, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

After the Yosemite Valley Railroad was abandoned in 1945, another means had to be found to transport supplies into Yosemite Valley. The Yosemite Park and Curry Company purchased large trucks, which were unable to pass through Arch Rock. A serious traffic hazard resulted when the trucks were forced to bypass the rock going against the traffic flow. To remedy the situation, the arched portion of the rock was blasted out to permit passage of these vehicles. Small charges of dynamite were used to avoid breaking off unsightly chunks of rock.38

[38. “Arch Rock Enlargement, 1948,” in Box 78, Box A—NPS files, 1938-1953, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

l) Flood of 1950

The flood periods of 19 November, 3 December, and 8 December 1950 wreaked havoc on Yosemite’s road and trail system. Repair work in Yosemite Valley included repaving paved walks and footpaths, repairing bridle paths, replacing retaining walls, and removing fallen trees, silt, and other debris. Several bridges needed replacement of stringers and repair or replacement of abutments, railings, and decking. They included:

1. Old Village footbridge no. 20
2. Footbridge no. 25 (Mirror Lake half-log)
3. Footbridge no. 9 (Camp 16)
4. Footbridge no. 1 (Yosemite Creek near highway)
5. Horse bridges nos. 2-3 (Lost Arrow)
6. Footbridges nos. 4-5 (Lost Arrow)
7. Footbridge no. 26 (Mirror Lake)
8. Horse bridge no. 14 (Mirror Lake loop)
9. Horse bridge no. 10 (between Camps 9 and 12)
10. Horse bridge no. 8 (foot of Yosemite Fall)
11. Swinging Bridge no. 21

The El Portal road lost more than 700 lineal feet of walls undermined by the floodwaters, which fell into the Merced River. ‘The waters also undermined the pavement at two points and caused collapse of one road section. Repair work included construction of concrete rock fill to support the undercut pavement sections, replacement of pavement, restoration of washed-out shoulders, replacement of culverts, headwalls, and bridges at The Cascades, and replacement of retaining and parapet walls. Similar work followed on the Yosemite Valley, Wawona, Glacier Point, Big Oak Flat, Tioga, Lake Eleanor, and campground roads, including removal of rockslides, fallen trees, broken pavement, silt, and other debris. 39

[39. Flood Damage - Repair and Reconstruction Estimates - Floods of Nov. 19, Dec. 3, Dec. 8, 1950, in Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. Reconstruction costs for these properties skyrocketed due to the lack of an inexpensive work force, such as the CCC, and postwar inflation affecting the price of materials. Because of the extensive flood damage and consequent need for haste in repair work, by the mid-1950s the park began using Bailey bridges of prefabricated steel parts. Snyder and Castle, “Draft Mules on the Trail in Yosemite National Park,” 10.]

m) Completion of the Tioga Road

Completion of the Tioga Road comprised a primary aim of the MISSION 66 road and trail program in Yosemite. Over the last several years, discussions had ensued over whether the central portion of the new road should be routed via the “high” or “scenic” line or along the general route of the old Tioga Road. Intensive studies involving discussions with various cooperating groups, the Secretary of the Interior, and other interested parties became fraught with controversy. Objections arose specifically from certain conservationists and the Bureau of Public Roads after it had been decided to proceed on the route selected and approved years earlier. Changes to meet improved safety standards met resistance from such people as David Brower, executive secretary of the Sierra Club, and nature photographer Ansel Adams. The Bureau of Public Roads believed that a wider road with wider shoulders was necessary so that cars could pull off the road in emergencies. The Park Service, meanwhile, wanted a safe width of road with narrow shoulders and with turnouts only where the terrain permitted to avoid scars from cuts and fills as much as possible plus higher costs. The matter was finally settled in favor of the two-foot shoulders with few turnouts except for one section where the shoulder had to be widened to provide the necessary stability.40 Conservationists, however, continued to object to the blasting and gouging methods used and the resulting scars on the face of glacially polished granite surfaces at Olmsted Point.

[40. Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People, 359-60.]

Actual construction of the new central section began in 1957, and it officially opened to the public in June 1961. The work had progressed with due regard for preservation of scenic values. It turned into an outstanding park road, carefully designed to display to their fullest the dramatic assets of the Sierra Nevada. The highest trans-Sierra crossing, it is well supplied with overlooks and interpretive signs. Sections of the old Tioga Road were retained, such as that leaving the new road just east of the White Wolf intersection and winding down to the Yosemite Creek campgrounds; another short section climbs over Snow Flat to the May Lake Trail junction. Shorter sections still serve campgrounds along the old road.

n) Flood Reconstruction Work Continues

In 1952 workers completed reconstruction of the Yosemite Fall bridge, partially washed out during the 1950 flood. By 1952 Park Service officials had decided the new Yosemite Village would receive early attention. Director Wirth at that time earmarked $80,000 for immediate use (1953) in planning and constructing roads and parking areas.41 In 1955, the most severe flood in Yosemite’s history forced closure of roads into the park. Again floodwaters washed away large sections of the El Portal road, resulting in months of extensive repair work. In 1957 crews placed steel decking on the Vernal Fall bridge. By the end of 1960 the Merced River bridge stood complete with the approaches prepared for paving and the contractor had started work on reconstruction of the Sentinel Bridge.

[41. Russell, notes taken during conference on 30 July 1952, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Illustration 161.
Road bridge over the South Fork of the Merced River near Wawona.

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Illustration 162.
Controversial section of Tioga Road, northeast of Olmsted Point.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984-85.

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Illustration 163.
Ruins of Chilnualna Fall ranger patrol cabin.

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Illustration 164.
Single stringer log and plank foot/horse bridge on trail between Chain Lakes and Chiquito Pass.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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o) MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for New Big Oak Flat

Entrance Road

The second most important section of the park’s road system scheduled for completion under MISSION 66 was the seven-mile section of the old Big Oak Flat Road between Crane Flat and Carl Inn connecting with state route 120. The old stagecoach route would be retained as access to the Tuolumne Grove. In 1961 laborers started clearing the alignment for the new Big Oak Flat entrance road and parking areas. That entailed clearing and removing trees and brush within the right-of-way for the new road, between Crane Flat and the vicinity of Hazel Green Creek. The park decided to relocate the road when it determined that improvements to the existing road, including some realignment to straighten out dangerous curves, could not be made without damaging trees in the Tuolumne Grove. The new route ran along the western boundary of the park, connecting with state route 120 in the vicinity of Carl Inn. The park retained the historic road to the big trees in the Tuolumne Grove as a downhill, one-way road out of the park from Crane Flat.42

[42. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1948 to 1961, microfilm rolls #4 and #5, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

C. Construction and Development

Construction within the national parks increased tremendously during the 1930s, particularly with the added help of emergency public works personnel. War conditions of the early 1940s tended to slow the process, but the pace of construction in Yosemite National Park into more recent times continued to be impressive and cause new concern about effects on the resources and the quality of the visitor experience. MISSION 66 objectives calling for the modernization of existing facilities, additional development of accommodations and services in sections of the park outside the valley to relieve congestion, and removal of all but certain critical operating functions out of the valley would result in major governmental and concession-related physical development in the latter part of this period. The decision to bring more development into the Yosemite high country, resulting in improved roads and construction of new campgrounds, picnic areas, comfort stations, and visitor interest areas, such as the Yosemite Pioneer History Center at Wawona, has not solved the problem of overcrowding but helped to some extent in broadening the visitor experience and exposing people to the variety of attractions in the park.

1. Season of 1931

Construction projects accomplished during the 1931 season included,

on the Big Oak Flat Road: Establishing a new entrance station at the park line on the Big Oak Flat Road on a site formerly occupied by a California State Automobile Association tow camp. This action placed a ranger in the heart of the Rockefeller timber purchase and close to the Tuolumne Grove;

at Crane Flat: Completing the Crane Flat fire lookout, the first of its kind in the park, the result of the fire protection plan developed for Yosemite by J. D. Coffman, Chief Forester and National Park Service fire expert. The Park Service’s Landscape Division prepared the plans for the structure and John Wosky, assistant landscape architect, planned the site. The first story functioned as a garage, for economic and landscape reasons, and the second story for observation. The structure overlooked the Rockefeller grant recently added to the park. The next year, Superintendent Thomson noted that a definite effort was being made to get visitors to the lookout as a lesson in conservation (see later discussion of Park Service fire control philosophy during this period). Visitation averaged 100 people per day;43

[43. C. G. Thomson to Edward Robling, 21 July 1932, in Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

Illustrations 165-66.
Crane Flat fire lookout.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, and Jo Wabeh, 1984, 1986.

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Illustration 167.
Tioga Pass ranger station.

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Illustration 168.
Tioga Pass comfort station.
Photos by Gary Higgins, 1984,

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Illustration 169.
Buck Camp cabin

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Illustration 170.
Buck Camp cabin, tack and equipment storage shed (rt.), and privy.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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at Tioga Pass: Completing a new ranger station. The first structure erected in connection with relocation of the old Tioga Road and the first rustic stone building in the Tuolumne Meadows/Tioga Pass area, it set the precedent for the use of that style in that section of the park;

at Tuolumne Meadows: Establishing a construction camp for the water, sewer, and sanitation system work, consisting of a dining room, tent platforms, bathhouses, and meat house, and completion of comfort stations;

in the valley: Moving residence #4, the old E. P. Leavitt house, from its location on the valley floor blocking the view of Yosemite Fall to the residential area, tearing down its garage, and landscaping the site; moving the old Oliver Taylor house to the Lost Arrow section, tearing down the garage, and landscaping the site; completing residences for the doctor, dentist, and an employee, and a hospital garage; completing a comfort station in the Indian Village; completing an activated sludge sewage disposal plant and sewer for the valley; installing electric camp stoves in the winter campground operated by meters; cleaning up the rock quarry near the Pohono Bridge and demolishing all associated structures; restoring an old parking area at Mirror Lake and abandoning the road at the foot of the Vernal Fall Trail; and reveting the Merced River at its junction with Yosemite Creek, arresting erosion of the banks and beautifying the area;

at Glacier Point: Completing two frame ranger cabins to replace the temporary tent accommodations. The ranger cabins were constructed for possible future moves in that each was built in two portions, the two bedrooms constituting one unit and the kitchen another, so that moving could be accomplished by simply unbolting the girders and framework of the walls dividing the two sections.

in the southern section of the park: Making an old logging cabin and barn at Eleven-Mile Annex (Deer Camp) habitable and constructing a log cabin at Buck Camp to aid in collecting snow measurements and for patrol use. The state helped financially on those projects; completing a comfort station in the Mariposa Grove.44

[44. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1931, microfilm roll #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

During 1931-34 the park completed fifteen new residences, a six-car garage, and a toilet/shower building for the Indians living on the valley floor. Originally estimates had been sought for a wigwam-type structure with a hexagonal floor plan, but fortunately the superintendent had the foresight to rule out that design, and Assistant Landscape Architect John Wosky drew plans in June 1931 for a cabin similar to those erected at Glacier Point earlier in that year. The site chosen for the new village lay west of the winter campground (present Sunnyside Campground).

2. Season of 1932

Other construction work accomplished in 1932 included a variety of needed projects:

at Merced Grove: Demolishing the old log ranger station constructed in 1915 and landscaping the site.

in Yosemite Valley: Construction by Maggie Howard of a new chuck-a in which to store acorns in the Indian Village behind the museum. That interpretive area then contained two chuck-as, three o-chums, and a mortar rock. These were thought to be the only chuck-as in use in the mountains of California at that time; completing two three-room frame women’s dormitories; completing a new equipment storage shed in the valley utility group; landscaping the old sewer plant, including removal of the old frame building; completing the Union Point comfort station; and constructing a rubble masonry drinking fountain at the intersection of the short spur trail leading to Union Point from the main Glacier Point Trail, and, in the open area at Union Point, a combination horse trough and drinking fountain of rubble masonry;

Illustration 171.
Glacier Point residence.

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Illustration 172.
Glacier Point naturalist’s cabin.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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near Chinquapin: Obliterating the old Wawona Road between Grouse Creek and Eleven-Mile; removing buildings to permit grading for a plaza. The Chinquapin area had first been developed between 1919 and 1923. A fire destroyed the contractor’s camp there in October, burning all buildings except two small ranger cabins. Of the thirteen frame structures lost, the government had owned five;

at Wawona: Replacing the Wawona barn removed for highway and bridge work; and

at Mariposa Grove: Developing Wawona Point with a large parking area and lookout, a project considered a model for future work of that type.

The valley lost one of its early landmarks in December 1932 when fire destroyed the old Cosmopolitan Bathhouse. For the past several years the Yosemite Park and Curry Company had used it for their general offices. The fire, which could not be contained, centered on an overheated flue in the rear of the building. The Park Service subsequently razed the ruins, and the concessioner moved his offices to the Ahwahnee Hotel.45

[45. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1932, microfilm roll #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1933 the park superintendent praised the energy and efficiency with which the park public works projects had been initiated. This had been due to the fact that blueprints had already been prepared for many projects, equipment had been available, and usually slow processes such as purchase and supply had been expedited. Several construction crews were busily working at Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, Mariposa Grove, in Yosemite Valley, at Wawona, Glacier Point, Nevada Fall, and other places. Each of the projects underway had been selected from the park’s development program. The Branch of Plans and Design was expediting design work during this early period of the public works program and the year-long detail of Landscape Architect John Wosky to the park was proving invaluable. The five CCC camps at Wawona, Crane Flat, and Eleven-Mile Meadow were accomplishing enormous amounts of work relative to fire control, cleanup, trail construction, campground development, erosion prevention, and the like. At this time the park was just organizing to employ several hundred men under the CWA, primarily on building and utility maintenance.46

[46. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, Jaunary-December 1933, microfilm roll #2, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

3. Season of 1933

In 1933 crews worked on several construction projects:

at Tioga Pass: Constructing a stone gateway;

in Yosemite Valley: Eliminating the old Indian Village at the foot of Indian Canyon; demolishing the zoo in the Lost Arrow district; and removing the elk paddock in Yosemite Valley and restoring the meadow area it had covered;

at Chinquapin: Completing the comfort station;

at Wawona: Removing the dressing rooms (at Stella Lake?), the old laundry building, the bear pen, and the old fish hatchery; and

Illustration 173.
Chinquapin comfort station.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 174.
Chinquapin ranger station.
Photo by Paul Cloyd, 1986.

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Illustration 175.
Chinquapin garage.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 176.
Chinquapin gas station (Curry Co. employee residence).

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Illustration 177.
Chinquapin barn, to west.

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Illustration 178.
Chinquapin barn, to south.

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Illustration 179.
Hetch Hetchy comfort station.

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Illustrations 180-81.
Mather ranger station/residence.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 182.
Mather barn.

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Illustration 183.
Old cookhouse/residence, Mather.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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at South Entrance: placing the Alder Creek checking station at the intersection of the Mariposa Grove road and State Route 41. This comprised a temporary measure because of the lack of funds for construction of a permanent station. The ranger on duty there lived in a tent. The addition of a checking station reflected the new boundary line resulting from the 1932 Wawona acquisition; moving the ranger station at Four-Mile to the park boundary at South Entrance.47

[47. Ibid.]

4. Season of 1934

During the season of 1934, workers accomplished a multitude of construction projects, chief among them being:

at Hetch Hetchy: Completing a comfort station;

at Lake Eleanor: Rebuilding the fish trap at Frog Creek;

at Mather: Completing the ranger residence. This four-room cabin served as the park’s administrative center concerned with cattle grazing along the park boundary and activities at the city of San Francisco’s recreational camp at Mather. Two rangers there patrolled the northwest portion of the park and its fishing area and checked cars.48

[48. Master Plan Development Outline, ca. 1940, RG 79, Cartographic Archives Division, NA, Alexandria, Va.]

at Merced Grove: Completing a ranger cabin;

at Tioga Pass: Completing the entrance gates and a comfort station;

at Tuolumne Meadows: Completing four bunkhouses at the new maintenance camp in the utility area, plus a mess hall, kitchen, and toilet-shower building (relocation of the Tioga Road had necessitated demolition of the former housing area used by road maintenance and construction crews during the summer); completing three frame comfort stations and an addition to one erected in 1931;

at Merced Lake: Enlarging the ranger cabin and adding a fireplace;

in Yosemite Valley: Razing of the old 1912 army hospital northeast of Yosemite Lodge; adding a new bathroom to the old Chris Jorgensen residence near Sentinel Bridge; completing a four-family apartment unit and a nurses’ quarters on the second floor of the hospital’s six-stall rubble masonry garage; completing three employees’ residences; moving the old granary near the Lost Arrow residential section to the east between two barns; razing the old government building in the Old Village used as a laundry by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company; placement of finishing touches on the Camp 14 entertainment area, including a stage platform and benches; removing the old concrete piers remaining after the footbridge across the Merced River to the Old Village had been torn down; completing a comfort station near the Vernal Fall Bridge;

at Glacier Point: Completing a comfort station, a four-stall barn, and an eighty-car parking area;

at Chinquapin: Completing the ranger station. The early ranger station, maintenance camp, and tourist facilities had been nearly all destroyed by the fire of 1932, and the remaining structures torn down when a new parking area was constructed in 1934. The new ranger station and comfort station, plus the concessioner’s service station/lunchroom would complete the new complex. The Chinquapin junction was being developed in accordance with a plan prepared by the Branch of Plans and Design of the Park Service. The Alder Creek barn was being moved to Chinquapin.

Illustration 184.
Present Tuolumne Meadows visitor center (old CCC mess hall).

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Illustration 185.
Employee housing (former bunkhouses), Tuolumne Meadows.
Photos by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustration 186.
Merced Lake ranger station.

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Illustration 187.
Miguel Meadow barn.

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Illustration 188.
Miguel Meadow guard station.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 189.
Henness Ridge fire lookout.

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Illustration 190.
Wawona ranger station/residence #4000.

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Illustration 191.
Wawona residence #4003.

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Illustration 192.
Wawona ranger station/residence #4001.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 193.
Wawona equipment shed #4052, to northeast.

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Illustration 194.
Wawona equipment shed #4052, to southwest.

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Illustration 195.
Wawona barn, utility area.

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Illustration 196.
Wawona blister rust camp repair garage.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 197.
Wawona maintenance yard, to east.

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Illustration 198.
Wawona district ranger office #4027.

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Illustration 199.
Wawona ranger office #4002.

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Illustration 200.
Wawona teacherage and school.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 201.
Wawona barn.

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Illustration 202.
Wawona residence occupied by Curry Company employee (store manager).

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Illustration 203.
Wawona wagon shop (former Chinese laundry).
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 204.
Wawona store and post office.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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at Henness Ridge: Completing a fire lookout. The Park Service Branch of Plans and Design prepared the plans for the three-story frame structure on a granite rubble masonry foundation. The first floor served as a garage, the second for living quarters, and the third for observation. In October 1934 construction began on the Miguel Meadow fire guard cabin, headquarters of a fire protection district north of the Tuolumne River adjacent to the Lake Eleanor road. The fire guard stationed there communicated by telephone with the valley floor ranger station and park fire lookouts. Previously the guard had lived in tent quarters. The Miguel Meadow cabin was part of the park’s fire protection program worked out with the aid of J. D. Coffman. The Branch of Plans and Design prepared plans for the structure. In addition to the single-story frame cabin, a barn and corral for pack stock and patrol horses were constructed in the meadow that same year and in 1935 storage buildings were erected. Nearby stood a CCC stub camp.

at Wawona: Completing a ranger station and residence; removing old buildings in the Camp A. E. Wood area near the new public campground; erecting a new garage at the ECW camp; completing a new equipment shed.

at South Entrance: Completing the new Four-Mile complex, an area planned for development as a result of acquisition of the Wawona Basin. It included a ranger station, checking kiosk (present office), and comfort station. The old checking station was removed at this time. The Four-Mile residence had two divisions—one a dormitory and the other a single-family residence.49

[49. West of the South Entrance Station today are remains of a sewer system that served the dormitory building and comfort station. These consist of a redwood-lined cesspool structure set flush with the ground and sludge draining lines. Construction on them took place sometime between September 1933 and October 1934. C. G. Thomson, “Final Report . . . Sewer System Extension and Improvements”; Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1934, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

5. Season of 1935

Accomplishments of 1935 included:

at Mather: Completing the ranger residence garage and storage building;

at Tuolumne Meadows: Razing the old government mess hall and cook house;

in Yosemite Valley: Removing the fence around the pioneer cemetery and transplanting some of the cedar trees to new locations, changing the entrance, mounding and marking graves, and laying out paths; beginning razing of the old electric, paint, and carpenter shops that were being supplanted by a new utility building; constructing the new utility building, removing the rest of the old shops around it, and grading the area; razing the aged and deteriorated Rock Cottage in the Old Village; removing large rocks in the New Village plaza to improve the appearance of the area; improving the campground system by instituting thirty-day camping limits to lessen crowding and help reclaim vegetation and a system of rotational use of campgrounds to spread the camping impact over a larger area and give the vegetation a chance to recuperate. Plans were also made for using the “Meinecke System” of delineating campgrounds (advocated by Dr. E. P. Meinecke, Principal Pathologist, Division of Forest Pathology, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture), involving fixing the location of the car, the fireplace, and the table so that each campsite is readily identifiable;

at Chinquapin: Completing the garage building at the ranger station; installing drinking fountains and faucets along the Wawona Road between Yosemite Valley and Chinquapin;

at Eight-Mile: Constructing a cooperative field laboratory and insectary building to be staffed by Bureau of Entomology personnel;

Illustrations 205-6.
Eight-Mile insect control laboratory.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 207.
South Entrance kiosk and office.
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustration 208.
South Entrance office.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 209.
South Entrance comfort station.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustrations 210-11.
South Entrance ranger station/residence.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik and Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustrations 212-14.
Utility building, Yosemite Valley maintenance yard. Notice similarities in style between this building and the valley power plant.
Photos by Gary Higgins and Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 215.
Frog Creek cabin.

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Illustration 216.
Remnants of dam, Frog Creek.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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at Wawona: Completing the new ECW camp office building and an equipment shed;

at Four-Mile (South Entrance): Completing a garage;

at Mariposa Grove: Moving the abandoned checking kiosk to the Mather ranger station.50

[50. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1935, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Most of the buildings projected for the new Yosemite Village had been completed by the spring of 1935. One of the major buildings constructed during the year was the new utility building in the Yosemite Valley maintenance area. Designed by the Park Service Branch of Plans and Design in San Francisco, the reinforced concrete building would eliminate the old separate and inefficient frame shop units and concentrate them in a single structure. The building contained a repair and machine shop unit, a sign shop, a fire station, a blacksmith unit, carpentry and upholstery shops, an electrical department, an auto paint shop, a building paint shop, and a plumbing and sheetmetal shop. This was the first fire-resistant unit built in the utility area in the valley. The government utility area at around this time consisted of thirty-one structures, comprising shops, barns, and storage warehouses. Most of them had been erected around 1921-22 of salvaged material. A laborer’s quarters area consisted of ten light frame sleeping cabins and tent platforms with a mess hall and shower/toilet building for 184 men.51

[51. Master Plan Development Outline, ca. 1938, RG 79, Cartographic Archives Division, NA, Alexandria, Va.]

6. Season of 1936

Work in 1936 involved:

at Lake Eleanor: Completing a dwelling at Frog Creek;

at Tuolumne Meadows: Constructing a new ranger contact station at the main campground entrance. The naturalist’s quarters and old ranger dwellings now stood isolated along a portion of the old Tioga Road;

in Yosemite Valley: Razing the residence formerly occupied by Gabriel Sovulewski and restoring the site to a natural condition. After Sovulewski retired, the Park Service decided the large, two-story house could not be moved without danger of collapse or removal of several of the surrounding oak trees. Officials finally decided to dismantle the house and construct a smaller residence in another area using salvaged material.52

[52. Pavlik, “The Hutchings-Sovulewski Homesite, Yosemite Valley,” 8-9.]

at Wawona: Completing a new mess hall.53

[53. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1936, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

7. Season of 1937

a) General Construction

Construction and maintenance tasks in 1937 involved, in Yosemite Valley, initiating work on a residence for the school bus driver west of the valley schoolhouse and completing a footbridge across the Merced River to the Old Village; and, at Wawona, constructing a schoolhouse with the aid of the CCC and removing the old tennis court and razing three old buildings (described as two barns and a former stage depot) from the area behind the gas station.54 Landscape Architect R. L. McKown also noted in May that the pit in Miguel Meadow being excavated by the City of San Francisco for sand, which was conveyed to the Hetch Hetchy Dam by a three-mile-long aerial tramway, was extremely large, indicating that Yosemite would acquire a fair-sized lake when dam-raising ended. McKown had staked an outline for the contractor ensuring a natural-looking shoreline. The area is now known as Gravel Pit Lake.55 At Hetch Hetchy by the end of 1937 the machine shop, an old warehouse, the company office building, and four cottages had been removed from the dam area. Superintendent Lawrence C. Merriam planned to retain two cottages on the upper side of the road for park purposes. The city had begun construction of its guest house as well as remodeling of existing houses.56

[54. “Monthly Narrative Report to Chief Architect by R. L. McKown, Resident Landscape Architect, April 25 to May 25, 1937,” Architectural Reports, 1927-1939, in Box 28, Yosemite Park and Curry Company, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 4; Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1937, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

[55. McKown, “Monthly Narrative Report,” 25 April to 25 May 1937, 8.]

[56. McKown, “Monthly Narrative Report,” 25 November to 25 December 1937, 8.]

b) Flood Damage

As mentioned in the preceding section, the most serious situation in the park’s history occurred as a result of the devastating storm that inundated Yosemite Valley and its environs with almost twelve inches of rain in December. Overflowing waters and sheets of mud and other debris inflicted an enormous amount of damage on roads, trails and paths, bridges, electric and telephone systems, water and sewer systems, buildings, campgrounds, and signs. Rushing waters even washed away the egg-taking development at Frog Creek, except for the cabin. The flood reached its peak at 3:00 p.m. on 11 December.

Specific flood damage to structures entailed

at Arch Rock: Destruction of the parking area, undermining of the unit building housing the ranger’s dormitory, comfort station, and garage, and moving of a portion of the main structure off its foundation;

in Yosemite Valley: Inundation of Camps 6 and 16, flooding of the first floor of the Old Village store and the chapel, flooding of the superintendent’s house and government houses at Sentinel Bridge (residences #50-51), flooding of the Yosemite Lodge cabin area and removal of some structures from their foundations, and submerging of six public campgrounds at the upper end of the valley.57

[57. Ibid., 2.]

at Cascades CCC camp: Washing away of four of the large barracks and the officers’ quarters, leaving only the chimney, and damage to the mess hall and recreation building. The enrollees escaped to El Portal by forming human chains across flooded stretches of the road. The Army District Commander refused to approve rehabilitation of this site. An acceptable new location was found north of the All-Year Highway, just west of the El Capitan checking station. At first the displaced enrollees were housed in the school at El Portal and later at other CCC camps in the region. It was imperative, however, to return them to Yosemite immediately to assist in repair of flood damage. They were finally quartered in two Yosemite Park and Curry Company employee bunkhouses and in the old school at Wawona until new quarters were constructed.58

[58. Ibid., 4.]

c) New CCC Cascades Camp Constructed

Only sparse details are available about the area into which the new Yosemite CCC camp was moved, between present Northside Drive and the old Big Oak Flat Road, west of Ribbon Creek. By 1917 an auto checking station had been located at El Capitan to serve incoming visitors on the Big Oak Flat Road. A section of old road heading east from the Big Oak Flat Road across Ribbon Creek and on into the meadow near El Capitan where it intersects with another road section now used as a bridle path may be part of the original Northside Drive. In 1924 the park erected a frame, two-room ranger residence and in 1926 a checking kiosk and two comfort stations in the vicinity of El Capitan near the old Big Oak Flat Road. Three years later, however, the park moved the checking kiosk downstream to Arch Rock. Camp YNP-6, Cascades, was rebuilt near these earlier structures. Work began on this new Cascades Camp YNP-20 in January 1938 and occupation took place in mid-April. A December 1940 plat of the camp shows:

four barracks buildings, 20 by 130 feet

one education building west of the barracks, 20 by 119 feet

one recreation hall southwest of the barracks, 20 by 100 feet

one centrally located washroom and latrine, 20 by 55 feet

one laundry north of the washroom, 20 by 30 feet

one mess hall south of the barracks, 20 by 160 feet

one officers’ and foreman’s quarters southeast of the barracks, 20 by 120 feet

one administration building east of the officers’ quarters, 20 by 40 feet

one ECW toolroom northeast of the administration building, 35 by 50 feet

one ECW garage north of the toolroom, 30 by 100 feet

Other buildings included an infirmary, oil house, maintenance shop, blacksmith shop, foreman’s garage, and storehouse. The Cascades camp was evacuated by early August 1942 and its equipment turned over to the U. S. Army. By November the army had removed all portable buildings and the remaining structures were to be turned over to the National Park Service. The date of their removal is not known.59

[59. Development Outline in Master Plan folders, ca. 1940, RG 79, Cartographic Archives Division, NA, Alexandria, Va.; Plat of Camp YNP-20, Cascades, 20 December 1940, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center; Bob Pavlik to Scott Carpenter, 24 April 1986, re: CCC camp at present-day wood yard.]

The 1937 flood damage necessitated a massive cleanup job clearing roads of debris, resiting structures washed off their foundations, cleaning up campgrounds, repairing bridges, and reconstructing trails. Repair work by CCC crews included raising the Arch Rock unit twenty-two inches above its former level and constructing a new rubble masonry foundation to that level as a precaution against future flooding. A rock parapet wall was also constructed around the unit and the parking lot.

8. Season of 1938

In 1938 improvement work and flood damage repair continued. The period occupied in making residences habitable again extended from December 1937 to October 1938. During the latter year the men accomplished

at Lake Eleanor: Constructing a new dam and fish ladder at the Frog Creek egg-collecting station;

in Yosemite Valley: Clearing and grading for the new CCC camp west of the Big Oak Flat Road and the El Capitan ranger station; constructing another new employees’ residence in the Lost Arrow section; and razing the Sentinel Hotel and Ivy and River cottages;

at Badger Pass: Placing cabins for winter ranger occupancy.60

[60. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1938, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In late spring 1938, the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation installed a new substation immediately west of the Yosemite power plant and installed protective riprap around the base of the station on the river side. Other protective work against flooding involved construction of the major portion of a barrier wall in January to divert spring floodwaters and extension of it during the summer of 1938. The

Illustration 217.
Map of Yosemite National Park, 1939.
From “Guide Map, Yosemite National Park,” 1939, courtesy Western History Section, Denver Public Library.

[click to enlarge]

wall, 270 feet long and ranging from two to ten feet in height above the stream channel, extended from the tailrace channel wall upstream from the powerhouse to a point on the riverbank.61

[61. Lawrence C. Merriam, “Final Report—Flood Damage Repaii—Physical Improvements,” January 1940, in Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

A sixty-man maintenance camp in the Mariposa Grove in 1938 consisted of a frame mess hall (1931), storeroom (1931), meat room (1926), shower (1931), and toilet (1931). Tent platforms provided shelter^62

[62. Master Plan Development Outline, February 1938, RG 79, Cartographic Archives Division, NA, Alexandria, Va.]

and a gas station had been moved there in 1936. After 1926 and the completion of the Ail-Year Highway, railroad travel to El Portal diminished and the Yosemite Transportation Company shifted its quarters to various hotels in the park. In the late 1930s the Park Service converted the vacant transportation building to a residence. Instead of being razed in 1959 as part of the MISSION 66 program, the Park Service purchased the structure from its current owner, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, and moved it to the Wawona Pioneer Yosemite History Center. There it was restored to its appearance of about 1912 and opened for interpretive use.

9. Seasons of 1939-40

The work season of 1939 kept CCC crews busy completing an employees’ residence, a doctor’s residence near the Lewis Memorial Hospital, and a ranger residence at Badger Pass. In 1940 CCC labor from the Crane Flat camp carried out fire hazard reduction work at Carl Inn, where the remains of houses used for resort purposes previous to the Carl Inn Addition to the park were razed. They had been badly damaged in the flood of December 1937 and were in an extremely co ramshackle state.63 In 1939 the South Entrance layout was revised and a new checking kiosk installed by 1940. Demolished in 1958, it was replaced by a MISSION 66 structure, which still stands. The South Entrance layout has undergone numerous changes through the years, with landscape architects, especially John Wosky, believing that it never fulfilled the park’s needs in regard to traffic and circulation control.

[63. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1939, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

As a result of a study made in 1938 on Yosemite campgrounds, and, on the basis of subsequent recommendations to the superintendent, a CCC project was started in Campground 11 in Yosemite Valley in 1940 to install individual campsites using a modified Meinecke system. Park officials hoped that this would alleviate the damage done to vegetation by unregulated camping practices and overcrowding of campgrounds. At the same time, CCC labor attempted to regulate the former heavy use of riverside sites at the Tuolumne Meadows campground and channel more activities to sites more remote from the river.64

[64. The Yosemite Advisory Board remained skeptical about extending the outlining of campsites according to the Meinecke plan within Yosemite Valley. After considering all the pros and cons, the board concluded it would be unwise to apply the plan extensively to campgrounds in Yosemite Valley, although it believed one campground laid out in that manner would enable a comparison as to camper preference, ease of administration, flexibility under camper population pressure, and cost and upkeep. The board did not believe the Meinecke plan a feasible application in the valley because of the anticipated increase in demand for camping spaces and the fact that the Meinecke plan decreased that number by about fifty percent. The board advised that no large-scale application of the plan be considered until provision for the campers excluded by it could be made elsewhere. It concluded, however, that campers could not be attracted away from the valley and that the campsites lost through application of that plan in the valley could only be replaced by new sites on the valley floor, which it felt to be undesirable. “Outlining Campsites in Camp Grounds, Meinecke Plan,” from discussions of Yosemite Advisory Board in Yosemite National Park, 20-23 August 1949, dated 25 August 1949, Board of Advisors file, 1949 to 1953, in Box 10, Advisory Board Correspondence and Files, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Checking stations were located at five different sites on the Big Oak Flat Road—EI Capitan (lower end of control road), Gentry (upper end of control road), Crane Flat, Tuolumne Grove, and Carl Inn. The Gentry and El Capitan stations remained in use until 1940, chiefly for operation of the control road. After the Rockefeller purchase, a checking station was placed at Carl Inn about 1941, but in the mid-forties moved to Crane Flat. The Tuolumne Grove tent station functioned for only a short time. The new Crane Flat ranger duplex and garage were finished in 1940 upon completion and opening of the new Big Oak Flat and Tioga roads. (The old Crane Flat ranger cabin was occupied seasonally into the early 1950s and moved to the Pioneer Yosemite History Center at Wawona in 1959.) The U. S. Forest Service also constructed a lookout tower on North Mountain, accessible by a road through Miguel Meadow, during this year.

In 1940 a question arose concerning the future of Cedar Cottage, the oldest building in the park, then being used by the concessioner to house weekend guests during the winter. Park Service officials had decided, as part of the overall park plan, that because of the importance of natural resources, all other considerations should be subordinate to their welfare and every opportunity taken to return unoccupied areas to as pristine a condition as possible. This policy was to be followed in the Old Village.

Some preservationists had argued that the Sentinel Hotel, Cedar Cottage, and Oak Cottage should be considered a group to be preserved if they were found to have sufficient architectural interest and historical value. The park gave some thought to preserving Oak Cottage and Cedar Cottage as examples of early California hotel architecture and for the historical and educational value of the buildings. When officials decided to tear down the Sentinel, however, it was decided the other buildings should go also. Despite the efforts of Carl Russell and others to preserve Cedar Cottage, the members of the Yosemite Advisory Board judged its architectural and historical significance to be so minimal that it unanimously recommended its removal and that of other Old Village

Illustrations 218-19.
Rear of Sentinel Hotel from across Merced River.
Photos by Rural Housing Authority, December 1934.
NPS, Western Regional Office files.

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Illustration 220.
Sentinel Hotel in Old Village.
Photo by RHA, spring 1935.
NPS, Western Regional Office files.

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Illustration 221.
Front of Rock Cottage, Old Village, ca. 1935.
Photographer unknown.
NPS, Western Regional Offices files.

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Illustrations 222-23.
Ivy Cottage, Old Village, ca. 1935.
Photographer unknown.
NPS, Western Regional Office files.

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Illustration 224.
Mariposa Grove comfort station.

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Illustration 225.
Ostrander Lake ski hut.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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structures in the Interest of the larger program for the restoration of the valley.65

[65. It is interesting to note that in the discussions concerning preservation of those structures, the question was raised as to whether any attention should be paid to history in the park because of the great natural values of the area. The statement was made that “This is one park which is manifestly not an historical park.” “Minutes of the Meeting of the Yosemite Advisory Board, April 19-21, 1940, at Yosemite National Park, Califronia,” Board of Advisors file, 1940, in Box 10, Advisory Board Correspondence and Files, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3. The entry of the Department of the Interior into the field of historic preservation began as early as 1906, when passage of the Antiquities Act made the preservation of historical and archeological sites one of its responsibilities. That duty also passed to the National Park Service upon its establishment in 1916. Director Horace Albright soon perceived the need for a separate body to address preservation issues and in 1931 created a historical division in the Branch of Research and Education. His action reflected the growing recognition of the importance of historical areas in the National Park System. Verne E. Chatelain, head of the new division, undertook the difficult task of reorienting the Park Service’s longstanding concern with large natural areas of the West toward a new awareness of historical features. Prior to that time, leadership in historic preservation in park areas had come primarily from individuals and private groups. ‘The immediate problems Chatelain faced are apparent in the involved discussions concerning the justification for preservation of historical features, such as Cedar Cottage, carried on in Yosemite National Park.]

Also in 1940 a small residence near the site of the former El Capitan checking station was moved immediately east of the Wawona ranger station. The comfort station at Badger Pass was completed, and a hut at Ostrander Lake was constructed through the cooperation of the CCC program. Originally the Yosemite Winter Activities Committee had recommended that two huts be constructed—one for people who wished to carry their own sleeping bags and food and one for those who desired to rent bedding and purchase meals. Because it did not seem feasible to construct two huts, and with a view to providing an experiment along the lines recommended, it was decided to provide both types of service in one structure.66

[66. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1940, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

As mentioned in the previous chapter, following studies by various individuals, including field biologists, the park discontinued bear feeding on the valley floor late in the 1940 season. It tore up the old feeding platforms and landscaped the old parking area to restore it to its original condition. Temporary platforms were constructed at Gin Flat, and the experimental project of trapping bears on the valley floor and hauling them to Gin Flat for release and feeding of garbage was seen as the solution to eliminating the bear nuisance problem.

10. Period of the Late 1940s

In 1941 the Oak and Cedar cottages in the Old Village were razed and bronze markers placed on large boulders to indicate their former locations and that of the Sentinel Hotel. The new Big Oak Flat Road entrance station on the western park boundary opened in May 1941 and a residence at Wawona was completed. In 1942 fire destroyed the Wawona store and post office.67 In 1943 the old Eight-Mile insect experimental laboratory was converted into a mess hall for a blister rust camp.68

[67. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1941-1942, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

[68. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1943, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

During 1945 a fire occurred in the Old Village pavilion, the movie house operated by the concessioner. In 1947 the barn at the Mariposa Grove ranger station burned, and twenty-four grave markers were made and installed in the Yosemite Valley cemetery. In that year the Wawona school became one of eleven one-teacher schools established during a reorganization in Mariposa County. The school, which began operating during the 1890-91 term, reached its peak during 1937-38. Its attendance declined gradually through the 1950s and 1960s and the school closed in 1971.69

[69. Alan Beymer, “End of the Line Nears for Wawona’s One-Room School,” Fresno (Calif.) Bee, 18 May 1971. The Park Service planned to use the building as a community center for the Wawona area; Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1947, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

By the late 1940s questions were arising over the future uses of the park, and an effort was being made to formulate policies to guide the development program. It was generally agreed that the facilities in the valley had about reached the saturation point and further expansion would have to be accomplished elsewhere. Many of the concessioner’s obsolete buildings were in a state of dilapidation and its accommodations and supporting services were the subject of complaints from the public. The Park Service considered Yosemite Lodge, especially, a disgrace. Thought was given to developing new facilities at Wawona and Crane Flat as major visitor-use areas.

In December 1949 fire destroyed the old railroad depot at El Portal. By 1950 the Cunningham Flat Campground at Wawona was being built and the amphitheater at Camp 14 had to be demolished for safety reasons. Two residences, nos. 68 and 69, were under construction in the Lost Arrow Residential section in the valley.70

[70. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1949-1950, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

11. The 1950s Period Encompasses Many Changes

As stated in the previous section, torrential rains and melting snow from the high country caused flood conditions in Yosemite in November 1950 similar to those of December 1937. Damage from the twelve inches of rain included tent platforms and pit privies washed from their foundations, residences and comfort stations filled with silt and mud, and destruction of power poles, telephone lines, and sewage systems. The diversion dam and valley sewage treatment plant suffered damage, while the Frog Creek spawning station needed replacement of holding pens, traps, and railings. Although the damage was less in some respects than during the 1937 catastrophe, more funds were required for repair work because of radical economic changes during the past decade.71

[71. “Repair Estimates - Buildings and Structures” and “Report of Damage Caused by Flood of Nov. 18-20, 1950. Includes Estimate of Repair and Reconstruction Costs,” in Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1951 some of the old buildings connected with the Wawona Hotel Company were torn down as was the old Foley Studio in the Old Village. A small amphitheatre was constructed in Campground No. 7 in 1952. Also in that year the new refreshment stand at Happy Isles was under construction. Stuart N. Greenberg donated money to install a bronze sign and railing around the sequoia tree in the Old Village. That concrete and rock work was installed in 1953, the year that stabilization of the stone fireplace in the Mount Dana Summit Mine cabin was undertaken.72 The plaque and railing were removed about 1970.

[72. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, 1951-1953, microfilm roll #4, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

An addition to Lewis Memorial Hospital was begun in 1953. The new extension included a dental office with two treatment rooms and a laboratory, a storage room, a sun room, and a four-bed ward, completed in May 1954. In the latter year the old checking station at Aspen Valley was rehabilitated and used as quarters for a fire guard during the fire season. In addition, the Crane Flat fire lookout was established as one of seven key observation posts in connection with a new California Forest and Range Experiment Station cloud-observation program. This “Operation Sky-Fire” entailed daily recording of a rather complex series of cloud formations, movements, types, and related data. The

Illustration 226.
Shaded area shows extent of flood, 22-23 December 1955.
Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

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accumulated information from such posts would be analyzed to determine the feasibility of a cloud-seeding program to decrease the number of lightning strikes throughout the fire season. Also during 1954, representatives of the Davis Lumber Company working in Aspen Valley, which had ceased operations in November 1953, burned the remaining parts of their sawmill and several other temporary wooden structures. Additionally the Park Service razed several small buildings on the Scroggs property at Wawona to lessen the fire hazard.73 That same year restoration of the old stone cabins at the Great Sierra Mine began. The worst flood in Yosemite’s history hit in December 1955, when more than seventeen inches of rain fell. Losses, however, were less severe due to the precautions taken as a result of the previous floods. In the fall of 1956 the old Yosemite Lodge burned. That was not considered much of a loss since the building was being dismantled at the time because of the opening of the new lodge that year.

[73. Emil F. Ernst and Henry R. During, “Annual Forestry Report of Yosemite National Park for the Calendar Year 1954,” RG 79, Federal Archives and Records Center, San Bruno, California, 2-3, 20.]

In February 1956 residence 15 (old stage office/school) in the valley was demolished and the site cleaned up to make way for new residence 74. Residences 71-73 were also completed on the site of the former tennis court, in the summer of 1956. A new grammar school was built that same year. The Happy Isles state fish hatchery building closed in 1957 and conversion to a nature center began. As a proposed information and interpretive station, it would contain exhibits on the high country and natural history subjects and serve as a meeting place for the Junior Ranger program.74

[74. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, 1953-1957, microfilm rolls #4 and #5, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

By 1949 about thirty-five Indians resided in the Indian Village in Yosemite Valley. Most of the men worked for the Park Service while

Illustration 227.
Indian Village - Arch Rock entrance station, 1952.
Part of the Master Plan for Yosemite National Park.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

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the women worked in the laundry or performed housework for some of the park’s permanent residents. Younger children attended the nearby elementary school and the older ones attended either Mariposa High School or Indian schools.75

[75. Perry, “The Yosemite Indian Story,” 7.]

The discontinuance of the Indian Village in the 1950s was based on an Indian housing policy formulated by the National Park Service in August 1953, which provided that when a house became vacant, the building would be removed. The gradual elimination of the cabins was seen as a solution to a problem stemming from an influx of outside Indians. Houses were removed at several different times: Bldgs. 114 and 121 in 1953; No. 119 in 1956; No. 112 was destroyed in 1957; Nos. 110, 115, and 118 were razed in 1953; and No. 107 was torn down in 1960, as was the garage. In 1944 two sets of cabins were relocated in the Indian Village and joined together (108 with 109 and 116 with 117). Building No. 120 was moved ‘to the government utility area where it functions as a paint shop (No. 551). Remaining cabins (108, 111, 113, 116), the comfort station, and the shower (Bldg. No. 444) were eliminated about 1969.76

[76. Leslie P. Arnberger, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, to Barbara Karshmer, Attorney-at-Law, California Indian Legal Services, 19 October 1976, Box 58, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

By 1957 the staff of the park realized that a number of historic buildings in the park would be lost unless they could be moved to a location where they would receive proper care. Several lay in areas due to be restored to wilderness, others in isolated places had become susceptible to vandalism. Visitors never saw most of them, wasting their value as historic structures. The park conceived the idea of moving those buildings to Wawona, which already had items of historical interest, such as the old covered bridge, an old wagon shop, and the hotel. There the park would develop a major pioneer interpretive and information center concentrating on the human history of the area, turning Wawona into the park’s second-largest visitor-use area and lessening visitor pressures on Yosemite Valley.

The first step in the project involved the restoration of the covered bridge. The old wagon shop on its original location near the bridge was rehabilitated to house an outstanding collection of Yosemite stagecoaches and other horse-drawn vehicles. Workers brought in eight historic structures from various areas of the park and reassembled them as a village. Each one represented a phase of Yosemite’s human history: pioneering, homesteading, early transportation, visitor accommodations, army administration, ranger services, and pioneer artists. Machinery from the Tioga Mine illustrated the story of mining in the Sierra. Each cabin was furnished to its period and in accordance with its original use and each structure is interpreted to visitors. Restoration crews spent six years moving and restoring early structures for the center, and various people contributed vehicles and furnishings to aid in interpretation. The Pioneer History Center opened to the public in 1961.

A new Camp 14 amphitheater was constructed in June 1957. By that year the problem of refuse collection and disposal in Yosemite Valley had become of paramount importance. Mixed refuse was being disposed of at the incinerator operated by the Park Service at the north edge of the utility area near Yosemite Village. The concessioner collected the refuse from the privately owned establishments and concessioner housing for disposal there. Built in 1925, the facility was now considered inefficient and obsolete as well as overloaded. Rubbish and noncombustible material of the concessioner and the Park Service was collected separately and hauled to the Curry dump, an open, abandoned borrow pit just southeast of Camp Curry. Rubbish was burned in the almost full pit each day. Although garbage from the valley eating establishments was collected daily by a hog rancher from Merced under a Park Service contract, some always ended up in the Curry dump and attracted bears. In addition, smoke from the burning trash was extremely unsightly. Obviously both the dump and the incinerator needed new facilities and relocation.77

[77. “Report on Yosemite Valley Refuse Collection and Disposal System -Yosemite National Park, California,” August 1957, in Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Other construction during this later period included a comfort station near the valley museum (completion report dated 1957); a post office employees’ garage, comfort stations at Camp A. E. Wood, Camp 9, Bridalveil Fall, White Wolf, and Glacier Point; and ten employee residences in Upper Tecoya (completion reports dated 1958); and a combination service building in the El Portal trailer village and rehabilitation of historic structures for the Yosemite Pioneer History Center (completion reports dated 1960). At the end of 1958, the park was in the process of razing or removing from the valley twelve old dwellings, some dating from 1906. The first superintendent’s office, which had been moved to Yosemite Valley in 1906, had been used as a residence until 1958, when it was moved to the Pioneer Yosemite History Center.

In 1959 work started on liquidation of the large employee trailer camp on the valley floor immediately above Sentinel Bridge between the river and the valley road. A major step in the MISSION 66 program was moving this out of the valley to El Portal. A fire that year destroyed a Happy Isles residence.

Early in 1961 construction of government houses at El Portal began, along with erection of a new water and sewage disposal plant. By 1962 the new El Portal incinerator was operative, ending the burning of ‘garbage and trash on the valley floor. In 1961 a new bridge over the Merced River below El Portal was also built. That same year Soap Suds Row, the board-and-batten, high-ceilinged dwellings used by married enlisted soldiers during the military administration of the park, was razed. The six remaining structures, occupied by park personnel up to that time, were burned as part of the park’s volunteer fire brigade training program. The origin of the name for such a row of houses common to all military posts lay in the array of washboards and tubs and the row of army housewives that could frequently be seen scrubbing the laundry of the soldiers in the military days.78

[78. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December, 1959-61, microfilm roll #5, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

D. Concession Operations

1. The National Park Service Acquires Wawona Basin

On 13 August 1932, President Herbert C. Hoover signed a proclamation placing the Wawona Basin within Yosemite National Park. In that year Clarence A. Washburn, son of a founder of the Wawona Hotel, sold the property to the U. S. Government, with the Yosemite Park and Curry Company purchasing the furnishings and equipment. The addition of these 8,785 acres also brought the entire new Wawona highway within park boundaries. Clarence Washburn managed the Wawona property under the same policies as before until he quit in 1934. Under the agreement, the dairy would be maintained and the farm continue operating.

The acquisition of the Wawona Basin had been considered imperative for a long time because of its strategic importance in relation to Yosemite’s future development. It was considered second only to the valley in operating and administrative importance, because it had the only available airplane landing field, was considered the best place to send the valley’s midsummer overflow of campers, would enable some restrictions to be put on subdivisions in the area, would facilitate the control of illegal hunting and fishing, would provide more recreational opportunities for visitors, and enable better fire protection for the Mariposa Grove and nearby areas.

Also, the addition of Wawona would enable one entrance station at Four-Mile Junction to serve as a checking station for the entire area south of the valley and would eliminate similar stations at the Big Trees Grove, Alder Creek, and Chinquapin. In addition, it was feared that the owners, who were then operating at an annual net loss, might be tempted to sell timber on the property or subdivide it to acquire additional revenue.

The Yosemite Park and Curry Company wanted the buyout .consummated because of the threat of strong competition posed by the Wawona Hotel as this area grew in importance. Its acquisition would remove the only nearby outside competition of concern to the company’s park operations.

An inventory of property acquired at Wawona by the government included:

a dwelling erected in 1902, razed about 1936;

a fish hatchery erected in 1892 [1895], razed in 1933;

a hide house, razed in 1934;

a slaughterhouse erected in 1929;

a refreshment stand erected in 1929;

a filling station operated by Standard Oil erected in 1932;

an engine house erected in 1932;

a garage erected in 1890, razed in 1936?;

a milk house moved to the upper end of the meadow and razed in 1941;

a storehouse erected in 1865 and razed in 1936?;

a granary built in 1865, razed 1936?;

a wagon shed erected in 1865, razed in 1936;

old Shell quarters erected in 1926, razed in 1936;

Illustration 228.
Boundary changes, Wawona Basin.
From Yosemite Draft Land Acquisition Plan, Yosemite National Park, October 1979.

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Illustration 229.
Wawona Hotel and vicinity.
From Sargent, Wawona’s Yesterdays.

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Illustration 230.
Map of Wawona area, showing concession operations and park facilities.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

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an engine house erected in 1926, razed in 1936;

a barn erected in 1920;

a dwelling, razed in 1934?;

a blacksmith shop erected in 1922, caved in by snow in 1933;

a shed razed in 1934?;

a carpenter shop (wagon shed) razed in 1941 by the CCC;

a planing mill, erected 1917, razed in 1941 by the CCC;

a bunkhouse (white), erected in 1920;

a laundry, erected in 1917;

a boiler shed, erected in 1917, razed in 1934?;

a bunkhouse for Chinese help, erected in 1917;

two dwellings erected in 1920;

a double dwelling;

a powerhouse erected in 1907;

a dwelling erected in 1930;

a bathhouse on [Stella?] lake, razed in 1933?;

an ice house erected in 1897;

a storehouse;

a store and post office erected in 1920;

a music hall erected in 1892, razed in 1936?;

a coffee shop, erected 1925 and moved in 1937?;

a warehouse erected in 1880;

a rustic pavilion, razed in 1934?;

a soda and curio store, erected in 1886;

the Sequoia Hotel, erected in 1920, burned in 1977;

the Wawona Hotel, erected in 1879;

the Small Brown Building, erected in 1896;

the Long Brown Building, erected in 1900, raised to two stories in 1914;

the Long White Building, erected in 1864;

White Cottage (Small White), erected in 1884;

the Annex, erected in 1917;

a boiler house erected in 1917, razed in 1935?;

a dwelling erected in 1921;

a barn, erected by NPS in 1932;

a tank house, erected in 1917;

Oak Cottage, erected in 1927;

Cedar House, erected in 1903, used as NPS ranger station;

the Gordon dwelling, erected in 1892;

a schoolhouse, repaired in 1932;

a woodshed in the school yard erected in 1928;

a chicken house;

a tennis court, swimming pool, and golf course;

and a cow barn erected in 1932, located at the upper end of the aviation field.79

[79. “Inventory of Fixed Equipment,” Wawona property acquired by the federal government by presidential proclamation dated 13 August 1932, inventory taken by R. Sprinkel and M. A. Ackles during the month of November, 1932 (corrected 19 April 1933 to agree with YP&CCo inventory), 33 pages, Records of the Superintendent, 1910-1953, Yosemite National Park, RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California.]

2. Big Trees Lodge

The earlier tent camp established by the Yosemite National Park Company in 1920 in the upper portion of the Mariposa Grove consisted of fourteen wooden cabins and an octagonally shaped headquarters. The Yosemite Park and Curry Company razed that group of buildings and during July to October 1932 built a new lodge near Sunset Point in the grove. The small, attractive twelve-room hotel, simple in style, was designed by Eldridge T. Spencer. It contained an office, store, studio, employees’ quarters, dining alcove, and guest rooms.80 The complex ceased to house guests in 1972 and became a dorm for Youth Conservation Corps groups. Fire and a falling tree that smashed the roof in the winter of 1982 led to its eventual demise.

[80. See Albert H. Good, Park and Recreation Structures, Part III—Overnight - and Organized Camp Facilities (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1938), 70-71, for pictures and a floor plan.]

3. Chronology of Later Yosemite Park and Curry Company Development

a) Company Facilities Need Improvement

In 1930 the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, having operated in Yosemite for five years, prepared a program to serve as a basis for study in terms of future developments and operations and to use in discussions with the National Park Service in order to enable synchronization with the government’s expansion plans. The program, which included such items as restoration and preservation of the Sentinel Hotel group as an early California hostelry, a permanent housekeeping unit at Yosemite Lodge, development of the High Sierra camps as small mountain lodges, and facilities for winter sports, golf, tennis, and visits by notable guest artists to prolong visitor stays, did not evolve as planned. Evidently the company did not feel it received a clear definition of government policies toward recreation and entertainment and other commercial activities of the company. In addition, the government’s inability in the early 1930s to provide the necessary sewer, water, and electrical systems and access roads on which company development was dependent delayed the program at first. During the late 1930s and with the onset of World War II, the dropoff in visitation and other economic factors made such improvements in accommodations and facilities

Illustration 231.
Remains of Big Trees Lodge in Mariposa Grove.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 232.
Empire Meadow building foundations (former lumber company camp and CCC camp).
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

Illustration 233.
Tecoya group and warehouse area of Yosemite Park and Curry Company in Yosemite Valley, 1972.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

inappropriate. By the late 1940s, however, this lack of investment resulted in rising visitor dissatisfaction.81

[81. “A Report on A Provisional Program for the Development of the Buildings, Equipment, and Grounds of Yosemite Park and Curry Co. for a Five-Year Period from 1930 to 1935,” prepared by Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1 March 1930, in Box 28, Yosemite Park and Curry Company (NPS) Architectural Reports, 1927-1939, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 1 (Introduction), 1 (Relation of Program to Policies of National Park Service), 3-5 (Summary of Relation of Program to the Operation).

b) Winter Sports Move to Badger Pass

As skiers began to gravitate toward the Badger Pass area, the Snow Creek cabin continued to provide a more extensive ski terrain than the valley floor offered. Skiers often used a small hill near the cabin as a practice slope. The cabin served for five seasons for skiing, until the spring of 1934. Although park visitors did not use the cabin much after that, rangers en route to Yosemite Creek or Tuolumne Meadows on snow surveys would occasionally stop overnight, and, during the spring, men sent by the concessioner to fill the ice houses at Tuolumne Meadows and Merced Lake, which were used for refrigeration purposes for the high country camps, would stop by. Ansel Adams visited the cabin several times to take pictures of the high country in winter. The cabin was basically abandoned by the Curry Company after that time, although it was occasionally used as an overnight refuge by backcountry travelers. Volunteer “rangers” occasionally lived in the building, which has had some use as a backcountry patrol cabin.

After completion of the new Wawona Road and tunnel in 1933, visitors began to use the Chinquapin area for skiing as well as the Badger Pass slope. Because of the poor condition of the Glacier Point road, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company became interested in installing the cable tramway mentioned earlier as a means of getting skiers to the south rim. Gradually valley floor winter activities faded and skiers concentrated on Badger Pass and the high country, especially after improvement of the Glacier Point road afforded greater accessibility to that area.

Because the valley facilities for handling the public had proven inadequate, Donald Tresidder felt justified in making Badger Pass the focal point of his company’s ski development. He fully expected it to turn into one of the great skiing centers of the Sierra because of its easy access from the valley, its sufficient quantity of snow even in drier years, its good quality of snow, and its good skiing terrain. He finally abandoned the valley toboggan and ash-can slides because of the possibility of serious accidents. Tresidder began construction on the lodge at Monroe Meadows in late September 1935. The structure, of log slab construction, also designed by Eldridge Spencer, opened in December of that year with a ski lift in conjunction. Several of the Badger Pass ski school’s directors and instructors proved very influential in the development of skiing in the West. The Ostrander ski hut, built by the Park Service in 1940 with CCC labor as a touring shelter, became an important addition to the park’s winter facilities. Dr. Tresidder took a great personal interest in the development of winter sports in California, and Yosemite, a pioneer in the winter sports field, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ski enthusiasts in the West.82

[82. Author unknown, “History of Winter Sports in Yosemite,” typescript, 13 pages, in Box 47, Yosemite Park and Curry Co., Misc. Records, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

c) Limited Construction Occurs

In 1936-37 the company managed to finance two dormitories and one apartment building, all three stories high, in the Tecoya residential area. The company advocated use wherever possible of multiple instead of free-standing residential units to conserve space. In October 1937 the government transferred the frame movie pavilion in the Old Village to the concessioner. In the early 1930s porches had been added to the sides. The park burned and razed the structure in 1963 after fire due to an overheated oil furnace had badly damaged it. At the time it was the last remaining commercial building in the Old Village. The site was revegetated to a natural state in line with MISSION 66 plans for the Old Village area. The Glacier Point Hotel and Annex (old Mountain House) continued to house and serve visitors. A small, open-faced, sheet metal building close to Glacier Point provided shelter for the bark burned in the firefall. As mentioned, in 1938 the park began razing the Sentinel Hotel and Annex.

During the 1930s the High Sierra camps began to undergo some renovation. In 1936 the Tuolumne Meadows camp consisted of tent platforms and log frames for two lodge buildings housing a kitchen, dining room, and office, and fifty-one platforms for guest tents, two womens’ dormitories, 2 men’s dormitories, two bathhouses and toilets, and one store. All structures had canvas coverings. In 1940 the lodge had a dining room, kitchen, warehouse, thirty-eight tent platforms, one women’s dormitory, two men’s dormitories, and two bathhouses. All were canvas except the kitchen and warehouse—frame structures built in 1938.83

[83. Master Plan Development Outlines, 1936, 1940, RG 79, Cartographic Archives Division, NA, Alexandria, Va.]

d) High Sierra Camps Continue

By 1938 five High Sierra camps existed: two original ones at Merced Lake and Tuolumne Meadows, which had ice houses, and new ones at May Lake (replacing the Tenaya Lake camp), Glen Aulin, and Vogelsang (replacing the Boothe Lake camp). The company had discontinued the Tenaya Lake and Little Yosemite Valley camps. About 1935 a small stone lodge was constructed at Glen Aulin. The Curry Company erected a stone dining room and kitchen at May Lake in 1938. Mary Curry Tresidder, president of the Curry Company, established the Sunrise High Sierra camp in 1961 and also equipped it with a canvas dining tent and stone kitchen structure. It overlooks Long Meadow on the John Muir Trail a few miles from Cathedral Pass.

The Vogelsang camp has had three different sites. First located on the north shore of Boothe Lake in 1924, it was found that drainage was poor and the mosquitoes intolerable. In the early 1930s the camp moved up near the junction of the Vogelsang, Rafferty Creek, and Lyell Fork trails. The camp moved again in 1940, being rebuilt at its present location on Fletcher Creek. It also has a rock kitchen and a dining tent.

In March 1939 the company commenced work on a new office building near Yosemite Village. In 1940 it built a new store and service station at Tuolumne Meadows.

e) The U. S. Navy Takes Over the Ahwahnee Hotel

In June 1943 the U. S. Navy leased the Ahwahnee Hotel for use as a hospital and rehabilitation and recreation center for Navy and Marine personnel suffering from the effects of service in the Pacific. Exhausted veterans of air battles, naval engagements, and submarine patrols rested and recuperated there.

The Navy converted the Ahwahnee and its grounds to hospital use by several alterations and the erection of temporary buildings surrounded by a fence. The first year, conditions at the hospital were desperate due to a dearth of just about everything, including recreational facilities. Many of the patients resented being sent to the isolated valley and having to wait months for a medical discharge or return to duty. The Navy then secured eleven excess army field-type temporary buildings and constructed a new rehabilitation and recreation center in the summer of 1944 in the meadow west of the hospital. There bowling, fly tying, weaving, leatherwork, and bookbinding relieved the strains of war. Skiing, skating, and climbing also became valuable therapeutic agents in rehabilitation. The Navy ultimately decided to request only patients requiring hospitalization who were less likely than psychiatric cases to resent the isolation of Yosemite. It made preparations to receive the more acutely ill types, including those needing surgery. Commissioned as the U. S. Naval Convalescent Hospital, the facility’s name later became the U. S. Naval Special Hospital. The war ended, however, before the new plan could be implemented. The hotel was decommissioned on 15 December 1945. Refurbishment got underway quickly and paying guests began arriving again the end of 1946. Due to wartime restrictions and conditions, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company closed the Glacier Point Hotel, the Wawona Hotel, and the Big Trees Lodge, and did not reopen them until 1946. In September 1943 the old Curry sawmill and two nearby buildings at Camp Curry burned. In 1944 the isolation ward in Yosemite Valley, built by the government prior to 1929, was moved to its present location.

f) The Curry Company Begins a New Building Program

The Yosemite Advisory Board continued during this later period to aid in broad policy questions. Many of the plans they suggested were never carried out because of differences of opinion as to the wisdom of proceeding and because money was not available to do much. In 1946 the board advocated branch stores in the campgrounds to relieve the constant daily travel to the Old Village store. It suggested canvas tents with solid flooring in which staples could be obtained. After peak visitation had passed, the tents would be removed until the next season.

Superintendent Frank A. Kittredge spoke of some of the frustrations connected with the park concession operations in 1947:

Many of the company [YP&CCo] public buildings are a problem because they are in a state of dilapidation. The old store built prior to 1900, the Yosemite Lodge built about 1911 or ’12, the company warehouse of about the same period, and many of the public cabins are the subject of a great deal of complaint, and there is no question but that they are a disgrace to the Park Service. . . . This problem was recognized a great many years ago. . . . There is . . . an agreement of 1925, signed by Secretary of the Interior Work and representatives of the Park Service and the YP&CCo which required the construction of a new store building in the new area [New Village]. . . .

Illustration 234.
High Sierra camps, 1975.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

The following year - 1926, the company were [sic] given five years in which to build a new lodge in place of the present Yosemite Lodge. In 1932 a new 20 year contract was given the YP&CCo and the five year program included, which contemplated the above items and many others for reconstruction in the period 1932 to 1937. It was felt that a full 20 year franchise would permit the company to obtain proper financing and to do the construction work at a time when the President was endeavoring to have the business concerns do just as much employing as possible.

Along about 1937 some question was raised as to the adequacy of the location of certain structures.

Irrespective of why scheduled construction of buildings was not adequately undertaken or completed, the fact remains that the Park Service has now and has had on its hands a very unfortunate situation. For 20 years the public has been harrassed by having the old village structures and the old lodge structure on the main highway serving as bottlenecks for every incoming vehicle on crowded days. For 20 years the Park Service has been confronted with the necessity of straightening out traffic, pacifying people, and trying to overcome the conditions which have been imposed upon the public because at those two locations we are still subject to the stagecoach days structures and service. The problem of buildings is very much a Park Servicematter and a very serious one if the public is to be served.84

[84. Report “Prepared for Mr. Clem W. Collins, Chairman, Concessions Advisory Group” by Frank A. Kittredge, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, 6 June 1947, in Separates File, Yosemite-Concessions, Y-16c, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

In 1947 the concessioner erected an experimental store in Camp 14 to alleviate the parking situation in the Old Village, and it turned out to be successful. In 1950 a guest unit at Yosemite Lodge was built called Pine Cottage, designed to be reminiscent of early California architectural syles. In 1951 the main building constructed during the year was the new apartment house in the Tecoya area. In 1952 the Park Service and the Yosemite Park and Curry Company negotiated a new twenty-year contract. The company then pledged one million dollars over the next five years as part of a new building program.85 In 1953 a new store, post office, and coffee shop building with a detached four-room

Illustration 235.
Ahwahnee Hotel of Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1970.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

manager’s residence, was completed at Wawona; in 1954 the Park Service was relocating the valley’s Northside Road to run behind the Yosemite Lodge facilities instead of through them. In 1954 the concessioner began adding a new structure at Badger Pass to house ski sales, rental, and repair facilities and employee sleeping quarters, thereby increasing dining and lounge areas in the original main building. In the spring of 1955 the Wawona and Yosemite Lodge service stations were completed. In December 1955 the company completed the new Cedar Cottage guest unit at Yosemite Lodge.

[85. Robinson, “History of Business Concessions,” 4.]

In 1956 the long-awaited new Yosemite Lodge main buildings, consisting of an office, lounge, cafeteria, coffee shop, souvenir shop, and post office were completed. All the old lodge buildings were demolished. As part of the MISSION 66 program, by early 1958 construction had started on the Degnan-Donohue, Inc., building in the new Yosemite Village. It would house a restaurant, soda fountain, bakery, and delicatessen. The Park Service had rejected the earlier mushroom-dome structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954 as being too modern for a park setting. The current structure was a simple, two-story, A-frame building designed to fit into the landscape. Miss Mary Ellen Degnan and Dr. John Degnan, daughter and son of the founders, ran the operation. Construction in 1959 resulted in a new village store, containing a restaurant and a fountain replacing the Old Village Grill, and a new central warehouse with maintenance shops. The Maintenance Division serviced all units and facilities operated by the concessioner. Its nine shops (canvas, keys, paint, audio-visual, machine, plumbing, print, electrical, and carpentry) occupied the basement level -of the central warehouse building. By February 1959 the old Wells Fargo building had been moved to the Yosemite Pioneer History Center, the old Degnan store/restaurant had been razed, and the Old Village store and ice house removed. The rebuilding and/or relocation of the two principal areas of congestion in the valley—Yosemite Lodge and

Illustration 236.
Yosemite Lodge area of Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1972.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

the village—helped solve many traffic problems and facilitated cross-valley circulation.

Work during 1960 concentrated on Camp Curry, where the old grill was demolished and a new coffee shop constructed, the old office building was converted into a lounge, and the former transportation office transformed into the front office. The Camp Curry store became a dress shop. The Park Service relocated the camp’s entrance road and parking area to provide improved access and circulation, and the entrance area was landscaped more attractively. The next year work began on converting the former auditorium and dance pavilion into a lodging unit called the Stoneman House. In 1962 the company razed the old cooks’ dormitory.86

[86. Annual Reports, Yosemite Park and Curry Co., 1950-62, in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

E. Patented Lands

1. Remaining in 1931

By 1931 there remained in Yosemite about 2,400 acres of private land, whereas in 1906 there had been more than 25,000. The 1931 acreage was divided into sixteen parcels. Only two continued to function as cattle range, and they belonged to Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer who owned Big Meadow and the McCauley 40. Eleven of the parcels were originally used as range land. One parcel was taken up as a timber claim, and was later purchased by the West Side Lumber Company. Four of the parcels were selected to accommodate the tourist trade to the valley. Two of those, Tamarack Flat and Gentry, were used as early stage relay stations, and the other two, at Tenaya Lake, were used as high mountain camps.

In the summer of 1931 a comprehensive report was done on private lands in the park by temporary rangers J. Griffith and Emil Ernst. Those lands included the Sierra Club holdings at Tuolumne

Illustration 237.
Camp Curry, 1956.
Part of the Master Plan, Yosemite National Park.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

Meadows; the Frank H. Powers estate at Murphy Creek, Tenaya Lake, and Illilouette Creek; the Timothy H. Carlin holdings at McSwain Meadows; the J. H. Meyer holdings at White Wolf; the T. J. Hodgdon holdings at East Meadow and Aspen Valley Lodge; the McNee Company, Inc., holdings at Tamarack Flat; the Charles E. Hooper and Kate Smith holdings at Cascades and Gentry; the holdings of Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer at Big Meadow and McCauley 40; the Foresta subdivision; the holdings of Fannie Stockton at Johnson Lake; of Lewis C. Elwell at Elwell Meadows; and of the West Side Lumber Company on Kibbie Ridge.

In terms of private land use at that time, Big Meadow was used for grazing headquarters, one parcel was operated as a local timber supply, and two were conducted as private camps—White Wolf and Aspen Valley Lodge. The latter consisted in 1931 of a lodge building and rooming house of native logs cut and dressed on the owner’s East Meadow property. The store/gas station was a poorly finished log building; the auto repair garage was a shed open on all sides, and another rough shed housed the resort laundry. The original Hodgdon two-story log cabin was being used as a storehouse. All of the improvements on the property had been made since 1920 except for the original cabin erected shortly after 1880. Nearby stood park entrance and ranger stations. Realignment of the Tioga Road in 1937 caused visitation, and consequently profits, to drop. Public use of the old road discontinued during World War II. Private summer homes and a logging operation existed there into the 1950s, although the park eventually acquired some of the land.

Another of the properties was maintained by the Sierra Club as a recreation area for its members. Foresta remained a semi-active subdivision of summer homesites. The remaining properties surveyed in 1931 were not used for any purpose at all. There were varying degrees of improvement on five of the properties. The Sierra Club at Tuolumne Meadows had erected Parsons Lodge as a mountain shelter. White Wolf and Aspen Valley Lodge showed development related to tourist trade over the Tioga Road. The Big Meadow property had extensive improvements that had been made over the years relative to a self-supporting homestead. Several Foresta owners had improved their lots by erecting summer cabins.87

[87. J. Bain Griffith and Emil F. Ernst, “Private Land Survey, Yosemite National Park, California,” 20 August 1931, Records of the Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, 1910-1953, RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California, 1-3.]

2. Yosemite Lumber Company

White and Friant assumed control of the operations of the Yosemite Lumber Company in March 1933. In 1935 John Ball formed a new Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company. Ball, president of the White and Friant Company, had to consolidate the assets of both the Yosemite Lumber and Sugar Pine Lumber companies to get out his timber that was mixed in with the old Yosemite Lumber Company holdings. The company conducted logging operations near Camp 17 on the Coulterville Road. In 1938 it built another incline above Camp 17, and pushed the logging railroad north toward Sawmill Mountain. Truck logging also started that year over roads built toward Ackerson Meadow.

In 1937 the campaign to halt logging in the Yosemite area began to climax, especially after a visit to the park by Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Although lumbermen argued that selective cutting aided in preserving the sugar pine forests by removing the potential fire hazard from over-ripe, rotting timber, the conservation cause ultimately won the day. In 1939 the Carl Inn tract of 7,200 acres of choice sugar pine came under government ownership after the passage of legislation authorizing its purchase. Logging continued through the season of 1942, by which time most of the available timber supply had been exhausted; the company then decided to cease operations. A scrap dealer bought the physical assets of the company and the buildings at Merced Falls were sold or torn down. Thus ended the long history of the seventh largest lumber producer in the West.88

[88. Johnston, Railroads of the Yosemite Valley, 125-32, 153-59, 169-72; “Proposed Exchange of Timber Lands between the United States and the Yosemite Lumber Co.,” 20 November 1913, in Central Files, RG 79, NA, 1-2, 7-8; and also see Fred J. Overly, comp., “Financial History of the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company,” 36 pages, in Central Files, RG 79, NA, passim.]

3. Section 35, Wawona

The amount of privately owned land in the park increased with the purchase of the Wawona Basin in 1932, for it contained one patented land section containing about 650 acres broken up into a large number of parcels with many owners. These patented lands at Wawona are all within Section 35, Township 4 South, Range 21 East, MDM. Section 35 is bisected by the South Fork of the Merced River, which flows west through the section, separating it into two distinct divisions. On the north the land slopes southerly from the base of Chilnualna Ridge, on the south the section line follows the top of a ridge descending west to the Wawona highway.

The section is also crossed by the Washburn irrigation ditch, built in 1871 by Galen Clark and Edwin Moore and used continuously for irrigation and until 1933 as a source of domestic water supply for Wawona.89 In 1934 the government installed a water system at Wawona and laid the main supply line in the Washburn ditch, which had been acquired as part of the Wawona sale. The Yosemite Park and Curry Company used the water flowing through the ditch to run a small hydroelectric plant. A maze of dirt roads covered the entire section, with a main road on each side of the river affording access from the Wawona road.

[89. “Wawona Private Land Report,” 15 December 1933, File 610-07.3, 1933, RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California.]

Illustration 238.
Railroad ties at top of north side incline of Yosemite Lumber Company.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

[click to enlarge]

The north half of Section 35 had been homesteaded by Albert Bruce, who divided his half section into six large lots that he distributed among his children. His family still controlled five in 1941, comprising nearly forty percent of the section acreage. At one time the Greeley family owned all of the south half of the south half of Section 35, but its holdings dwindled through the years.

At the time of the purchase of the Wawona Basin, there was a growing interest in the private lands at Wawona for year-round housing. It was to be expected that further development of organization camps (usually a colony of individual cabins plus a recreation club) would follow. Summer cabins of an older type of construction were located in “Koon Holler” on the south side of the river, far removed from most of the more recent cabin developments. Many landowners in the section as it grew held prominent positions in business, professional, and political circles of California. Possibly through their influence, most of the old ramshackle cabins slowly disappeared. Residents used many of the new year-round cabins as ski headquarters in the winter. The Bruce family built many modern new homes in the Chilnualna area.90

[90. “Pictures Showing Various Activities and Developments in Section 35, Yosemite National Park, California,” January 1951, File 610-07, 1951, RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California.]

Section 35 has always constituted a self-sufficient entity. The main business of several of its residents has been catering to tourists. Throughout its history the section has contained summer camps for children, trailer parks, campgrounds, subdivisions, grocery stores and restaurants, lodges, theaters, and cabins offering modern motel-type accommodations for visitors. Practically every owner for a small consideration would allow camping on his property. Certain subdivisions, such as Camp Chilnualna, owned by Harold Mays, and Sierra Lodge, owned by Sarah Scroggs, rented summer cottages. Stores operated, such as May’s Grocery and Walter Baker’s combination curio shop. A Seventh Day Adventist Church and an outdoor dance pavilion also served the public. Swimming pools have been very popular. A school operated under county jurisdiction on government land with an average attendance of twenty pupils, most of whom resided on private land. The Associated Conference of Seventh Day Adventists also conducted a private summer school or camp in Section 35. That complex included a mess hall, recreation building, eleven bunk houses, and other miscellaneous structures. Sarah Scroggs conducted the Sierra Lodge school for retarded children, which included a mess hall, dorms, schoolrooms, and cabins—about eighteen or twenty buildings altogether. The Park Service purchased the Scroggs property about 1950 in order to establish a housekeeping camp.

Real estate subdivisions offering town lots for sale became active after the surrounding land was included in the park. In Section 35 four tracts existed on which lots had been laid out: Chilnualna Villa Homesites Addition No. 1, Harold Mays’s property, Chilnualna Villa Homesites Addition No. 2, and a portion of the Wawona summer homesites. Many of the structures in the section first built on the sites were of flimsy, rough, board-and-batten or shake construction with no modern conveniences; later structures were of much better construction. The potential fire hazard in the area has always been great. In 1941 Section 35 contained 202 structures, exclusive of outside toilets. Administrative problems in Section 35 have included: the continual breakdown of the section into smaller parcels; its attraction to undesirable characters; additional policing duties due to the large number of summer residents; the lack of control over building activities; unsatisfactory sanitary conditions; and danger from fire.91

[91. E. C. Smith, Chief Engineering Aide, “Wawona Private Land Report, Section 35,” 15 February 1941, Records of the Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, 1910-1953, RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California, 13 pages.]

Illustration 239.
Wawona area, showing Section 35.
Landownership map, 1967.
NPS, Denver Service Center files.

[click to enlarge]

The one fortunate element of the land situation at Wawona has been that the private holdings are concentrated within the limits of a single section and not scattered throughout the area, so that the distinction between park lands and private holdings is clearer and has lessened administrative problems to some degree. Because they occupy a considerable portion of the South Fork valley, however, they seriously impinge upon full public use of that portion of the park.

4. Camp Hoyle

Bert Hoyle filed three mining claims on the old army site at Wawona in 1922 and established Camp Hoyle. It functioned as a tourist camp with a dining room, fountain, store, six tents, six cabins, and a gas station until 1932 when the National Park Service bought Hoyle’s interest and razed the camp. From 1933 on the site has functioned as a public campground. In 1951 it was improved and modernized and became Camp A. E. Wood Campground.

5. Hazel Green

With the completion of the Yosemite Valley Railroad to El Portal in 1907, traffic on the stage lines on the Coulterville and Big Oak Flat roads dwindled. In the early 1900s Jennie Foster Curry (Mrs. David A.) erected a small sawmill for manufacturing shakes, but terminated operations at the request of Park Service officials Stephen Mather and Horace Albright. The pine columns in the Ahwahnee Hotel dining room were produced there. In June 1938 the National Park Service bought the upper forty acres of Hazel Green as a right-of-way for the new Big Oak Flat Road as it was then being planned. Mary Curry Tresidder sold the remaining acres to the Cuneo brothers of Merced in the early 1940s. Their families built a new cottage and barn and put in a reservoir.92

[92. Tresidder, “Reminiscences of Hazel Green.”]

6. Carl Inn

An act of 9 July 1937 authorized the Secretary of the Interior to acquire certain lands known as the Carl Inn Sugar Pine Area and add them to Yosemite National Park. The government started a condemnation suit, including as defendants the owners of mining claims recorded to cover certain portions of the lands involved in the acquisition area. They lay along the western boundary of the park near the headwaters of the Tuolumne River.

The Carl Inn resort lay within the proposed addition. The Tioga Road crossed its north end, the Big Oak Flat Road crossed the central portion, and the Crane Flat road crossed the southern part. All highways were heavily used by the general public in going to and from the park. After a year and a half of negotiations with the Yosemite Sugar Pine Lumber Company, owner of most of the tract, an agreement was reached on price. The purchase was consummated early in 1939.

7. Foresta

By 1931 all but 125 subdivision lots in Foresta had been sold, but very few summer homes built. Some of the early owners had improved their lots with cabins, but many had become disgusted with their purchase. The project, as outlined earlier in this report, had started in good faith when the Chautauqua idea was popular. A legitimate attempt had been made to attract intellectuals and teachers who had long vacation periods available in which they could develop summer properties. But the money eventually gave out and the subdivision’s promoters went into bankruptcy. Property records became incredibly confused as properties changed hands over and over.

Construction work on the new Tioga, Big Oak Flat, and Wawona roads in the 1930s provided employment for a few people residing in Foresta. Several Bureau of Public Roads engineers and other workers lived there in tents or rental cabins.93 A few people continued to sporadically build in the area. The economic stringencies caused by World War II, resulting in an end to construction and decrease in visitation in the park also affected Foresta. Default on property payments increased and by the mid-1940s more than half the owners had defaulted for nonpayment of taxes. After the war, speculative interest in the subdivision increased and more homes were built.

[93. Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, 51-52.]

National Park Service officials kept close track of Foresta activity. Throughout the 1940s congressional appropriations for the purchase of inholdings were lacking and the Foresta situation remained on hold until the 1950s. During that period and into the early 1960s interest in the area again arose and resulted in construction of seventy-four additional cabins, largely a result of electrification of the area in early 1951. In 1954, to comply with the Park Service director’s desire to clear up remaining areas of alienated lands within the park, the government acquired eighteen Foresta properties and options on several others.

With the implementation of the MISSION 66 program in Yosemite, active acquisition by the Park Service of the remaining unimproved lots began. The last year for building in the area was 1961. In October of that year condemnation of almost 600 unimproved lots took place. The government had already acquired 274 by donation and purchase. 95 By November 1962 all such lots had been acquired. That left about eighty-five privately owned and improved properties in the subdivision.

Access within the Foresta area was provided by a series of twisting, poorly graded, and privately maintained dirt roads. The beautiful streets laid out on the subdivision maps shown to prospective buyers were never cleared or graded. The National Park Service
[94. Ibid., 70.]

[95. Ibid., 82.]

Illustration 240.
Map of Foresta lots and historic sites.
From Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost.

[click to enlarge]

considered the Foresta area ideal for the development of public campgrounds outside Yosemite Valley, because it was close to the valley, lay at about the same elevation, had fairly level topography, and was accessible from the park’s road system. It seemed especially appropriate for organization camps serving youth and church groups. A campground was finally developed there in 1964.96

[96. Mark Massie, “Appraisal Report, Foresta Area - Yosemite National Park,” 23 May 1969, in Box 16, Land Acquisition - Foresta, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 6. See Sargent, Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost, for a more detailed history of landownership and construction in Foresta, especially sections on “Today’s Cabins,” “Park Service Cabins,” and “Yesterday’s Cabins,” 94-97; W. I. Madeira, Inspector, Post Office Department, to G. A. Leonard, Inspector in Charge, 3 September 1913, in Central Files, RG 79, NA; Simoneau & Company to Major Wm. T. Littebrandt [sic], Supt., Yosemite National Park, 2 May 1914, in ibid :, “Informational Statement on Foresta Subdivision, Yosemite National Park, California,” 2 pages, in Box 17, Land Appraisals (Foresta and Wawona), Yosemite National Park Research Library and Records Center.]

8. Big Meadow

Fire took its toll in the Foresta/Big Meadow area during the mid-1930s. The McCauley ranchhouse burned in December 1935, while the old Meyer ranchhouse burned in 1936. The Meyers then moved into Thomas Rutherford’s old cabin until completion of their new home in 1938.

The Park Service considered the Big Meadow area next in importance to Wawona in terms of administrative and recreational opportunities. The fact that the area offered the possibility of rapid transportation to the main valley gave these lands almost more importance than the distant properties at Wawona. In anticipation of passenger air transportation increasing after World War II, and expected pressure to permit travel to Yosemite by plane, Big Meadow seemed an ideal site for an airfield. It possessed a firm surface and ample level space for landing, and the noise in connection with the field would not impinge upon tourist appreciation of Yosemite Valley.

Big Meadow has long been considered as a possible location for various park activities, thus helping to relieve some of the congestion on the valley floor. Suggestions have recommended its use for a golf course, as an employee housing area, a place to keep saddle animals when they were not needed on the valley floor, and as a possible home for the Happy Isles fish hatchery because of the warmer water available in Crane Creek.97 Its accessibility and pleasant climate, plus the added advantage of being able to use Foresta lots as homesites in conjunction with park use of the area, ensured that Big Meadow might play a large part in any plan designed to remove certain activities and administrative and concessioner operations from the floor of the valley. (Although El Portal was being studied in the mid-1940s as a place for the relocation of park activities, its climate seemed less agreeable in the summer and the narrow two-way road between it and the park loomed as a major safety hazard.) The Big Meadow and McCauley ranches were both condemned in 1964, but litigation dragged on for years. Meyer continued cattle raising until the McCauley land was included in the park.

[97. Report, Yosemite Advisory Board Meeting, 30 August - 7 September 1943, in Box 10, Advisory Board Correspondence and Files, Board of Advisors, 1943, no. 201-11, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 26-28.]

9. White Wolf

By 1931 the Meyer family expressed interest in selling White Wolf in whole or in part. That property had always been sought by the park, although it was not considered a high priority acquisition. Cabins 5 and 6 were added during the 1930s. Business at the lodge picked up during construction work on the new Tioga Road section from Crane Flat to the White Wolf intersection as construction crews and their families patronized it. For a while the lodge was accessible by both the old and new Tioga roads, but after paving ended on the new section in 1940, the old road section from the Big Oak Flat Road intersection through Aspen Valley to White Wolf was permanently closed. John Meyer died in 1940 and his wife Alice five years later.

Gas rationing during World War II and the death of both the elder Meyers curtailed the resort’s activities. In the late 1940s a relative began serving meals, and in 1947 a son of the Meyers and his wife took over the operation until it could be sold. Purchasers were hard to find because of the threat of eminent domain. That purchase took place in 1951 by the Park Service, the deed of sale stipulating that the lodge continue to be operated. The Curry Company leased it and has since made it part of its High Sierra camp system, offering a lodge with dining room, a store, tents, and a few cabins.

Changes were gradually made to adapt to the times and requests for more amenities. In 1961 cabins 5 and 6 were consolidated into one duplex with bath. Improvements brought new customers and the lodge business grew appreciably. Another duplex cabin with bath was created out of the old housekeeping cabins and modern toilets and shower rooms were added. The government relocated and enlarged a nearby campground in 1961. During the winter of 1968-69, a heavy snow load on the lodge roof caused its collapse and the crushing of cabins 5 and 6. The cabins were removed. Although this might have been a good time to update the facilities, plans for that work had not been approved, so the lodge was simply rebuilt without any changes to the former design.

10. Soda Springs

When it had initially purchased the Soda Springs property, the Sierra Club had intended to keep it indefinitely. After World War II, however, as the National Park Service became more dedicated to buying up inholdings in the parks, Sierra Club leaders felt it inconsistent with their philosophy to retain hold of the property. In addition, by the mid-1960s, the club found operation of the Soda Springs campground increasingly difficult due to larger numbers of visitors and a lessening ability to control their impact on the meadows. In 1973 the Sierra Club Foundation, which had held the property in trust since 1971, sold the 160 acres and the buildings to the Park Service.98

[98. Elizabeth S. O’Neill, “Edward Taylor Parsons Memorial Lodge,” Sierra , 63, no. 7 (September 1978): 34-35.]

Illustration 241.
Tent cabins at White Wolf Lodge.
Photo by Gary Higgins, 1984.

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Illustration 242.
Wrangler’s cabin, White Wolf Lodge.
Photo by Jo Wabeh, 1986.

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Illustration 243.
Guide map of Yosemite National Park, ca. 1968.
From Bingaman, Pathways.
[Editor’s note: this map is actually a reprint of a map from the mid-1950s without updates—dea]

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11. Tioga Mine

a) Renewal of Activity

Years after closing the Tioga Mine, Antoinette Swift, the widow of Rhodolphus’s son Edward, interestted a group of western investors in reopening the Tioga Mine tunnel. The process of probating estates and clearing Mrs. Swift’s title to the property took several years, but finally, in 1933, she granted an option to the Tioga Mining Company of New York City for the Tioga Mine, a group of six patented claims on the Sheepherder and Great Sierra lodes.

That company employed twenty men in driving the tunnel several hundred feet farther. A report to the directors of the company for the year ending 31 December 1933 provides interesting information on the state of the property at that time. It stated that when the crew commenced operations at the beginning of August, they found the mine and camp in relatively good shape, with three of the original buildings still usable. Those included the barn, twenty-four by thirty-two feet by eighteen feet high, with a gabled and shingled roof, constructed to accommodate sixteen horses on the ground floor, with hay storage above; a one-story office building, fourteen by sixteen feet, with a gabled and shingled roof; and a warehouse, about the same size as the barn, of mill-type construction with a trussed, gabled, and shingled roof and a large storage cellar for food. Wind and snow had wrecked the original flimsy mess hall and bunkhouses, and their remaining lumber was fast decaying.

Snowslides had destroyed the buildings erected at the tunnel entrance to house the blacksmith shop and power plant. The air compressor and ventilation blower, although obsolete, still rested on their foundations and showed little deterioration. The tunnel itself contained gas several hundred feet beyond the portal. Although the company had to purchase new ventilation equipment before operations could begin, hopes for success soared, it being noted that
The excellent condition of the tunnel with several stringers exposed, the favorable geology and the showing of values in the outcrops and shafts gave sufficient indications for the presence of ores in commercial quantities to justify the extension ofqihe tunnel to at least cut the first or Sheepherder quartz lode.99

[99. Report of operations at the Tioga Mine for the year ending 31 December 1933, in Box 86, Tioga Mine, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Mining equipment necessary to extend the tunnel proved difficult to obtain because of the resurgence of mining activity in the region due to the recent increase in the price of gold and silver. While waiting for the equipment to arrive, the crew reconditioned the camp and built a blacksmith shop at the tunnel. Camp reconditioning consisted of converting the barn into a mess hall and offices by building in two floors. The lower one was subdivided to house a kitchen, cook’s quarters, a wood storage facility, a dining room, a washroom, a provision storage area, and the stairs; the upper floor contained an office and quarters for the executive staff. The crew replaced the shingles on the sunny side of the roof with a composition material and installed doors and windows. Workmen converted the former office into their bunkhouse, replacing its wood shingles with composition roofing and installing doors and windows.

The tunnel turned out to be in excellent condition and required no new timber and little repair work. The portal contained benches, bins, and racks filled with miscellaneous equipment, fittings, and parts. There the workers found small tools, air drills, pumps, engines, a mine car, and a box of blacksmith coal. The tunnel also contained an eighteen-inch-gauge mine track, constructed of wooden rails topped with an iron strip, supported on wooden ties, which required replacement in a few areas. A snowslide had destroyed the wooden powder magazine.

After installation of the new mining equipment and cutting of a powder magazine in the rock face, tunneling operations started on 15 October. Excavation proceeded for only a couple of weeks before snow forced suspension of operations until spring. The Tioga Mining Company never struck the elusive Sheepherder lode. Upon Mrs. Swift’s death in 1949, the Great Sierra claims were sold for taxes.100

[100. The Tioga Mining Company actually held more than the six patented claims. It secured title to additional property through the location of overlying claims covering the entire mineralized area and protecting water and timber rights and mill and camp sites. That area consisted of thirty-six claims, which included three reservoir sites, one above the other, so that dams for enlarging the nearby natural lakes could be constructed in the future. Ibid. An excellent account of the Tioga Mine history is found in Douglass Hubbard, Ghost Mines of Yosemite (Fresno: Awani Press, 1958).]

b) Mine Ruins

The Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Mining Company established the mountaintop community of Dana in 1881 when it purchased all the claims in the vicinity of Tioga Hill. Because living on the summit of the High Sierra proved difficult, the company relocated its town at Bennettville, near the north base of Tioga Hill. First named Bennett City, this town was almost immediately evacuated when the Tioga Mine closed in July 1884. Company guards patrolled it for a while, but when no further mining activity proved forthcoming, even they left, and the small settlement became a ghost town. Two buildings, one a two-story barn, remained by the 1960s.101

[101. Lou Evon, “Mine Machinery, Treasured as Rarity, Once Ran Famed Failure,” The Fresno (Calif.) Bee, 15 October 1965.]

The site of Dana Village, on Tioga Hill above treeline, comprises five dry-laid stone cabins, a wooden blacksmith shop, and a small stone powder house above Gaylor Lake on Tioga Hill. The cabin walls are well defined, but portions of them are in ruins; the blacksmith shop was destroyed by an explosion during the last months of operation of the mine. Shaft openings are all caved in. Only a single one-story, one-room masonry structure, twenty-five by eighteen feet, remains almost intact.

Chief Naturalist Douglass Hubbard retrieved much of the old machinery from the Tioga Mine. It included an old air compressor and drill that were moved to the Wawona Pioneer Yosemite History Center for preservation. Both the compressor and drill were manufactured by the Burleigh Company of England. According to personnel at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., this is the only Burleigh compressor known to be extant, while only two of the Bureigh drills are known to exist. The Burleigh rock drill was a significant factor in the development of tunneling and mining technology. The mine owners donated the machinery to the park.102

[102. Ibid.]

12. MISSION 66 Provides Impetus for Land Acquisition

By 1951 the U. S. government had acquired all of the private land at Gentry. Also in that year the timber and land exchange agreement between the U. S. and the Robert Bright interests involving their Aspen Valley and East Meadow properties was approved by the Secretary of the Interior’s office. By 1954 an increase in prospecting and mining activity in the western states brought a renewed interest in mineral lands adjacent to the park. The tax sale of several patented mining claims in the park in the vicinity of Tioga and Mono passes re-opened the alienated land situation. As has been mentioned throughout this study, the Department of the Interior, as well as the earliest army administrators, believed private ownership of lands within parks to be incompatible with public use. Part of Yosemite’s MISSION 66 program involved acceleration of land acquisition—1,271 acres (exclusive of city and county of San Francisco lands) remained to be acquired. Undeveloped tracts would be given first priority and developed properties with improvements that could be utilized for park purposes would be sought next. Officials optimistically forecast that all of the remaining private lands would be acquired by the close of the MISSION 66 program.103

[103. USDI, “MISSION 66 for Yosemite National Park,” in Box 22, Backcountry, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 10-11.]

F. Hetch Hetchy

1. O’Shaughnessy Dam Raised

In 1932 the city of San Francisco and the Department of the Interior simplified the entire Hetch Hetchy situation by signing an agreement providing for administrative control of the area by the National Park Service, the formal entry of the Public Health Service as advisor on watershed and reservoir protection, and recognition by the city that its authority and responsibilities included only the supervision of the dam mechanism, control of reservoir runoff, and the supervision and domiciling of its employees. Under the new agreement, the city no longer maintained any roads or trails in Yosemite.

In 1934, in order to keep the Moccasin Powerhouse running at full capacity, year-round, a Public Works Administration project began, raising O’Shaughnessy Dam 85-1/2 feet and enlarging it to its present size: 430 feet above bedrock, 308 feet base thickness, 900 feet crest length, and impounding 360,000 acre-feet of water. The enlargement, completed in 1938, was accomplished by building an addition against the downstream face of the old dam to increase its thickness and then raising its height. The dam contains fourteen outlet conduits with sliding gates through which water from the reservoir can be released. Cost of the dam, including enlargement, totalled $12,600,000. In 1935 the city built a 200-man bunkhouse and a 100-man bunkhouse; thirteen temporary duplex houses of a design compatible with the landscape; remodeled one building for office headquarters; and remodeled the old mess hall. All structures were to be used during the raising of O’Shaughnessy Dam.

2. Hetch Hetchy Railroad Revived

Heavy use of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad discontinued in the mid-1920s with completion of the dam and aqueduct, but the line functioned for several more years as a supply and maintenance route in winter. When in 1933 the city made plans to enlarge O’Shaughnessy Dam, it again needed the railroad to haul heavy freight and rebuilt the line. This time it was leased to the Sierra Railway, with the Hetch Hetchy Railroad becoming its Hetch Hetchy Division. In May 1938, with construction work practically completed, the volume of freight carried on the line became too small to justify the expense of steam operation. Therefore gasoline locomotives were substituted for the remaining work.

Finally maintenance problems due to heavy rain and snowfall in the winter impeded hauling to such a degree that the Sierra Railroad, which had acquired the Sierra Railway of California in 1936, discontinued the operations of the Hetch Hetchy line. The station and other structures at Hetch Hetchy Junction were removed in 1937-38; other structures at Groveland were dismantled in 1944. Sidings and spurs were removed to reclaim steel during the war years. The main track soon deteriorated and, as roads in the mountains improved, the railroad became less necessary. The entire line was finally dismantled in 1949.

Parts of the old right-of-way were used for a new city-built paved road to Mather and for access into the Hetch Hetchy area and in making the Big Oak Flat Road an all-year access to Yosemite Valley. The old route can be seen and hiked in places. One of the steam locomotives, Hetch Hetchy Shay No. 6, is on display at the Transportation Museum at El Portal, along with a track bus/railcar/ambulance. Two short pieces of track remain—one embedded in concrete over a shop pit at Hetch Hetchy Junction and the other in the concrete floor of the Moccasin powerhouse.104

[104. “History of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad,” The Western Railroader 24, no. 10, Issue No. 262 (October 1961): 2-12; Wurm, Hetch Hetchy and Its Dam Railroad, passim., provided much information on the railroad and the construction of O’Shaughnessy Dam.]

Illustration 244.
Map of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad, 1947.
From “History of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad,” in The Western Railroader, 24, no. 10 (October 1961).

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Illustration 245.
Bunkhouses and boardinghouse, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center files.

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Illustration 246.
Engineers’ quarters and portable bunkhouses, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center files.

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Illustration 247.
Office guest house and residences, Hetch Hetchy dam site, 1930s.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center files.

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Illustration 248.
Map of Hetch Hetchy village with 1935 additions.
Yosemite Research Library and Records Center files.

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3. Construction and Security, 1930s-1950s

In 1938 the guest house being built by the city was completed. In that same year the city turned over to the Park Service two buildings that had been requested prior to the submission of the plans and specifications for the dam enlargement. At that time Superintendent C. G. Thomson had requested that the city construct one or two ranger residences as a prerequisite to issuance of the permit. Those buildings formed units of the construction camp but were better built in order to be acceptable to the Park Service upon completion of the project. Those buildings were the old guest house, the most southerly of the buildings constructed along the east side of Mather Road, and the duplex cottage, about sixty feet to the northwest. The Park Service requested those structures to house trail and road maintenance crews in the summer, sanitation men, and patrolling rangers. Previously the superintendent had used a city of San Francisco cabin that had since been demolished.

During World War II, to protect the Bay area’s water systems from sabotage, the Hetch Hetchy Dam and reservoir and the Lake Eleanor Dam became closed military areas, with military guards stationed at Mather camp and at Hetch Hetchy. The restrictions against public use were lifted in May 1945. In 1947 the city commenced construction on a new cottage at Lake Eleanor, and a year later a new reservoir keeper’s cottage and a dormitory at Lake Eleanor were completed. In 1951 a camp house was built at Hetch Hetchy for use by Hetch Hetchy Water Supply employees who occasionally went there to perform maintenance work. It still stands southeast of the comfort station and northeast of the damkeepers’ residences on the main road.

G. Yosemite Valley Railway

In October 1934 a group of bond holders incorporated the Yosemite Valley Railway Company and took over the Yosemite Valley Railroad Company as bankruptcy receivers in December 1935. Traffic improved somewhat as the Sugar Pine Lumber Company resumed its Merced Falls operation at that time and mail and tourist revenue again began to climb.

Illustration 249.
Guest cottage, Hetch Hetchy.

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Illustration 250.
Lake Eleanor dormitory built by City of San Francisco.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 251.
Hetch Hetchy covered water line.

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Illustration 252.
Packer’s shack, Lake Eleanor Road - Jack Main Canyon Trail junction.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Five years later, however, the Sugar Pine Lumber Company sold its major holdings to the government and began closing out its operation. The Merced Falls mill shut down at the end of 1942. Another blow was the sale and disbandment of the Portland Cement Company quarry and plant in June 1944, when the company sold out to Henry Kaiser, who closed it. Regular mail service over the line was cancelled by the Navy, then installed at the Ahwahnee Hotel, in 1943, and finally in August 1944 the railroad trustees applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for abandonment. That body recommended abandonment on 28 February 1945. The Machine Tool and Equipment Company of New York, meanwhile, effectively took control of the railroad and its assets through bond purchases and announced its intention to scrap the line. On 28 June 1945, the I. C. C. approved abandonment and the line was sold for the bondholders on 7 September on the steps of the San Francisco city hall. The last official run over the line took place on 24 August 1945. The engine, cars, buildings, and other materials were disposed of by Machine Tool Company and the track and ties removed under contract.105

[105. Johnston, Short Line to Paradise, 19-22, 26-30, 37. Also see The Western Railroader, Issue No. 257, vol. 24, no. 5 (May 1961): 3-4, 8-9, 11-12, and Issue No. 310, vol. 38, no. 11 (November 1965), and Johnston, Railroads of the Yosemite Valley, 21-77.]

H. Research and Park Management

Park policies relative to wildlife management, and pest, fire, and stream control underwent more intensive scrutiny beginning in the early 1930s. In 1931 research reserves were established at White Mountain, Boundary Hill, and Swamp Lake. George M. Wright et al.’s Fauna of the National Parks of the United States publicly recognized the necessity for broader considerations in the formulation of park management procedures. The disruption of ecosystems as a result of the sometimes arbitrary but more often politically motivated placement of boundaries impeded the proper protection and conservation of park resources.

The availability of money during the implementation of emergency work programs beginning in the early 1930s enabled the hiring of ecologists to study national park conditions and advise on CCC work programs. By the late 1930s even superintendents voiced the need for organized botanical, biological, and ecological research on the local level to enable the proper understanding and interpretation of a park’s natural features. The advent of World War II and a strained economy hindered development of such a program. After the war, however, the Park Service renewed attempts to encourage use of scientific data in park planning and management, and master plans of the 1950s began to incorporate ecological studies. Yosemite and other areas then began to utilize ecological expertise to address problems caused by human impact through the years on the environment.106

[106. Hartesveldt, “Effects of Human Impact,” iv-vi.]

I. Natural Resource Management

1. River and Stream Control

James Milestone has divided this period of stream control efforts into two distinct phases, the first that of the “Landscape Architect Years,” 1928 to 1938, characterized by implementation of a variety of erosion control devices, such as revetments, channel clearing, dam and bridge construction, and pipe laying. During this time, landscape architects concerned themselves with making the river aesthetically pleasing to the visitor, and the CCC accordingly removed much brushy debris and log jams simply for scenic purposes. Enrollees also sloped and revegetated undercut riverbanks. A change in thinking occurred after two floods of staggering proportions hit the park in 1937 and 1950:

When the 1937 flood occurred in Yosemite it was considered one of the emergency situations which happens only once in a hundred years. However, when it was followed by a similar flood in 1950 it was realized that such floods might occur in the future at much shorter intervals. Since that time both the Service and the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. have taken such possibilities into consideration and have planned accordingly. This advance planning resulted in less losses to the Service and the concessioner during the 1955 flood than would have occurred if such planning had not been done. . . . The 1955 flood also pointed up the need for additional planning, especially with respect to the need for a more rugged type of construction designed to withstand the impact of major floods.107

[107. “Emergency Flood Estimates - 1955,” in Box 11, Floods and Water Supply, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3.]
The flood of 1955 precipitated the “Preventative Nature Design Years/1 1955 to 1967, during which time flood control became the preeminent concern and control work aimed at protecting developed areas from rising waters. The Park Service concentrated on methods of draining floodwaters faster and continued the reduction of bank erosion. Emergency reconstruction work included channel improvement, extension of streambank revetment, and construction of retaining walls and larger drainage structures in an effort to control problem areas.108 Several thousand feet of riprap laid at this time significantly stifled the Merced’s lateral migration.

[108. Milestone, “Influence of Modern Man,” 86-89.]

The following events that took place during the 1930 to 1960 period affected the course of the Merced River and its tributaries:

1932 - construction of the El Capitan and Stoneman bridges.

1933 - construction of Bridalveil Bridge.

1934 - continuance of erosion control on Yosemite Creek; removal of logs and debris along the Merced from Happy Isles to the park boundary; CCC work; removal of concrete piers from the Old Village bridge; installation of a sandbag dam at Mirror Lake to prevent it from drying out.

1936 - Old Village bridge rebuilt and a rock dam built under it to form a reflecting pool.

1937 - 9 to 13 December flood in which 10.86 inches of rain fell; flood lake formed in central valley; superintendent’s house, Old Village store, and chapel flooded; Yosemite Lodge cabins standing in four to five feet of water; 10 footbridges destroyed.

1938 - Swinging Bridge rebuilt 200 feet downstream from old site; 140-foot rock wall built behind Lost Arrow residence to divert water from Yosemite Creek.

1950 - 18 to 20 November flood, 14.52 inches; log jams threatened bridge damage; river debris left over entire valley.

1955 - 21 to 23 December flood in which 17.41 inches of rain fell; streambeds afterwards widened and deepened and other control devices strengthened, such as replacing wood with concrete, to withstand damage from future floods.109

[109. Ibid., 94-99.]

The 1937 flood wrought great devastation in Yosemite Valley to Park Service and concessioner developments, although it did not greatly affect the valley’s physical features. After World War II and into the early 1970s, stream control emphasized protecting of MISSION 66 projects, such as new campgrounds, tourist facilities, and service structures, from being undercut and washed away.

Through the years, and as somewhat described in preceding chapters, several methods of stream control have been implemented throughout the Yosemite Valley stream system of which remains exist today. Riprap revetment constituted one of the most common methods of stream control and proved most effective at retarding stream bank erosion. The technique consisted of protecting eroded banks with material either from the streambed or from nearby fans or talus slopes. Often river gravel excavated from the streambed was spread over the stream banks, which were then sloped, and covered with close-fitted granite boulders or hand-placed cobbles. Early riprap consisted of smaller stones because of the difficulty of finding or transporting larger granite materials. In later years riprap revetment in the form of large boulders came from as far away as El Portal. Revetment has been placed in such quantities in Yosemite Valley that it has drastically changed the geomorphology of the entire river system by eliminating braided channels and preventing lateral migration. Willow planting began in the 1880s and continued in connection with riprap revetment to provide extra bank protection and give the riprapped banks a more natural appearance. Willow planting in Yosemite Valley reached a peak during the CCC work of the 1930s.

Another method of stream control involved man-made dams, of which there are fourteen in the valley stream system. These alter natural stream conditions by pooling the water. Pipe dams, the most common type, consist of six- to eight-inch cast-iron pipes emerging from the riverbank and crossing the river bottom, resting on top of the riverbed. Rock was placed over the pipes throughout their length for protection. The pipe dams in the valley are quite old and no longer serve a purpose. Two pipe dams existed at the Old Village footbridge. The one below the bridge created a reflecting pool, while the upper one created a huge reservoir that provided ice for the Curry Company. A third major pipe dam exists at the Yosemite Creek highway bridge. The rest of these dams are found throughout tributary streams and are in failing condition.

Six diversion dams have been built to divert water and ice into a penstock pipe or into another channel. The largest diversion dam is associated with, the power plant on the Merced River. Two others are on Yosemite Creek just below the Yosemite Fall footbridge, which protect Yosemite Lodge and the Lost Arrow residences. The others are wing dams, large mounds of granite cobbles that protrude out into the river channel about eight feet, at a thirty-degree angle, to divert the river current. Three are located on the Merced: one at the west end of Lower River Campground and two on the north bank of the Merced at the south end of Leidig Meadow, all built by the U. S. Army.

The only valley reservoir dam was built at Mirror Lake to raise the original water level to maintain it throughout the year. The Mirror Lake outlet supported many dams from at least 1882 on that were successively flooded out. Dredging of the lake ended in 1971. Unintentional stream control structures consist of thirty-eight bridges on the valley stream system, varying from small footbridges of split logs to large arched, reinforced-concrete structures with granite stone facings. These structures constrict the natural river channel and restrict natural lateral migration. They also tend to back up water during floods when litter accumulates behind them.

Channel excavation and clearing took place as early as the 1880s and continued throughout the years as extensive dredging of silt, clay, sand, and rock deposits provided gravel for concrete construction projects, such as bridges, warehouses, hotels, and roads. Channel clearing consists of removal of floating matter such as pine needles, leaves, and logs, which actually could be handled naturally by the river system if left undisturbed. Because of the revetted banks and bridges, however, channel clearing has become necessary to prevent the accumulation of debris behind bridges where lateral erosion is retarded, causing jams and resulting in rising water levels, the breaking of new channels, or broken bridges. This type of work became necessary as more expensive structures were built in the valley. The CCC accomplished much channel clearing in the 1930s. Into the 1970s, fallen trees picked up by the river during high water that threatened log jams forced sporadic log clearing for several years and regular clearing activities after 1965.110 Since 1965, little stream control has been undertaken.

[110. Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 13. A major removal of fallen trees from the Merced took place in 1963, with twenty to thirty trees removed each year afterwards to prevent bridge damage. Milestone, “Influence of Modern Man,” 101-165.]
Despite these many activities, flooding in Yosemite Valley persists during the winter and spring as a result of rapid snowmelt. Winter floods tend to be larger because more water is involved, but spring floods occur more often. The 1955 flood, the largest ever recorded in valley history, necessitated $62,000 for the repair of grounds and streams. Repairs were performed on stream bank revetments to contain and channel future floodwaters and streambeds were widened and deepened to avoid future revetment damage.

The natural conditions of the stream system of Yosemite Valley have been unnaturally altered through these various stream control processes that have prevented lateral erosion and increased drainage. The stream system has been ignored as a significant natural feature of the park in the zeal to protect costly investments and to ensure access routes.111

[111. Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 54.]

In 1943 William Colby of the Yosemite Advisory Board expressed concern over riverbank erosion due to bathers, children, and adults desiring to get down to the stream edge. Colby wrote:

The river bank erosion is an exceedingly vital matter and is one that requires expert study over a long period of time. It is one on which the Service could well expend a great deal of time and is second only in importance to the question of the transformation of conditions on the floor of the valley resulting from excessive forest growth due to human control of normal destructive agencies such as fire.112

[112. William Colby, “Report, Yosemite Advisory Board, September 1942 - January 1943,” in Box No. 10, Advisory Board Correspondence and Files file, Board of Advisers, 1943, no. 201-11, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 5.]

Current river control is concerned with finding more natural methods of erosion control to fit the aesthetics of the park, such as instream flow diversion using boulders or bank protection using gabled logs. In 1975 Bryan Harry, a former Yosemite naturalist, discussed the problem of managing Yosemite’s natural resources:

If the valley had a very low density of people present and a very small investment in expensive facilities—then natural processes of fire and flood could run unchecked. Thus, naturally, the desirable mosaic of meadows, oak-lands, pine-woods, and fir forest would result from entirely random processes. This isn’t the case. There are many people and heavy investment—and now man must meddle with deliberate fires and active resource management practices to perpetuate the semblance of a natural valley. These practices should be on a “little every year” basis and funded as the highest priority valley function if we are to hand along the valley to the next generation in the condition we found it. Unluckily, some crucial decisions fall to us now because California Black Oak is on its last legs; major vegetation type shifts to cedar-fir forest are in an advanced stage (as a result of decades of fire and flood control).

Too, much can be done to remove some development (bridges and streamside campsites) from streams in the upper valley and we can then do away with much river rip rap. Certainly, we shouldn’t cram added development down valley where the Merced will then haue to be stabilized in places to protect new investments.113

[113. Bryan Harry, “Views (and Prejudices) Regarding Yosemite Valley Planning,” February 1975, in Master Plan Files, Yosemite National Park, Denver Service Center, NPS, 3-4.]

It is recommended that recordation of the valley pipe, diversion, and reservoir dams be undertaken as part of a parkwide trail, bridge, and dam survey. Their current condition should be noted and evaluations made of National Register eligibility.

2. Fire Control

As mentioned in the previous section, in 1928 the Park Service prepared its comprehensive fire prevention plan detailing requirements for adequate national park fire controls and facilities. After the authorization of fire lookouts in 1931, Yosemite constructed the Crane Flat facility that same year. Three years later the Henness Ridge lookout and Miguel Meadow Fire Guard Station took form.

In 1933 John Coffman became chief of a new Branch of Forestry and took charge of the ECW program. During this New Deal period, the parks received a major overhaul in accordance with the national fire plan. Whereas in 1929 the Park Service’s permanent fire organization had consisted of a national fire officer, a special fire organization at Glacier, and a fire guard at Sequoia, the emergency programs of this period resulted in a network of fire lookouts, telephone lines, fire hazard cleanups, and crews for fire suppression, all geared toward protection of the national parks’ irreplaceable resources. During this time, standards for fire control and fire facilities within the national parks became more equal to those in national forest areas. Problems did arise as the need for prompt fire response resulted in construction of fire roads, trails, and facilities, conflicting with the policy of keeping wilderness areas free from such development. Also the ability such construction gave recreationists to get into the backcountry increased the fire hazard. These were seen as the price to be paid for protecting the park’s unique treasures and irreplaceable artifacts:

Not until the concept of preservation changed its emphasis from the products of nature to the processes of nature was the imperative for fire protection diminished. Until the 1960s virtually every advocate of wilderness and every director of the Park Service demanded a strong fire program.114

[114. Pyne, Fire in America, 299.]

The reduction in public works money during World War II drastically affected Yosemite’s fire control capabilities. Emergency fire appropriations carried the parks through World War II and in 1943 a memorandum of understanding between the departments of Agriculture and Interior made Forest Service resources available to the parks. There was a definite decline in facilities and services, however. Fire control again became a part of ranger activities and forestry became a division of resource management. During MISSION 66, the expansion of fire control facilities was carried out with a view toward providing additional interpretive centers.

During the 1960s, prompted by the Advisory Board on Wildlife Management in the National Parks chaired by A. Starker Leopold, a professor of wildlife management at the University of California, the committee’s report of 1963 changed the Park Service concept of park management, advocating that biotic conditions in the parks be maintained or recreated as nearly as possible in the condition prevailing when white men first visited the area. The Secretary of the Interior endorsed those policies and they formed the foundation for a complete overhaul of Park Service administrative policies. Park Service fire control was seen as detrimental to proper resource management. The report opened the way for prescribed burning and advocated research as a guide in setting objectives for resource management.115

[115. Ibid., 298-301.]

3. Grazing

Grazing management has remained an important part of the park’s natural resources program. Meadow destruction from this practice is always possible due to the trampling down and overgrazing of certain perennial grasses, which would then be replaced by weeds, brush, and trees. Extended use of an area can result in the killing of grass roots, resulting in bare patches easily eroded by water. Moderate pack stock use of high mountain meadows is not detrimental to those areas.

Through agreements made during the grazing period of World War I, cattle had been allowed to range within portions of Yosemite. Eleven-Mile Meadow became a base of operation for cattlemen, who had erected thereon three shacks, a barn, and fencing. By 1931 the park intended to eliminate all structures and restore the area to park status, per the Secretary of the Interior’s instructions.116

[116. C. G. Thomson, “Final Report to the Director on the Proposed Exchange of Government Owned Lands Within Yosemite National Park for Lands Now Owned by Messrs. Best and O’Connor,” 3 February 1931, in Central Files, 1907-39, RG 79, NA, 8.]

In the mid-1930s, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company could graze horses and mules necessary to supply and accommodate its guests and employees in areas approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Prior to completion of the new Glacier Point Road, concessioner stock grazed the Bridalveil Meadow area on the south rim of Yosemite Valley. The Wawona Meadow, though grazed intensively for the previous sixty years, had become less feasible for that purpose because of various new physical developments, such as the golf course and proposed airplane landing field in its center.117

[117. E. Lowell Sumner, Jr., Regional Wildlife Technician, Wildlife Division, National Park Service, “Report on the Yosemite Saddle and Pack Stock Grazing Problem,” 27 November 1935, 1, 6.]

By 1940, however, the Curry Company still grazed its stock in the Wawona Meadow. Fall pasturage took place at McGurk Meadow and in upper Little Yosemite Valley, with winter pasturage in the foothills.118 Most horse and mule use in the park has occurred near developed areas, where the stock is housed and fed in corrals overnight. Grazing has mostly involved horses, mules, and burros transporting supplies and people into the backcountry. The Park Service requires all such grazing by the concessioner and park employees to be incidental to a recreational trip or necessary to backcountry maintenance, patrol duties, or resource surveys. Management of grazing resources is guided by ecological principles. After 1977 all pasturage not incidental to recreational or management trips had to cease, affecting primarily the concessioner in the Wawona area.119

[118. “Narrative Annual Forestry Report of Yosemite National Park for the Calendar Year 1940,” RG 79, FARC, San Bruno, California, 28.]

[119. Natural, Resources Management Plan, 1977, 19-20, 24.]

4. Insect Control

Insect control work, which started in Yosemite in 1913, had been continued as needed. In general, the season of 1931 brought seriously increasing infestations in both the Stanislaus and Sierra national forests bordering the park. From 1930 to the summer of 1933, the amount of damage to forest trees due to insect infestation steadily increased, reaching epidemic proportions. Those infestations were marked by heavy attacks of the western pine beetle during the summer and by very general topkilling of yellow pine in the fall by engraver beetles.

Emergency Conservation Work crews combated the infestations. Most control work involved the western pine bark beetle, which damaged Ponderosa pines, and the mountain pine bark beetle, which injured the sugar and lodgepole pines. By 1934 the lodgepole needle miner moth was increasing in occurrence.120

[120. Emil Ernst, “Insect Control in Yosemite,” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 7 (July 1934): 49-52. A decline in logging activities near Yosemite made many loggers available for insect control in the park, their employment in that activity somewhat alleviating the unemployment problem in Mariposa County.]

Insect control work, started under regular park appropriations, and then carried on largely by the CCC, greatly reduced the numbers of beetles and saved many times the number of trees cut in combating them. Enrollees destroyed egg masses and cocoons of tree-damaging moths and cut and burned beetle-infested trees. An additional benefit of CCC involvement in insect control work was the conversion of cut trees into shakes and huge log benches installed in suitable locations for weary visitors. Timber products obtained and used for maintenance and improvement projects largely comprised by-products of insect control, fire hazard reduction, timber clearing, and the like. The CCC organization gained credit for much of the success of the campaign against bark beetles in the Yosemite forests.

Studies of lodgepole needle miner biology had been carried out in the Tuolumne River drainage since before 1949. The opinions of entomologists regarding needle miner activity changed through the years. Many scientists, along with many Park Service personnel in the 1930s to 1950s, believed it to be a destructive pest requiring extermination. Others believed the insect played an important role in maintaining healthy forests by thinning out older trees. Outbreaks of needle miner infestation occurred in Yosemite between 1910 and 1922, from 1933 to 1940, and again from 1945 periodically into the early 1960s. The insect attacked thousands of trees, creating extensive “ghost forests.”

The Park Service undertook airplane spraying of infected trees with DDT in 1948 and again in 1953, but with little success. In 1954, when the mountain pine beetle population increased, killing off trees already weakened by the needle miner, almost two thousand trees were felled and burned north of Tuolumne Meadows. A year later four entomologists established a summer field camp in the meadows to study the needle miner and methods of control. Their work included testing of more powerful insecticides such as malathion. In 1959 a major application of that chemical was made on several thousand acres of lodgepoles around Tuolumne Meadows, killing seventy-five percent of the needle miners. Spraying of additional acres took place into the early 1960s.

The National Park Service faced a complex problem in its control of forest pests. Although the Forest Service, responsible for the protection of potential lumber supplies within its holdings, could justify severe actions against forest pests, the Park Service had been charged with protecting all aspects of the natural scene and needed to concentrate more on biological controls. Because both the needle miner and lodgepole pine were native to Yosemite, Park Service officials often had trouble accepting the use of artificial means to control the problem. The role of needle miner caterpillars in encouraging the growth of younger lodgepoles could not be ignored, even though the interrelationship resulted in adverse aesthetic affects.

The Leopold Report of 1963 questioned the mass application of insecticides to control forest insects in national parks because of the unknown affects on a biotic community as a result of change in the ecological balance. The recognition grew that insect devastation played a significant part in the building process of forests. Because natural biological controls did exist for the overall problem, the Park Service’s primary concern became how best to protect the natural scene only in certain developed areas such as campgrounds and picnic areas. There dead trees not only minimized shade and screening, but also became hazardous to people and property. Park Service insect pest control began concentrating only on minimizing tree losses with approved pesticides in areas of high visitor use.121

[121. Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 64, 67-70; Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 56.]

5. Blister Rust Control

By the 1930s this disease had spread west and appeared to be threatening the sugar pine stands of California. The U. S. Forest Service helped the Park Service fight the disease to prevent an epidemic that would interfere with timber production. Beginning in 1933, the CCC waged an intensive battle aimed at preventing the establishment of blister rust in the park. The white pine blister rust, as mentioned earlier, was caused by an organism that spent part of its life on wild currant or gooseberry bushes, botanically called ribes, after which it traveled to the white pines, which it seriously damaged or killed. The disease was fatal to all white pine species, including the sugar pine, western white pine, and white-bark pine, all native to Yosemite.

Rust spores could travel 200 miles from a pine to a ribes host plant, but spores from a diseased ribes bush could travel only 1,000 feet to infect a white pine tree. Control of the disease lay in elimination of certain species of the ribes genus. Not all gooseberry and currant bushes in the park were eliminated, the program entailing ribes eradication only in the immediate vicinity of white pine stands.

The Crane Flat CCC camp was entirely devoted to blister rust work, although blister rust efforts also took place at Deer Camp, Eleven-Mile Meadow, Base Line (Smith Meadows), Chinquapin, Chilnualna, the South Fork of the Tuolumne River area, Carl Inn, Tamarack Flat, Empire Meadow, and Sugar Pine Pass near the Merced Grove. During the war years, 1942-45, ribes eradication continued at a reduced rate, using mostly high school students. (The Crane Flat blister rust control camp was reoccupied in 1943 after extensive reconstruction. Portable tent platforms and mess halls proved useful at both Crane Flat and at Eight-Mile. At the end of the season at each camp, all of these portable items were dismantled and stored for the winter.) In 1944 the Sequoia Hotel at Wawona was remodeled for occupation by a blister rust crew and camp equipment was brought in from the former camp at Eight-Mile. In 1946 the buildings at Crane Flat were dismantled and replaced and a new camp established one-quarter mile west of the old one with several surplus army and navy buildings. ‘These buildings had been removed from, the Ahwahnee Hotel grounds after the U. S. Naval Special Hospital was decommissioned for use as blister rust camps and for storage for blister rust tools and supplies. Some of these World War II structures also went to Carl Inn for blister rust work. (It is uncertain whether the buildings were moved intact or dismantled and the salvaged materials reused.) The Sugar Pine Pass Blister Rust Control camp, at the junction of the Merced Grove road and Highway 120, moved from the Wawona CCC camp in 1946, was not used after 1951 and razed in 1960.

In 1945 the U. S. Forest Service established a Division of White Pine Blister Rust Control. At that time employees of the Office of Blister Rust Control of the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine were transferred to the Forest Service. Three years later the division was abolished and its functions transferred to the Division of Forest Pest Control. Ultimately pathologists became convinced that indirect control was ineffective. The work of ribes eradication continued through 1967, when it was superseded by monitoring and detection surveys. After that time surveys to determine the intensity of blister rust infections were carried out periodically. Actually the disease was less of a threat than originally believed.

J. Fish and Game

In the 1932-33 season the National Park Service and the California Division of Fish and Game cooperated in erecting the Frog Creek Egg Taking Station. Isolated Lake Eleanor in the northwest section of the park contained a rugged strain of rainbow trout considered ideal for planting as fingerlings in high country lakes. A dam was built across Frog Creek about 100 yards upstream from the lake. A fish ladder and two traps were incorporated in the dam to catch trout during their upstream migration.

Each year during April and May an employee would operate the fish traps on Frog Creek and stay in the Park Service snow survey cabin, also operated as a park outpost station, completed in 1936 under ECW. Rainbow trout traveling up Frog Creek to spawn were caught and held in a small enclosure, then transferred to a holding tank in which they were held until time for them to be “milked” of their eggs. The eggs were then fertilized and transported to the hatchery at Happy Isles where they were hatched and raised for planting in the high country. In October 1934 CCC enrollees reconstructed the fish trap on Frog Creek that had been damaged by high water in the spring of that year.122 Activities

Illustration 253.
Crane Flat blister rust camp, #6014, mess hall, now used by Yosemite Institute.

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Illustration 254.
Crane Flat blister rust camp, #6016, barracks and office, renovation in progress.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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stopped here during the war, with operations beginning again in 1950. The Frog Creek operation closed down in 1956 along with that of the fish hatchery in Yosemite Valley.

[122. Superintendent’s Monthly Reports, January-December 1934, microfilm roll #3, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.]

Fish planting had progressed in Yosemite from the “coffee pot” method of planting by early settlers to the slightly more sophisticated planting by park and state personnel using pack stock with specially designed fish cans. That process was, however, both time consuming and expensive. In 1952 the planting of lakes by airplane began, but these air plants were curtailed in the early 1970s.123 Fish planting still occurs by agreement with the state in several Yosemite lakes. The state finally abandoned its Yosemite Valley hatchery in 1956, by which time it had become outdated and considered costly and inefficient. Rather than raze the old fish hatchery buildings, the California Department of Fish and Game offered them to the Park Service for interpretive purposes. The National Foundation for Junior Museums prepared and donated several exhibits. The state Fish and Game department also donated funds for exhibits on Yosemite fish rearing and stocking activities. The new center also became the meeting place of the Yosemite Junior Ranger Program. The Happy Isles Nature Center was one of Yosemite’s first MISSION 66 projects.124 The Department of Fish and Game transferred title to the buildings, tanks, and equipment to the federal government on 1 March 1957. Some of the equipment went to the Moccasin Creek Hatchery near Big Oak Flat, on the Tuolumne River. Later plantings in the park involved fingerlings produced at larger, more efficient stations.

[123. Jerry Goertzen, San Joaquin Fish Hatchery, to Robert C. Pavlik, 3 December 1984.]

[124. Douglas Hubbard, “The Happy Isles Nature Center,” Yosemite Nature Notes 36, no. 12 (December 1957):1.]

The National Park Service’s new nature center opened on 21 July 1957. The Park Service razed a four-car garage with a storage and fish food preparation room in that year and fire destroyed the foreman’s residence in August 1959. The Park Service removed the other residence, the pond, and the concrete tanks after that time.125

[125. Pavlik, “A History of Yosemite’s Fish Hatcheries,” 1984, 2-3; E. C. Finney, First Asst. Secretary, Department of the Interior, to California State Fish and Game Commission, 10 February 1923, Central Files, RG 79, NA.]

K. Water Monitoring

The U. S. Geological Survey, under cooperative agreements with the Park Service, maintains continuous flow gauging stations on all major park drainages and conducts qualitative and quantitative water resource studies throughout the park. The city of San Francisco still measures outflow from the O’Shaughnessy and Lake Eleanor dams.126
[126. Natural Resources Management Plan, 1977, 35.]

L. Snow Survey

In 1931 the state appropriated money for construction of a log snow survey cabin at Buck Camp, completed by January 1932. An old logging cabin built in 1916 at Deer Camp was also renovated for use in the state Cooperative Snow Survey beginning 1 January 1932, but today is no longer standing. Both of these cabins were to be used as outpost patrol cabins during the summer. Because of the depressed economy of the 1930s, funding for snow surveys was unavailable for the 1934-35 season. During that time cooperating agencies continued to make surveys and so the period of disruption of the program was not excessive. The California legislature appropriated money to resume the state-coordinated program in 1936.

In 1945 the city of San Francisco asked to build two shelter cabins within the park to be used in the acquisition of snow survey data necessary for the operation of the Hetch Hetchy water supply. The California Department of Public Works subsequently built cabins at Lake Vernon and Wilmer Lake. They became the property of the U. S. Government, however, which used and maintained them, allowing city workers to use them in connection with the obtainment of hydrologic data. In 1946 the California Department of Public Works was issued a permit to construct a cabin at Benson Lake (never built). The ranger staff found the Vernon and Wilmer cabins excellent help in the protection of those park areas. Rangers no longer had to carry their dishes and bedding with them, and the cabins were hidden well enough from the main trail that hikers were not tempted to use them. Although the Advisory Board considered them an unwelcome intrusion in the backcountry, park rangers considered them an invaluable tool. Another cabin was built in 1947 at Sachse Springs, then in the Stanislaus National Forest, by the state with the city contributing part of the cost. The last cabin was built at Snow Flat in the Merced River drainage that year.

As the need increased for more frequent information to forecast short-term water supplies and flood potentials, the use of supplemental snow data from automatic snow sensors and aerial snow depth markers became valuable. The use of automatic snow sensors began in 1965 in places where access was a problem and proved a more rapid method of updating water supply forecasts. About 1949 the advantages of obtaining supplemental snow depth information from remote areas by observation from aircraft became apparent and led to the placement of aerial snow depth markers in remote areas of the Sierra. In Yosemite these were located in various spots in the Tuolumne watershed.

The backcountry cabins, except the Lake Wilmer cabin that was demolished by an avalanche in the winter of 1985-86, still function for snow surveys on foot and are bases of operation for the maintenance of snow survey equipment. They also function as ranger patrol cabins, aiding in law enforcement and search-and-rescue activities.127

[127. Pavlik, “A History of Snow Survey in Yosemite National Park,” 30 November 1984; State of California, The Resources Agency, Department of Water Resources, Bulletin No. 129-70, “Snow Survey Measurements Through 1970,” September 1971, 9-10.]

All information obtained from snow surveys funneled into the office of the Department of Water Resources, which assembled the data and published forecasts of runoff in supplements of its Bulletin 120, “Water Conditions in California.” The park still participates in the California Cooperative Snow Surveys run by the Department of Water Resources. Park personnel take measurements twice each year on eight snow courses within the park to check average snow depth and water content.

M. El Portal

In July 1932 the El Portal Inn burned. The existing hotel, next to highway 140, was completed by December 1932. The Yosemite Valley Railroad leased it to Ben and Dolly Gardner.

During the late 1940s or early 1950s, the Incline Mining Company of San Francisco developed several groups of tungsten claims around El Portal and built a gravity concentrator on the north bank of the Merced River one-half mile west of the barite-processing plant. The company produced and milled some ore at the plant during 1955 before floods washed out the mine roads. Low tungsten prices eventually stopped operations.128

[128. R. G. Sporleder, Mineral Report, “Withdrawal Application, National Park Service, April 22, 1957,” in unnumbered box, El Portal material, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 3.]

The small village of El Portal took on added importance during this later period in connection with one of the major areas of emphasis of the MISSION 66 program—the removal outside the park of employee housing and support facilities of the Park Service and the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. This was intended to result in better administration and removal of some of the adverse impact on the valley floor. Some of the needed land belonged to the U. S. Forest Service, which agreed to transfer it to the Park Service or cover the Park Service’s use of it by a cooperative agreement. Other land was privately owned. Congressional

Illustration 255.
Lake Vernon snow survey/patrol cabin.

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Illustration 256.
Interior of Lake Vernon cabin.
Photos by Paul Cioyd, 1986.

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Illustration 257.
Snow Flat snow survey/patrol cabin.
Photo by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 258.
Ruins of Lake Wilmer snow survey/patrol cabin. Destroyed by avalanche in winter of 1985-86.
Photo by Paul Cloyd, 1986.

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Illustration 259.
Sachse Springs snow survey/patrol cabin.

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Illustration 260.
Interior of Sachse Springs cabin.
Photos by Paul Cloyd, 1986.

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legislation had to occur before the move could take place. After the Yosemite Valley Railroad was abandoned in 1945, the El Portal Mining Company obtained title to the village. The El Portal Mining Company, a subsidiary of the Baroid Division of the National Lead Company, owned the El Portal barite properties. It then sold the village to the Park Service as an administrative site in 1958.

N. Summary

The narrative of the Historic Resource Study of Yosemite National Park ends at this point. Future historians will have the task of chronicling and assessing the more modern development, interpretation, and management of the park. It will not be an easy task. Research on Yosemite is stimulating and never ending, its fascination lying in the contemplation of human impacts since the 1860s and the never-ending quest for solutions to a variety of natural and cultural resource-related problems that seem to multiply according to the complexities and vagaries of modern society. Park management deserves our respect and admiration, its mission clear but its methods subject to intense scrutiny and often criticism.

Charles Goff Thomson, Yosemite superintendent from 1929 to 1937, ably summarized what seemed to be eternal natural resource management problems in the park:

Simplified to the ultimate terms, we face two rather conflicting necessities:

First, the National Park Service is controlled by an earnest determination to preserve the parks for posterity; every responsible officer is determined to turn over to the next generation a finer Yosemite than we inherited—a Yosemite not ruined by over-development, a Yosemite with all its natural features preserved, its wonderful forests unravaged, its wildlife influenced as little as possible, its wilderness as untouched as possible. There is no false conception that we can or should fix the character of its use permanently, for succeeding generations will know better how to adapt these priceless areas to their needs; but we owe it to future generations not to over-develop the area; not to mar any essential beauties; not to permit exploitation in any form; to safeguard against destructive nibbling processes. National parks are not Coney Islands, but distinctive idealistic American institutions. They are not resorts—not areas for promotion, but for conservation.

Our second responsibility, fully as important and more immediate, is to make Yosemite as useful as possible to the people of this generation, to enrich the lives of its users to the greatest possible extent. . . .129

[129. C. G. Thomson, Superintendent, “Yosemite National Park,” typescript, 7 pages, in Separates File, Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, 6.]

In addition, it is now recognized that natural park areas contain many prehistoric and historical resources that ought to be preserved. In a sense, they are more vulnerable than natural resources because they are nonrenewable. A historic structure, once demolished, is gone forever. Yosemite is, at least in a philosophical sense, the first and oldest of the world’s national parks. Its significant sites and works of man that reflect that epochal history and that possess integrity are an important part of our heritage and as worthy of preservation as the park’s animals, plant life, and geological wonders.

Illustration 261.
County library and residence (former post office), El Portal.

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Illustration 262.
El Portal post office. Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 263.
El Portal chapel (former school).

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Illustration 264.
El Portal elementary school.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984-85.

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Illustration 265.
El Portal fire department.

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Illustration 266.
Carroll Clark Community Center, El Portal.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 267.
El Portal Hotel, to southeast (rear). Now used for employee housing by park and Yosemite Institute.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984,

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Illustration 268.
El Portal Hotel, to northwest.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 269.
El Portal Market.

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Illustration 270.
El Portal Motor Inn cabins, hotel in background.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1984.

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Illustration 271.
Rancheria Flat MISSION 66 housing, El Portal.

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Illustration 272.
Chevron building across from post office, El Portal
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 273.
Old sewage treatment plant, El Portal.

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Illustration 274.
New wastewater treatment plant, El Portal.
Photos by Robert C. Pavlik, 1985.

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Illustration 275.
Ruins of Cuneo mill above wastewater treatment plant, El Portal.
Photo by Gordon Chappell, ca. 1975.
NPS, Western Regional Office files.

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U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1987—773-038/60,006 REGION NO 8

historic resource study
VOLUME 3 OF 3
historical narrative

YOSEMITE

NATIONAL PARK / CALIFORNIA

Historic Resource Study

YOSEMITE: THE PARK AND ITS RESOURCES

A History of the Discovery, Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California

Volume 3 of 3
discussion of historical resources,
appendixes, historical base maps,
bibliography

by
Linda Wedel Greene
September 1987

U. S. Department of the Interior / National Park Service

CHAPTER VII: HISTORICAL RESOURCES OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

It has taken an extensive number of pages to tell the story of the construction and development of administrative, interpretive, and visitor-related facilities and services in the park. It could easily take two or three hundred additional pages to fully present and assess the complex, detailed, and often acrimonious discussions through the years about the placement and extent of that development. Possibly no other area in the National Park System has been studied to the extent of Yosemite in terms of the potential effects of human use on the environment, a process begun early by the state administrators and their critics and continued by the army and the National Park Service. It is interesting and informative to note the parallels in the problems facing park management yesterday and today in terms of valley congestion, appropriate concession facilities, visitor use of the backcountry, stream erosion, prescribed burns, and the like. The solutions of today are as open to question and discussion as those of the 1880s and 1890s.

Initial visitation to Yosemite Valley was limited to a select few in the earliest days—those who could afford both the cost of transportation and the amount of time it took to reach the remote area over primitive, winding trails, and who were not afraid to “rough it” when it came to visitor services and accommodations. The destination of those early travelers was primarily the valley floor, where the scenic values for which the area had been set aside were concentrated, with an intrepid few going on to the Mariposa Grove if time allowed. Most of that visitor impact concentrated on the south side of the valley near the trailhead of the Four-Mile Trail. During the army tenure, the focus of park administration turned to the north side of the valley at the eastern end. Park administrators spent most of their time warding off cattlemen and sheepmen, working on roads and trails, planting fish, watching for forest fires, and protecting wildlife. Because initially visitors were few and far between, their impact on the flora and fauna was minimal and of little concern.

The gradual improvement of the early trails into dusty stage roads increased tourist travel markedly, but it was the extension of railroads to the vicinity of the park that caused a sudden, dramatic upswing in the number of park visitors. The lack of hotels, grocery stores, and campgrounds was accentuated. The feverish construction that that influx precipitated resulted in another hodgepodge of structures that continued to spread haphazardly along the valley floor and were designed only to meet immediate needs. Little thought was yet given to the proper function of each structure, to future needs, or to the effect of the buildings on park values and the landscape.

Another factor that drastically threatened the scenic integrity of the valley was the arrival in the early 1900s of a new class of tourist—the leisurely auto traveler—who after World War I in sheer overwhelming numbers filled hotels and campgrounds to overflowing and then in desperation drove and camped over the meadows, leaving behind a residue of camp litter, garbage, and environmental desolation. It has been said that the automobile is responsible for most of the present-day administrative headaches. Cars brought in more people, necessitating better roads, garages and gas stations, parking lots, more hotels, more campgrounds with sanitary facilities, more stores, more recreational opportunities—more of those amenities that tend to detract from the values for which parks are established.

Despite the later improvement of roads and trails into the backcountry, most visitors insisted on spending most of their time within a single square mile of the valley floor. It was inevitable that as awareness of detrimental effects on the environment grew and concerns were more widely voiced, the undisciplined development of the valley floor would cause widespread consternation. The continued uncontrolled use of the valley in the 1920s clearly highlighted for the first time the conflict between preservation of the natural resources and their use and enjoyment by the visitor. The reconstruction and paving of roads during that period, further facilitating travel, only ensured that further devastation would be wrought upon the resources unless steps were taken.

Realizing the need to develop a program of park management that would assure visitors a quality experience without endangering the scenic values they were enjoying, the Park Service in the 1920s, and continuing into the 1930s and 1940s, began to define the basic objectives of its administration at Yosemite, to determine the uses to which the park should be put, and to formulate scenic standards that would guide the direction of future park improvements. To help with this program, the Department of the Interior established a Board of Advisors for Yosemite, composed of outside experts in various professional fields as well as in park planning, and developed a cadre of professionals within the Service in such fields as landscaping, engineering, sanitation, construction, and interpretation to help implement the desired goals.

In the belief that the values on the valley floor were so great that intensive use there should be limited to as small an area as possible, Director Stephen Mather and others visualized a new centralized village layout farther up the valley. There administrative and service functions could be housed in a spot more removed from public view and less intrusive on the environment, thus keeping the balance of the valley as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

The planned elimination of the ancient and outdated structures at the Old Village area in the 1920s became the first step in implementing a policy of naturalization of the valley floor, in keeping with the opinion voiced by the Advisory Board as early as 1928 that every square foot of land used for housing or other development withdrew from the park’s scenic values and defeated the purpose for which it had been created. Unfortunately, the ultimate removal of that complex might have reinforced the idea that all manmade structures should eventually be removed when their useful days were considered over in order to restore the landscape to a pristine condition.

Yosemite has from the beginning been considered by most people—visitors and administrative personnel alike—a “natural” rather than a “cultural” area. Certainly most visitors through the years have come primarily to see such celebrated wonders as the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and the Yosemite gorge itself, rimmed by sheer granite walls punctuated by the striking formations of Half Dome and El Capitan and traversed by a beautiful river fed by numerous sparkling waterfalls tumbling hundreds of feet from the rim into the canyon below.

Those who advocate the removal of historical remains on the basis of their intrusiveness on the environment argue that Yosemite was set aside to preserve for generations yet to come not only its spectacular natural wonders, but also its varied ecosystems. Actually, the valley and Mariposa Grove were set aside for their superlative scenic values only. Ecological considerations were a much later development in the establishment of parks and monuments. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that only the valley floor and the rim far enough back to include the waterfalls were originally set aside. The later extension of the reserved area beyond the rim of the valley was an attempt to include the watersheds and the forests in the high country to prevent their exploitation by private utility, stockraising, and commercial interests. This is not to say that many conservationists, such as John Muir and Robert Underwood, were not already thinking in terms of related ecosystems, but such considerations did not yet play a major part in policy decisions on Yosemite boundaries.

Because the act establishing the policy framework of the National Park Service mentions the conservation of scenery and natural and historic objects, it is legitimately argued that many of the significant historical remains in Yosemite have a valid right to remain there and be protected by the same safeguards against unwarranted destruction as the natural ones. The removal of the Old Village structures on the valley floor was justified as helping to preserve the scenic values of the park, because they were not harmonious with the landscape and often detracted from its enjoyment by the public, indeed often obscuring views of the resources. We did, however, in the process of removal, lose some interesting early guest facilities that were both historically and architecturally significant.

Yosemite’s historical resources are numerous and varied. They include early homesteads and supporting facilities; early concessioner guest accommodations and service buildings; structures connected with cooperative research programs in natural resources management carried on with state and other federal agencies; Park Service structures, including beautiful rustic-style residential, interpretive, and administrative facilities; early roads, scenic trails, fine stone bridges, and a variety of sign types; and a significant number of attractive rustic-style structures built by skilled Public Works Administration laborers and by Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees under the Emergency Conservation Work Act during the 1930s.

Many of those resources are significant architecturally and several historically in terms of their association with important people and events and with educational and interpretive programs that were later copied throughout the National Park System. The sites and remains of CCC camps are of great interest because of the contribution of the corps to construction and development work and natural and cultural resources management in the state and national parks during a time of stringent budget and personnel restrictions. Many former enrollees who come to the parks today are anxious to revisit the camp sites where they once lived and worked. The CCC comprised a major part of their lives at one time as well as of American social history and should be part of the park interpretive program. Although the most significant PWA and CCC buildings in Yosemite have either been nominated to the National Register or are in the process of being nominated, the other Depression-era structures scattered throughout the park are also considered an important resource. Although they possess varying degrees of architectural significance, they are illustrative of an important period of our cultural and political history.

Often structures and sites of past activity are as great an educational and interpretive asset to the park as are its natural resources and should not be wantonly destroyed or damaged. The tendency to try to erase rather than preserve and interpret the history of the parks is an unfortunate one that cheats the public and the park alike, for it overlooks ail the advantages that historical resources offer in terms of public education, enjoyment, visitor safety, and adaptive use. In the same way that enlightened natural resource management gradually abolished the bear feeding program and the elimination of predators in Yosemite, bettering the condition of wildlife in particular and the resource management program in general, the thoughtful and planned management of historic resources can lead to a more satisfactory situation meeting the requirements of both cultural resource management and park administrative and interpretive needs.

With the completion of the study on significance of selected historical resources in 1979 and of this Historic Resource Study, the majority of the most important historical resources of the park have been identified. Several structures of marginal historical and architectural significance, although not eligible for the National Register, are nonetheless considered useful adjuncts to the interpretive program of the park in terms of illustrating the stories of early settlement, park management, concession development, and Park Service educational and administrative growth. Those structures have been identified in the park building inventory, Appendix G of this report, and should be on its List of Classified Structures.

The integrity of historical structures at Yosemite is continually affected by regularly scheduled rehabilitation and maintenance work. The concern is that such work not be implemented without proper regard for the historical nature or fabric of the structures. We need to ensure that all park employees possess an awareness of the significance of the park’s resources, including those not on the National Register, and of the importance of conserving and maintaining them with some degree of integrity.

If a structure or complex has been determined to be significant and eligible for the National Register, the National Park Service must make every effort to protect its site integrity and its general appearance in terms of existing form and fabric, and to preserve the architectural and historical qualities for which it has been nominated. Routine maintenance should only be performed in accordance with historic preservation standards and guidelines. Any adverse effects on a component of a historic district become a threat to the integrity, and therefore the significance, of the complex as a whole. Any major change to structures must be preceeded by a review and approval process to insure that it is not a negative impact on historical and/or architectural significance. National Register properties to be adversely affected by management actions should undergo recordation for the Historic American Engineering Record and Historic American Buildings Survey as part of the mitigation process.

The future of each structure not on the National Register or eligible for nomination should also be carefully reviewed when maintenance action is necessary, when conflicts with implementation of the General Management Plan arise, when rehabilitation is contemplated, or when it is simply thought that a structure is no longer needed to prevent the irreparable loss of useful educational and interpretive resources. Such a review should determine the best treatment for the building—preservation, stabilization and possible adaptive use, natural deterioration, or removal, either by demolition or relocation—based on considerations of its educational and interpretive value, in the context of the historical themes presented in this study, and of all other options available. If possible, general historical appearances and settings should be retained, with adaptive use where feasible and necessary to preserve the useful life of a significant building. With proper planning, the interior functions of individual structures can be changed while preserving outward historical appearances. New structures should not be built for park purposes when it is possible to use historical buildings for the same purpose.

Full protection of Yosemite’s historical resources is dependent upon faithfully followed and carefully documented procedures. Whenever a structure is to be adversely affected, either by maintenance and rehabilitation work, by adaptive reuse or restoration/stabilization, or by the addition of any type of “improvements,” complete mitigation procedures must be followed. All structures in the park proposed for such work or for removal should be reviewed to ensure that historically or architecturally significant properties are not inadvertently altered or removed without proper consideration of their values and that compliance according to national historic preservation legislation is followed. As trails foreman Jim Snyder cautions, “With cuts in budget, personnel, and programs, it is all the more important that resources of all kinds continue to receive thoughtful survey and evaluation during day-to-day park operations.”1

[1. Jim Snyder to Steve Botti, 11 February 1986, re: Historic Resources in Wilderness. ]

Cultural resources management, which entails documentary research, the physical retrieval of historical and archeological data, the interpretation of that data to the public, the avoidance of impact to cultural sites, and the preservation of significant resources, is a complex and continual responsibility of Park Service managers. In order to fulfill that responsibility, employee and visitor education, a systematic monitoring process, an active research program, and long-term planning are essential. Chapter IX presents some specific recommendations related to cultural resources in Yosemite National Park whose implementation might facilitate this management process.

CHAPTER VIII: ADDITIONAL NOTES ON CERTAIN SITES

A. In the Backcountry 1021
B. Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor Dams 1023
C. Foresta Subdivision and McCauley-Meyer Sawmill 1025
1. Foresta 1025
2. McCauley-Meyer Sawmill 1025
D. Emergency Relief Projects 1026
E. Yosemite Valley 1027
1. Hydroelectric Power Plant 1027
2. Ahwahnee Row Houses 1028
3. Yosemite Village Historic District 1030
4. Camp Curry Historic District 1032
5. Yosemite Lodge 1033
6. Yosemite Village Garage 1034
7. Yosemite Village Gas Station 1034
F. Wawona 1034
1. Pioneer Yosemite History Center 1034
2. Section 35 1036
G. El Portal 1037
1. Hotel and Market 1038
2. Other Resources 1038

Chapter X will summarize the historic sites in Yosemite National Park listed in the National Register of Historic Places and those that are in the process of nomination. In this chapter the writer will briefly discuss a few of Yosemite’s resources whose significance, or in some cases lack thereof, in the park’s history has not been adequately covered elsewhere and whose recommended level of treatment in the park’s cultural resources management program should be noted.

A. In the Backcountry

The importance of cultural resources in the backcountry has been discussed. Major portions of some of the old historic roads in the park are now included in wilderness areas. Maintenance plans for them recognize the appropriateness of utilizing some historic stretches of road as trails, stabilizing between washouts and rockfalls as necessary. Resources such as the retaining walls and culverts along the Tioga Road should be inventoried, photographed, and recorded. Samples of early road and trail stretches should be preserved because they are symbolic of pioneer construction techniques. Associated historical sites still exist in some cases. Along the Wawona Road, for instance, one can locate stage stop sites and dumps. Rebuilt stretches and added switchbacks are also present. Recordation of those should be included in a comprehensive backcountry cultural resource survey.

A variety of tree blazes, consisting of cross-like forms, Ts, diamonds, simple chips, the “i” of the U. S. Forest Service, plus regulation blazes of the U. S. Army to accommodate posted regulations are significant resources present in the backcountry. Some blazes still exist from early treks along the Mono Trail. An early date of “July 4, 1877” has been found in Jack Main Canyon. The incidence of all such remains from sheepherders, early visitors, army patrols, trail contractors, the Park Service, and others provide significant information on backcountry use. Other unrecorded backcountry resources include sites where homesteaders cut logs for cabins; old trail maintenance campsites that functioned up through the 1960s, containing remnants of camp equipment, trash, and early tools; old cabin remains; and construction such as the corduroy road at Johnson Lake used to travel over that boggy area from the 1950s into the 1970s. (The Park Service added another corduroy road in Echo Valley during the 1950s that remains in good shape.) Concrete foundations of an old CCC camp exist on the way into Deer Camp at Empire Meadow.1

[1. Information taken from interview with Jim Snyder, 10 September 1985. A need exists to pinpoint significant sites for fire control purposes. Some are threatened by prescribed burns; others could be lost as wild fires are allowed to burn themselves out.]

Sections of the park also contain remnants of historical logging activity by the Yosemite Lumber Company near Chinquapin, Empire Meadow, and Deer Camp; the Sugar Pine Lumber Company above El Portal; and the Madera Sugar Pine Company in the south section of the park from the early 1900s up to the early 1940s. Remains such as skid roads, railroad beds, and rusted equipment can still be found despite the activities by CCC crews in removing thousands of railroad ties from old logging railroad beds and converting the old grades into usable park roads for firefighting purposes. Enrollees also removed logging cables and dumps and performed revegetation on some scarred areas. Yosemite National Park contains approximately 10,000 acres of lands that have been^2 logged or show evidence of logging activity.

[2. Bob Pavlik to Kathleen Hull and Scott Carpenter, 28 April 1986, 4. The lumber companies themselves employed men to clean up old logging camps by burning or removing buildings and to clear railroad grades by piling and burning ties.]

Any remains from this period are indicative of various types of logging activity and changing technological process and illustrate the effects on the environment of that type of land use. The lumber industry takes an added significance as it relates to the conservation movement and boundary changes. Other important visible remnants of logging activity are the logging inclines of the Yosemite Lumber Company out of El Portal. The earlier one on the south side of the Merced River canyon, which operated until the fall of 1923, is used as a television line right-of-way. The second, on the north side, operated from 1924 to 1942 and is visible as a brush-covered scar. Few artifactual items remain, and neither incline has enough integrity to justify nomination to the National Register.

Only a small portion of the park wilderness has been formally surveyed. Although some work was done in connection with this study in terms of visiting and assessing backcountry patrol cabins and related resources, the majority of the research was performed in written records and through oral interviews on sites whose existence is already known. It is recognized that there are a variety of other resources in the backcountry that have not yet been found and recorded. Extensive and time-consuming field studies of areas that might be impacted by wilderness operations could not be completed under the scope of this report. Homesteaders and stock raisers, army trail- and map-makers, logging operations, CCC blister rust control workers, and NPS trail maintenance and construction crews have all impacted the wilderness and left their mark on it. It is hoped that this study provides some basis for evaluating the historical context and significance of historical resources that may yet be found in the backcountry in the course of survey, maintenance, or fire protection work. All wilderness cultural resources need to be protected until recorded through photographs and base maps, and until a determination of significance is made. A policy of natural deterioration is recommended for those resources.

B. Hetch Hetchy and Lake Eleanor Dams

The purpose of the Hetch Hetchy project, the largest water project ever undertaken by a municipality, as initially envisioned by the city of San Francisco, was to supply only an additional sixty million gallons of water a day. The Army Board of Engineers in 1913, however, advised that the city think in terms of assuming responsibility for the needs of all the people around the bay, about one million at the time of the Raker Act. Full development of the Tuolumne River would provide over 400 million gallons daily, which, with local supplies, would provide water for a population of four million, predicted for the area after the year 2000.

The resultant surge of population growth, however, far exceeded all estimates for the area around San Francisco. Fortunately, in the early 1920s the cities on the eastern side of the bay pulled out of the Hetch Hetchy Project and developed their own supply of water from the Mokelumne River. This enabled San Francisco to meet the increasing requests for water from its expanding suburban areas and industrial complexes. The Hetch Hetchy Project was planned and built so that additions could be made to various parts of the system as needed, such as increases in capacity on various parts of the aqueduct, without changing the basic design. The initial development of Hetch Hetchy, up to the first flowing of water into the city in 1934, cost about one hundred million dollars, an expense met entirely by the city without state or federal assistance.3

[3. City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Water and Power, 14, 16, 18-19; Eckart and Stocker, “San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Water Supply,” Part II: Details of Some of the Constructional Facilities That Are Helping in the Execution of This Titanic Task, in Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 9 (September 1922): 247-50, and Part III: The Structural Features of the Dams for the Lake Eleanor and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoirs, in Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 10 (October 1922): 283-88. Part IV of this series is entitled “Details of the Aqueduct Tunnels and of the Mechanical Facilities Employed in Their Construction,” Compressed Air Magazine 27, no. 11 (November 1922): 315-20.]

The construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam and the associated water supply system for the city of San Francisco and surrounding area comprised one of the largest engineering projects of modern times. Work on it began with clearing the valley floor of timber to protect the impounded waters from contamination resulting from the decay of submerged wood. The next step involved cutting a diversion tunnel 900 feet long through the cliff on the south side of the dam site through which the river would be turned during construction and which would afterwards be used for the release of water from the reservoir. The construction of the arched gravity-type dam of cyclopean concrete was well planned and smoothly executed. The entire Hetch Hetchy water system, including the Lake Eleanor Dam, appears to be of a level of significance warranting nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. They possess not only engineering significance, but are nationally important in the history of the conservation movement and the development of National Park Service water policies. Because of the furor occasioned by their construction, they are the last intrusions of that type and magnitude to be placed in a national park. Their ownership by the city of San Francisco precludes preparation of forms by the writer. The loss of integrity of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad system also precludes its nomination to the Register.

C. Foresta Subdivision and McCauley-Meyer Sawmill

1. Foresta

The Foresta subdivision contains several mountain cabins of a very functional style, interspersed with some A-frames, constructed by weekend visitors and other short-term residents. Most are one- or two-room cabins with outdoor privies. None are considered to be of historical or architectural significance.

2. McCauley-Meyer Sawmill

The shed is in fair condition, although open to the weather. The rusty machinery has not fared as well, vandalism having taken its toll. Most of the belts are off their tracks; several have disappeared. The sawmill has no particular architectural significance and the site has no archeological merit. It is not of sufficient local historical importance to justify nomination to the National Register, although it is symbolic of an interesting aspect of the history of the region, specifically the lumber industry in terms of the development of small, independent sawmills, of which there were several in the park. It has been recommended that the machinery and shed be preserved and moved to El Portal in connection with the twentieth-century transportation exhibit, which also features mechanical items. There is an association with that town in that lumber from the mill was sold at El Portal and its engine came from a mine below^4 the town. This writer believes that the structure should be left in place subject to natural deterioration. The site has been inspected and photographed.

[4. “Evaluation of McCauley-Meyer Sawmill, Yosemite National Park, July 16-17, 1974,” Historic Preservation Team (Gordon S. Chappell, Roger E. Kelly, and Robert M. Cox), Western Region, to Associate Regional Director, Professional Services, Western Region, 26 July 1974.]

D. Emergency Relief Projects

The New Deal contribution to the National Park System is only now being thoroughly assessed and properly recognized. Probably part of the reason for this is that the period of the Great Depression and the subsequent government relief programs still seem to be “recent” history. Although it is usually recommended that events and people be viewed from some distance in time, enabling their proper placement in historical contexts, in this case such delay might result in irretrievable loss of an important cultural resource in many areas of the park system.

In Yosemite there are two main concentrations of Civilian Conservation Corps remains. Near the Yosemite Institute complex at Crane Flat are several tent cabin terraces and a stone water fountain from the earliest camp in the area. Three buildings remain from the 1934 period and are in use at Crane Flat—an oil shed (No. 6013), a former cook’s quarters used as a staff cabin (No. 6020), and a former office that has been renovated as a shower room (No. 6024).

The portable structures now used by the Institute were retrieved from the Naval rehabilitation center at the Ahwahnee Hotel at the end of World War II and set up at Crane Flat in 1946 to serve as permanent structures for the blister rust control activity that had been going on in the area since the early 1930s. Two of these—a messhall (No. 6014) and an office/barracks (No. 6016)—might have had some historical significance in terms of conservation efforts except that they have undergone many alterations. It is also uncertain whether originally the buildings were moved intact or disassembled and rebuilt. After the blister rust control effort was discontinued in 1967, road and forestry management crews used the camp until the Yosemite Institute took it over in 1973 for use as an environmental education campus.

Another area containing CCC remains is at Wawona where one can still see some of the original service buildings of the Wawona camp. They are in fair condition, having been altered and adapted for modern-day use. Structures remaining from the 1934 period include a repair garage (No. 4020), a four-stall garage (No. 4023), a seven-stall garage and light plant (No. 4025), and an office (No. 4027) used today as the Wawona ranger district headquarters. These structures, because of their alterations over the years and the lack of a typical CCC complex configuration, have not been recommended for nomination to the National Register.

Remains of the Cascades CCC camp consist of concrete foundations and a standing chimney. Any additional CCC camp remains found in this or any other park should be closely evaluated for integrity and significance, however, and not dismissed as a too recent intrusion in an historical area. Just as significant as structures built for the CCC enrollees are those built by them. Usually such buildings also demonstrate major importance in terms of rustic architecture, but their identification with the CCC adds another dimension of historical significance.

E. Yosemite Valley

1. Hydroelectric Power Plant

The Yosemite power plant contains all of the original electrical generation and switching equipment installed in 1917-18. Despite its significance as one of the few intact and relatively unaltered systems of its type left in the state and the only generating facility of its kind in the National Park System, by the 1980s decisions on major rehabilitation work and the future of the system became necessary. Critics believed power generation inside national parks to be no longer appropriate. Proposals to abandon the system also reflected the park’s desire to restore the Merced River to a free-flowing stream and improve fish habitat. The Park Service has decided to abandon the hydroelectric generating system and convert to commercially purchased power. This will result in removal of the diversion dam and intake structure; of the entire redwood-stave and steel penstock, trestles, surge tank, and support equipment; and of major portions of the interior powerhouse equipment for display and interpretation at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum. The Italian Renaissance-style power plant will be retained and rehabilitated on the interior to house the new switchgear for the commercial electrical system.5

[5. USDI, NPS, “Preliminary Case Report, Yosemite Hydroelectric System,” February 1986, 1-4.]

2. Ahwahnee Row Houses

Employee residences Nos. 107 to 113 built by the Yosemite National Park Company in the Tecoya area during 1922-24, fronting on the Ahwahnee Meadow, were inspected by a historical architect in the course of this study. At the same time, this historian searched concession records expected to contain pertinent information on their construction. These six L-shaped houses originally had the same interior plan but have been greatly modified over the years by removal of interior walls and the construction of additions. Only Building 112 appears to retain its original configuration. Exterior fabrics consisted of hollow tile, boards and rails, stone, processed metal, stucco, and rustic logs and boards. Originally built by the Yosemite National Park Company as employee quarters, the reason for the different exterior coverings is unclear.

A unified complex such as this, possessing a similar design but fabricated of different materials, would seem to have been constructed for a specific purpose. It has been stated that they served as an experimental group—as prototypes for employee housing—testing fabric durability or different insulation methods. This writer found no documentation to support this theory. As DSC Historical Architect Paul Cloyd has noted, if their construction were an experiment, the outcome evidently had no documented or visible impact on later construction, the concessioner sticking with wood-framed and wood-sided dormitories in the 1930s. It is therefore, difficult to claim significance on that basis.

Cloyd also points out that their architectural style is incompatible with the tenets of rustic architecture. The use of manufactured as opposed to natural materials and their intrusive position relative to the nearby meadow, conflict with the conceptual criteria so obvious in the village historic district. Their integrity has also been lessened as a result of modifications through the years.

The concensus at this time is that we do not have sufficient data to justify nomination of these structures to the National Register on the basis of architectural or historical significance. An agreement has been reached between the Yosemite Park and Curry Company and the National Park Service for the transfer of the Curry Company archives to the Yosemite Research Library and Records Center. This action will ensure the careful use and professional preservation of a vast body of important data relative to the park and its concession history. If additional data in those archives comes to light on the buildings’ purpose and design, they should be re-evaluated. Even though their original purpose might not be clear at this time, they are superior in style to much of today’s modern housing and should be retained for park use if feasible. Six of the small houses on Ahwahnee Row (H 101/102, H 103/104, H 105/106) were made into duplexes in 1932.

3. Yosemite Village Historic District

Another important area within Yosemite National Park that should be left in as intact a condition as possible as the Yosemite Village Historic District. This group of rustic-style residences, administrative facilities, and historic sites comprises a significant enclave of early National Park Service structures.

The northwest portion of the district contains the site of J. M. Hutchings’s 1865 cabin, apple orchard, and sawmill, and the site of the small cabin built by John Muir. No aboveground remains exist except for a few apple trees. Southeast of these sites is the National Park Service residential area of sixty-eight buildings dating from 1911 to 1951. Four of them are wood frame houses built by the army, surviving examples of military architecture on the valley floor. The Park Service moved them into the new group of rustic residences in the late 1920s and early 1930s because their original location blocked the view of Yosemite Fall. The other residences and dormitories display some variation of the Park Service rustic style of architecture and formed part of the new residential area developed by the Park Service beginning in 1918 as an effort to move the center of activity from the Old to the New Village. This area includes ancillary structures such as woodsheds and garages and more modern structures that are not considered historically or architecturally significant, such as 1950s-era residences and school.

Southwest of the residential district and near Yosemite Creek is the park superintendent’s residence and garage. Originally erected by the army in 1912, the Park Service almost completely rebuilt the house in 1929. Southeast of the residential group is the old Pioneer Cemetery, bounded by a low stone wall on the north and east sides and a row of trees on the south and west. To the southeast is the administrative and business portion of the New Village, which includes:
Rangers’ Club—an employee residence with garage and woodshed, built in 1920 with funds contributed by Stephen T. Mather. Its design was intended to set a precedent for the use of rustic architecture in the New Village;

Administration Building—built 1924;

Museum Building (present Valley District Building)—completed 1926;

Post Office—previously the post office was housed in the Cosmopolitan Saloon (early 1880s), Sentinel Hotel (1897 to 1913), Old Village store (1914 to 1920, when new building erected to the west), until this one completed in 1925. Leased to postal department for twenty years, then reverted to Department of the Interior and used by postal service under special use permit. The post office building is rather unusual in that it contains postal facilities on the ground floor and living quarters for postal employees on the second.

Pohono Indian Studio—built in 1925 as the new studio of photographer Julius Boysen;

Ansel Adams Gallery—a complex of five buildings erected in 1925. Main building originally known as Best’s Studio. Other buildings included a darkroom, single-family residence, garage, and duplex residence.

The Yosemite Village Historic District contains elements of the entire range of Yosemite history, from pioneer homesteading and enterprise through state, army, and National Park Service administration of the area. It also contains buildings associated with early Park Service residential, administrative, and interpretive efforts. There is also potential for significant findings in historical archeology. The district’s importance lies in its totality, which is of greater significance than any individual component, although several of the buildings are individually significant also. An assault on the integrity of any individual structure in the district compromises the integrity of the whole. The National Register form for the district, completed by Gordon Chappell, Western Regional Historian, NPS, and Robert Cox, Western Regional Historical Architect, NPS, in 1976, which should be examined for further detail on individual structures, points out that no other complex in the National Park System illustrates as well the range and variation of the rustic architecture style as conceived and implemented by the National Park Service.6 Because the significance of the district lies in the spatial, architectural, and historical relationships of the structures, no attempt should be made to change its physical characteristics or alter its boundaries.

[6. For further information on the Yosemite Village Historic District, see National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form prepared by Gordon Chappell and Robert Cox in 1976.]

4. Camp Curry Historic District

Camp Curry, or Curry Village, at the base of Glacier Point at the east end of Yosemite Valley, contains in the midst of a shady forest hundreds of canvas tent and wooden cabins plus motel-type units and an administrative facility. At the entrance to the camp stand the original registration office (1904) and the rustic entrance sign (ca. 1914). The several structures of the complex in the National Register are important in exemplifying Camp Curry’s early history and architectural style.

The camp opened in 1899, but the first permanent structure, a large wooden dining room and kitchen, was not built until 1901, burning in 1912. The registration office was erected in 1904, with a new dining room, studio, cafeteria, and auditorium following in 1912. A year later the Currys added a pool and bathhouse. Only the registration office and pool/bathhouse remain of this original complex. The auditorium has been converted to guest units. The dining room, after being rebuilt in 1929, burned in 1973 and was replaced. A fire in 1975 destroyed the sections housing the studio and cafeteria.

Two nomination forms exist for this property. The Camp Curry Historic Site form highlights four buildings that are the oldest surviving elements of the original camp: the Curry Residence, built in 1917 and currently serving as employee housing; the Tresidder Residence, built in 1916 and used as an employee residence; the Registration Office, that at the time of the nomination housed the Mountaineering Center; and the Swimming Tank Bathhouse, serving as a shower building, barber shop, and general storage room. That structure burned in 1977 and has since been replaced. The significance of Camp Curry lies in its philosophy of providing low cost lodging for Yosemite visitors and in the rustic style of architecture used in building construction, which, characterized by unpeeled logs and bark strips, differed from the later Park Service interpretation of that style, but provided a prototype for later valley structures.7

[7. See National Register form for Camp Curry Historic Site prepared by Leslie Starr Hart and Merrill Wilson in 1976. The Mountaineering School is now in the new structure east of the registration office, which is now used as a guest lounge and for postal services.]

A second nomination form was written for Camp Curry structures that collectively are exemplary of the camp ideal and enhance the historic setting but that have only minimal significance individually. Those include bungalows with bath built between 1918 and 1922, tent cabins dating mostly from the late 1920s and” early 1930s, cabins without bath built after 1928, and the Stoneman House, the former auditorium and dance hall converted into guest rooms. The historic district also contains several bathhouses and toilet facilities, an ice skating rink and warming room, two employee housing sections with canvas cabins and some cabins without baths used for employee housing.8

[8. See revised National Register form for Camp Curry prepared by Leslie Starr Hart and Merrill Wilson in 1979.]

5. Yosemite Lodge

The original buildings of the Yosemite Lodge complex—the U. S. Army barracks—stood northwest of the modern lodge buildings. None of those early structures remain. The newer lodge was constructed in 1956 and is not architecturally or historically significant. Canvas tents and cabin facilities and guest use areas have changed through the years, either by replacement or relocation. Several more modern motel-type buildings have been added. The present bungalows, built mostly in the 1920s, are simple frame rustic structures. Some of the cabins without baths used for lodge employee housing were brought by D. J. Desmond from the Owens Valley Aqueduct project after World War I. They are not considered significant. The lodge complex is a standard park commercial venture, intended to fill the gap between the more primitive accommodations of Camp Curry and the more expensive ones of the Ahwahnee Hotel.

6. Yosemite Village Garage

This structure, built in 1917, stands on its original site. It displays on the exterior aspects of the early rustic architecture style in Yosemite Valley. It is the only structure of that style in the commercial area east of the Yosemite Village Historic District. It has sustained several alterations and would not qualify for the National Register.

7. Yosemite Village Gas Station

This structure was built about the same time as the Yosemite Village garage. Its once classic rustic exterior has been completely destroyed by refurbishment in the late 1940s and 1950s.

F. Wawona

1. Pioneer Yosemite History Center

This interpretive center, part of the MISSION 66 program for the park, is a popular aspect of the park’s interpretive program and is a restful and educational way to ingest some of the park’s early history and personalities. The establishment of the center was carried out with thoughtful planning and professional expertise and undoubtedly saved many historical structures in the park from an untimely demise.

The center was nominated to the National Register in 1971 as an historic district. It was rejected as an artificial district with the recommendation that the thirteen buildings involved be inventoried on an individual basis to ascertain their historical and/or architectural merit. Because all but two of the structures had been moved, it was necessary to evaluate them as exceptional properties.

Four of the buildings lacked any significance for Yosemite history: the rail fence came from Aspen Valley for visual effect; the blacksmith shop was moved from a Madera County ranch as an interpretive device; the Cuneo Cabin (Hope Cabin) came from Hodgdon Meadow to house audio-visual equipment for the original interpretive program and was later refurbished as a turn-of-the-century schoolhouse. The cabin was actually built in the mid-1930s as a summer cabin; the “Washburn Barn” is on its original site but actually served as the garage for the Shell Service Station that once operated on the old Wawona Road. The structure, built in the early 1920s, has no particular merit.

In September 1975 Merrill Ann Wilson, Historical Architect, Denver Service Center, and Leslie Starr Hart, Cultural Resources Specialist, Yosemite National Park, made an onsite investigation of the history center. On the basis of their investigations, nomination forms were forwarded for what was then thought to be the Jorgensen Studio (Art, local); the George Anderson Cabin (Exploration/Settlement, local); the Hodgdon Homestead Cabin (Architecture, local); the Acting Superintendent’s Headquarters (Conservation, local); the Yosemite Transportation Company Office (Architecture and Transportation, local), and the Covered Bridge (Engineering, regional). A listing of current National Register properties is available in the next chapter.

Of the two remaining buildings—the Crane Flat Ranger Patrol Cabin and the Powderhouse (Old Jail)—Hart noted a conflict in construction dates for the former (1900 vs. 1915) and also questioned its exceptional significance as a “moved structure.” It is clear now that the 1915 date is the correct one. The building is not being nominated to the National Register despite its local significance in architecture and transportation for two reasons. First, the fact that is not on its original site, has been reconstructed, and is in an artificial setting adversely affects its integrity. Second, its maintenance and upkeep should be ensured by its location in the history center. Furnished in a fashion reflecting the lifestyle of a ranger in the early 1920s, it is an important part of the living history program^9 representing the changes in administration of the park and its roads. The powderhouse also shows a conflict in construction dates, 1880 or 1890. It was probably built by John Degnan in the late 1880s while he was employed by the state for road repair and other odd jobs. It has no particular historical significance.10

[9. Robert C. Pavlik, “A Summary of Nine Buildings Being Considered for National Register Nomination,” typescript, 2 pages, no date (ca. 1985). The building’s original stone foundation and three giant sequoia trees planted adjacent to the cabin by its early occupants are still visible at Crane Flat.]

[10. Leslie Starr Hart to files, Alaska/Pacific Northwest/Western Team, Denver Service Center, 16 December 1976.]

2. Section 35

Section 35 is a historical community with a long cultural background, some families having lived there for several generations. Most of the improved parcels support vacation or recreation homes and cabins built primarily in the 1950s and later, with a few earlier 1930s-1940s structures. Although no structures of historical or architectural significance have been found in Section 35, any anticipated removal of structures in that area should be preceded by a careful review process on a case-by-case basis. Several families homesteaded the area very early, but so far as is known, most of those original structures are gone. There is always a slight chance that resources of that period remain that have not yet shown up on property lists or during initial Park Service on-site surveys. Because many of the construction dates of buildings that have been given to Park Service officials have not been substantiated, further search in courthouse records will probably be required for structures that seem questionable in terms of period of construction and significance. That kind of detailed property-by-property research was not possible in the scope of this report. It is the kind of study best performed by a full-time park historian able to spend long days researching county records and interviewing landowners. (During the course of this study, the Vagim property was researched in that way by Bob Pavlik and found not to be historically or architecturally significant.) This also applies to properties in El Portal, Aspen Valley, and Foresta that may need to be evaluated in more depth on an individual basis as the federal government purchases them.

G. El Portal

As the site selected for Park Service and Yosemite Park and Curry Company residential and administrative functions, the potential for adverse impacts on existing sites and structures in El Portal is great. This small village, with a long history of aboriginal and Anglo occupation, contains a variety of sites and structures with varying degrees of archeological, historical, and/or architectural interest.

Beginning in 1905, activities related to various railroad, lumber, and mining interests left their distinctive mark on the town and its buildings. The town’s older businesses lie in the vicinity of the present library and fire station. Although no sites or structures of National Register significance have been found, the houses and business establishments of El Portal, including the library, hotel, and present store, comprise an interesting enclave of vernacular architecture that is pleasing to the eye. Most of the town’s older bungalows have been added on to or improved through the years with whatever material happened to be available and display a variety of fabrics and styles. Three early-twentieth-century railroad houses also remain; they have been determined ineligible for the National Register because of a lack of associative historical significance or architectural significance. Because of their personalized architectural style, individual structures in El Portal are deserving of study and careful consideration during Park Service planning and development of the village and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as they are purchased by the government. Again, this is the type of study best accomplished by a full-time professional park historian. El Portal is a quaint and close-knit community with a fragile heritage that could easily be damaged by modern development.

1. Hotel and Market

The existing hotel has undergone interior changes with the addition of walls and other alterations to make it suitable as living quarters for National Park Service employees and Yosemite Institute personnel. Although the building exterior has integrity of design and workmanship, the present hotel—the fourth one in the town—is not historically or architecturally significant. The present market has exterior integrity but has undergone some interior change. It is not considered significant.

2. Other Resources

Other historical resources in the El Portal area not considered eligible for the National Register include:
the library (old store) dating from ca. 1934;

the town’s third school, built in 1930 and replaced in 1962, which was developed into a community church in 1967-68 after the Park Service declared its intention to burn it;

the El Portal garage, built in the 1950s along with a community hall and now used by the fire department;

the El Portal Motor Inn, built in the early 1950s;

the Leland J. Cuneo tungsten rod mill ruins located above the present sewage treatment plant at the railroad wye. Cuneo had two mill sites on the land—the Donna and the Gary—with the mill located on the latter site. Cuneo built the mill about 1952, evidently to serve a tungsten mine near Big Meadow. The mill ended operations about 1964 due to the low price of tungsten. It also processed gold^11 ore.

a few excavations from mining operations; and

the old Hennessey ranch house site in the trailer village.

[Editor’s note: Footnote 11 is missing—dea]

CHAPTER IX: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INTERPRETATION, CULTURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, AND FURTHER RESEARCH

A. Interpretation and Cultural Resources Management 1041
B. Further Research 1042

The author’s recommendations relative to cultural resources management, interpretive efforts, and further studies that would enhance understanding and protection of Yosemite’s historical resources include:

A. Interpretation and Cultural Resources Management

1. Increasing interpretation of related historical, natural resource, and construction projects. For instance, in the Old Village area it would be enlightening to show pictures of the early buildings, explain the area’s history and land use, and discuss the naturalization process.

2. Undertaking a backcountry survey. Proposals for a Wilderness Historic Resources Survey and Historic Base Map Revision have been submitted for consideration. Information gathered would be added to the park Geographic Information System and onto new maps. The survey would search out blazes, old trails, cabins, and other historical features over a period of eight summers. National Register nominations should be prepared as part of the project.

3. Undertaking a trail, bridge, and dam survey throughout the park, including recordation of cobbled trail sections and retaining banks, culverts, and associated trail maintenance campsites. The project should include the man-made dams in the valley stream system. Again National Register evaluations should be made.

4. Undertaking archeological studies of historical properties within the park, especially in Yosemite Valley, and at El Portal, Glacier Point, Wawona, Mariposa Grove, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, Foresta/Big Meadow, and in the backcountry. Archeological remains of historic properties have not been investigated to any great extent and could turn out to be a rich source of material culture, yielding information relative to the socioeconomic development and historic occupation of Yosemite and the Sierra in general.

5. Training new and seasonal employees, especially those working in the backcountry, in the value of historical resources and the park’s need to protect them against relic hunters and vandals.

6. Establishing a full-time historian position to provide detailed reports on sites and structures to be impacted by park construction or development, to be on hand to make evaluations of unrecorded resources as needed, to monitor earth-disturbing activities and record cultural aspects of the work, and to perform title checks on individual properties in inholding areas as needed.

B. Further Research

Much additional information is available on the park’s legislative and administrative history. Some of this material could be included in a comprehensive administrative history encompassing the administrative differences and the development of regulations, policies, and programs under the state of California, the U. S. Army, and the National Park Service. Because of the volume of information, however, and the long-term impact of Yosemite developments on later Park Service policies and programs, it might be more useful to attempt several administrative histories focusing on different aspects of park development, such as:

natural resource management, including such topics as fire and predator control; forestry, including insect diseases and blister rust control; and wildlife management;

the development and changing philosophy and techniques of trail construction, especially in the backcountry;

the significance of Hetch Hetchy in relation to the question of exploiting and exporting park resources;

the role of conservation groups in park development, discussing the affect of the growing conservation philosophy on logging activity and power generation and including discussion of the Sierra Club involvement through the years and the later growth of the Yosemite Institute, a nonprofit organization helping the park with its educational and environmental programs. The study would include how their organizational changes related to park developments;

the development of the Park Service museum program and interpretive division;

the growth of cooperative associations;

Master Plan efforts of the 1960s and 1970s; and

MISSION 66.

The Park would also profit from historic structure reports on some buildings, such as Parsons Lodge and the old Administration and Museum buildings. Special history studies might cover such topics as:

backcountry settlement, including when people first entered the park, where they settled, how they used the land, and how they marked and used trails; and

the logging industry, including activities within the park and in the broader context of the Sierra lumber industry, including a discussion of its impact on national park values and the local economy.

CHAPTER X: SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL PROPERTIES IN YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

A. The National Register of Historic Places 1045
1. Properties Listed in the National Register 1046
2. Properties Determined Eligible for Listing in the National Register 1048
3. Properties Nominated to the National Register, Status Uncertain 1048
4. Properties Nominated to the National Register by the National Park Service, Concurred in by State Historic Preservation officer, Returned by National Register for Additional Data or Revisions Potential National Register Properties 1049
5. Properties to be Nominated to the National Register, 1987 1049
a) Architecture 1050
b) Transportation and Landscape Architecture 1051
c) Conservation/Commerce 1052
d) Conservation/Parks and Recreation 1052

B. The Historic American Buildings Survey 1054
C. The National Historic Landmarks Program 1055
D. The List of Classified structures for Yosemite National Park as of 12 December 1984 1057

(Note: Yosemite Valley became California registered historical landmark No. 790 in 1964)

A. The National Register of Historic Places

A number of evaluations of historical properties in Yosemite National Park have been made over the past fifteen years. A 1971 inventory by Historian F. Ross Holland, Jr., of the Denver Service Center was followed in 1974 by a historic resources survey of Yosemite Valley by Historian Erwin N. Thompson of the Denver Service Center. The significant properties determined by those studies, plus those in developed areas and those potentially affected by proposed actions of the General Management Plan, were studied further in a Historic Resources Inventory published in 1979 that provided data necessary for the cultural resources component of the GMP.

In the 1979 study all of the previously studied properties were evaluated against National Register criteria. The National Register of Historic Places is the nation’s official list of its cultural resources worthy of preservation. Maintained by the National Park Service, it is part of a national program coordinating public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect historic and archeological resources. The list contains districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, archeology, architecture, engineering, and culture. The National Register includes places of regional and local significance as well as those resources qualified for designation as National Historic Landmarks.

The National Register evaluation process in 1979 eliminated most properties less than fifty years old from further consideration. The remaining ones were studied and, where appropriate, either nominated to the National Register, recommended for future nomination based on additional research, or determined ineligible due to marginal importance or complete lack of historical or architectural significance. The data base for park historical resources had been further expanded with completion of this parkwide Historic Resource Study, which has resulted in additional nominations to the National Register. The status of significant sites and structures in Yosemite National Park follows.

1. Properties Listed in the National Register

Name

Date Entered

Yosemite Valley Chapel
regional significance: 19th-century architecture

12/12/73

Wawona Hotel and Pavilion
national significance: 19th-century art; regional significance: commerce, 20th-century conservation, transportation; local significance: exploration/settlement

10/01/75

Ahwahnee Hotel
national significance: 20th-century architecture

02/15/77

McCauley Cabin
local significance: 20th-century architecture and conservation

03/08/77

Le Conte Memorial Lodge
regional significance: 19th-20th-century conservation; local significance: architecture and education

03/08/77

Yosemite Valley Bridges
local significance: 20th-century architecture

11/25/77

Yosemite Valley Archeological District
state significance: prehistoric and historic archeology

01/20/78

Hetch Hetchy Railroad Engine No. 6
local significance: 20th-century transportation

01/30/78

Yosemite Village Historic District
regional and local significance: 19th-20th-century architecture, conservation, exploration/settlement, education, commerce, art, science

03/30/78

Glacier Point Trailside Museum
local significance: 20th-century architecture and education

04/04/78

Track Bus No. 19
local significance: 20th-century transportation

05/22/78

Yosemite Valley Railroad Caboose No. 15
local significance: 20th-century transportation

05/22/78

Great Sierra Mine (Dana Village) Historic Site
local significance: 19th-century architecture and industry

05/24/78

Acting Superintendent’s Headquarters
local significance: 20th-century conservation

06/09/78

Yosemite Transportation Company Office
local significance: 20th-century architecture and transportation

06/09/78

Hodgdon Homestead Cabin
local significance: 19th-century architecture

06/09/78

McCauley and Meyer Barns
local significance: 19th-century agriculture and architecture

06/15/78

El Portal Archeological District
regional significance: prehistoric and historic archeology

08/18/78

Great Sierra Wagon Road
local significance: 19th-century engineering, industry, transportation

08/25/78

Tuolumne Meadows [Mess Hall, Kitchen, Bunkhouses, Toilet, and Shower]
local significance: 20th-century architecture and social/humanitarian

11/30/78

Mariposa Grove Museum
regional significance: 19th-20th-century exploration/ settlement, social/humanitarian; local significance: architecture

12/01/78

Tioga Pass Entrance Station
local significance: 20th-century architecture and social/humanitarian

12/14/78

Merced Grove Ranger Station
local significance: 20th-century architecture

12/14/78

Tuolumne Meadows Ranger Stations & Comfort Stations
local significance: 20th-century architecture and social/humanitarian

12/18/78

Bagby Stationhouse, Water Tanks, and Turntable
local significance: 20th-century transportation

04/13/79

Chris Jorgensen Studio
local significance: 19th-20th-century art

04/13/79

Soda Springs Cabin [Enclosure] (John Lembert Homestead)
local significance: i9th-20th-century exploration/ settlement and science

04/19/79

Parsons Memorial Lodge
regional significance: 20th-century architecture; local significance: conservation

04/30/79

McGurk Cabin
local significance: 19th-century exploration/ settlement

06/04/79

Camp Curry Historic District
local significance: 19th-20th-century architecture, commerce, exploration/settlement

11/01/79

2. Properties Determined Eligible for Listing in the National Register

Old Coulterville Road and Trail
local significance: 19th-century engineering and transportation

03/15/78

Tuolumne Meadows Archeological District
state and regional significance: prehistoric and historic archeology

12/07/78

Wawona Archeological District
state and regional significance: prehistoric and historic archeology

12/07/78

Dead Giant Tunnel Tree
local significance: 19th-century transportation

12/20/78

Eagle Peak Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

White Wolf Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Snow Creek/Mt. Watkins Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Yosemite Creek Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Mariposa Grove Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Aspen Valley Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Crane Flat Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Hetch-Hetchy Archeological District
local, regional significance: prehistoric and protohistoric

01/21/80

Yosemite Hydroelectric Power Plant
regional significance: 20th-century engineering; local significance: parks and recreation

3. Properties Nominated to the National Register, Status Uncertain

Golden Crown Mine Historic Site
local significance: 19th-century exploration/settlement and industry

1978

4. Properties Nominated to the National Register by the National Park Service, Concurred in by State Historic Preservation Officer, Returned by National Register for Additional Data or Revisions. Potential National Register Properties

Wawona Covered Bridge
regional significance: 19th-century engineering

1977

George Anderson Cabin
local significance: 19th-century exploration/settlement

1979

Lamon Orchard Historic Site
local significance - 19th-century agriculture and exploration/settlement

1979

Foresta/Big Meadow Archeological District
state and regional significance: prehistoric and historical archeology (22 sites)

1983 (rev.)

5. Properties to be Nominated to the National Register, 1987

The 1979 case study recommended certain properties for further evaluation under the National Register criteria. Those included:

Valley Area
Arch Rock stone retaining walls, entrance sign, and buildings
Cascades residences
Ahwahnee Row Houses
Lewis Memorial Hospital
Camp Curry Footbridge
Happy Isles Museum
Snow Creek Cabin

South Rim Area
Wawona tunnel
Chinquapin ranger residence, comfort station, and lunchroom
Henness Ridge Fire Lookout
Badger Pass ski house
Ostrander Lake ski hut
Wawona CCC and WPA structures
Wawona Washburn barn
South Entrance ranger duplex, office, and comfort station
Mariposa Grove comfort station
Chilnualna Fall ranger station (ruins)
Buck Camp ranger station

North Rim Area
Crane Flat Blister Rust Control camp
White Wolf Lodge

Miscellaneous
Backcountry patrol cabins
Yosemite Lumber Company grades and camps
El Portal, Aspen Valley, and Foresta inholdings

After further study of the above and of additional sites within Yosemite National Park, the writer determined that the following structures meet the criteria for eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places under the following park themes:

a) Architecture

A variety of structures were selected for significance in architecture, displaying a wide range of styles and uses. The South Entrance ranger duplex (No. 4600), office building (No. 4604), and comfort station (No. 4606); the Mariposa Grove comfort station (No. 4726); the Henness Ridge fire lookout (No. 5300); and the Hetch Hetchy comfort station (No. 2104) are considered significant in rustic architecture. The Crane Flat and Henness Ridge fire lookouts are two of only four rustic-style lookouts in the state. The Crane Flat structure is not being nominated because of alterations that have been made to the original structure. The Henness Ridge structure is also significant in conservation.

The Chinquapin ranger station (No. 5000) and the Wawona ranger stations (Nos. 4000 and 4001) are representative of a cultural theme not used in other western parks. Although the buildings are reminiscent of colonial New England-style buildings, with their simple lines, white paint, and Cape Cod look, National Park Service Assistant Architect John B. Wosky designed them to continue the nineteenth-century building tradition of Yosemite exemplified by the early Sentinel and Wawona hotels and the later White Wolf Lodge. The latter resort is also being nominated for architectural significance and in the social/humanitarian field as being representative of the types of small resorts once so prevalent in the region.

A different type of architecture is displayed by the Yosemite Valley group utility building (no. 527), a reinforced concrete structure designed to be fireproof and to centralize many functions relative to visitor safety and comfort previously housed in a multitude of unsightly frame shacks in the valley utility area. Despite its size and utilitarian function, the building has some attractive architectural details and was designed with consideration of proper landscaping and harmonious blending with the environment.

In Summary:

Rustic Style - South Entrance ranger duplex, office, and comfort station
Mariposa Grove comfort station
Henness Ridge fire lookout
Hetch Hetchy comfort station

Early California Style -
Chinquapin ranger station
Wawona ranger station and residence
White Wolf Lodge

NPS Functional -
Valley group utility building

b) Transportation and Landscape Architecture

Several structures in the park are considered to be of local significance in this field. The early roads and trails are being added to the National Register because of their significance in engineering, exploration/settlement, and association with famous people. They were important in the development of the park, of mountain climbing, and of enjoyment of the High Sierra backcountry. The Wawona tunnel was not only a skillful engineering project with an innovative ventilation system, but was also constructed with due respect for landscape and environmental concerns. The tunnels, bridges, and retaining walls on the new Big Oak Flat Road display stonework of quality and craftsmanship, in addition to being part of an important park road system. The retaining walls and entrance sign near the Arch Rock checking station also exemplify the best in Park Service stonework and rustic signage.

In Summary:

Mist Trail, including Vernal Fall bridge and comfort station
Four-Mile Trail
Yosemite Fall Trail
Half Dome Trail
John Muir Trail
Old Big Oak Flat Road traces
Wawona tunnel
New Big Oak Flat Road tunnels, retaining walls, and bridges
Arch Rock stone retaining walls and stone and timber park entrance sign

c) Conservation/Commerce

The High Sierra camps possess local significance as important early interpretive branches of the Yosemite educational program and as an early long-range planning attempt to relieve valley congestion. The Snow Creek cabin has local significance in the development of winter sports activities in Yosemite National Park and within California, as does the Ostrander Lake ski hut, which also possesses significance in architecture (late rustic design) and social/humanitarian themes, as the last CCC-aided construction project in the park.

In Summary:

White Wolf Lodge High Sierra Camp
May Lake High Sierra Camp
Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp
Tuolumne Meadows High Sierra Camp
Sunrise High Sierra Camp
Vogelsang High Sierra Camp
Merced Lake High Sierra Camp
Snow Creek cabin
Ostrander Lake ski hut

d) Conservation/Parks and Recreation

National Park Service snow survey/backcountry patrol cabins at Merced Lake (No. 3400), Lake Vernon (No. 2450), Sachse Springs (no No.), Snow Flat (No. 3501), and Buck Camp (No. 4800) served as storage places and as shelters for men taking hydrologic measurements within the park as part of a statewide snow survey program. A similar structure at Lake Wilmer was crushed in an avalanche during the winter of 1985-86. The Frog Creek cabin aided in patrol work and egg-taking operations.

In Summary:

Merced Lake cabin
Lake Vernon cabin
Sachse Springs cabin
Snow Flat cabin
Buck Camp cabin
Frog Creek cabin

The following structures noted in the 1979 case study have been determined ineligible for the National Register due to a lack of historical or architectural significance:

Cascades residences
Happy Isles Museum
Lewis Memorial Hospital
Badger Pass ski house
Washburn barn

The Camp Curry footbridge should be part of the recommended parkwide trail, bridge, and dam survey and, if found eligible for the National Register, could be included in a thematic nomination resulting from that study. The Crane Flat blister rust control camp has been found ineligible due to a lack of integrity, the buildings have been altered for use by the Yosemite Institute. The remaining CCC structures at Wawona are ineligible due to lack of integrity. The Chilnualna Fall ranger cabin is also deemed to lack integrity, having fallen into ruin over the past few years. As mentioned earlier, on the basis of current information the Ahwahnee row houses are not considered eligible for the National Register.

Individual El Portal, Foresta, Aspen Valley, and Section 35 structures, numbering in the hundreds, will have to be researched and evaluated on an individual basis. At this time no structures of National Register significance have been found in El Portal, Section 35, or Foresta. The majority of the Aspen Valley properties, after a cursory examination by the writer, were not considered significant architecturally, although the older cabins should be more carefully inspected and their construction history researched for architectural and historical significance. The Yosemite Lumber Company grades and camps should be studied as part of the proposed wilderness survey.

Additional structures which have been evaluated and found to be ineligible due to a lack of historical, architectural, or associative significance, or a lack of integrity, include the:

Lake Eleanor residences
Hetch Hetchy residences
Miguel Meadow guard station and barn
El Portal National Lead Company houses
El Portal Murchison house
El Portal barium mines
Yosemite Valley water-stage recorders
Eight-Mile insect control laboratory
Wawona district ranger office, #4027
Wawona ranger office, #4002
Wawona barn
Wawona wagon shop

B. The Historic American Buildings Survey

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), initiated in 1933 as a program administered by the National Park Service, was the federal government’s first major step in establishing a comprehensive program for recording important examples of American architecture. Such documentation ensures that historical building techniques, fabrics, styles, and technology will be available for study and comparison long after the actual structures are gone. The program was initially conceived to utilize unemployed architects, draftsmen, and photographers to secure complete graphic records of endangered examples of early architecture and historic structures throughout the United States. In 1934 the Park Service, the American Institute of Architects, and the Library of Congress signed a memorandum of agreement to ensure continuance of the program on a permanent basis. Under the agreement, the AIA would identify and catalog significant structures, the Park Service would take photographs and prepare measured drawings, and the Fine Arts Division of the Library of Congress would serve as repository for the inventory forms, drawings, and photographs.1 The work almost ceased during World War II, but revived.

[1. Unrau and Willis, Expansion of the National Park Service, 178, 180.]

In 1969 the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) was established as a companion program to document structures of technological and engineering significance as opposed to the residential and commercial structures on which HABS concentrated. HABS/HAER surveys involve varying levels of documentation for a specific building or complex and can include measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written architectural and historical data. The HABS/HAER collections, housed in the Library of Congress, are open to the public.

The following structures in Yosemite National Park have been documented by the HABS/HAER division of the National Park Service:

Structure

HABS Number

Bagby Stationhouse

CA 1650

Foster Curry Cabin [Curry Village]

CA 2181

George Meyer Barn No. 1

CA 2182-A

George Meyer Barn No. 2

CA 2182-B

Tuolumne Meadows Ranger Station

CA 2183

Wawona Hotel

CA 1805

Cedar Cottage

CA 1645

Sentinel Hotel

CA 1644

Yosemite Chapel

CA 1649

John Degnan House

CA 2178

John Degnan House Garage

CA 2178-A

John Degnan House Bakery

CA 2178-B

Pohono Indian Studio

CA 2180

Superintendent’s Residence

CA 2179

Superintendent’s Residence Garage

CA 2179-A

Structure

HAER Number

Hydroelectric Power System

CA 20

C. The National Historic Landmarks Program

Landmark designation is a unique status accorded a limited number of properties meeting the criteria of national significance. A national historic landmark is a district, site, building, structure, or object nationally significant in American history, architecture, archeology, or culture, and, as such, a special part of the nation’s heritage possessing significance for all Americans. The National Historic Landmarks program, authorized by the Historic Sites Act of 1935, underwent rapid growth in the early 1960s. The study, identification, and review of potential landmarks is a cooperative process in which state and local agencies, professional historians, architects, and archeologists, and the professional staff of the Park Service share knowledge and expertise. In the final review of potential landmarks, experts in relevant disciplines contribute their judgement to ensure that only qualified properties are declared eligible. Survey findings on potentially significant sites are presented in formal studies related to themes in the field of American history. A consulting committee of authorities reviews the study reports, as does the Secretary of the Interior’s Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments. The Secretary of the Interior has final responsibility for declaring sites eligible for designation as National Historic Landmarks. All properties eligible for National Historic Landmark status are automatically entered in the National Register as soon as the Secretary of the Interior determines them to be of national significance.

Architectural Historian Laura Souilliere recently completed an evaluation of structures within the National Park System for national significance in architecture. A selected number of properties in Yosemite National Park were determined to possess national significance in architecture’ as well as individual historical importance and on 28 May 1987 were approved for landmark status. They include:

Wawona Hotel, including all guest accommodations, and Hill Studio
Ahwahnee Hotel (main structure only)
LeConte Memorial Lodge
Parsons Memorial Lodge
Rangers’ Club and Garage

D. The List of Classified Structures for Yosemite National Park as of 12 December 1984

Current Department of the Interior management policies state that the central List of Classified Structures should only include historic structures within Park Service units that might meet the criteria for listing in the National Register or that are elements of sites, districts, or structural complexes that might meet the criteria. A few other structures determined to warrant preservation for their cultural values may also be included.

Structure

IDLCS

Anderson Cabin

05804

“Long Brown” Building (Washburn Cottage)

07160

Administration Building (Park Headquarters)

05778

Ahwahnee Bridge (Kennyville #01)

12960

Annex (Hotel)

07163

Arboretum Wall

05837

Army Cabin

05798

Army Tack Room

05799

Bagby Stationhouse (El Portal)

10858

Bagby Watertower (El Portal)

10857

Blacksmith Shop

05805

Bruin Baffle (Tuolumne Meadows)

05831

Buck Camp Ranger Cabin

05807

Cabin No. 1 - Golden Crown Mine

05813

Cabin No. 2 - Golden Crown Mine

05814

Cabin No. 3 - Golden Crown Mine

05815

Cabin No. 4 - Golden Crown Mine

05816

Chilnualna Fall Ranger Patrol Cabin

05834

Clark’s Bridge

12962

Comfort Station

05787

Comfort Station (Tioga Pass)

05795

Comfort Station (Tuolumne Meadows)

05791

Comfort Station (Tuolumne Meadows)

05792

Comfort Station (Tuolumne Meadows)

05793

Covered Bridge

05838

Crane Flat Ranger Cabin

05800

Cuneo Cabin

05801

Dana Cabin at Great Sierra Mine

05824

Dana Fork Cabin

05811

Degnan - Storage and Garage

05785

Degnan Residence and Bakery

05784

Diversion Dam

05835

Gin Flat Cabin

05812

Girls’ Club - Dormitory (Yosemite Valley)

05752

Girls’ Dormitory (Yosemite Valley)

05751

Girls’ Dormitory (Yosemite Valley)

05753

Girls’ Dormitory (Yosemite Valley)

05754

Great Sierra Mine Equipment

05836

Happy Isles Bridge

12963

Hennes Ridge Fire Lookout

05809

Hodgon Homestead Cabin

05776

Jail

05802

Jorgenson [Jorgensen] Studio or Artists Cabin

05803

Le Conte Memorial Lodge

05783

Leonard Cabin

05782

Long White Building (Clark Cottage)

07161

Manager’s Cottage (Little White Building)

07162

Mariposa Grove Museum

05806

Masonic Hall

05780

McCauley Cabin

05830

McGurk Cabin

05810

Mess Hall (Tuolumne Meadows)

05790

Mono Pass Trail Cabin (Dana Fork Cabin)

05833

Office Building (Yosemite Valley)

05750

Old Museum (Valley District Building)

05779

Parsons Memorial Lodge

05829

Pavilion (Thomas Hill Studio)

01400

Pohono Bridge

12957

Pohono Studio

05786

Power House

05777

Prospector’s Cabin

05827

Ranger Club

01483

Ranger Club Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05775

Ranger Station (Tuolumne Meadows)

05788

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12025

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12026

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12027

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12028

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12029

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12030

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12031

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12032

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12033

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12034

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12035

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12036

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12037

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12038

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12039

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12040

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12041

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12042

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12043

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12044

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12045

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12046

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12047

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05741

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05742

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05743

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05744

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05745

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05746

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05748

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05749

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05756

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05757

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05758

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05759

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05760

Residence (Yosemite Valley)

05761

Residence 2 (Yosemite Valley)

12024

Shaft No. 1 - Golden Crown Mine

05817

Shaft No. 2 - Golden Crown Mine

05818

Shaft No. 2 - Great Sierra Mine

05826

Shaft Number 1 - Great Sierra Mine

05825

Small Brown Building (Moore Cottage)

07159

Soda Spring Cabin (Tuolumne Meadows)

05828

Stella Lake Ice Reservoir

05832

Stoneman Bridge

12999

Structure No. 1 - Great Sierra Mine

05819

Structure No. 2 - Great Sierra Mine

05820

Structure No. 3 - Great Sierra Mine

05821

Structure No. 4 - Great Sierra Mine

05822

Structure No. 5 - Great Sierra Mine

05823

Sugar Pine Bridge (Kennyville #2)

12961

Superintendents Residence (Yosemite Valley)

12023

Tenaya Bridge

12964

Tioga Pass Ranger Station

05794

Turntable (El Portal)

10859

US Post Office

05781

View Lookout Shelter (Glacier Point Trailside Museum)

05808

Visitor Center (Tuolumne Meadows)

05789

Washburn Barn

05796

Wawona Hotel, Main Building

07158

Wawona Tunnel

05839

Wells Fargo Office (Yosemite Transportation Co. Off.)

05797

Wood Shed (Yosemite Valley)

05767

Wood Shed (Yosemite Valley)

05768

Wood Shed (Yosemite Valley)

05773

Yosemite Creek Bridge

12958

Yosemite Valley Chapel

01401

1 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05774

2 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05770

2 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05771

3 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05766

4-Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05772

4-Unit Apartment (Yosemite Valley)

05747

4-Unit Apartment (Yosemite Valley)

05755

5 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05762

5 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05763

5 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05765

5 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley)

05769

7 Stall Garage (Yosemite Valley

05764

APPENDIXES

A: C. Hart Merriam, “Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley,” Sierra Club Bulletin 10, No. 2 (January 1917) 1063
B: Chronological Overview of Archeological Investigation in Yosemite National Park 1069
C: Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove 1075
D: Legislation Pertaining to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove 1081
E: Administrators of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1866-1960 1087
F: Historical Components of Concession Operations, June-July 1923 1089
G: building Inventory, Yosemite National Park 1105

APPENDIX A
“Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley”

by C. Hart Merriam
from: Sierra Club Bulletin 10, no. 2 (January 1917): 202-9

Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley*

By C. Hart Merriam

*This article was written in 1910, during which year I was able to complete the list of villages from the head of Yosemite Valley to Ferguson Station on the Merced, about six miles below El Portal. I had previously obtained and published the villages from Horseshoe Bend down the Merced as far as the territory of the tribe extended, and was anxious to fill the gap between Soo-noó-koo-loon at Ferguson and Se-sau'-che at Horseshoe Bend. Not having been able to do this, it seems hardly worth while to defer publication longer.

•

For ages before its discovery by white men Yosemite Valley was inhabited by Indians. Owing to its isolated position and the abundance of mountain trout, quail, grouse, deer, bear, and other game animals, and of acorns, manzanita-berries, and other vegetable foods, it supported a large population. This is attested not only by the statements of the Indians themselves, but also by the surprisingly large number of villages whose locations have been determined. These were of three kinds:. (1) permanent villages, occupied the year round, though somewhat depleted in winter; (2) summer villages, occupied from Alay to October, after which the inhabitants moved down into the milder climate of Merced Cañon, where there was little or no snow; and (3) seasonal camps for hunting and fishing. The camps were definitely located and each was regularly occupied at a particular season.

It has not always been possible to distinguish between village-sites and camp-sites, but, taken collectively, I have been able, with the help of resident Indians., to locate and name no less than thirty-seven. All of these were in the valley proper, and at least six were occupied as late as 1898. To the list I have added sixteen located in the cañon of the Merced from the Cascades to Ferguson Station, six miles below El Portal, making in all fifty-three villages and camps in a distance of about twenty-two miles; and doubtless there were others which my informants had forgotten.

All of these people belonged to the Ahwaneéche or Ahwah'-nee Mew'-wah, a subtribe closely akin to the neighboring Chow-chil'-la Mew'-wah of Chowchilla Cañon. Their language is the southernmost of the three dialects of the once great Mé-wuk family—a family comprising a group of closely related tribes occupying the western foothills and lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada from Cosumnes River south to Fresno Creek.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME YOSEMITE

In this connection it is interesting to recall how the name Yosemite originated. In the early spring of 1851 the valley was invaded by an Indian-chasing expedition. The word Yosemite, said to be the name of the native Indian tribe, was proposed by Dr. L. H. Bunnell, a member of the expedition, and accepted by the others while still in the valley.* During the early fifties there was some controversy between Bunnell and Hutchings as to whether the proper form was Yo-sem'-i-te or Yo-ham'-i-te (or Yo-hem'-i-te). Hutchings was right, Yo-ham'-i-te being the name of the band inhabiting a large and important village on the south bank of Merced River at the place now occupied by Sentinel Hotel and its cottages. These Indians hunted the grizzly bear, whose name—Oo-hoó-ma-te or O-ham'-i-te—gave origin to their own. The tribe next north of the valley called the grizzly Oo-soó-ma-te, which doubtless accounts for the euphonious form given by Bunnell and now universally accepted.

[* L. H. Bunnell, "How the Yo-Semite Valley was Discovered and Named," Hutchings California Magazine, pp. 498-504, San Francisco, May, 1859.]

[Editor’s note: For the correct origin of the word Yosemite see “Origin of the Word Yosemite.”—DEA.]

PECULIAR CLASSIFICATION OF THE VILLAGES

The villages and camps were sharply divided into two categories—those north of Merced River and those south of it. This division has a far deeper and more ancient significance than that indicated by the mere position of the villages with respect to the river, for it goes back to the underlying totemic beliefs that form an important part of the religion of this primitive people.

If one of the survivors is questioned as to the location of the villages, he in replying constantly makes use of the terms inside and outside as denoting one or the other side of the valley; and if the inquiry is pressed a little farther it soon develops that there is a grizzly-bear side and a coyote side, a land side (Too-noó-kah), and a water side (Kik-koó-ah). This perplexing state of affairs leads to the interesting discovery that after all there are only two sides, but that each of them has four names: that the north side, inside, grizzly-bear side, and land side are one and the same—namely, the side north of Merced River; while the south side, outside, coyote side, and water side are only so many different names for the side south of Merced River.

The names most commonly used by the Indians themselves for the two sides are Oo-hoó-mă-tāt ko-tó-wahk (or Oo-hoó-mă-te ha-wā'-ah), the grizzly-bear side, and Ah-hā'-leet ko-tó-wahk (or Ah-hā'-le ha-wā'-ah), the coyote side—from Oo-hoó-ma-te, the bear, and Ah-hā'-le, the coyote, respectively.

It is not difficult to see how Oo-hoó-ma-te, the bear, an important personage among the early animal-people, might be chosen to represent the land animals; but why Ah-há-le, the coyote, should stand for the water-people is not so obvious. For the explanation one must look far back into the mythology of these Indians, in which it appears that before there were any real people in the world Ah-há-le, the coyote-man, one of the early divinities of the animal-people, came over the ocean from beyond the sea—for which reason he is ranked with the water-people.

Returning to our more immediate subject, the village and camp sites of Yosemite Valley, it is now easier to understand the grouping employed by the Indians. Indians are naturally methodical, and it is their custom to classify objects and places, and in speaking of them to begin at a fixed point and proceed in orderly sequence. Thus, in seeking the names of animals and plants and of geographic locations, I have several times provoked the undisguised disgust of my informant by not putting my questions in what he or she deemed the proper sequence.

In enumerating the village and camp sites of Yosemite Valley the Indians begin at the upper (or east) end of the north side—the grizzly-bear side—and proceed westerly to Til-til'-ken-ny at the lower end of the valley, and then cross the Merced to the south side—the coyote side—and return easterly to the upper end.

Following this sequence, the names and locations of the villages and camps are as follows:
ON THE NORTH (OR GRIZZLY-BEAR) SIDE—OO-HOÓ-MA-TAT KO-TÓ-WAHK

1. Hoo-ké-hahtch'-ke.—Situated at the extreme upper end of the valley between Merced River and Tenaya Creek, and just below the mouth of Tenaya Cañon. A summer village inhabited up to about twenty years ago.

2. Hol'-low', or Lah'-koó-hah.—Indian cave, immediately under Washington Column at the mouth of Tenaya Cañon; a low, broad, and deep recess under a huge rock. Said to have been occupied as a winter shelter, and also when attacked by the Mono Lake Piutes. The overhanging rock is black from the smoke of ages, and far back in the cave large quantities of acorn-shells have been found. The word Lah-koó-hah, often applied to Indian Cave, is a call meaning "come out."

3. Wis'-kah-lah.—A large summer camp on a northward bend of Merced River, a little west of Royal Arches. Western part of site now occupied by a small settlement known as Kinneyville.

4. Yó-watch-ke (sometimes nicknamed Mah-chá-to, meaning "edge" or "border," because of its position on the border of the valley).—Large village at mouth of Indian Cañon; still occupied. The slightly sloping gravel and sand "fan" on which this village is situated is the warmest place in Yosemite Valley, having a southwesterly exposure and receiving a maximum of midday and afternoon sunshine. Several species of shrubs belonging to the Upper Sonoran zone—the one next below the Transition zone, in which Yosemite Valley lies—thrive on this hot sandy plain among and outside of the scattered ponderosa pines and black oaks. These are Ceanothus divaricatus, Rhus trilobata, Lupinus ornatus, Eriodictyon glutinosum, Pentstemon[sic] breviflorus.

5. Ah-wah'-ne.—Village on Black Oak Flat, extending from site of Galen Clark’s grave easterly nearly to Yó-watch-ke. As in the case of most of the villages, the village name was applied also to a definite tract of land belonging to it. This area, in the case of Ah-wah'-ne, was a piece of level ground of considerable size, beginning on the west along a north and south line passing through Sentinel Hotel and reaching easterly nearly to the mouth of Indian Cañon. The cemetery was on this tract, as was also the barn formerly belonging to J. B. Cooke. This being the largest tract of open level ground in the valley, the name Ah-wah'-ne came to be applied by outside Indians to the whole valley.

6. Koom-i-ne, or Kom-i-ne.—The largest and most important village in the valley, situated on the north side of the delta of Yosemite Creek just below Yosemite Fall (Ah-wah'-ning chú-luk-ah-hu, slurred to Chó-luk), and extending southwesterly at the base of the talus-slope under the towering cliffs for about three-quarters of a mile, reaching almost or quite to Three Brothers (Haw'-hawk). Old Chief Tenaya had a large earth-covered ceremonial-house (hang-e) by a big oak tree in this village. The Government soldiers stationed in the valley took possession of the site and established their camp there in 1907, forcing the Indians out. (Occupied by Indians during all my earlier visits.)

7. Wah-hó-gah.—Small village about half a mile west-southwest of Koom-i-ne, on or near edge of meadow.

8. Soo-sem'-moo-lah.—Village at northwest end of old Folsom bridge (now the ford), less than half a mile south of Rocky Point.

9. Hah-ki-ah.—Large village only a short distance (less than one eighth mile) below Soo-sem'-moo-lah, and likewise south of Three Brothers (Haw'-hawk). A roundhouse, or hang-e, was located here, not far from old Folsom bridge. The three villages, Wah-hó-gah, Soo-Sem'-oo-lah, and Hah-ki-ah, were inhabited up to about twenty years ago.

10. Kotm'-pom-pá-sah, or Pom'-pom-pá-sah.—Small village only a little below Hah-ki-ah, and also south of Three Brothers, or under the talus slope of the cañon immediately west of Three Brothers.

11. Aw'-o-koi-e.—Small village below and slightly east of the tall pine growing in a notch on the broad south face of El Capitan. The native Indian name of the gigantic rock cliff which we call El Capitan is To-tó-kon oo-lah, from To-tó-kon, the Sandhill Crane, a chief of the First People.

12. He-lé-jah (the mountain lion).—Small village under El Capitan a little west of Aw'-o-koi-e.

13. Ha-eng'-ah.—Small village under El Capitan, and only a little west of He-lé-jah.

14. Yu-á-chah.—Still another village under El Capitan, and only a short distance west of Ha-eng'-ah.

15. Hep-hep'-oo-ma.—Village where present Big Oak Flat road forks to leave the main road, south of the steep cañon which forms the west wall of El Capitan, and near west end of the big El Capitan Meadows (To-tó-kon oó-lah' i-e-hu). The five villages, Aw'-o-koi-e, He-lé-jah, Ha-eng'-ah, Yu-á-chah, and Hep-hep'-oo-ma, were summer villages occupied from April to late October or early November.

16. Ti-e-té-mah.—Village only a short distance below Hep-hep'-oo-ma, and close to El Capitan bridge.

17. Ho-kó-nah.—Small village a little below Ti-e-té-mah, and near site of old (shack) house.

18. Wé-tum-taw.—Village by a small meadow a short distance. below Ho-kó-nah, and east of Black Spring.

19. Poot-poo-toon, or Put-put-toon.—Village in rocky place on north side of present road at Black Spring, from which it takes its name.

20. Ah-wah'-mah.—Lowermost (westernmost) village in Yosemite Valley, a short distance below Black Spring and above Til-til'-ken-ny, where the mail-carrier’s cabin is located.

VILLAGES ON THE SOUTH OR COYOTE SIDE—AH-HÁ-LEET KO-TÓ-WAHK

21. Sap-pah'-sam-mah.—Lowermost (most westerly) village or camp on south side of the valley, about half a mile east of Pohono Meadows.

22. Lem-mé-hitch'-ke.—Small village or camp on east side of Pohono (or Bridal Veil) Creek, just below a very large rock.

23. Hop'-tó-ne.—Small village or camp at base of westernmost of the lofty cliffs known as Cathedral Rocks, and close to south end of El Capitan bridge across Merced River.

24. Wé-sum-meh'.—Small village or camp at base of Cathedral Spires near the river, with a small meadow below; not far above Hop'-tó-ne.

25. Kis'-se, or Kis'-se-uh.—Large village near the river, nearly opposite Hah-ki-ah. Kis'-se was the westernmost of the large villages on the south side. From it easterly they occurred at frequent intervals.

26. Chá-chá-kal-lah.—Large village just below old Folsom bridge (ford). Formerly a sweat-house (chap-poó) here.

27. Ham'-moo-ah.—Village on Ford road, nearly opposite Three Brothers (Wah-hah'-kah).

28. Loi-ah.—Large village in open pine forest below Sentinel Rock (on ground now occupied by Camp Ahwahnee) and reaching down toward river. Occupied during my earlier visits-to the valley.

29. Hoó-koo-mé-ko-tah.—Village a little above Galen Clark’s house; looked out easterly over big meadow. Occupied during my earlier visits. (Hoo-koo-me is the great horned owl.)

30. Haw-kaw-koó-e-tah (Ho-kok'-kwe-lah, Haw-kaw'-koi*).—Large and important village on Merced River, where Sentinel Hotel and cottages now stand. Home of the band called Yo-ham'-i-te (or Yo-hem'-i-te), for whom the valley was named. The old woman Callipena was a Yo-ham'-i-te.

[*Named from How-kaw'-met-te, or How-wah-met-te, a rocky place.]

31. Ho-low.—Village on or near Merced River where the schoolhouse used to stand.

32. Wah'-tahk'-itch-ke.—Village on edge of meadow on south bend of Merced River near forks of road west of Le Conte Memorial. The wild pea (wah-tah'-kah) grows here.

33. Too-yú-yú-yu.—Large village on south bend of Merced River due. north of Le Conte Memorial and close to the bridge between Le Conte Memorial (or Camp Curry) and Kinneyville.

34. Too-lah'-kah'-twh.—Village or camp on open ground now occupied by orchard on east side of meadow north of Camp Curry.

35. Um'-ma-taw.—Large village on present wagon-road between Camp Curry and Happy Isles; was some distance from the river; water was fetched from a spring.

36. Ap'-poo-meh.—Camp on Merced River below Vernal Fall.

37. Kah-win'-na-bah'.—Large summer camp in Little Yosemite, whose name it bears.

VILLAGES IN MERCED CAÑON BELOW YOSEMITE VALLEY

There were no villages in the narrow Merced Cañon between the lower end of Yosemite Valley and the Cascades, where there were a few houses called Yi-yan'. This name also covered the ground from Cascade Creek to the junction of the Coulterville road.

The next village on the north side was at the terminus of the new railroad at El Portal (a distance of eight or nine miles), where the villages began and continued down-stream. Most of these were permanent, but they were far larger in winter than in summer, receiving material additions from Yosemite when cold weather set in.

Sit'-ke-noó-al-lah.—Place and few houses on the south side of Merced River a little above (east of) El Portal; now Indian Wilson’s place.

Kep-pek'-oo-lah.—Place and small settlement on the south side of Merced River just above El Portal; now occupied by a white man. Named from the abundance of kep-pek' the brake fern (Pteris aquilina), the rootstocks of which the Indians use for the black design in their baskets.

Kah-wah'-koo-lah.—Place and small settlement on the south side of Merced River half a mile below Sit'-ke-noó-al-lah and nearly opposite El Portal stable.

Sal-lah'-to.—Large village on flat now occupied by the railroad terminus at El Portal. The place at the mouth of Crane Creek at El Portal is called Sas'-oo-lah; formerly a few houses where the hotel stable now is.

Po-ko-nó.—Village on the north side of the Merced a quarter of a mile west of El Portal. The flat gravel and pebble bench extending along the north side of the Merced for an eighth of a mile just below El Portal was known by the same name.

Choó-pi-tah, or Choó-pi-do.—Large village on the north side of Merced Cañon one or one and a half miles below El Portal, at the place called Rancheria Flat (immediately west of the present Hite Mine and northeast of the bend of the river).

To-yo'ng-am'.—Small village on top of a small pointed hill on the north side of the Merced at the bend of the river just below Hite Mine (really surrounded by Choó-pi-tah, being situated in the middle of the flat; may have been only a roundhouse).

Soó-wut-oo-lah'.—Large and important village on large oak-forested flat on the north side of the Merced, now Switch Flat (railroad switch), just west of Hogback Ridge, which separates it from Choó-pi-tah. Used to be a roundhouse (hang-e) here.

Oi-kó-bah.—Very small old village at mouth of Moss Cañon, north side of the Merced; not room for many houses.

Kil'-mit-ten.—Big village on flat on the north side of the Merced just above the Government bridge.

Moó-lah-buk'-sa-bah'.—Village on the north side of the Merced just below and close to the Government bridge.

Haw'-too-too.—Village on the north side of the Merced. Old cabin there now, opposite the present Indian ranch where Big Nancy and others live.

Muh-chó-kah-nó.—Old village on the south side of the Merced, at present occupied by Big Nancy, Callipena, and Lucy Ann.

Wah'ng'-oo-hah.—Village on small flat on the north side of Merced Cañon, a little above the mill at Ferguson Mine.

Soo-noó-koo-loon'.—Village on the north side of Merced Cañon, at present Ferguson Station, six miles below El Portal.

APPENDIX B
Chronological Overview of Archeological Investigations in Yosemite National Park

by Judy Rosen, Environmental Specialist, DSC

The following presents in chronological order the major archeological projects conducted in Yosemite National Park. For more detailed information, refer to Appendix A in Dr. L. Kyle Napton’s Archeological Overview of Yosemite National Park, California, Part 2.

1851:

Indian villages were observed by members of the Mariposa Battalion upon their arrival in Yosemite Valley and were recorded by Bunnell in 1880. The five villages found in the valley appear to be situated upon previous remains, representing the terminal stages of an archeological continuum.

1880s:

Collection of Indian artifacts, especially basketry, as early as 1886 when Hutchings reports relics kept at Galen Clark’s cabin in Wawona.

1908:

First descriptive report of archeological site in Yosemite by E. W. Harnden who visited pictograph site in Pate Valley. This is one of the largest such sites in the Sierra Nevada.

1917:

C. H. Merriam’s publication of ethnographic data relative to the locations of thirty-seven Indian village sites along the Merced River in the Yosemite Valley and El Portal areas.

1930:

Reported in Yosemite Nature Notes and in manuscripts are significant archeological discoveries. Also, Rangers C. C. Presnall and C. A. Harwell conducted the first formal archeological survey in Yosemite in this year, locating seven archeological sites in the environs of Big Meadow.

1940 - 1950:

Archeological surveys informally conducted by park naturalist R. Mclntyre in the central portion of the park. He located more than 100 sites, which he plotted on a base map. This data proved invaluable for survey parties in 1952. In 1949 Archeologist Robert F. Heizer visited Yosemite and recorded several sites.

1951:

University of California, Berkeley, conducts surveys at Lake Eleanor.

1952 - 1954:

NPS contracted with University of California, Berkeley, to examine areas in the park subject to heavy visitor use. Field crews led by James Bennyhoff and Gordon Grosscup recorded more than 300 archeological sites and projected data against Sierran ecology, physiography, and prehistory, and the ethnographic work of Merriam. These constitute the first known controlled archeological excavations in the park and determined three complexes in park prehistory: Crane Flat, 2000 BC-500 AD; Tamarack, 500 AD-1200 AD; and Mariposa, 1200 AD-1850 AD.

1956:

Bennyhoff conducted archeological reconnaissance in Yosemite to inventory sites and assess tourist impacts in high-use areas.

1959:

R. J. Fitzwater of the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a major salvage excavation on a Miwok site identified by Merriam as Choopitah (4-Mrp-181) one mile east of El Portal in the Merced River canyon, recovering more than 1,400 artifacts and 23 inhumations. Though this site exhibited very scarce lithic debitage, it is remarkable for its depth and number of inhumations recovered.

1960:

Another salvage project was conducted in Yosemite when the realignment of California Highway 120 transgressed 4-Mrp-105 (Crane Flat), producing 2,820 artifacts but no inhumations. Expanded housing construction spurred another salvage project on the northwest side of the park at Hodgdon Meadow, five miles from Crane Flat. This site (4-Tuo-236) is notable for the large number of bedrock mortar cups and for the richness of the site deposit.

1969:

Another limited salvage project in Yosemite Valley prior to construction of the new Interp/Visitor Center, was located within the perimeter of Awahnee (Site 4-Mrp-56), one of the principal Indian villages. Under contract with the NPS, excavations by J. Rasson of University of California, Los Angeles, revealed extensively disturbed subsurface archeological deposits. Test pits produced 249 artifacts.

1973:

Skeleton of young female Indian discovered during excavation of a horse barn foundation in headquarters ara. Recorded and examined by physical anthropologist and ceremonially reinterred by local Indians.

1974:

The first formal archeological surveys conducted in the park in more than twenty years carried out by Dr. L. Kyle Napton and field parties from Institute for Archeological Research, California State College, Stanislaus, Turlock. Sites subject to impact under the park DCP were studied, including: small acreages at Glacier Point, Badger Pass, Bavarian Village, and extensive DCP areas in Wawona on the South Fork of the Merced River, and almost the entire floor of Yosemite Valley. This resulted in the discovery of seventeen previously unrecorded sites in Wawona and forty-two unrecorded on the valley floor, increasing the archeological resources to ninety-eight in the valley.

1975:

Additional archeological surveys contracted by NPS with California State College, Stanislaus, in 15 areas to be affected by development increased the previously identified 81 archeological sites to 158 in those areas. Reports by Napton and Greathouse (1976, 1977.)

1976 - 1977:

Survey of 106 miles of backcountry trails in Yosemite through NPS contract by the Institute for Archeological Research, California State College, Stanislaus, Turlock, located, recorded, photographed, and evaluated 69 sites, 20 of which had been previously recorded. Covering 140 miles of corridor, the majority of backcountry trails receiving intensive visitor use were surveyed.

1980:

Wawona testing (Whittaker).

1981:

Yosemite Archeological Research Design (Moratto).

1981:

El Portal testing (Baumler and Carpenter).

1983:

Wawona testing (Ervin).

El Portal testing (Riley).

1984:

Wawona testing and survey in support of proposed construction of sewage and water systems. Investigations carried out at ten additional sites in Wawona and Section 35 areas.

South Entrance/Mariposa Grove survey in support of tram staging study comprehensive design and reconstruction of grove road. Nine new sites recorded.

Yosemite Valley testing at two sites in support of rehabilitation of water and electrical systems.

Tioga Road survey from Big Oak Flat entrance to White Wolf in support of road rehabilitation plans. Crane Flat area also surveyed. Fourteen new sites recorded.

Glacier Point Road survey between Chinquapin and Glacier Point in support of planned rehabilitation and construction work. Nine sites recorded.

Wawona Hotel archeological monitoring.

Pate Valley district survey.

Wawona Meadow survey.

Merced Lake survey.

1985:

Yosemite Valley testing and survey.

Wawona testing.

Glacier Point Road testing.

Tioga Road survey.

South Entrance testing.

El Portal testing.

Lake Eleanor survey.

SUMMARY

Because less than five percent of the park has been subject to survey, the total of archeological cultural resources could exceed several thousand. The present total is inflated by intensive surveys of three areas: Wawona, Tuolumne Meadows, and Yosemite Valley, all extensively occupied by Native Americans. The entire northern area and the most southern reaches of the park have not been extensively surveyed.

Survey efforts to date have been directed toward recognition of cultural resources within heavily used areas and areas which may be developed for use in the future. The most serious deficiency in the survey records for Yosemite National Park lies in incomplete knowledge of backcountry sites. Currently, only 146 of the total 750-mile trail network (19.5%) have been surveyed for archeological material. The survey mileage includes the most intensively used trails within the park. Information regarding historical/archeological values (trash dumps and the like) is imperfectly recorded at present.

APPENDIX C
Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove

I.

No person shall reside or transact business within the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grant, without written permission from the Commissioners.

II.

No application for residence or privilege to transact business within the Valley or Grove shall be considered if the applicant be in arrears to the Commission. Applicants must be in good standing.

III.

Any person having permission to reside and transact business within the Valley or Grove, who shall transfer or sublet the whole or any part of the premises or business in said permit without the written consent of the Commission, shall, ipso facto, forfeit the same.

IV.

The Guardian shall report to the Executive Committee all parties residing or transacting business within the Grant without permission, and shall cause the discontinuance of such residence or business.

V.

No person residing or transacting business within the Grant shall retain in his or her employ any person who is detrimental to good order or morals.

VI.

Upon complaint to the Commission, made by the Guardian, against any person specified in Rule V, the employer of such objectionable person shall be notified of the facts, and the employe [sic] must be dismissed.

VII.

Any employer neglecting or refusing to dismiss such objectionable employee, shall thereby forfeit his permission to reside or transact business within the Grant.

VIII.

No person shall be employed as guide who is not of good moral character, and approved by the Guardian.

IX.

The Guardian shall, upon complaint of any tourist or visitor, of the conduct or behavior of a guide, inquire into the cause, and advise the complainant of the result, enforcing Rule V if necessary.

X.

The Guardian is empowered to suspend a guide from his privilege during the investigation of charges preferred against said guide. If the guide be found in fault, he shall be dismissed, in accordance with Rule V.

XI.

The Guardian shall inspect all horses, their trappings, and all vehicles used for hire; and if any such horses, trappings, or vehicles shall by him be deemed unsuitable or unsafe, he shall cause the same to be removed at once from the Valley or Grove.

XII.

Any person offering for hire, or otherwise, any horse, trapping, or vehicle, or refusing or neglecting to remove the same from the grant, after the Guardian shall have condemned the same, shall forfeit his privilege to reside or transact business within the grant.

XI.

The Guardian shall direct campers to the grounds set apart for their use while within the grant, and shall establish such rules as will contribute to their comfort.

XIV.

No camp fires shall be permitted within the grant of either Valley or Grove, without the express permission of the Guardian.

XV.

The Guardian shall promptly cause the arrest of any person violating Rule XIV, and prosecute the offender to the full extent of the law, under Section 6 of the Act of April 2, 1866, as found in the last division of this book.

XVI.

No trees shall be cut or injured, or any natural object defaced.

XVII.

The discharge of firearms, either in the Valley or Grove, is strictly prohibited.

XVIII.

No horses, cattle, or stock of any kind shall be allowed to run at large within the grant, except under permission given in writing to the owner or owners thereof.

XIX.

Campers and all others, save those holding license from the Commission, are prohibited from hiring their horses, trappings, or vehicles to tourists or visitors within the grant.

XX.

Stages entering the valley shall stop at each hotel in the order of location, that passengers may exercise the right of selection.

XXI.

Rates of charges at hotels, and also for horses, trappings, or vehicles, or for provender, as published by the Commission from time to time, must not be exceeded, under pain of forfeiture of privilege to keep hotel, to conduct the livery business, or to sell provender.

XXII.

The Guardian shall notify the managers of hotels of any action of the Commission forbidding any objectionable person from residing or transacting business in the Valley or Grove.

XXI.

The Guardian shall, from time to time, enter all tenements, for the purpose. of inspecting sanitary conditions, and of examining the property in pursuance of his official duties.

XXIV.

No buildings or improvements of any kind shall be erected, or made upon the grant, without written authority from the Commission.

XXV.

All buildings and improvements of every kind erected, or made upon the grant, belong to the grant, and shall be so recognized and treated.

XXVI.

No person shall drive or ride faster than a walk over any of the bridges.

XXVII.

The Guardian shall exercise general police supervision in the Valley and Grove, and shall forbid and prevent all acts that tend to a breach of the peace or the discomfort of visitors, or the injury or destruction of property.

XXVIII.

All action of the Guardian shall be in response to orders communicated to him by the Executive Committee. He shall make no purchases, nor shall he incur any liability without specific authority. And he must refer all questions of policy, touching the management of the trust, to the Executive Committee for its decision. He must promptly remit all collections to the Secretary and Treasurer, and is specially forbidden to disburse any funds of the Commission, unless directed so to do by the Executive Committee. His vouchers must be full and self-explanatory, and must be taken by him in triplicates; one of them to be retained in his office in the Valley, and the other two transmitted to the Secretary and Treasurer. His accounts, covering the month last past, shall be made up and forwarded to the Executive Committee on the first of each month. He shall also transmit to the committee his estimate of material and supplies necessary, and await the approval of the same before purchasing. No standing timber shall be cut without special authority from the Executive Committee.

APPENDIX D
Legislation Pertaining to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove

An Act Authorizing the Grant to the State of California
of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove,
30 June 1864 (13 STAT., 325)

“Section 1. That there shall be, and is hereby granted to the State of California, the “cleft” or “gorge” in the Granite Peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, situated in the county of Mariposa, in the State aforesaid, and the headwaters of the Merced River, and known as the Yosemite Valley, with its branches and spurs, in estimated length, fifteen miles, and in average width, one mile back from the main edge of the precipice on each side of the valley; with the stipulation, nevertheless, that the said State shall accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation, and shall be inalienable for all time; but leases, not extending more than ten years, may be granted for portions of said premises. All incomes derived from leases of privileges to be expended in the preservation and improvement of the property or the roads leading thereto. The boundaries to be established at the cost of said State, by the United States Surveyor-General of California, whose official plat, when affirmed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, shall constitute the evidence of the locus, extent, and limits of said cleft or gorge; the premises to be managed by the Governor of the State, with eight other Commissioners, to be appointed by the Executive of California, and who shall receive no compensation for their services.

“Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, that there shall likewise be, and there is hereby granted to the State of California, the tracts embracing what is known as “Mariposa Big Tree Grove;” not to exceed the area of four sections, and to be taken in legal subdivisions of one quarter section each, with the like stipulation as expressed in the first section of this Act, as to the State’s acceptance, with like conditions as in the first section of this Act, as to inalienability, yet with the same lease privilege; the income to be expended in preservation, improvement, and protection of the property; the premises to be managed by Commissioners, as stipulated in the first section of this Act, and to be taken in legal subdivision as aforesaid; and the official plat of the United States Surveyor-General, when affirmed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to be the evidence of the locus of said Mariposa Big Tree Grove.”

[Chapter CLXXXIV of the Statutes at Large, passed at the Thirtieth Congress, session one.]

An Act to Accept the Grant by the United States Government to the State of California of the Yosemite Valley and Big Tree Grove, and to Organize the Board of Commissioners, and to Fully Empower Them to Carry Out the Objects of the Grant, and Fulfill the Purposes of the Trust.

[Approved April 2, 1866.]

“Whereas, By an Act of Congress, entitled an Act authorizing a grant to the State of California of the Yosemite Valley, and of the land embracing the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, approved June thirtieth, A. D. eighteen hundred and sixty-four, there was granted to the State of California in the terms of said Act said valley and the lands embracing said grove, upon certain conditions and stipulations therein expressed; now, therefore,

The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:

“Section 1. The State of California does hereby accept said grant upon the conditions, reservations, and stipulations contained in said Act of Congress.

“Sec. 2. The Governor, and the eight other Commissioners, Frederick Law Olmsted, Prof. J. D. Whitney, William Ashburner, I. W. Raymond, E. S. Holden, Alexander Deering, George W. Coulter, and Galen Clark, appointed by him on the twenty-eighth day of September, eighteen hundred and sixty-four, in accordance with the terms of said Act, are hereby constituted a Board to manage said premises, and any vacancy occurring therein from death, removal, or any cause, shall be filled by the appointment of the Governor. They shall be known in law as “The Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” and by such name they and their successors may sue and be sued, and shall have full power to manage and administer the grant made, and the trust created by said Act of Congress, and shall have full power to make and adopt all rules, regulations, and by-laws for their own government and the government, improvement, and preservation of said premises, not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or of this State, or of said Act making the grant, or of any law of Congress, or of the Legislature. They shall hold their first meeting at the time and place to be specified by the Governor, and thereafter as their own rules shall prescribe, and a majority shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. They shall elect a President and Secretary, and any other officers from their number, as their rules may prescribe.

“Sec. 3. None of the said Commissioners shall receive any compensation for their services as such. They shall have the power to appoint a Guardian, either of their number or not, of said premises, removable at their pleasure, to perform such duties as they may prescribe, and to receive such compensation as they may fix, not to exceed five hundred dollars per annum.

“Sec. 4. The Commissioners shall make a full report of the condition of said premises, and of their acts under this law, and of their expenditures, through the Governor, to the Legislature, at every regular session thereof.

“Sec. 5. The State Geologist is hereby authorized to make such further explorations on the said tract, and in the adjoining regions of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as may be necessary to enable him to prepare a full description and accurate statistical report of the same, and the same shall be published in connection with the reports of the Geological Survey.

“Sec. 6. It shall be unlawful for any person willfully to commit any trespass whatever upon said premises, cut down or carry off any wood, underwood, tree, or timber, or girdle or otherwise injure any tree or timber, or deface or injure any natural object, or set fire to any wood or grass upon said premises, or destroy or injure any bridge or structure of any kind, or other improvement that is, or may be, placed thereon. Any person committing either or any of said acts, without the express permission of said Commissioners, through said Guardian, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

“Sec. 7. The sum of two thousand dollars is hereby appropriated for the eighteenth and nineteenth fiscal years, out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to pay said Guardian, and the incidental expenses of the Commissioners, and to be expended under the supervision of said Commissioners; provided, that not more than one half of said sum shall be expended during the eighteenth fiscal year.

“Sec. 8. This Act shall take effect immediately.”

[Chapter DXXXVI of the Statutes of California, passed at the sixteenth session of the Legislature, 1865-6.]

ACT OF OCTOBER 1, 1890 (26 STAT., 650).1

AN ACT To set apart certain tracts of land in the State of California as forest reservations.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the tracts of land in the State of California known as described as follows: Commencing at the northwest corner of township two north, range nineteen east Mount Diablo meridian, thence eastwardly on the line between townships two and three north, ranges twenty-four and twenty-five east; thence southwardly on the line between ranges twenty-four and twenty-five east to the Mount Diablo base line; thence eastwardly on said base line to the corner to township one south, ranges twenty-five and twenty-six east; then southwardly on the line between ranges twenty-five and twenty-six east to the southeast corner of township two south, range twenty-five east; then eastwardly on the line between townships two and three south, range twenty-six east to the corner to townships two and three south, ranges twenty-six and twenty-seven east; thence southwardly on the line between ranges twenty-six and twenty-seven east to the first standard parallel south; thence westwardly on the first standard parallel south to the southwest corner of township four south, range nineteen east; thence northwardly on the line between ranges eighteen and nineteen east to the northwest corner of township two south, range nineteen east; thence westwardly on the line between townships one and two south to the southwest corner of township one south, range nineteen east; thence northwardly on the line between ranges eighteen and nineteen east to the northwest corner of township two north, range nineteen east, the place of beginning, are hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and set apart as reserved forest lands; and all persons who shall locate or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed therefrom: Provided, however, That nothing in this act shall be construed as in anywise affecting the grant of lands made to the State of California by virtue of the act entitled, ‘An act authorizing a grant to the State of California of the Yosemite Valley, and of the land embracing the Mariposa Big-Tree Grove,’ appeared June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and sixty-four; or as affecting any bona-fide entry of land made within the limits above described under any law of the United States prior to the approval of this act.

“Sec. 2. That said reservation shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be, as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation from injury of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said reservation, and their retention in their natural condition. The Secretary may, in his discretion, grant leases for building purposes for terms not exceeding ten years of small parcels of ground not exceeding five acres; at such places in said reservation as shall require the erection of buildings for the accommodation of visitors; all of the proceeds of said leases and other revenues that may be derived from any source connected with said reservation to be expended under his direction in the management of the same and the construction of roads and paths therein. He shall provide against the wanton destruction of the fish, and game found within said reservation, and against their capture or destruction, for the purposes of merchandise or profit. He shall also cause all persons trespassing upon the same after the passage of this act to be removed therefrom, and, generally, shall be authorized to take all such measures as shall be necessary or proper to fully carry out the objects and purposes of this act.

[1. Sections 1 and 2 of this act pertain to the Yosemite National Park, while section 3 sets apart General Grant National Park, and also a portion of Sequoia National Park.]

Recession Act of the Legislature of the State of California, Approved March 3, 1905

“Sec. 1. The State of California does hereby recede and regrant unto the United States of America the ‘cleft’ or ‘gorge’ in the granite peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, situated in the county of Mariposa, State of California, and the headwaters of the Merced River, and known as the Yosemite Valley, with its branches and spurs, granted unto the State of California in trust for public use, resort, and recreation by the act of Congress entitled, ‘An act authorizing a grant to the State of California of the Yosemite Valley and of the land embracing the Mariposa Big Tree Grove,’ approved June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and sixty-four; and the State of California does hereby relinquish unto the United States of America and resign the trusts created and granted by the said act of Congress.

“Sec. 2. The State of California does hereby recede and regrant unto the United States of America the tracts embracing what is known as the ‘Mariposa Big Tree Grove,’ granted unto the State of California in trust for public use, resort, and recreation by the act of Congress referred to in section one of this act, and the State of California does hereby relinquish unto the United States of America and resign the trusts created and granted by the said act of Congress.

“Sec. 3. This act shall take effect from and after acceptance by the United States of America of the recessions and regrants herein made, thereby forever releasing the State of California from further cost of maintaining the said premises, the same to be held for all time by the United States of America for public use, resort, and recreation, and imposing on the United States of America the cost of maintaining the same as a national park: Provided, however, That the recession and regrant hereby made shall not affect vested rights and interests of third persons.”

APPENDIX E
Administrators of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1866-1960

1. Yosemite Guardians for the State of California

Name and Title

Period of Service

Galen Clark

1866 to 1880

James M. Hutchings

1880 to 1884

Walter E. Dennison

1884 to 1887

Mark L. McCord

1887 to 1889

Galen Clark

1889 to 1897

Miles Wallace

1897 to 1899

John Stevens

1899 to 1904

George Harlow

1904 to 1906

2. Acting Superintendents Under the War Department

Capt. Abram Epperson Wood

5/17/1891 to 5/29/1893

Capt. George Henry Goodwin Gale

5/25/1894 to 5/24/1895

Capt. Alexander Rodgers

5/24/1895 to 5/18/1896

Lt. Col. Samuel Baldwin Marks Young

5/18/1896 to 5/21/1897

Maj. Alexander Rodgers

5/21/1897 to 6/16/1898

J. W. Zevely

6/16/1898 to 9/24/1898

Capt. Joseph E. Caine

9/24/1898 to 1/00/1899

Lt. W. H. McMasters

1/00/1899 to 6/18/1899

Lt. William Forse

6/18/1899 to 8/03/1899

Capt. Elon Farnsworth Willcox

8/03/1899 to 10/28/1899

Maj. Louis Henry Rucker

6/03/1900 to 9/15/1900

Maj. Louis Aleck Craig

6/17/1901 to 10/10/1901

Maj. Otto Louis Hein

6/26/1902 to 9/25/1902

Lt. Col. Joseph Garrard

5/07/1903 to 10/08/1903

Maj. John Bigelow, Jr.

5/23/1904 to 9/25/1904

Capt. Willard Herman McCornack

9/25/1904 to 12/00/1904

Capt. Harry Coupland Benson

1905 to 12/00/1905

Maj. Harry Coupland Benson

5/25/1906 to 10/25/1908

Maj. William Woods Forsyth

4/27/1909 to 9/30/1212

3. Superintendents Under the Department of the Interior

Mark Daniels, Act’g. Supt.

7/10/1914 to 5/25/1915

George V. Bell

6/01/1915 to 11/15/1915

Mark Daniels, Act’g. Supt.

11/15/1915 to 12/09/1915

Gabriel Sovulewski, Supervisor

12/09/1915 to 3/03/1916

Washington B. Lewis, Supervisor

3/03/1916 to 11/01/1917

Washington B. Lewis

11/01/1917 to 7/04/1928

Earnest P. Leavitt, Act’g. Supt.

7/04/1928 to 2/15/1929

Charles Goff Thomson

2/15/1929 to 3/22/1937

John B. Wosky, Act’g. Supt.

3/22/1937 to 6/02/1937

Lawrence C. Merriam

6/02/1937 to 8/01/1941

Frank A. Kittredge

8/01/1941 to 12/01/1947

Carl P. Russell

12/01/1947 to 11/01/1952

John C. Preston

11/01/1952 to 12/30/1965

John M. Davis

2/27/1966 to 1/13/1968

Lawrence C. Hadley

1/28/1968 to 8/23/1970

Wayne B. Cone

7/26/1970 to 8/22/1971

Lynn H. Thompson

8/08/1971 to 1/06/1974

John M. Good, Act’g. Supt.

1/07/1974 to 1/19/1974

Leslie P. Arnberger

1/20/1974 to 7/13/1979

William N. Burgen, Act’g. Supt.

7/14/1979 to 7/21/1979

Robert O. Binnewies

7/22/1979 to 2/01/1986

James O. Laney, Act’g Supt.

2/02/1986 to 2/16/1986

John M. Morehead

2/16/1986 to

APPENDIX F
Historical Components of Concession Operations June-July 1923

This appendix contains historical data and structural information on properties in Yosemite National Park owned by the Yosemite National Park Company in 1923. The data was extracted from scrapbooks of the concessioner, housed in the Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, that were possibly part of an inventory of holdings made in anticipation of that company’s consolidation with the Curry Camping Company. These books contain a wealth of construction information and detailed pictures pertaining to the early facilities listed below. Most of the structures are no longer extant, although the housekeeping cabins in the Camp 17 employees area (H107-13) survive and have been referred to previously in this report as the “Ahwahnee Row Houses.”

General Office Group and Print Shop:

Locust Cottage [old Cosmopolitan Saloon] - ca. 1863 [1871] - used as manager’s office - one-story frame bldg. with six offices, one barbershop on first floor - originally used as saloon and recreation facility and then as guestrooms in connection with Sentinel Hotel; later remodelled for offices.

Ahwahnee Building - 1906 - used as general offices - one-story frame bldg. with four offices - originally used as office and lobby in Camp Ahwahnee, 1919; moved and remodelled for offices.

Old Sentinel Hotel Bathhouse - n. d. - used as architect’s office - one-story frame bldg. with three offices and one blueprint room - originally used as bathhouse in connection with Sentinel Hotel; in 1920 moved and rebuilt for [NPS?] offices.

Vault - 1920 - used as vault for safekeeping of valuable records against theft and fire - one-story stone bldg.

Printshop - 1900 - used as printshop - one-story frame bldg. - originally used as icehouse and warehouse; in 1921 rebuilt for printshop.

Store, Supply Warehouse, and Meat Market:

Village Group:

General Store - 1900 - used as store, cafeteria, supply warehouse, and post office - one- and two-story frame bldg. - originally building was only 43' x 44', two stories high, built by U. S. Army - gradually enlarged by Yosemite National Park Co.

Oriental Cottage - ca. 1900 - used as employees’ quarters -one-story frame bldg.

Meat Market & Ice Plant - 1911 - one-story frame bldg.

Store Manager’s Residence - 1916 - built from three portable cabins.

Bluebird Cottage - ca. 1900 - employees’ dormitory - one-story frame bldg.

General Manager’s Residence - 1916 - one-story frame bldg. - built from two portable cabins.

Hope Cottage and Old Transportation Building - 1882 - used as employees’ dormitory - one-story rustic frame bldg. - built and originally used by Wells Fargo Express Co. for transportation and express office; later rebuilt for living quarters.

Employees’ Laundry - ca. 1900 - laundry and dormitory for employees.

Wiggle Inn - ca. 1912 - employees’ dormitory - one-story frame bldg. - originally used as warehouse, later rebuilt for living quarters.

Field Barn - ca. 1912 - used as employees’ dormitory and warehouse - 1-1/2-story frame bldg. - originally used as barn and icehouse; rebuilt for living quarters and warehouse in 1922.

Old ice-house - ca. 1900 - used as employees’ quarters - one-story frame bldg. - originally built as icehouse, later warehouse and rebuilt for living quarters in 1922.

Fox Cottage - ca. 1900 - used as employees’ quarters - one-story frame bldg.

Toilet Building - 1916 - used as toilet - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Sentinel Hotel Group and Employees’ Quarters:

Sentinel Hotel - 1873 [1876] - used as hotel in winter, cafeteria in summer - two-story frame bldg. - in 1923 the former lavatory bldg. was rebuilt as a lobby on the first floor and connected with the main hotel structure; in summer 1923 the kitchen and dining room were remodelled with portable fixtures for cafeteria and operated as such for first time during overflow season.

Ivy Cottage - 1896 - used as hotel rooms - one-story frame bldg.

Cedar Cottage - 1859 - used as hotel rooms - two-story frame bldg. -originally used as hotel, being first one in valley - later used as dorm in summer, recreation room in winter.

Oak Cottage - 1882 - used as hotel rooms - two-story frame bldg.

Rock Cottage - ca. 1873 - used as dormitory and hotel rooms in emergencies in connection with Sentinel Hotel - 1-1/2-story frame bldg. - originally used as hotel rooms, then for printshop, cafeteria, photographic shop, offices; in 1922 rebuilt for dormitory; in February 1923 partly destroyed by fire, rebuilt in same year.

River Cottage - 1882 - used as hotel rooms - two-story frame building.

Lavatory Building - 1923 - used as lavatory and toilet for men - one-story frame bldg.

Canvas Cabins - 1923 - used as rooms for guests and employees - stationary frames, canvas removed in winter - twenty kept for guests and employees and warehouses (strengthened for winter).

Tents - forty-three tents behind Cedar and Oak cottages used for overflow guest accommodations in season.

Warehouses, Construction, and Equipment:

Warehouse Group:

Construction Warehouse No. 1 - 1920? - used as office and warehouse - one-story frame bldg.

Construction Warehouse No. 2 - 1920 - one-story frame bldg.

Construction Warehouse No. 3 - 1920 - one-story frame bldg.

Construction Warehouse No. 4 - 1920 - one-story frame bldg.

Construction Warehouse No. 5 - 1918 - one-story frame bldg. originally used as plumbing and carpenter shop, broken by snow 1921-22.

Old Blacksmith Shop - 1916 - used as paint shop - one-story frame bldg. - originally used as blacksmith shop; in 1923 remodelled for paint shop.

Storage Shed - 1922 - one-story frame bldg.

Employee’s Quarters - n. d. - used as mechanical engineer’s quarters - one-story frame bldg. - originally 12' x 16'; enlarged in 1922.

Carpenter, Plumber, and Electrician Shop - 1923 - one-story frame bldg.

Garage Group:

Garage - 1920 - used as main building - one-story frame with shake walls.

Car Shed and Paint Shop - 1920 - used as car shed, carwash, and paint shop - one-story frame building - contained twenty-one stalls for forty-two cars - paint shop originally used for car stalls; in 1921 built out for paint shop.

Toilet Building - 1920 - used as toilet, lavatory, bathhouse - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls.

Gas Station No. 1 - 1920 (1917?) - used as gas and oil station - one-story frame bldg. - originally only one car shelter, on north side of bldg.; car shelter on south built 1922.

New Garage Administration Building - 1922 - used as car storage bldg. - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls - built to be used as garage administration bldg. with future development.

Car Shed - 1922 - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls - one room for ten cars.

Kenneyville:

Stables and Employees’ Quarters:

Office Building - 1878 - used as office, bath, and toilet - one-story frame bldg. - rebuilt 1921.

Employees’ Quarters - 1878 - used as stable manager’s quarters one-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Employees’ Quarters - ca. 1890 - one-story frame bldg.

Employees’ Quarters - ca. 1890 - one-story frame bldg.

Blacksmith Shop - ca. 1888 - one-story frame bldg.

Saddlehouse and Haybarn - ca. 1888 - one-story frame bldg. - rebuilt 1921 and saddleroom added.

Barn - ca. 1888 - used as stable and hay and grain barn one-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Saddlehouse - 1921 - one-story frame bldg.

Barn - ca. 1888 - used as stable - one-story frame bldg. remodelled 1921.

Saddlehouse - 1921 - one-story frame bldg.

Barn - ca. 1888 - used as packhouse, storeroom, saddleshop - two-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Wagon Shed - ca. 1890 - used as car and wagon shed and for storage - one-story frame bldg. - storage room built 1923.

Barn - ca. 1888 - used as stable and for grain and hay storage - one-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Old Saddlehouse - ca. 1890 - one-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Employee’s Quarters - ca. 1890 - used as residence for superintendent of construction - one-story frame bldg. - remodelled 1921.

Gas and Oil Station No. 2 - 1920 - one-story frame bldg. - moved from Camp Curry to this site in 1922.

Yosemite Lodge:

Main Building - 1912 - used for administration - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls and siding - originally built and used by U. S. Army as barracks for soldiers; later remodelled and enlarged.

Car Shelter - 1916? - one-story log post bldg. with no walls - one room for twenty-nine cars.

Convention Tent - 1923 - used as car parking shelter and convention hall - one-story log post bldg. with no walls - one room for forty cars.

Bathhouse - 1916 - used as bathhouse, dressing rooms, and beauty parlor - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls.

Laundry Building - 1916 - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls.

Tailor Shop - 1916 - used as laundry office and tailor shop - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Linen Room - 1916 - used as linen storeroom - one-story portable section frame bldg. - originally used as two warehouses in different location; in 1921 moved to lodge area and rebuilt for linen storage room.

Public Bathhouse - 1916 - used as barbershop, public bath, employees’ quarters - one-story portable section frame bldg. - remodelled in 1922 - barbershop moved from east to west side of bldg. and two employees’ rooms put i n; in 1923 one employee room added.

Motion Picture Machine Building - 1922 - one-story frame bldg. with shake and canvas walls - originally platform only, enlarged in 1922.

Stage - 1916 - used for entertainment - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls - enlarged and rebuilt in 1923.

Linen Room - 1916 - used as linen supply room - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Lavatory Building - 1920 - used as lavatory, toilet, line room - one-story rustic frame bldg.

Log Warehouse - 1916 - used as storeroom - one-story log bldg.

Dane Pavilion - 1916 - used as dance pavilion and music stand.

Swinning Pool - 1916 - concrete.

Desmond, or Redwood, Cabins - 1916 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. - designed and built by Desmond Park Service Co. in 1915 - 115 of that type in use - two single beds in each, some with double beds.

Canvas Cabins - 1916 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. with canvas walls - built by Desmond Park Service Co. - thirty-nine in use - two single beds in each, some with double beds.

Double Bath Cabins - 1920 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. - thirty-five in use.

Single Bath Cabins - 1920 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. - thirty in use.

Double Canvas Cabins - 1916 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. with canvas walls - two in use.

Telephone Station - 1923 - box of boards for telephone on five-foot-high post - two in use.

Firehouse Shelter - 1920 - boards on elevated platform.

Yosemite Lodge Annex:

Men’s Bathhouse - 1916 - used as toilet, bath, and lavatory - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Boilerhouse - 1916 - used as boilet and linen room - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Women’s Bathhouse - 1916 - used as toilet, bath, lavatory - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Warehouse - 1916 - used as warehouse and dormitory during overflow - one-story portable section frame bldg. - five of this type building used as overflow dorms, each holding six to ten single beds.

Toilet Building - 1916 - used as women’s toilet - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Toilet Building - 1916 - used as men’s toilet - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Telephone and Ticket Office Building - 1916 - used as telephone and bathhouse and ticket office - one-story portable section frame bldg. - one room for telephone, one for bathhouse/ticket office.

Tennis Court - 1916 - used at times for convention hall, with canvas put over for roof and walls.

Old Government Barn - n. d. - used as car shed and barn - one-story frame bldg., partly open - originally built and used by U. S. Army for barn - in 1923 west section partitioned off for stall to house horses used in connection with children’s playground.

Canvas Cabins - 1916 - used as guest rooms - one-story portable section frame bldgs. with canvas walls - built by Desmond Park Service Co. - 205 in use.

Canvas Cabins or Tents - 1922 - used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldgs. with canvas walls - forty-eight in use.

Camp 17 Housekeeping Department (Upper Tecoya Area):

Housekeeping Camp Headquarters - n. d. - used as office and camping supply warehouse - one-story portable section frame bldg. - partly borken in winter 1921-22 - rebuilt 1922.

Refreshments Booth - 1922 - used as refreshment, curio, newspaper, cigar, botacco, and candy stand - one-story frame bldg. with shake and board walls.

Warehouse No. 1 - n. d. - used as storeroom for camp supplies - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Warehouse No. 2 - n. d. - one room used for storage of camping supplies - one-story frame bldg. with board walls.

Camp 17 Employees’ Quarters

Housekeeping Cabin, H101 - 1922 - used as employee residence - one-story frame and portable frame section bldg. - five of this type, H101-105, put up with new additions from two Desmond cabins each, which were formerly used for guest rooms in connection with Yosemite Lodge up to 1922.

Garage, H101A - 1922 - used as garage and storage room with employee residence - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls - seven of this type in use, H101A-107A.

Housekeeping Cabin, H106 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story frame bldgs. with shake walls - two of this type, H106-107.

Housekeeping Cabin, H108 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story hollow tile bldg., concrete found., hollow tile walls, roof of processed metal, T&G flooring, celotex walls.

Garage, H108A - 1923 and 1924 - used as garage and storage rooms for employees’ residences H108-109 - onestory frame bldg. (double garage).

Housekeeping Cabin, H109 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story frame bldg., concrete found., board and rails walls, shingle roof, T&G flooring.

Housekeeping Cabin, H110 - 1922 - used as employee residence - one-story stone bldg., concrete found., stone walls, asbestos shingle roof, T&G flooring.

Garage, H110A - 1923 and 1924 - used as garage and storeroom with employee residences - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls - four of this type in use (H110A-113A).

Housekeeping Cabin, H111 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story frame bldg., concrete found., process metal walls and roof, T&G flooring, celotex walls.

Housekeeping Cabin, H112 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story frame bldg., concrete found., stucco walls, shingle roof, T&G flooring.

Housekeeping Cabin, H113 - 1923 - used as employee residence - one-story frame bldg., concrete found., rustic logs and board walls, shake roof, T&G flooring.

Camp Tecoya:

Cafeteria - 1917 - for guests and employees - 1-1/2-story portable section frame bldg. - originally used as cafeteria for employees only; after 1921 used for guests on European Plan and at end of 1921 season, half of the dining room was used in connection with Yosemite Lodge for the American Plan.

Employees Laundry Building - 1917 - used as laundry - onestory portable section frame bldg.

Employees Bathhouse - 1917 - used as men’s toilet, bath, and lavatory - one-story frame bldg. with annex.

Lavatory and Boilerhouse - 1917 - used as women’s lavatory and toilet (guests only) - one-story portable section frame bldg. - originally used for darkroom and men’s laundry; rebuilt 1922.

Employees’ Bathhouse - 1917 - used as women’s toilet, bath, lavatory (employees only) - one-story frame bldg. with annex.

Old Linen House - 1918 - used as employee dormitory; during overflow in season used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldg. - originally used for linen and storage; rebuilt 1922 for bedrooms; bathroom added 1923.

Old Barbershop - 1917 - used as Tecoya manager’s living quarters - one-story portable section frame bldg. - originally barbershop.

Office Building - 1917 - used as office - one-story portable section frame bldg. with rustic log porch.

Linen Room - 1917 - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Hospital - 1917 - used as employee hospital - one-story portable section frame bldg. - originally used for dormitory, then as recreation room for employees; rebuilt 1922 as hospital.

Toilet Building - 1917 - used as women’s toilet - one-story frame bldg.

Warehouse - 1917 - used as dormitory during season and as warehouse for camp equipment during winter - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Toilet Building - 1917 - used as men’s toilet - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Warehouse - 1917 - used as dormitory and as warehouse in winter to store camping supplies - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Manzinita [sic] Cottage - 1918 - used as manager’s living quarters - one-story frame bldg. - bathroom built 1922.

Pumphouse - 1922 - one-story frame bldg.

Water Tank - 1918 - used for fire protection; water pumped from pumphouse - two-inch redwood planks with iron rods.

Tecoya Annex:

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - used as employee residence - one-story frame and portable frame section - original bldg. only 12’ x 18’ and used for guest housekeeping rooms in connection with Yosemite Lodge; rebuilt and enlarged 1922.

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - same as above.

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - same as above.

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - same as above.

Garage - 1922 - used as garage and storage room with residence one-story frame bldg. with shake wails.

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - same as above.

Housekeeping Cabin - 1917 - used as employee residence - one-story frame and portable frame section - original bldg. 18’ x 24’ and used as warehouse at Yosemite Lodge; remodelled and enlarged 1922.

Toilet Building - 1917 - used as wash and toilet rooms for women employees - one-story portable section frame bldg. - two portable section buildings put together.

Toilet Building - 1917 - used as women’s toilets (employees only) - one-story portable section frame bldg. - six portable section bldgs. put together.

Toilet Building - 1917 - used as women’s toilet (employees only) - one-story portable section frame bldg. - two portable section bldgs. put together.

Glacier Point Group:

Glacier Point Hotel and Mountain House:

Glacier Point Hotel - 1916-17 - two- and three-story frame bldg. with painted shake walls and shingle roof - normal capacity of 180 guests - operated on American Plan from opening in 1917 until end of 1920 season; after that, used for rooming of guests only in connection with Mountain House, which operated on European Plan - porte cochere broke in winter of 1922-23 under snowload; rebuilt 1923?.

Tents - 1921 - used as rooms for guests and employees during overflow season - five in use.

Mountain House - n. d. [1878] - used as cafeteria and hotel - two-story frame bldg. with annex shed, siding and shake walls - first hotel at Glacier Point; remodelled in 1921 with annex shed built - since erection of new hotel and up to 1921, used for rooming employees on 2d floor - 1st floor used for storage rooms and soda fountain with lunch counter - normal capacity of thirty-two guests.

Old Barn - n. d. - used as barn and storage room - 1-1/2-story log frame bldg. with log walls - barnyard closed in in 1921 with shaked fence walls.

Gas and Oil House - 1917 - used for gas and oil storage - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Pumphouse - 1923 - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls.

Water Tanks - 1921 - two-inch redwood plank walls on timber platforms - each holds 10,000 gallons - three of this type tank for storage for hotel use - water supplied from upper main reservoir by pipeline.

Upper Main Reservoir - n. d. - built-up earth dam about four feet high on east side - reservoir is natural sloping meadow toward east, at which end is dammed up with four-foot-high earthen dam - water comes from little springs - dam made wider and higher with dragging of reservoir in 1922.

New Horse Corral - 1923 - log post and railing fence.

New Barn - 1923 - used as barn and stable - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls and roof - six single stalls.

Hetch Hetchy Lodge:

Lodge - 1920 - used as main administration bldg. - 1-1/2-story frame bldg., b/b walls, shake roof - up to end of 1922 season operated on American Plan - in 1923 kitchen rebuilt and changed to cafeteria style.

Bathhouse - 1920 - used as bath, lavatory, and toilet for guests - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls, shake roof.

Pumphouse - 1920 - used as water tank tower house and gas and oil station - one-story frame bldg., tower, redwood tank - water pumped from City of San Francisco railroad water station just outside lodge.

Wood Cabins - 1920 - used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls, shake roof - fourteen of this type with two single beds each - normal capacity of twenty-eight guests.

City Cabins - 1923 - used as guest dormitory - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls, roofing paper - eight of this type cabin, built by City of San Francisco in 1923 to accommodate weekend excursion parties.

Washroom - 1923 - used as men’s washroom - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls, roofing paper - built by City of San Francisco in 1923 in connection with their cabins for weekend excursion guests.

City Cabins - 1923 - used as guest dormitory - one-story frame bldg., b/b walls, roofing paper - two of this type bldg. in use.

Warehouse - n. d. - used for storage of Yosemite National Park Co. boat - located at Hetchy Hetchy Dam and owned by City of San Francisco.

Big Trees Lodge:

Kitchen - 1920 - used as kitchen and pantry - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof.

Women’s Lavatory - 1920 - used as lavatory and toilet for women - one-story frame bldg. with rustic log walls and shake roof.

Canvas Cabin - 1920 - used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - three of this type in use.

Redwood Cabin - 1920 - used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldg. with resawed siding - fourteen of this type in use.

Tent - 1923 - used as rooms for employees and for guests during overflow - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this type in use.

Proposed Tree Cabins - permission being asked from Department of the Interior to build hollow trees out with glass walls and equip as bedrooms.

Big Trees Lodge - 1920 - used as administration building - one-story frame bldg. with rustic log walls and shake roof - roof broken in snow, winter of 1920-21 - season of 1922 canvas used for temporary roof covering - roof rebuilt in 1923 - up to end of season of 1921, operated on American Plan only; since 1922 operated cafeteria style.

Water Tank - 1923 - used as water supply tank - one-story frame bldg. - two-inch redwood planks on tank - built 1923 for new water supply system for lodge.

Well - 1923 - two-inch plank walls - water carried from here through pipeline to water tank.

Tuolumne Meadows Lodge:

Canvas Cabins - n. d. [1916?] - used as guest rooms - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - fifty of this type cabin with new canvas put in 1923 - normal capacity of 100 guests.

Lodge - n. d. [1916?] - used as main administration bldg. - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - built by Desmond Park Service Co. in 1916 and operated on American Plan - later shut down - reopened 1922 by Yosemite National Park Co. and operated on cafeteria style - changed to American Plan 1923.

Dormitory - 1916 - used as dormitory for men and women employees; during overflow in season, is also used for housing guests - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - four of this type in use.

Women’s Bathhouse - 1916 - used as bath, laundry, and boilerhouse - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this type, for men and women.

Women’s Toilet Building - 1916 - used as women’s toilet - one-story portable section frame bldg.

Men’s Toilet Building - 1916 - used as men’s toilet - two portable section one-story frame bldgs. put together.

Icehouse - 1916 - used as cold storage rooms - one-story log frame bldg. with log walls and shake roof - icehouse filled every spring with ice to last during summer season.

Barn - 1916 - used as warehouse - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls and roof.

Water Tank - n. d. - used as water supply tank - redwood - water comes through pipeline from Tuolumne River.

Hikers’ Camp at Tuolumne Meadows:

Men’s Dormitory - 1923 - used as dormitory for hikers - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this type, for men and women - erected in 1923 for convenience of hikers who could secure lodging and meals for 75 cents each.

Dining Room - 1923 - used as dining room and kitchen - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof. [Note that this inventory does not mention a stone lodge building nor does the later description of the lodge at Merced Lake. The stone structures may have been added in the later 1920s.]

General Store at Tuolumne Meadows, Near Soda Springs:

Store - 1916 - used as general store - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof.

Girls’ Camp at Tenaya Lake:

Icehouse - 1916 - used as storeroom - one-story frame bldg. with log walls and shake roof - originally used as cold storage rooms in conjunction with operation of lodge here up to end of 1921 season - lodge was in connection with High Sierra loop.

Barn - 1916 - used as warehouse - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls and roof.

Water Tank Tower - 1916 - one-story frame structure, open framed log walls, and no roof - water tank removed to Tuolumne Meadows Lodge.

Boathouse - 1916 - log frame structure. Hikers’ Camp at Tenaya Lake:

Dining Room - 1923 - used as dining room and kitchen - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof.

Men’s Dormitory - 1923 - used as hikers’ dormitory - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this type bldg., for men and women.

Boys’ Camp at Merced Lake:

Lodge - 1916 - used as main administration bldg. - one-story frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - camp was originally used for tourists up to end of 1921 [1918?] season - since 1922 operated as boys’ camp exclusively; enlarged 1922.

Canvas Cabin - 192? - used as rooms - one-story portable frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - twenty-five of this type in use - in connection with these cabins are several other ones of various kinds and sizes.

Dormitory - 1916 - used as employees’ dormitory - one-story portable section frame b!dg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this type in use.

Icehouse - 1916 - used as cold storage rooms - one-story frame bldg. with log walls and shake roof - filled every spring with ice to last during summer.

Barn - 1916 - used as warehouse - one-story frame bldg. with shake walls and roof.

Women’s Bathhouse - 1916 - used as bathhouse and laundry bldg. - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof.

Men’s Bathhouse - 1916 - used as men’s bath, lavatory, and boiler room - one-story portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof.

Tennis Court - 1916 - rope netting.

Toilet Building - 1916 - used as men’s toilet - one-story portable frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - seven of this kind of toilet bldg. - two have toilets only and are for women.

Water Tank - 1916 - used as water supply tank - redwood planks - water comes through pipeline from Merced River.

Hikers’ Camp Between Merced and Washburn Lake:

Men’s Dormitory - 1923 - used as hikers’ dormitory - log frame on posts with canvas walls and roof - two of them tents, for men and women.

Dining Room - 1923 - used as dining room and kitchen - log frame on posts with canvas walls and roof.

Washing Place - 1923 - for men and women - tin washbowls, mirrors, and paper towels on log - water gotten from Merced River.

Toilet Building - 1923 - portable section frame bldg. with canvas walls and roof - two of this kind, for men and women.

Chinquapin Group:

Gas Filling Station No. 3 - n. d. - oil barrels and filling taps for two underground gas tanks at gas and oil station no. 3.

El Portal Train Shed:

Shelter - 1921 - used as shelter for passengers and cars - one-story frame bldg. with open sides - built by Yosemite National Park Co. - cement driveway on west side of shed built 1923. [Burned 1949]

(Pictures and building numbers of these structures may be found in Yosemite National Park Company photo albums in the Yosemite Research Library and Records Center, Yosemite National Park.)

APPENDIX G
Building Inventory, Yosemite National Park

The following building inventory is divided according to major physical districts of the park. It includes only buildings that are still standing. Breaks in the numerical sequence denote structures that have been removed. All buildings are owned by the National Park Service unless otherwise noted. Certain buildings, marked with an asterisk (*), are considered to have marginal historical or architectural values. Although not of National Register quality, they could be useful in local interpretive or educational efforts or serve adapatively for park management or housing needs. It will be noted that there are some discrepancies in construction dates, though usually they involve differences of only one or two years. This may reflect the time span between actual completion dates and the dates of submission of final construction reports. Structures listed or proposed for listing on the National Register of Historic Places are indicated.

A. Yosemite Valley

1

NR

Superintendent’s Residence
U. S. Army (1912),
rem. 1929-30

by Yose Lodge

2-14

NR

Residences,
2 - USA (1911), remodeled 1921
3 - NPS (1937)
4 - USA (1911), remodeled 1921 (moved)
5 - USA (1912), remodeled 1921 (moved)
6 - NPS (1920)
7 - NPS (1920), remodeled 1939
8 - NPS (1920), remodeled 1939 (moved)
9 - NPS (1922)
10-12 - NPS (1922)
13 - NPS (1923) (1914; remodeled 1923?)
14 - NPS (1924), remodeled 1939

NPS res. area

16-21

NR

Residences
16 - NPS (1923? 1926? possibly
built 1923, remodeled 1926)
(1919? moved and remodeled
1923?)
17 - NPS (1926), remodeled 1932
18 - NPS (1919)
19-20 - NPS (1918)
21 - NPS (1919), altered 1934

NPS res. area

34-37

NR

Residences
34 - NPS (1930)
35-36 - NPS (1938) (36 - 1936?)
37 - NPS (1939)

NPS res. area

39-45

NR

Residences
39-41 - NPS (1927)
42-43 - NPS (1928)
44-45 - NPS (1929)

NPS res. area

46
47-48

NR
NR

NPS (1930)
Residences

4-unit apartment
NPS res. area

54-55

NR

Girls’ Dorms
NPS (1923)

NPS res. area

56
57

NR
NR

Rangers’ Club
funds donated by Mather (1920-21)
Girls’ Club
NPS (1923), remodeled 1939

Yose. Village
NPS res. area

58-59

NR

Girls’ Dorms
NPS (1932)

NPS res. area

60
64

NR

4-unit apartment
NPS (1934) 61-63
Nurses’ Quarters
NPS (1934)

NPS res. area
NR
Hospital area

65

Residence
NPS (1939)

Hospital area

66-74

Residences
66-67 - NPS (1940), remodeled
1957 and 1958 - NR
68-69 - NPS (1950)
70 - NPS (1951) - NR
71-74 - NPS (1956)

NPS res. area

75-84

Residences
NPS (1958)

Upper Tecoya

101-105

Residences
101-103 - NPS (1917)
104 - NPS (1923)
105 - NPS (1924)

Cascades

106 A & B

Residence - A: res., B: dorm
NPS (1926)

Arch Rock

107-113

*

Residences (Ahwahnee Row Houses)
YNPC (1922-24); owned YP&CC

Camp 17

120

*

Paint shop (former Ind. Vill. cabin)
NPS (1931)

Utility area

122, 124
127

Cabins
122 - “flunky cabin,”
NPS (1920)
124-127 - NPS (1923)

Utility area
Camp 1

225-269

Tent platforms
225-229 - NPS (1950)
230-250 - NPS (1951)
251-258 - YNP Church (1951)
259-269 - NPS (1951)

Camp 6

(Church camp)
Camp 19

300

NR

2-stall garage
NPS (1929)

Supt.’s res.

301

NR

5-stall garage
NPS (1938)

rear res. #3

302

NR

5-stall garage
NPS (1933)

rear res. #48

303

NR

7-stall garage
NPS (1929)

rear res. #43

304

NR

5-stall garage
NPS (1927)

rear res. #41

305

NR

3-stall garage
NPS (1919)

rear res. #40

306

NR

Woodshed
NPS (1919)

rear res. #21

307

NR

Woodshed
NPS (1919)

rear res. #19

308

NR

5-stall garage
NPS (1933)

rear res. #45

309

NR

2-stall garage
NPS (1924)

rear res. #12

310

NR

2-stall garage
NPS (1922)

rear res. #12

311

NR

4-stall garage
NPS (1927)

rear res. #11

312

NR

Woodshed
NPS (1924)

rear res. #8

313

NR

1 -stall garage
NPS (1924)

rear res. #6

315

NR

3-stall garage
NPS (1920)

Rangers’ Club

333

Garage
NPS (1917)

Cascades, by
res. #101

334

Garage
NPS (1917)

Cascades, by
res. #102

335

Garage
NPS (1917)

Cascades, by
res. #103

336

Rock storage room Cascades, behind
NPS (1917)

Cascades, behind
res. #103

337

Garage and storage
NPS (1923)

Cascades, by
res. #104

338

Garage and storage
NPS (1948)

Cascades, by
res. #105

400

NR-’87

Comfort station
NPS (1934)

Vernal Fall
Bridge

401

Comfort station

Happy Isles
NPS (1927)

409-416

Comfort stations
409 - NPS (1923); razed 1972
& replaced with new c.s.
of concrete blocks constructed
by JASU
410 - NPS (1941? 1923?); ditto
411 - NPS (1923); ditto
412-414 - NPS (1924); ditto
416 - NPS (1960)

Camp 14
(Lower Pines)

417-419

Comfort stations
417-418 - NPS (1924); razed 1972
& replaced with new c.s.
of concrete blocks constructed
by JASU
419 - NPS (1960)

Camp 12
(North Pines)

420

Comfort station
JASU (1972)

Camp 12

421-424

Comfort stations
421-422 - NPS (1923)
423-424 - NPS (1924)

Camp 15
(Upper River)

428-432

Comfort stations
428-431 - NPS (1922)

Camp 7
(lower River)

433

Bath trailer
(1971)

Camp 6

434-435

Comfort stations
NPS (1922) (employees)

Camp 6

436

Comfort station
Chas. D. Joslin (1964)

Yosemite Falls
parking area

437

Comfort station
NPS (1923); removed 1977?

Camp 19

440-441

Comfort stations
NPS (1929)

Camp 4
(Sunnyside)

445

Comfort station
R. Hodgson & Sons (1957) -
MISSION 66

Village
by visitor center

450

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

Camp 9

451

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

Camp 9

452

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

Camp 9

453-462

Comfort stations
DeFalco Construction Co. (1968? 1969?)

Camp 11
(Upper Pines)

500

Chlorinator House
NPS (1948)

Vernal Fall

500A

Chlorinator House
NPS (1948)

Nevada Fall

501

Pumphouse
NPS (1931)

Spring intake

502

Storage
NPS (1946; moved to present
location 1952; originally constructed
for Chinquapin BRC)

NPS maint. area

503

Sewage pumphouse #4 (#7?)
NPS (1924); rased and replaced
1972 by COAC, Inc.

Camp 12

504

Sewage pumphouse #3
NPS (1922); rased and replaced
1972 by COAC, Inc.

Camp 7

505

Sewage Pumphouse
NPS (1922); rased and replaced
1972 by COAC, Inc.

Yosemite Lodge

506

Substation control house
NPS (1931)

Ahwahnee Hotel

507

Standby electrical plant
NPS (1947)

Lewis Memorial
Hospital

508

Meter house
NPS (1931)

Camp 4
(Camp 8?)

509

NR

Transformer house
NPS (1920)

by Rangers’ Club

516

Equipment shed
NPS (1921)

NPS utility area
by corral

517

Storage
constructed by U. S. Navy (1943);
relocated 1946 from U. S. Conv.
Hosp. at Ahwahnee Hotel

NPS utility area
back of #516

518

Equipment shed
NPS (1920)

NPS utility area

519

Equipment shed
NPS (1926)

NPS utility area

520

Storage shed
(1910)

NPS utility area

521

Storage shed
NPS (1918)

NPS utility area
west of sharpening
shed

522

Cement storage
NPS (1928)

NPS utility area
back of sharpening
shed

523

Tool sharpening shed
NPS (1928)

NPS utility area

524

Sign storage
U. S. Navy (1943); relocated
from U. S. Conv. Hosp. 1946

NPS utility area

526

Equipment shed
NPS (1932)

NPS utility area

527

NR-’87

Utility building
NPS (1935)

NPS utility area

529

Warehouse
NPS (1916) - removed? Possibly
now replacement storage (1973) -
barn

NPS utility area

530

Supply warehouse
NPS (1916) - 3 offices added 1974

NPS utility area

531

Gas station
NPS (1943)

NPS utility area

533

Storage (former mess hall)
NPS (1920)

NPS utility area

534

Storage
NPS (1916)

NPS utility area

535

Comfort station
NPS (1924); originally for
storage; converted to c.s. 1958

Utility area,
Camp 1

537

Electric plant
NPS (1939)

NPS utility area

540

Sewage disposal plant
NPS (1930); remodeled 1938;
abandoned 1977

Bridalveil Fall

542

Pumphouse
NPS (1938)

by disposal plant

542A

Lime storage

by disposal plant

542B

Primary digester
NPS (1957)

by disposal plant

544

Pumphouse
NPS (1945)

Road oil mixing plant

545

Screen shelter
NPS (1945)

near dam,
Yosemite power plant

546

NR

Powerhouse
NPS (1918)

Cascades

547

Valve shelter
NPS (1940)

by wood stave
pipeline,
power plant

548

Storage
CCC (1940)

near pipeline,
power plant

549

Stave storage
NPS (1940)

Cascades

550

Well Station No. 1
A&W Plumbing (1974)

Yosemite Lodge

551

Standby power building
NPS (n. d.)

Yosemite Lodge

552

Campground office
NPS (n. d.); moved from Wawona,
1961; former building #4093,
storage shed (Baker), South Wawona

Yosemite Valley?

559
560

Sanitation office
(n. d.)
Forestry warehouse
(n. d.)

NPS utility area
NPS utility area

575

NR

Administration building
NPS (1924)

Village

576

NR

Valley District building
(old museum)
NPS (1925); converted from
museum to offices in 1967,
after completion of visitor center

Village

577

Jail
NPS (1927); converted to rescue
cache & morgue in 1974

NPS utility area

580

NR

Chapel
Ca. St. Sunday Sch. Assoc.
(1879) moved and remodeled 1901

Old Village area

583

NR

Post office
private contractor (1924);
rented to Post Office
Department; owned by
NPS since 1944

Village

584

Entrance kiosk
NPS (1961); original building #584
constructed 1926; demolished 1961
and reconstructed

Arch Rock

585

North station
NPS (1926); moved to El Portal
open storage area in 1977

Arch Rock

586

South station
NPS (1926)

Arch Rock

587

Piano storage
Owned, constructed by
YNP Church (1950)

Church bowl

588

Piano storage
Owned, constructed
YNP Church (1950

Church bowl

589

Storage
(n. d.)

Church bowl

592

Post office employees’ garage
Owned, constructed by Post
Office Department (1957)

Village

593

Post office duplex
(ca. 1956)

Village

593 (?)

Amphitheater
NPS (n. d.)

Lower River
Campground

594

Amphitheater
(NPS (n. d.)

Lower Pines
Campground

597

*

Leonard Cabin
(n. d., early 1900s)

Little Yosemite
Valley

598

Visitor center
NPS (1967)

Village

599

Kiosks

Campgrounds

599 (?)

Reservations office
NPS (1980)

Curry parking area
near orchard

601

Comfort station
NPS (1924); maintained by
YP&CC

Camp 6

602-606

Comfort station
NPS (1924); maintained by
YP&CC; #605 razed & replaced
by YP&CC, (n. d.)

Camp 16

607

Lewis Memorial Hospital
NPS (1929); additions in 1953,
1960-61, 1973-74

Hospital area

608

Isolation ward
NPS (pre-1929, possibly 1926)

Hospital area

609

NR

LeConte Memorial Lodge
Sierra Club (1903); dismantled,
moved, and rebuilt (1919)

Across from
Camp 16

610

Pit privy
NPS (1930)

By LeConte Memorial
Lodge

611

Carport and bike port
R. Pederson & Sons (1973)

Behind hospital

625

*

Water gauging station
Owned, maintained jointly by USGS,
Water Resources Division & NPS;
const. NPS (1915), destroyed 1975
and replaced with smaller structure

Happy Isles

627

*

Water gauging station
Owned, constructed by USGS (1916);
maintained jointly by USGS, DWR,
& NPS

Pohono Bridge

628

*

Nature Center (old fish hatchery)
St. Department of Fish & Game
(1927-28); remodeled 1957

Happy Isles

636

NR

Residence (teacherage)
Owned, constructed by Mariposa
County Unified School District (1928)

NPS res. area

637

NR

Residence (bus driver)
Owned, constructed by Mariposa
County Unified School District (1937)

NPS res. area

638

NR

3-stall garage
Owned, constructed by Mariposa
County Unified School District (1937)

NPS res. area

642

Elementary school
Owned by U. S. Office of Education;
operated by Mariposa County Unified
School District; constructed by
Office of Education (1955)

NPS res. area

643

3-apartment residence (teacherage)
Operated by Mariposa County Unified
School District (1958)

Upper Tecoya

650-652

Residences (Pacific Telephone
& Telegraph)
Owned by PT&T; constructed bt
Berry Construction Co. (1957)

Upper Tecoya

653

Pacific Telephone & Telegraph office
Owned, constructed by PT&T (1956)

NPS utility area

655

Toll terminal building
Owned, constructed by PT&T (1956)

Turtleback Dome

656

Toll repeater building
Owned, constructed by PT&T (1956)

Sentinel Dome

657

Toll station radio building
Owned, constructed by PT&T (1956);
given to NPS

Yosemite Creek

900

NR

Ansel Adams Gallery
(old Best’s Studio)
Best’s Studio, Inc. (1925)

Village

902

NR

Duplex residence
Best’s Studio, Inc. (1925)

Village

903

NR

3-stall garage and storage
Best’s Studio, Inc. (1925)

Village

904

NR

Duplex residence
Best’s Studio, Inc. (1925)

Village

918

Degnan dormitory (Lost Arrow dorm)
Degnan-Donohoe (1949)

Village

919

Comfort station - removed?

Old Village

1001

Residence
Owned by YP&CC, constructed by
Phillsbury’s (1925), four portable
cabins joined together and sealed [Editor’s note: the correct spelling is Pillsbury—dea]

Village

1002

Residence
Owned by YP&CC, constructed by
Phillsbury’s (1925), three portable
cabins

Village

1003

Residence
Owned by YP&CC, constructed by
Phillsbury’s (1925)

Village

1005

NR

Yosemite Art Activity Center
(Pohono Studio)
Constructed by Boysen (1925)

Village

B. El Portal

700

*

Residence
Bariod Division, National Lead Co.
(1929)

Yosemite Research
Center

701

*

1-stall garage
National Lead Co. (1929 or
early 1930s)

Yosemite Research
Center by res. #700

702

*

Laboratory (former ranger office)
National Lead Co. (1929 or
early 1930s)

Yosemite Research
Center near res. #700

703-705

*

Residences
National Lead Co. (1929)

NPS res. area
Rancheria Flat

707

Laundry and c.s
NPS (1960)

Trailer village

711,
713-717,
719-721,
723,
726-728,
730-734,
737-738

Residences
NPS (1960-61)

NPS res. area
Rancheria Flat

756

Sewage disposal plant
NPS (1961)

Maintenance area
near res. area

757

Chlorinator house
NPS (1961)

Maintenance area
near res. area

758

Water pumphouse
(n. d.); remodeled by NPS (1959)

Maintenance area

759

1-stall fire truck garage
Constructed by citizens of
El Portal (1960)

Commercial area

760

Repair garage
El Portal Mining Co. (1949);
modified as maintenance shop,
NPS (1978)

Commercial area

761

*

Grocery store and residence
YVRR Co. (1934); purchased by
NPS, 1958

Commercial area

762

*

Hotel
YVRR Co. (1932); purchased by
NPS, 1958

Commercial area

763

2-stall garage
El Portal Mining Co.? (1952);
purchased by NPS, 1958

Commercial area
by hotel

764

Restaurant and bar
El Portal Mining Co.? (1948);
purchased by NPS, 1958

Commercial area

765-776

Motel cabins
765-769, 775-776 - (1948)
771-774 - (1950)
770 - (1955)
El Portal Mining Co.; purchased 1958

Commercial area

777

Storage
(n. d.)

Commercial area

778
779

NR

Transportation exhibit shelter
NPS (1964)
Bagby water tanks
YVRR (1907)

Commercial area
Commercial area

779A

NR

Bagby stationhouse
YVRR (1907)

Commercial area

780

Incinerator
NPS (1962); converted to
transfer station, 1973

Maintenance area

781

Incinerator office
NPS (1962); converted to
transfer office, 1973

Maintenance area
by incinerator

782

Storage
NPS (1962); converted to
transfer storage, 1973

Maintenance area
by incinerator

783

Pumphouse
NPS (1975); wastewater treatment
plant, 1977

Maintenance area

784

Carroll Clark Community Hall
former VFW community building;
taken over by NPS, 1980

Commercial area

786

Fire (Chevron) dorm
(n. d.); taken over from
YP&CC, 1981

Commercial area

791

NR

Turntable
YVRR (1907)

Commercial area

C. Mather

2000

*

Ranger station/residence
NPS, PWA (1934)

Mather

2002

4-stall garage
NPS, CCC (1935)

By ranger station

2003

Pumphouse
NPS (1936)

By ranger station

2004

Barn
NPS, CCC (1940)

Behind ranger station

2005

Storage (old cookhouse and quarters)
NPS, CCC (1935)

Mather

2006

Bunkhouse
NPS (1927?); former Aspen Valley
ranger station; moved to Mather 1964

Mather

2014-2015

Tent platforms
NPS (1959)

Mather ranger
station

2100

*

Mess hall & dorm (duplex)
City of San Francisco (1935)

Hetch Hetchy, north
building of 2, south
side Quarry Road

2101

*

Ranger station (duplex)
City of San Francisco (1935);
former Guest Cottage

Hetch Hetchy,
south of building of 2

2103

Sewage pumphouse
NPS (1934)

Hetch Hetchy,
across from comfort
station

2104

NR-’87

Comfort station, public
NPS, CCC (1934)

Hetch Hetchy

2200

*

Guard station
NPS (1934)

Miguel Meadow

2201

Barn
NPS (1934)
The building currently used as a barn
at Miguel Meadows is actually a cabin
built by Miguel Errera about 1890.
This is possibly the last building still
in use from the cattle and sheep raising
period in the high country. The cabin
was converted to a barn in the late 1950s.
The location of the 1934 structure is
unclear.

Miguel Meadow

2202

Woodshed
NPS, CCC (1935)

Miguel Meadow
by #2200

2204

Storage building
NPS, CCC (1935)

Miguel Meadow
(east)

no #

Storage building
San Francisco PUC (1958),
owned by City of San Francisco

Lake Eleanor Road -
Gravel Pit Lake Road

2206

Fire lookout
Owned, constructed by USFS
and NPS (1963)

North Mountain

2207

Pit toilet
Owned, constructed by USFS
and NPS (1963)

North Mountain
by fire lookout

2208

Utility Building
Owned, constructed by USFS
and NPS (1963)

North Mountain
by fire lookout

2300

NR-’87

NPS, CCC (1936)

Frog Creek cabin Frog Creek near
Lake Eleanor

2400

Packer shack
City of San Francisco (1921);
removed 1970; number of existing
structure unknown

Lake Eleanor Road -
Jack Main Canyon
Trail

2450

NR-’87

Patrol cabin
City of San Francisco (1945)

Vernon Lake

no #

NR-’87

Patrol cabin
State of California DWR (1947)

Sachse Springs

D. Tuolumne Meadows

658

Toll station radio building
Pacific Telephone & Telegraph (1956);
given to NPS

Tuolumne Meadows

3000

NR

Ranger station
NPS (1924)

Tuolumne Meadows
on road to lodge

3001

Naturalist’s cabin
NPS (1922) near

Tuolumne Meadows
ranger station

3002

Patrol cabin
NPS (1922)

Tuolumne Meadows

3003

Barn
NPS (1924)

Tuolumne Meadows

3004

Saddle room
NPS (1930)

Tuolumne Meadows

3005

NR

Contact station
NPS, CCC (1936)

Tuolumne Meadows
on road near store

3010

NR

Mountaineering shop (former mess hall)
NPS, CCC (1934) (visitor center
function relocated here in 1980)

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3011

NR

Cabin
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows

3012

NR

Cabin
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows
by #3011

3013

NR

Cabin
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows
by #3012

3014

NR

Cabin
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows
by #3013

3015

NR

Shower and toilet
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows
by #3014

3016

Gas and oil shelter
NPS (1934); rebuilt 1950

Tuolumne Meadows

3017

Quarters (original sewage pumphouse)
NPS (1939); remodeled to seasonal
residence 1975

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3018

Storage shed
NPS (1939)

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3019

Washroom
NPS (1934)

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3020

Comfort station
NPS (1926)

Tuolumne Meadows
near ranger station

3021

NR

Comfort station
NPS (1934)

East end of
campground

3022

NR

Comfort station
NPS (1934) of

3d from east end
campground

3023

NR

Comfort station
NPS (1934)

5th from east end
of campground

3024

NR

Comfort station
NPS (1931)

7th from east end
of campground

3028

Gas pump station
NPS (1950); rebuilt 1986

Tuolumne Meadows
near barn

3029-3041

Pit privies
NPS (1930-53)

Tuolumne Meadows
campground

3042-3047

Tent platforms
3042-44 - NPS (1971)
3045-47 - NPS (1971)

Tuolumne Meadows
near ranger station

3048

Tent platform - Church
YNP Church (1946)

Tuolumne Meadows
church camp

3052-3053

Tent platforms

Tuolumne Meadows
camp

3054-3067

Tent platforms
NPS (1971)

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3070-3075

Tent platforms
NPS (1930-40)

Tuolumne Meadows
utility area

3076

Comfort station
NPS (1960)

Tuolumne Meadows
campground
2d from east end

3077

Comfort station
NPS (1960)

Tuolumne Meadows
campground
4th from east end

3078

Comfort station
NPS (1960)

Tuolumne Meadows
campground
6th from east end

3079

Comfort station
NPS (1960)

Tuolumne Meadows
campground

3080

Comfort station
NPS (1972)

Near YP&CC
stables

3081 (?)

Sewage disposal plant
(n. d.) - removed?

Tuolumne Meadows

3081

NR

Parsons Memorial Lodge
Sierra Club (1915)

Tuolumne Meadows

3082 (?)

Bathhouse
(n. d.) - removed?

Tuolumne Meadows

3082

NR

McCauley cabin
John McCauley (1902)

Tuolumne Meadows

no #

Bathhouse
NPS (1964)

Tuolumne Meadows
seasonal housing area

3112-3114

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Tenaya Lake
campground

3200

NR

Ranger station
NPS (1931)

Tioga Pass

3201

Checking kiosk
NPS (1940?) - does not resemble
present structure (ca. 1961?)

Tioga Pass

3203

NR

Comfort station
NPS, CCC (1934)

Tioga Pass

3400

NR-’87

Ranger station/patrol cabin
State of California & NPS (1927)

Merced Lake

3450

NR-’87

Snow Creek cabin
Curry & Tressider (1929)

Tenaya Zig Zag
Trail near Snow
Creek

3501

NR-’87

Snow survey cabin
St. DWR (1947)

Snow Flat

E. Wawona

654

Yosemite Essex building
Pacific Telephone & Telegraph (1956)

Wawona

4000

NR-’87

Ranger station/residence
NPS, PWA (1934)

Chilnualna Road

4001

NR-’87

Ranger residence
NPS, CCC (1938)

Chilnualna Road

4002

Ranger office (old Alder Creek
fee collection cabin); NPS (1924);
moved to area of #4000 ca. 1934
and then to behind #4027 in 1970

Mike Adams’s office,
1971

4003

*

Residence (original CCC mess hall)
NPS, CCC (1936); remodeled
1940, 1953

On hill

4004

Dormitory
(n. d.)

Maintenance area

4008

*

Teacherage & school
NPS, CCC (1937)

Wawona

4020

*

BRC repair garage
(old firehouse & office)
NPS, CCC (1934)

Maintenance area
(old CCC camp)

4023

*

4-stall garage (snow plow shed)
NPS, CCC (1934)

Maintenance area
(old CCC camp)

4025

*

7-stall garage & light plant
NPS, CCC (1934)

Maintenance area
(old CCC camp)

4027

*

Office (old ECW office; now Wawona
district ranger headquarters)
NPS, CCC (1934)

Maintenance area
(old CCC camp)

4031

Quonset storage
CCC (1934)

Maintenance area
(old CCC camp)

4038

Residence - Abston
(1947) - purchased by NPS in 1972

Wawona

4039

Tent platform - single

Behind #4002

4040

Tent platform - single

Behind #4003

4041

Tent platform

Maintenance area
(barn)

4042

Residence - Carter & Reed
(1968)

Wawona

4043

Residence - Larke Assoc.
(1949)

Wawona

4044

Saddle room
NPS (1947); originally constructed
as light plant shelter (#4602) at
South Entrance ranger duplex;
moved to Wawona dn converted
to saddle room in 1953

Wawona
(near barn)

4045

Residence - Mee
(1946)

Section 35

4046

Residence - Mansfield
(1955)

Section 35

4047

Residence - Walker
(n. d.)

Section 35

4048

Residence (storage) - Fancher
or Sierra Club? (n. d.)

Section 35

4049

Residence - Whitman
(n. d.)

Section 35

4050

2-stall garage
NPS, CCC (1935)

Behind #4000

4052

Equipment shed
NPS, CCC (1934)

On hill across
from #4003

4053

Gas and oil shelter
NPS (1949); moved to utility
area in 1973

Utility area
by #4052

4054

Storage shed
NPS, CCC (1934)

Utility area
on hill

4055

Incinerator
NPS (1934)

On hill

4056

Barn
NPS (1941)

Utility area
near #4003

4057

Woodshed & 2-stall garage
NPS (1938)

Schoolhouse

4058

Sewage pumphouse
NPS (1934)

Big Creek

4060

Woodshed
NPS (1940)

Behind #4003

4061

Comfort station
NPS (1951) (1953?)

Wawona campground

4062

Comfort station
NPS (1951)

Wawona campground
Cunningham Flat

4063

Comfort station
NPS (1951)

Wawona campground
Interm. section

4064

Comfort station
NPS (1952)

Camp A. E. Wood

4065

Residence (office) - Tomik
(1955)

Section 35

4066

Comfort station
NPS (1953)

Camp A. E. Wood

4067

Comfort station
NPS (1958) center

Camp A. E. Wood

4068

Chlorinator house
NPS (1959)

End of Forest Drive

4069

3-stall garage & storage
NPS (1963)

Rear of residence
#4001

4070

Residence - Gorr
(ca. 1949)

Section 35

4073

Residence - Greening
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

4074

Residence - Anderson
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

4075

Residence - Teunis
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

4076

Residence - Teunis
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

4077

Residence - Culver
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

4078

Residence - Hart
(ca. 1955)

Section 35

4079 (?)

Tent platform
(n. d)

Utility area

4079

Residence Baublitz
Baublitz (ca. mid-1950s)

Wawona
Redwoods #21

4080

Pumphouse
W. F. Whitman? (1963)

Section 35
rear of #4049

4081

Storage shed
Whitman? (n. d.)

Section 35
rear of #4049

4082

1-stall garage
Whitman? (n. d.)

Section 35
rear of #4049

4083

Water tank building
Whitman? (n. d.)

Section 35
rear of #4049

4084

Residence - Cushman
(ca. 1950?)

South Wawona

4085

1-stall garage
(n. d.)

South Wawona
rear of #4084

4086

Pumphouse
Cushman (1963)

South Wawona
rear of #4084

4087

Residence - Thompson Parson
(n. d.)

South Wawona

4088

Garage
(n. d.)

South Wawona
by #4087

4089

Pumphouse - Mansfield
NPS (1963)

Service for
#4046

4090

Pumphouse - Walker
NPS (1963)

Service for
#4047

4091

Pumphouse - Francher
NPS (1963)

Service for
#4048

4092

Residence - Baker
(n. d.)

Wawona

4093

Storage shed
(n. d.)

Wawona

4094

Residence - Hickok
(ca. 1955)

Section 35

4095

Residence - Fleming
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

4096

Residence - Byers
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

4097

Residence - Byers
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

4098

Residence - Byers
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

4099

Bathhouse
NPS (1964)

Wawona

4100

*

Wawona wagon shop (gray barn)
Wawona Hotel Co. (1920);
restored by NPS in 1959

PYHC

4101

NR

Hodgdon homestead cabin
J. Hodgdon (1879); moved from
Aspen Valley to Wawona in 1959

PYHC

4102

NR

Wells Fargo office (Yosemite
Transportation Co. Office)
YVRR (1910); moved from
Yosemite Valley in 1959

PYHC

4103

Wells Fargo utility building
(1910? 1912?); moved 1960-

PYHC

4104

NR

Army cabin (acting superintendent)
USA (1904); moved from Yosemite
Valley in 1960

PYHC

4105

Army tack room
USA (1917); moved from Yosemite
Valley in 1960

PYHC

4106

Crane Flat ranger cabin
USA (1915); moved 1959

PYHC

4107

Cuneo cabin
Thomas Hope (1933); moved from
Cuneo Ranch, 1960

PYHC

4108

Pit toilet
NPS (1952); moved from Yosemite
Valley in 1960

PYHC

4109

Pit toilet
NPS (1952); moved from Yosemite
Valley in 1960

PYHC

4110

Anderson cabin
George Anderson (1876); moved
from Foresta in 1961

PYHC

4111

Jail (former powder cache and morgue)
Jim Degnan? (1880?)

PYHC

4112

NR

Artist’s cabin (Jorgensen studio)
(former #50 - employee residence)
Jorgensen (1900); remodeled 1934

PYHC

4113

Wagon shelter
NPS (1962)

PYHC

4114

Blacksmith shop
(n. d.); moved from Madera in 1963

PYHC

4115-4129

Tent frames
NPS (n. d.)

?

4130-4131

Tent frames
NPS (n. d.)

?

4131

Wagon shop (former Chinese laundry
and plumbing shop)
Wawona Hotel Co. (1917)

PYHC

4135

Former Hungry Bear restaurant
Bliss (ca. 1975)

Section 35

4145

Residence - Kuntz
(n. d.)

Section 35

4146

Residence - Pattimore
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

4147

Residence - Bruce
(ca. 1955))

Section 35

4148

Residence - Fowler
(1967)

Section 35

4149

Residence - Fowler
(1970)

Section 35

4151

Residence - Krahenbuhl
(ca. 1968); owner’s residence
added on to guest cabin dating
from 1942

Section 35

4152

Duplex - May
(ca. 1963)

Section 35

4153

Residence - May
(ca. 1964)

Section 35

4154

Residence - Doane
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

4166

Residence - Carhart
(n. d.)

Section 35

4170

Residence - Comfort
(n. d.)

Section 35

4175

Residence - Bliss
(n. d.)

Section 35

4401

Equipment storage (slaughterhouse)
Wawona Hotel Co. (1929)

Wawona Hotel

4414

NR

Soda & curio store (former Hill
Studio - Pavilion)
Wawona Hotel Co.? (1886);
remodeled 1968

Wawona Hotel

4416

NR

Sequoia Hotel
Wawona Hotel Co. (1917)

Wawona Hotel

4417

NR

Wawona Hotel
Wawona Hotel Co., Washburn
brothers (1879)

Wawona Hotel

4418

NR

Little Brown Building
(Moore Cottage)
Wawona Hotel Co. (pre-1894)

Wawona Hotel

4419

NR

Long Brown Building (Washburn
Cottage)
Wawona Hotel Co. (ca. 1899)

Wawona Hotel

4420

NR

Long White Building (Clark Cottage)
Washburn brothers (1876)

Wawona Hotel

4421

NR

Little White Cottage (Manager’s
Residence)
Wawona Hotel Co. (1884)

Wawona Hotel

4422

NR

Annex
Wawona Hotel Co. (1917)

Wawona Hotel

4423

Barn
NPS (1932); constructed for Wawona
Hotel Co. prior to acquisition of
Wawona property in exchange for
right-of-way for Highway 41 through
then existing barn

PYHC

4433

Shed
Wawona Hotel Co. (1928?)

Wawona Hotel

4436

Service station
(1955)

Wawona Hotel

4437

Store and gift shop
(n. d.)

Wawona Hotel

4439

Cabin - Kissler
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4440

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4441

Cabin - Kissler
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4442

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4443 a & b

Duplex
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4444

Service building
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4445

Pumphouse
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4446

Residence
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4447

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4448

Linen roome
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4449

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4450

Garage
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4451

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4452

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

4453

Cabin
Kessler? (n. d.)

Section 35

Federally owned properties in Section 35 Retained under Reservation of Use and Occupancy as of January 1980:

no #s

Residence - Hawkes
(1973)

Section 35

Residence - Morgan
(1968)

Section 35

Residence - Ketchum
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Romero
(n. d.); also garage, shop building,
storage building, 3 mobile homes

Section 35

Residence - Oliver
(n. d.)

Section 35

Residence - Romero
(n. d.)

Section 35

Residence - Bliss
(ca. 1968)

Section 35

Residence - Edelstein
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Hodgkinson
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Curnow
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Nishkian
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

Residence - Fahlen
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

Residence - Hunter
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Paltenghi
(ca. 1968)

Section 35

Main building - Moore duplex
(ca. 1965), residence, restroom
building, pumphouse, garage,
residence & laundry building

Section 35

Residence - Moore
(ca. 1950); plus shop & storage
building, hardware & office building,
two lumber storage buildings

Section 35

Residence - Berry
(1945)

Section 35

Residence - Brown
(1973)

Section 35

Residence - Dalbey
(1964)

Section 35

Residence - Davis
(ca. 1955)

Section 35

Residence - Cate
(ca. 1950)

Section 35

Residence - Conn
(ca. 1959)

Section 35

Residence - Hunt
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Cardella
(1961)

Section 35

Residence - Hunter
(ca. 1962)

Section 35

Residence - McNamara
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Coleston
(1973)

Section 35

Residence - Moon
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Williamson
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Savage
(ca. 1955); plus guest house

Section 35

Residence - Marks
(ca. 1958)

Section 35

Residence - Wiley
(ca. 1966)

Section 35

Residence - Johnson
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - James
(ca. 1943)

Section 35

Residence - Love
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Crews
(ca. 1968)

Section 35

Residence - Kline
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Wright
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Walling
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Nachtigal
(ca. 1955)

Section 35

Residence - Putnam
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Stenzel
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Simmons
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Vincent
(ca. 1972)

Section 35

Residence - Livingston
(1973)

Section 35

Residence - Darnall
(ca. 1975)

Section 35

Residence - Bray
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Jobe
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Hixson
(ca. 1964)

Section 35

Residence - Bickston
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Boyer
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Imbler
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Maxwell
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Eaton
(ca. 1969)

Section 35

Residence - Ottonello
(ca. 1970); plus swimming pool

Section 35

Residence - Novak
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Madden
(ca. 1965)

Section 35

Residence - Stultz
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Minch
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Sanders
(ca. 1955)

Section 35

Residence - Zipser
(ca. 1974)

Section 35

Residence - Kaiser
(ca. 1968)

Section 35

Residence - Cornell
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Dull
(ca. 1972)

Section 35

Residence - Soulanille
(ca. 1972)

Section 35

Residence - Trimmer
(ca. 1974)

Section 35

Residence - Williamson
(ca. 1968); plus guest house

Section 35

Residence - Landsnaes
(ca. 1972)

Section 35

Residence - Comfort
(ca. 1930)

Section 35

Residence - James
(ca. 1960)

Section 35

Residence - Blanchard
(1969)

Section 35

Residence - McCray
(1964)

Section 35

Residence - Olmstead
(1971)

Section 35

Residence - McKinsey
(1975)

Section 35

Residence - Flowers
(1974)

Section 35

Residence - Flowers
(ca. 1970)

Section 35

Residence - Stockton
(ca. 1945); plus guest house

Section 35

Residence - Nagy
(ca. 1971)

Section 35

Residence - Downey
(ca. 1968)
Residence - Swineford
(ca. 1970)

Section 35
Section 35

4600

NR-’87

Ranger residence - duplex
NPS, PWA (1934)

South Entrance

4601

3-stall garage
NPS, CCC (1935)

South Entrance
behind #4600

4604

NR-’87

Office (former checking kiosk)
NPS, PWA (1934)

South Entrance

4605

Checking kiosk
NPS (ca. 1958)

South Entrance

4606

NR-’87

Comfort station
NPS, PWA (1934)

South Entrance

4607

A-V shelter
(n. d.)

South Entrance

4702

Comfort station
(1978?)

Mariposa Grove
tram parking area

4725

NR

Museum (Galen Clark cabin)
NPS (1930)

Mariposa Grove

4726

NR-’87

Comfort station
NPS, PWA (1931)

Mariposa Grove

4737-4741

Tent platforms
NPS (1940); moved to Wawona, n. d.

Mariposa Grove

4800

NR-’87

Ranger patrol cabin
State of California & NPS (1931)

Buck Camp

4801

Saddle room
State of California & NPS (1931)

Buck Camp

4820

Insect control lab (former mess hall)
NPS (1935)

Eight Mile

F. Chinquapin to Glacier Point

5000

NR-’87

Ranger station
NPS, PWA (1934)

Chinquapin

5001

4-stall garage
NPS (1935)

Chinquapin
behind #5000

5003

Gas pump shelter
NPS (1934)

Chinquapin
north of #5000

5004

Comfort station
NPS, PWA (1933)

Chinquapin
east of #5000

5005

Barn
NPS (1924)

Chinquapin
west of #5000

5050

Gas station and lunch room
YP&CC (1933)

Chinquapin

5051

Light plant
YP&CC (1933)

Chinquapin

5100

Ranger station
NPS (1939)

Badger Pass ski
area

5102

Storage shed
NPS (1971)

Badger Pass

5103

First Aid building
(n. d.); moved from Foresta in 1969

Badger Pass
ski area

5104

Garbage can storage
(n. d.)

Badger Pass

5110

NR-’87

Ostrander Lake ski hut
NPS, CCC (1940)

Ostrander Lake

5150

Ski lodge
YP&CC (1935)

Badger Pass

5151

Ski lift power house
YP&CC (1935)

Badger Pass

5200

Ranger station
NPS (1931)

Glacier Point

5201

Naturalist’s cabin
NPS (1931)

Glacier Point

5202-5204

Tent platforms - double
NPS (1950)

Glacier Point
campground

5205

Bathhouse
(n. d.)

Glacier Point

5210

Comfort station
NPS, PWA (1934); converted
to residence

Glacier Point

5212

NR

Naturalist’s Lookout
NPS (1925)

Glacier Point

5300

NR-’87

Fire lookout
NPS (1934)

Henness Ridge

5312-5313

Tent platform - double
NPS (1958)

Henness Ridge

5314

Cabin
(1958?)

Henness Ridge

5315

Comfort station
NPS (1958)

Henness Ridge
east end

5316

Comfort station
(1958?)

Henness Ridge
2d from east

5317

Comfort station
(1958?)

Henness Ridge
3d from east

5318

Comfort station
(1958?)

Henness Ridge
4th from east

5319

Bathhouse
NPS (1958)

Bridalveil campground

5321

NR

McGurk Cabin
McGurk (1895-97)

McGurk Meadow

G. Foresta

5400

Residence - Hummer
(n. d.)

Foresta

5401

Residence - Gunderson
(n. d.)

Foresta

5403

Employee residence - Haglund
(n. d.)

Foresta

5405

Residence - Guy
(1956)

Foresta

5406

Residence - Tate
(n. d.)

Foresta

5407

Barn (small)
(n. d.)

Big Meadow/
Foresta

5408

Barn (large)
(n. d.)

Big Meadow/
Foresta

5410

Guest house - Butler
(n. d.)

Foresta

H. Crane Flat to Hodgdon

6000

Ranger station
NPS (1940)

Crane Flat

6007

Generator shed
NPS (1940)

Crane Flat

6008
6010

Storage building
NPS (1940)
4-stall garage
NPS (1940)

Crane Flat
Crane Flat

6012

Light plant
NPS (1940)

Crane Flat

6013

*

BRC storage
NPS, CCC (1934); converted to
bathhouse by YI, 1970s

Crane Flat BRC

6014

*

BRC camp mess hall
NPS (1946); remodeled 1951

Crane Flat BRC

6015

*

BRC camp barracks
NPS (1946); remodeled 1952, used
as dorm by YI

Crane Flat BRC

6016

*

BRC camp barracks and office
NPS (1946); remodeled 1984,
used as dorm by YI

Crane Flat BRC

6017

*

Oil house & light plant
NPS (1934); remodeled 1980s,
used as classroom by YI

Crane Flat BRC
camp (YI)

6018

*

BRC camp office
(former shower house)
NPS (1946)

Crane Flat BRC
camp (YI)

6020

*

BRC camp cook’s quarters
(?); converted to staff cabin by YI

Crane Flat BRC
camp (YI)

6024

*

BRC shower

Crane Flat BRC
camp (YI)

6025
6027-6029

Barracks, portable plywood
Victory huts

Crane Flat BRC
camp
Crane Flat BRC
camp

6030-6034

Tent platforms
NPS (1950)

Crane Flat

6038

Ranger station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground

6039

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground
between loops A & B

6040

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground
between loops B & C

6041

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground
west end loop D

6042

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground
east end loop D

6043

Comfort station
Edgar A. Girard (1964)

Crane Flat campground
loop E

6100

Residence - Cuneo
Cuneo (1940)

Carl Inn, near
Hodgdon Meadow
on old Big Oak
Flat Road

6110

Entrance kiosk, east
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon Meadow -
new Big Oak Flat
Road entrance

6111

Entrance kiosk, west
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon Meadow -
new Big Oak Flat
Road entrance

6112

Entrance office
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon Meadow -
new Big Oak Flat
Road entrance

6113

Comfort station
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon Meadow -
new Big Oak Flat
Road entrance

6114

4-unit apartment
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon res. area

6118

Residence
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon res. area
1st on right

6119

Residence
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon res. area
2d on right

6120

Residence
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon res. area
3d on right

6121

Residence
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon res. area
4th on right

6123

Utility building
NPS (1966)

Hodgdon Meadow
near res. area

6124

Comfort station
Varringer & Betke (1964)

Hodgdon Meadow
campground

6125

Comfort station
Varringer & Betke (1964)

Hodgdon Meadow
south end

6126

Bathhouse
(n. d.)

Hodgdon Meadow
res. area

6127

Tent platform
(n. d.)

Hodgdon Meadow
res. area

6128

Fire barracks
NPS (1969)

Hodgdon Meadow

6129

Office & contact station
(1966?)

New Big Oak Flat
Road entrance area

6130-6135

Tent houses
NPS (1968)

Hodgdon Meadow

6136

Mather District Office
NPS (1970)

New Big Oak Flat
Road entrance

6137

Bathhouse
NPS (n. d.)

Hodgdon Meadow

I. Crane Flat to White Wolf

6200

NR

Ranger station
NPS (1934)

Merced Grove

6202

*

Fire lookout
NPS (1931)

Crane Flat

HS-03

*

Gin Flat cabin
(1883); walls stabilized 1961

Gin Flat

Tack shed
(n. d.)

Harden Lake

6220

Tent platform - double

White Wolf
campground

6251

Pumphouse
NPS (n. d.)

White Wolf

6252

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

White Wolf campground,
east end

6253

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

White Wolf campground,
center

6254

Comfort station
Malven & Nicklas (1958)

White Wolf campground,
west end

6255

Tent platform - double
(NPS (1959)

White Wolf campground,
rangers

6256

Tent platform - double

White Wolf campground,
naturalists

6257

Tent platform - double

White Wolf campground,
sanitation

6301

NR-’87

Lodge
Meyers (ca. 1927)

White Wolf

6302

NR-’87

Guest cabin
Meyers (ca. 1927)

White Wolf

6303

NR-’87

Guest cabin
Meyers (ca. 1927)

White Wolf

6304

NR-’87

Storage
Meyers (ca. 1927)

White Wolf

6312

NR-’87

Linen room
Meyers (ca. 1930); original
soda fountain

White Wolf

6313

NR-’87

Saddle shelter
Meyer (ca. 1930)

White Wolf

no #

Sewage plant
NPS (ca. 1974)

White Wolf

J. Other Properties

[1. Hetch Hetchy]

No #s

Dormitory
Owned, constructed by City of
San Francisco

Lake Eleanor

2-stall garage
Owned, constructed by City of
San Francisco (1948)

Lake Eleanor

Reservoir keeper’s cottage
Owned, constructed by City of
San Francisco (1948)

Lake Eleanor

*

Lake Eleanor Dam
Owned, constructed by
City of San Francisco (1918)

Lake Eleanor

Camp house
Owned by City of San Francisco
constructed by San Francisco PUC
(1951)

O’Shaughnessy Dam,
Hetch Hetchy Valley

*

O’Shaughnessy Dam
Owned, constructed by
City of San Francisco (1923;
raised in 1938)

Hetch Hetchy
Reservoir

2. Yosemite Valley

HS-14

NR

Diversion dam
NPS (1917)

Cascades

HS-19

NR-’87

Wawona tunnel
NPS (1930-33)

Yosemite Valley
Wawona Road

NR

Ahwahnee Hotel
YP&CC (1925)

Yosemite Valley

Bridges

Yosemite Valley

P-001

NR

Pohono (1938)

P-003

NR

Yosemite Creek (1922)

P-005

NR

Stoneman (1933)

P-006

NR

Ahwanhee (1928) (Kenneyville #1)

P-007

NR

Sugar Pine (1928) (Kenneyville #2)

P-008

NR

Clark’s (1928)

P-009

NR

Happy Isles (1929)

P-010

NR

Tenaya Creek (1928)

Camp 16-7 (1929)

El Capitan (1933)

Arch Rock footbridge (1934)

NR-’87

Vernal Fall (1929)

Silver Apron (1950s) (older stone abutments)

Other bridges in the valley for which numbers were not found include:

on the Merced River

Happy Isles foot bridges—West Fork,
Middle Fork, East Fork
Curry Housekeeping Bridge

Sentinel Bridge
Swinging Bridge
Old Village Bridge

on Tenaya Creek

Tenaya Cascade Bridge
Snow Creek Bridge
Mirror Lake Bridge
Tenaya Creek Stable Bridge

on Indian Creek

Lewis Clinic Foot Bridge
North Drive Bridge
Tecoya Dorm Bridge
Tecoya Garage Foot Bridge North
Tecoya Garage Foot Bridge South
Tecoya Road Bridge South
Indian Creek Road Bridge
Indian Creek Horse Bridge

on Royal Arch Creek

Pump House Bridge

on Yosemite Creek

Lost Arrow Creek Bridge
Yosemite Fall Foot Bridge
Lost Arrow Horse Bridges #2-7
All-Year Highway Bridge

The Yosemite Fall trail bridge at the top of the Upper Fall is the last truss bridge still in use on Yosemite trails. It was built in the 1920s, with new timbers installed on the original pattern in the 1950s. It will be included in the Yosemite Fall Trail National Register nomination.

NR

McCauley barn
McCauley (1883)

Big Meadow

NR

Saltbox barn
Meyer (1880s)

Big Meadow

NR

Cribwork barn
Meyer (late 1870s)

Big Meadow

4. Wawona

HS-08

Stella Lake ice reservoir
Wawona Hotel Co. (1886)

Wawona

HS-13

Chilnualna Fall ranger
patrol cabin (ca. 1930)

Wawona

HS-16

NR

Great Sierra Mine equipment
(from Great Sierra Mine HS)

Wawona (YPHC)

HS-17

Arboretum wall
USA (1904)

Wawona

HS-18

NR?

Covered bridge
Clark, Washburn (1858 & 1875)

Wawona

South Fork Merced River bridge
NPS (1931)

Wawona

5. Tuolumne Meadows

HS-02

*

Dana Fork cabin Tuolumne Meadows

(Note: all Golden Crown Mine structures nominated to National Register, status uncertain)

HS-04A

NR

Golden Crown Mine Cabin 1
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-04B

NR

Golden Crown Mine Cabin 2
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-04C

NR

Golden Crown Mine Cabin 3
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-04D

NR

Golden Crown Mine Cabin 4
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-04E

NR

Golden Crown Mine Shaft 1
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-04F

NR

Golden Crown Mine Shaft 2
(1879)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05A

NR

Great Sierra structure 1
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05B

NR

Great Sierra structure 2
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05C

NR

Great Sierra structure 3
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05D

NR

Great Sierra structure 4
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05E

NR

Great Sierra structure 5
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05F

NR

Great Sierra Dana Cabin
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05G

NR

Great Sierra Shaft 1
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-05H

NR

Great Sierra Shaft 2
(1881)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-06

*

Prospector’s cabin
(n. d.)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-07

NR

Soda Springs Enclosure
Lembert (1889)

Tuolumne Meadows

HS-12

*

Mono Pass trail cabin
(Dana Fork Cabin)
(n. d.)

Tuolumne Meadows

HISTORICAL BASE MAPS

Historical Maps of Yosemite National Park and Yosemite Valley, 1850 to 1915, by William and Mary Hood, ca. 1964 1150
Historical Base Map No. 1. Early Trails, Yosemite National Park, DSC, 1987 1192
No. 2. Early Roads in Yosemite National Park (5 sheets), DSC, 1987 1201
No. 3. Old Yosemite Village area, Development from 1859 to 1959, DSC, 1987 1212
No. 4. Yosemite National Park, showing roads, structures, sites, and archeological and historic districts, DSC, 1987 1214
No. 5. National Register sites and potential nominations, Yosemite Valley 1216

HISTORICAL MAPS OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK AND YOSEMITE VALLEY 1850 to 1915

by
William and Mary Hood

The following data comprises a backcountry survey conducted by the Hoods in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of the structures are no longer standing. The Hoods concentrated primarily on roads, trails, and various structures and did not note such resources as blazes, logging camps, or railroad grades. The survey does, however, provide useful information on properties with visible remains ca. 1964. (The spelling and abbreviations of the original document have been retained for the most part.)

A

Park Map

Buildings and Sites

1.

Names of Sites and Buildings.

2.

Detail Sketches of some of the sites, which have several buildings or sites for one number.

3.

Reference to old maps.

4.

Reference to Army Reports on Land Claims.

5.

Map Key

A 1
PARK BUILDINGS AND HISTORICAL SITES

Map
No.

Location

Name of Site

1

A-4

Cabin, Lake Vernon (T. Reid)

2

A-5

Cabin, Jack Main Canyon, 1 mile south of Bearup Lake

3

A-5

Cabin, Tiltill Mountain

4

B-3

Cabin, Cherry Valley (Lord’s, Homestead F. E. Morelos)

5 a

B-3

Cabin, North Shore Lake Eleanor (Kibbie)

b

B-3

Cabin, South Shore Lake Eleanor (Homestead Wolfe)

c

B-3

Patrol Post, Lake Eleanor

6 a

B-4

Cabin, Hog Ranch (Homestead C. Smith)

b

B-4

Patrol Post, Hog Ranch

7

B-4

Cabin, Miguel Meadows (M Herrera Homestead R. Jones)

8

B-4

Cabin, Poopenaut Valley (Homestead, Marshner)

9 a

B-4

Cabin, Beehive

b

B-4

Cabin, Beehive

10 a

B-4

Cabin, Lower Hetch-Hetchy (Homestead J. Screech)

b

B-4

Cabin, Patrol Post, Hetch Hetchy

11 a

B-4

Cabin, Middle Hetch Hetchy (Homestead N. Screech)

b

B-4

Cabin, Upper Hetch Hetchy (Homestead H. & E. Kallett)

12

B-4

Cabin, Smith Meadows or Milk Ranch (C. Smith)

13

B-4

Cabin, Mt. Gibson

14 a

B-4

Cabin, Tiltill Valley (Homestead E. Elwell)

b

B-4

Cabin, Tiltill Valley

15

B-4

Cabin, Harden Lake

16

B-5

Cabin, White Wolf (Homestead J. Ridley)

17 a

B-5

Corral, Rancheria Mt.

b

B-5

Cabin, Rancheria Mt.

18 a

B-6

Cabin, miner’s, Snow Flat

b

B-6

Cabin, miner’s, Snow Flat

19

B-6

Historical Site, Mariposa Battalion at Lake Tenaya Capture 35 Indians

20 a

B-6

Cabin, Tenaya Lake (J. Murphy)

b

B-6

Cabin, Tenaya Lake (J. Murphy)

21

B-6

Cabin, Tenaya Lake east end

22 a

B-6

Cabin, Soda Springs (J. B. Lembert)

b

B-6

Cabin, Soda Springs (J. McCauley)

c

B-6

Patrol Post, Soda Springs

23

B-6

Cabin, Junction of Tioga Rd. and Lyell Creek Tr.

24

B-6

Cabin, Elizabeth Lake Tr.

25

B-7

Cabin, Lower Dana Meadows

26

B-7

Cabins (7), Tioga Mines

27

B-7

Cabin, Great Sierra Mines, U. Gaylor Lakes

28

B-7

Cabin, Upper Dana Meadows

29

B-7

Cabin, Upper Mono P. Trail

30

B-7

Cabin, Lower Mono P. Trail

31

B-7

Cabin, Mt. Gibbs (Gus Corde)

32

B-7

Cabins (5), Mono Pass (Ella Bloss)

33

B-7

Cabins (2), Avalanche, Mt. Gibbs

34

C-1

Settlement, Big Oak Flat

35

C-1

Settlement, Groveland, 1st Garrotte

36

C-1

Settlement, Coulterville

37

C-2

Hotel, Bower Cave

38

C-3

Ranch, Bull Creek (Black’s)

39

C-3

Ranch, Harden’s

40

C-3

Hotel, Crocker’s Station

41

C-3

Cabin, Coulterville Road (Henry Rose)

42

C-3

Cabin, Hazel Green (Homestead James Halstead)

43

C-3

Ranch and Stage Station (Hodgdon’s) (5 structures)

44

C-4

Patrol Post, Merced Grove

45

C-4

Cabin, 2 miles west of Aspen Valley

46 a

C-4

Cabins, Crane Flat (Homesteads, James Martin, Ann Gabin)

b

C-4

Patrol Post, Crane Flat

47 a

C-4

Cabin, El Portal (J. B. Lembert, Homestead Wharton)

b

C-4

Cabin, El Portal, south side of river

48

C-4

Ranch, McCauley’s near Big Meadow (2 structures)

49 a

C-4

Cabin, Aspen Meadows (Hodgdon’s summer)

b

C-4

Cabin, (Babcock’s Cache)

c

C-4

Patrol Post, Aspen Meadows

50

C-4

Cabin, Gin Flat (J. Curtin)

51 a

C-4

Stage Station, Tamarack Flat (Homestead David Woods)

b

C-4

Lodge and Store, Tamarack Flat

52

C-4

Historical Site, “Standpoint of Silence”

53 a

C-4

Cabin, Big Meadow (Anderson’s)

b

C-4

Cabin, Big Meadow (Meyer’s)

c

C-4

Cabin, Big Meadow (Rutherford’s)

54 a

C-4

Historical Site, Mariposa Battalion met 72 Indians

b

C-4

Stage Station, Grouse Creek (The Hermitage)

55

E-3

Settlement, Agua Fria, Mariposa Battalion enlisted here

56

C-5

Cabin, McGurk Meadow

57

C-5

Cabin, Bridalveil Meadows (Westfall’s)
Hotel Same Site (Peregoys Mountain View House)

58

C-5

Cabin, Bridalveil Meadows (Ostrander’s)

59

C-5

Cabin, Mono Meadow (Milt Egan’s)

60

D-2

Settlement, Bear Valley (Fremont’s Headquarters)

61 a

D-3

Cabins, Hite’s Cove

b

D-3

Mine, Hite’s Cove

62 a

C-4

Ranch (Henness)

b

C-4

Cabin, North of Merced River near Henness Ranch

63

D-4

Historical Site, Indian Ranchero captured by Mar. Bat.

64

D-4

Historical Site, Bishop’s Camp, occupied by Mar. Bat.

65

D-4

Stage Station, Chinquapin (2 structures)

66

D-4

Stage Station, 11 mile (Homestead West Woods) (2 structures)

67

D-4

Stage Station, 8 mile (2 structures)

68

D-4

Cabin, Alder Creek

69 a

D-4

Cabin, Cunningham Flat (Cunningham’s)

b

D-4

Historical Site, Campground Mariposa Battalion

70

D-5

Camp A. E. Wood, Camp Hoyle later on same site

71

D-5

Hotel and Settlement, Wawona

72

D-5

Cabin, Crescent Lake (Jim Duncan)

73

74

D-5

Cabin, Johnson Lake (Homestead Acosta)

75 a

D-6

Cabin, Buck Camp

b

D-6

Patrol Post, Buck Camp

76

D-8

Cabin, Devil Post Pile

77

E-3

Settlement, Mariposa

78 a

E-3

Settlement, Mormon Bar

b

E-3

Historical Site, Campsite of Mariposa Battalion

79

E-4

Historical Site, Campsite of Mariposa Battalion

80

D-4

Cabin (P. R. Gibson’s)

81

E-5

Patrol Post, Lower Mariposa Grove

82

D-5

Cabin, Upper Mariposa Grove

83

D-5

Cabins, Biledo Meadow (2 structures)

84

C-1

Settlement, 2nd Garrotte

85

C-2

Ranch (Sprague’s)

86

C-2

Flume, Golden Rock

87

C-2

Ranch (Hamilton’s)

88

C-3

Ranch, Colfax Springs (Elwell’s)

89

C-2

Cabin, Deer Flat

90

C-3

Cabin, Jenkin’s Mill

91

C-3

Cabin, Big Grizzly Flat (Homestead S. Varain)

92

C-4

Historical Site, Buena Vista Gap, 1st View of Yosemite

93

C-5

Historical Site, Army Target Range

94

C-5

Cabin, Last Water (Anderson’s)

95

C-6

Cabin, Hopkins Meadow

96

E-3

Settlement, Bridgeport

97

E-4

Hotel, Lard’s - later Hogan’s

98

D-5

Cabin, Empire Meadow

99

D-5

Cabin (Westfall’s)

100

D-5

Cabin (Sussman’s)

101

D-5

Cabin, Turner Meadows

102

D-3

Sawmill, Clark and Cook’s

103

D-3

Sawmill, Snyder Gulch

104

E-4

Historical Site, Stage Holdup

105

C-3

Cabin, Anderson Flat

106

D-4

Cabin, Bear Wallow near Devil Pk (Homestead C. H. Murphy)

107

A-5

Corral, Benson Lake

108

C-3

Stage Station, Coulterville Road (3 structures

109

B-3

Cabin, 2 miles southwest of Hog Ranch

110

B-3

Cabin, 1 mile north of Ackerson Meadow on Hog Ranch Road

111

B-3

Cabin, Ackerson Meadow

112

B-3

Cabin, 1 mile southwest of Hog Ranch

113

B-7

Cabin, Walker Lake (Chumbeau’s)

114

C-3

Stage Station, Carlin Meadow

115

B-4

Cabin, 2 miles east of Hog Ranch on Hetch Hetchy Road

116

C-5

Cabin, Porcupine Flat on Tioga Road

117

B-3

Ranch (Drew’s)

118

E-4

Cabin (De Long’s)

119 a

E-4

Hotel (White and Hatch’s)

b

E-4

Sawmill (White and Hatch’s)

120

E-4

Cabin (Thompson’s)

121

B-6

Cabin and Corral, foot of Cathedral Trail, Tuolumne Meadows

122

E-3

Cabins (Sebastapol)

123

E-4

Cabins, Cold Spring’s (Conway’s) (2 structures)

124

D-4

Cabin, on South Fork of Merced River at Mouth of Devils Gulch

125 a

D-3

Settlement, Jerseydale

b

D-3

Sawmill, Jerseydale

126

C-6

Cabin, Little Yosemite

127

B-3

Cabin on road between Hog Ranch and Drew Ranch

128

D-3

Savage’s Trading Post

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A 3
REFERENCES TO OLD MAPS
Park Cabins and Settlements

’68

Hoffman and Gardner Map

’74

Hetch-Hetchy Map in Whitney Guide

’93

J. N. LeConte Jan. 6 1893 Map

’96

Army Map McClure, Benson et al

’98

Army Map - 1 inch to Mile Benson

’07

U. S. G. S. Topog. Map

’28

U. S. G. S. Topog. Map

’48

U. S. G. S. Topog. Map

Uhte

Rbt. F. Uhte Sierra Club Bull. May 1951

Bingaman

Recollections of John Bingaman 1963

1

On map

X

Not on map

0

Off map

’68

’93

’96

’98

’07

’28

’48

Uhte

P.C.P.

Bingaman 1963

Cabins, Park

1

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

1

Foundation of
rotten logs 40

2

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

X

3

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

Little left 40

4

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

5a

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

1

Remains below high
water of reservoir

5b

X

1

X

X

1

X

X

X

5c

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

6a

1

1 (2)

1

1

X

X

X

X

Fair condition
in 40’s

6b

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

7

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

1

Fair condition
in late 50’s

8

X

X

1

X

1

1

1

X

X

9a

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

9b

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

1 R168

Fair condition
early 50’s

10a

X

X

X

1

1

1

X

X

Shown under
water in ’28

10b

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

Cabin ’74,
Patrol Post ’07

11a

X

1

1

X

1

1

X

X

Fair condition
early 20’s
Flooded ’25

Under water ’28
Cabin 74

11b

X

X

X

X

1

1

X

X

Under Water ’28

12

1

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1 R173

Fair shape
late 50’s

Milk Ranch ’68

13

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

14a

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

Bad shape
early 50’s

14b

X

X

X

1

1

1

1

X

15

X

X

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

16

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

Good shape 20’s
Torn Down

17a

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

X

17b

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

Fair shape 40’s

18a

X

X

X

X

1

1

1

1

Fair in 30’s
Now in ruins

18b

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

20a

X

1

X

1

1

X

X

1

X

20b

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

21

X

X

X

X

1

1

X

X

Still OK

22a

X

1

1

1

1

1 (3)

1 (2)

1

22b

X

X

X

X

X

1

1

1

22c

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

23

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

?

24

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

1 R171

Fair condition
in 40’s

25

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

X

1 R170

X

26

X

X

1

1 (2)

1 (5)

1 (8)

1 (7)

X

27

X

X

X

1 Mine

X

X

X

X

1 R172

28

X

X

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

Fair in 50’s
Now 4 logs

29

X

1

X

X

1

X

X

X

1 R177

30

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

1 R178

Still there

31

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

R176

32

X

X

1 (1)

1 (1)

X

X

X

1

1 R163
-R167

5 cabins still
there

33

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1 R174
R175

34

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

35

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

36

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

37

1 (2)

1 (5)

0

0

0

0

0

0

38

1 (5)

1 (3)

X

X

1 (4)

1 (4)

1 (4)

X

39

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

X

40

X

1 (2)

1 (2)

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (3)

X

Sequoia in ’07

41

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

X

42

1

1 (3)

1

1

1

1

1

1

43

X

1 (2)

1

1 (3)

1 (2)

1 (2)

1 ?

1

44

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

Patrol Post

45

X

X

1

X

X

1

1

X

Ranger Station
here in ’28

46a

1

1 (3)

1

1 (3)

1

1 (2)

1 (2)

1

(cabins)

46b

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

(Patrol Post)

47a

1

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

47b

1

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

48

X

X

1

1 (2)

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (3)

X

49a

X

1

1

X

1

1 (4)

1 (4)

1

49b

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

49c

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

50

X

1 (2)

1

1

1

1

1

1

51a

1

1

1

1

1

1

X

1

51b

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

53a

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

X

53b

X

1

X

1

1

1

1

X

53c

X

1

X

1

1

1

1

X

54

X

X

1

1

1 (2)

X

X

X

56

X

X

1 ?

1

X

X

1 ?

1

1 R160

57

1

1

X

X

X

X

Foundations
left in early 30’s

Westfalls in
’63

58

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

59

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

60

1

1 (4)

0

0

0

0

0

0

61a

1

1 (2)

1 (2)

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (4)

1 (4)

X

Mislocated on
Merced ’68

61b

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

62a

X

1

1

1 (3)

1

1

1

X

62b

X

1 (2)

1

1

X

X

X

X

65

X

X

1

1

1 (2)

1 (3)

1 (5)

X

X Remembers no
Stage Station

’07, ’28, ’48
include Ranger
Station

66

X

1

1

1

1 (2)

X

X

X

Fair condition
20’s; Torn down
30’s.

67

X

X

1

1

1 (2)

X

X

X

Fair condition
20’s; Torn down
30’s.

68

X

X

X

1

1

1 (3)

1 (4)

X

Entrance Sta.
in ’28

69a

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

70

X

X

1

1

1

1 (4)

1 (4)

X

Camp Kayle 22-32
4 cabins
demolished 1933

71

1

1 (4)

1

1 (6)

1

1

1

X

Clark’s Ranch
in ’68, ’07,
’28, ’48 many
buildings

72

X

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

Foundations
still there

74

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

75a

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

75b

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

76

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

77

1

1 (7)

0

0

0

0

0

0

78

1

1 (4)

0

0

0

0

0

0

80

X

X

1

X

1

1

1

X

81

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

82

X

X

1

X

X

1

1

1

83

1

1

0

1

1 (4)

1 (3)

1 (4)

1 (2)

84

1 (8)

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

85

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

86

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

87

X

1 (3)

0

0

0

0

0

0

88

X

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

89

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

90

X

1

1

1

1

1

1

X

91

X

X

X

1 (2)

1 (2)

1 (2)

1 (2)

X

94

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

95

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

’93 Show Meadow
but no cabin

96

X

1 (4)

0

0

0

0

0

0

97

X

X

0

0

1

1

1

X

98

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

1

Rock Foundation
in 30’s

99

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

Rock Foundation
in 30’s

100

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

Rock Foundation
in 30’s

101

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

1

105

1

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

106

X

X

1

1

1

1

1

X

107

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

X

108

X

1 (3)

0

0

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (3)

X

109

X

X

X

X

1

1

1

X

110

X

X

X

X

1

1

1

X

X

111

1 (2)

1

X

1

1

1

1

X

Still there

’68 Wades Ranch

112

X

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

Still there

113

X

1

1

1

?

1

1

X

114

X

X

X

1 (4)

X

X

X

X

115

1

1

X

X

X

X

X

X

116

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

117

1

1 (2)

0

0

0

0

0

0

118

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

119

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

120

1

X

0

0

0

0

0

0

121ab

X

X

1 a

X

1 b

1 c

1 d

X

a Corral
bed Cabin

122

X

1 (3)

0

0

0

0

0

0

123

X

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

124

X

X

1

1

X

X

X

X

125

X

X

1

1 (3)

1 (3)

1 (2)

1 (4)

X

125a

X

X

X

1

X

X

X

X

126

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Saw ruins 1/2 mile
west of Bunnell
Cascades

127

X

X

X

1

1

1

1

X

128

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

A 4
References to Acting Superintendent’s Report 1903
Park Cabins. Homestead or Preemption Entries

Map No.

Map Area

Location

Owner

Date of
Entry

1

A - 4

Lake Vernon

Thos. R. Reed

1888

4

B-3

Cherry Valley

Faustino E. Morelos

1882

5 a

B-3

Lake Eleanor (N. Shore)

Horace G. Kibbe

1881

5 b

B-3

Lake Eleanor (S. Shore)

Herman Wolfe

1881

6

B-4

Hog Ranch

Katherine Kellett

1885

6

B-4

Hog Ranch

Cyrill C. Smith

1881

7

B-4

Miguel Meadows

Seth R. Holmes

1883

8

B-4

Poopenaut Valley

George Marschner

1888

10 a

B-4

Lower Hetch-Hetchy

Joseph Screech

1882

11 a

B-4

Middle Hetch-Hetchy

S. Shore Nathan Screech

1882

11 b

B-4

Upper Hetch-Hetchy

Horatio S. Kellett

1885

11 b

B-4

Upper Hetch-Hetchy

Evaline E. Kellett

1884

14 a

B-4

Til-till Valley

Eugene M. Elwell

1887

16

B-5

White Wolf

Johnson Ridley

1884

20

B-6

Tenaya Lake

John L. Murphy

1886

22 a

B-6

Tuolumne Soda Springs

John B. Lembert

1885

40

C-3

Crocker’s Hotel

Henry R. Crocker

1881

41

C-3

Coulterville Road 2 m West of Hazel Green

Henry Rose

1888

42

C-3

Hazel Green Station

James Halstead

1885

43

C-3

Hodgdon’s Ranch

Thomas J. Hodgdon

1881

46

C-4

Crane Flat

James F. Martin

1882

46

C-4

Crane Flat

Ann Gobin

1883

47 a

C-4

1 Mile below El Portal

Leonidas G. Wharton

1884

48

C-4

McCauley’s Ranch near Big Meadow

James McCauley

1884

49 a

C-4

Aspen Valley

Thomas J. Hodgdon

1881

51

C-4

Tamarack Flat

David Woods

1884

53

C-4

Big Meadow

John Peter Meson

1884

53

C-4

Big Meadow

Thos. O. Rutherford

1884

53

C-4

Big Meadow

George Meyer

1884

56

C-5

Illilouette Canyon - Filed 1 Range too far East

Thomas. Again

1885

61

C-4

Hites Cove

John R. Hite

1879

62

C-4

Henness Ranch

Oliver W. Ward

1888

66

D-4

11-Mile Station Wawona Road

John W. Wood

1885

69

D-4

Cunningham Flat

Stephen M. Cunningham

1887

74

D-5

Johnson Lake

Emeterio Acosta

1886

91

C-3

Big Grizzly Flat

Julian Varain

1889

106

D-4

Near Devil Peak

Charles H. Murphy

1886

110

B-3

Hog Ranch Road

Irwin J. Buckley

1882

111

B-3

Ackerson Meadow

James F. Ackerson

1881

127

B-3

Hog Ranch - Drew Ranch Rd.

Carson Allen

1881

A 5
Park Map Key 1850 - 1915

Boundaries

Brown:

Act of

June 11th, 1906

Yellow:

Oct. 1st, 1890

Dotted Brown:

Feb. 1st, 1905

Orange:

Yosemite Grant

Pencil:

Area covered by Hood Valley Map

Trails:

Dotted -
Green, pre 1890
Red, post 1890

Roads

Double Line:
Green, pre 1890
Red, post 1890

Telegraph and/or Telephone Lines:

Single Line: Purple:

Railway Red
(Note: Lumber r.r. not included - built post 1915)
Army post

Building

Mariposa Battalion Site

Chapel

B

Park Map

1.

Roads and Trails listed.

2.

Telegraph and Telephones listed.

3.

Reference to Army Reports on Roads and Trails.
Also reference to earliest map on which trail or road is found.

B 1

Roads and rails
Yosemite Park Historical Map

Roads

1.

Big Oak Flat Road

C1 to C4

2.

Coulterville Road

C2 to C4

3.

Hog Ranch Road

C3 to B4

4.

Tioga Road

C3 to B7

5.

Leevining Road

B7 to A8

6.

El Portal Big Meadow Road

C4

7.

Merced Gorge Road (El Portal - Yosemite Valley)

C4

8.

Chinquapin to Glacier Point Road

D4 to C5

9.

Mariposa to Wawona to Yosemite Road

E3 to D5 to C5

9a.

Devil Peak Road

D4

10.

Wawona to Mariposa Grove Road

D5

Trails

11.

Long Barn Trail

B3

12.

Flora Lake Trail

B3 to A4

13.

Lake Eleanor Trail

B4 to B3

14.

Poopenaut Valley Trail

B4 to B3

15.

Beehive Trail

B3 to B4

16.

Jack Main Trail

A4 to A5

17.

Lake Vernon Trail

B4

18.

Hetch Hetchy Valley Trail

B4

19.

Tiltill Trail

B4 to A5

20.

Tilden Lake Trail

A5

21.

Rancheria Trail

B4 to B5

22.

Bear Valley Trail

B5 to A5

23.

Kerrick Canyon Trail

A5 to A6

24.

Pleasant Valley Trail

B5

25.

Benson Lake Trail

A5 to B6 to A5

26.

Smedberg Lake Trail

B5 to A6

27.

Slide Mt. Trail

A6

28.

Burro Pass Trail

A6

29.

Virginia Pass Trail

B6 to A7

30.

Cold Canyon Trail

B6

31.

Mt. Conness Trail

B6

32.

Lundy Lake Trail

B7 to A7

33.

Old Mono Trail - North Route

C4 to B8

34.

Big Oak Flat Trail

C1 to C4

35.

Gentry Fork of Old Mono Trail

C4 to C5

36.

Old Trail to Hog Ranch, north of Middle Fork of Tuolumne R.

C3 to B3

37.

Old Trail to Hog Ranch from Hardin Ranch

C3 to B3

38.

Smith Meadow Trail

B4

39.

Aspen Valley Trail from Tamarack Flat

C4

40.

White Wolf Branch of Aspen Valley Trail

C4 to B5

41.

Hardin Lake Trail

B4

42.

Ten Lakes Trail

B5

43.

McGee Lake Trail

B6

44.

Coulterville Trail

C3 to C4

45.

Trail Connecting Coulterville Rd. (2 miles west of Hazel Green) and Big Oak Flat Road (near Crocker’s)

C3

46.

Bull Creek Trail

C3

47.

Big Grizzly Flat Trail

C3

48.

Jenkins Hill [Mill] Trail

C3 to C4

49.

Big Meadow to El Portal Trail

C4

50.

Merced Gorge Trail

C4

51.

Indian Canyon Trail

C5

52.

Yosemite Fall Trail

C5

53.

North Dome Trail

C5

54.

Snow Creek Trail

C5 to C6

55.

Clouds Rest Trail

C6

56.

Forsyth Trail

C6

57.

Mono Trail - Southern Route

C5 to B6

58.

Merced Lake Trail

C6

59.

Tuolumne Pass Trail

C6 to B7

60.

Babcock Lake Trail

C6

61.

Trail from Fletcher Lake to Lyell Fork at mouth of Ireland Creek

C7

62.

Lyell Fork Trail

B6 to C7

63.

Thousand Island Lake Trail

C7 to C8

64.

Parker Pass Trail

B7 to C8

65.

Gem Lake Trail

C8

66.

Agnew Meadow Trail

C8 to D8

67.

Hites Cove Trail

D3 to D4

68.

Henness Trail

D4 to C4

69.

Pinoche Peak Trail

D3 to D4

70.

Mariposa to Wawona Trail

E3 to D5

71.

Wawona to Chinquapin to Yosemite Trail

D5 to C5

72.

Lightning Trail - Mariposa Grove to Wawona

D5

73.

Alder Creek Trail “Old Mariposa Trail” Wawona to Yosemite Valley

D5 to C5

74.

Buck Camp Trail—Giacier Pt Road to Buck C.

D5 to D6

75.

Ostrander Lake Fork of Buck Camp Trail

D5

76.

Chilnualna Fall Trail

D5

77.

Johnson Lake Trail

D5

78.

Merced Pass Trail

C5 to D6

79.

Trail from Illilouette Creek to Merced Lake via Starr King Meadows

C6

80.

Moraine Meadow Trail

D6

81.

Chiquito Lake Trail

D6 to E7

82.

Jackass Meadow Trail

E6 to D7

83.

Fernandez Pass Trail

D6 to D7

84.

Post Peak Trail

D6 to D7

85.

Isberg Pass Trail

C6 to D7

86.

Little Jackass Trail

D7

87.

Devil Postpile Trail

D7 to D8

88.

Fish Creek Trail

D8 to E8

89.

Branch of Fish Creek Trail to Soda Springs

D8

90.

North Trail over Chowchilla Mt.

E4 to E3

91.

Bridgeport to Mormon Bar

E3

92.

Hazel Green to Hodgdon Ranch

C3

93.

Mammoth City Trail. Fresno Flats to Mammoth City

E6 to E7

94.

Alkali Creek Trail

B6

95.

Tim Carlin Trail

C3 to C4

96.

Hetch-Hetchy Valley Trail N. Bank

B4

97.

Hetch-Hetchy Valley Trail S. Bank

B4

98.

South Branch of Alder Creek Trail. Camp A. E. Wood to Mariposa Road at Gibsons

D4

99.

Turner Md. to back of Horse Ridge

D5

100.

Pate Valley Tr. Harden L to Pleasant Valley Trail

B5

B 2
Yosemite National Park Telegraph and Telephone Lines

———

Telegraph and Telephone Lines

Telephone Lines

Telegraph Lines

Telegraph and telephone lines constructed at approximately same time

1. Sonora-Yosemite Telegraph line. First service May 25th, 1872, but abandoned after 1874. Constructed by H. L. Street.

2. Telegraph Line Berenda—Grants Sulphur Springs—Wawona Yosemite. Constructed by Western Union 1882.

3. A temporary telephone line from El Portal to Yos. V was installed in 1907 by Yos. Trans Co., Yos Terminal Hotel Co., and Mr. Cook of Sentinel Hotel to facilitate reservations. Government also used it. In 1908 Pac. T & T constructed both telephone and telegraph lines connecting Yosemite with outside world via El Portal and Merced Canyon.

4. Hetch-Hetchy telephone line installed in 15 days by Capt. Wells of 14th Cavalry with Army equipment in 1908.

5. Branch phone line to L. Eleanor from Hetch-Hetchy, 1909.

6. Branch phone line to Aspen Valley from Tamarack Flat, 1910.

7. Branch phone line to Merced G from Crane Flat, 1909.

8. Early phone line connecting Glacier Pt., Stoneman H Stables, Guardians of 1891.

9. Branch line to Soda Sp from Valley, 1909. There was an earlier line in 1883 intended to connect Bodie and Sonora by telegraph, but we only have record of a phone connection which did not survive the winter. There is no evidence that the Sonora-Yosemite line was restored.

10. Lundy-Bennettville telephone line opened for service March 1882 and closed with the Tioga Mine in 1884.

11. Yosemite-Wawona telephone line Army 1909.

12. Mariposa B. T. branch telephone line Army 1909.

13. Buck Camp branch telephone line Army 1910.

B 3
MAP REFERENCES
Park Roads and Trails

’68

Hoffman and Gardiner

’93

J. N. LeConte

’96

Army Map McClure, Benson et al

’98

Army Map 1 inch to Mile Benson

’07

U. S. G. S

1

On map

X

Not shown on map

0

Off map

Park Roads

H & G
1868

LeConte
1893

McClure
1895

Mc&Ben
1893

1907

1

a

1

1

1

1

a) Schlictman shows road reached Hardin
Ranch in ’68. H&G shows road to
Spragues Ranch

2

a

1

1

1

1

a) Road only to Black’s on Fall
Creek

3

X

1

1

1

1

4

X

1

1

1

1

5

X

b

c

X

1

b,c) Road reaches up to
Rockslide

6

X

X

e

d

e

c,d,e) From Big Meadow to
McCauley’s R.

7

X

X

X

X

1

8

X

1 b

1

1

1

b) Shows junction at 11 mile,
probably error.

9

a

1

1

1

1

a) Road reached Chowchilla Cr.

10

X

X

1

1

1

10a

X

1

1

1

1

10b

X

1

1

1

1

Park Trails

11

X

1

1

1

1

12

X

X

X

X

1

13

X

1

1

1

1

14

X

X

1

1

1

15

X

1

1

1

1

16

X

X

1

1

1

17

X

1

1

1

1

18

1

1

1

1

1

19

X

1

1 c

1

1

c) Dim

20

X

X

X

X

1

21

X

X

1

1

1

22

X

1

1

1

23

X

X

1

1 d

1

c) Dim trail from Pleasant V into
Morrick C via the Sink

24

X

X

1

1

1

25

X

X

1

1

1

26

X

X

1

1

1

27

X

X

X

X

1

28

X

X

1

X d

1

d) A rough trail goes up Matterhorn
Canyon and over into and down
Spiller Canyon

29

X

1

1 c

1

1

c) Dim.

30

X

1

1 c

1

1

c) Dim.

31

X

1

1

1

1

32

X

X

1

1

1

33

X

X

1 c

1 d

X

c,d) Tamarack Flat to Porcupine Flat
c,d) Tuolumne Meadows to Walker L

34

1

b

c

d

e

Superseded by road

35

1

1

1

1

X

36

1

b

c

d

e

Superseded by road

37

1

X

1

X

X

38

a

X

1

1

1

a) Short trail to Milk Ranch from
Hetch-Hetchy Trail

39

X

X

1

1

1

40

X

X

1

1

1

41

X

X

1

1

1

42

X

X

1

1

1

43

X

X

1 c

1 d

1

c,d) Also a branch to Tioga Road
up Cathedral Creek

44

1 a

b

c

d

e

a) From Blacks at Bull Creek
b,c,d,e) Superseded by road

45

X

X

1

1

1

46

X

X

1

1

1

47

X

X

1 c

1

1 e

c) Dim. e) Hazel Green to
Big Grizzly Flat Only

48

X

1

1

1

e

e) Superseded by RR Along Merced C

49

X

1

1 c

1 d

1 e

c,d,e) El Portal to McCauley’s R

50

X

1 b

1 c

1 d

e

b,c,d) Up N bank to Coulterville Rd.
foot from
e)Superseded by road

51

X

X

X

X

X

52

X

1

1

1

1

53

X

X

X

X

X

54

X

X

X

X

X

55

X

1 b

1 c

1 d

1 e

b,d) Front & back from Clouds Rest
c) Front. Dim extension to Tenya L
e) Front

56

X

X

1 c

X

X

c) Dim to Tenya L - see 55

57

1

1 b

1

1

1

b) Little Yosemite to Tuolumne M

58

X

X

X

X

1 e

e) Upper Trail

59

X

X

1 c

1 d

1

c) Connects w/Mt. Clark Trail
d) Connects w/Isberg Pass Trail

60

X

X

1

1

1

61

X

X

X

1

1

62

X

X

1

1

1

63

X

1 b

1

1

1

b) From 1000 Is L South

64

X

X

1

1

1

65

X

X

1

1

1

66

X

1

1 c

1

1

c) High and low trail

67

X a

1 b

1 c

1 d

1

a) Hites Cove shown at Junction of
S. Fork with Merced R. (error).
b) Indicated as road Snyders G. to
Merced R.
c,d) Hites Cove to Wards on S. Bank

69

X

X

1 c

1 d

1

c,d) Connects with Henness Tr.

70

1

b

c

d

e

b,c,d,e) Superseded by road

71

X

X

X

X

X

Indian Trail followed approx. route
of old Wawona Yosemite Rd.

72

1

X

1

1

1

73

1

1 b

1

1

e

b)No trail Peregoy Mds. to new
Inspiration Pt.
e)New trail Peregoy Mds. to Old
Inspiration Pt.

74

X

X

1

1

1

75

X

X

X

X

1

76

X

X

1

1

1

77

X

X

1

1

1

78

X

X

1

1

1

79

X

X

1

d

1

d) Ends between Mt. Clark & Merced L

80

X

X

1

1

1

81

X

X

1

1

1

82

X

1

1

1

1

83

X

X

1

1

1

84

X

X

X

X

1

85

X

X

1

1

1

86

X

X

1

1

1

87

X

1

1

1

1

88

X

1

1

1

1

89

X

1

X

X

1

90

X

X

1

X

1

91

X

1

0

0

0

92

X

1

1

1

1

93

1 a

1

0

0

0

a) An earlier version labeled
Bisalls Ranch to Long Valley

94

X

X

1

1

1

95

X

X

1

1

1

96

X

X

1

1

1

97

X

1

1

1

1

Also ’74 Hetch-Hetchy Map-Whitney Guide

98

X

X

1

1

1

99

X

X

1

1

X

North of modern trail to Chilnualna
Lakes. A dead end trail.

100

X

X

1

1

X

An early route.
Modern Trail constr. ’19, ’20.

REFERENCES TO ARMY REPORTS

Park Roads and Trails
(Also Earliest Map)

’68 Hoffman and Gardiner

’93 J. N. LeConte

MAPS

’96 Army Map McClure Benson et al

’98 Army Map, 1 inch to mile Benson

’07 U. S. G. S.

Reports Referred to Are:

Reports of Acting Superintendents of
Yosemite National Park 1891 - 1912

Park Road

Earliest
Map Found

Acting
Supt. Report

Constructed

Reconstructed

Repair

1

’93

’91,93,97,98, 08,09,10 04

56-74

2

’93

91,93,97,98, 08,09,10 04

70-74

3

’93

4

’93

91,96,97,98, 99,05,06,07, 08,09,10 04

83

1915

5

(’93 up to Rockslide
(’07 joins Tioga R

1915

6

’28

’13

7

’07

08,09,10,11 04

’07

8

’93

’82

9

’93

91,93,97,98,08, 09,10 04

’75

10

’96

’79

10a

’93

10b

’93

’77

Park Trails

11

’93

12

’07

13

’93

’10

’11, ’12

14

’96

’03

15

’93

16

’96

’05 to junction of Tiltill Trail

17

’93

’06, ’12

’02

18

’68

’98, ’99

’07, ’12

’99, ’03, ’04, ’11

19

’93

’98

’05, Jack Main to Tiltill
’06, Hetch H to Tiltill
’12

’99, ’02

20

’07

’07

21

’96

’06 5 Miles above Upper Bridge
’12

’03

22

’96

’08

23

’96

’06

24

’96

’06

’03, ’12

25

’96

’12

26

’96

’12

’04

27

’07

’08

28

’96

29

’93

’91

30

’93

’04

31

’93

’91,’96

32

’96

33

’68

’91

34

’68

35

’68

36

’68

37

’68

38

’96

39

’96

’10

40

’96

41

’96

42

’96

43

’96

’12

’03

44

’68

45

’96

46

’96

47

’96

48

’93

’91

49

’93

50

’93

51

’--

52

’93

’12

53

’--

’12

54

’--

’10

55

’93
’96 Dim)
Temp)

’12

56

’28 Forsyth

’12

57

’68

’91

’12

58

’07

’04

’11

’12

59

’96

60

’96

61

’98

62

’96

63

’93

64

’96

’02

65

’96

’02

66

’96

’02

67

’96

’91

68

’96

69

’96

70

’68

71

’--

72

’96

73

’93

’02, ’04

74

’96

’04

75

’07

76

’96

’99

77

’96

78

’96

79

’96

80

’96

81

’96

’12

82

’93

’11

83

’96

84

’07

’05

85

’96

’05

86

’96

87

’93

88

’93

89

’93

90

’96

91

’93

92

’93

93

’68

’79

94

’96

’12

95

’96

96

’96
Whitney
Hetch-Hetchy

’06

97

’74

98

’96

99

’96

100

’96

Modern Route ’19. ’20

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

HISTORICAL BASE MAP YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK

PART OF THE MASTER PLAN

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

[click to enlarge]

C

Valley Map

1.

Names of Sites

2.

Roads and Trails

3.

Legend.

Will send later (Sept. 1964):
References to Old Maps
Detail Maps:
Old Village -
Upper
Lower [not reproduced in this report]
Wawona, etc

C 1
YOSEMITE VALLEY MAP By Numbers

1.

Sawmill: Hutchings’

B-9

2.

Camp: Lost Arrow (formerly Camp Yosemite)

B-9

3.

Mariposa Battalion; Camp Site, 2nd exped.

B-9

4.

”     ”     ”     ”     1st     ”

B-9

5.

”     ”     ; Tenaya’s capture 2nd Exped.

B-10

6.

Sawmill: Gentry’s a) Gentry’s — b) Hutchinson’s

C-2

6.

Hotel:     ”

C-2

7.

Mariposa Battalion, 5 Indians captured, 2nd Exped.

C-8

8.

Bridge: Coulter’s, later Folsom

C-8

9.

Lower Village (see detail map)

C-8 & 9

10.

Lodge Area     (“     ”     ”)

C-9

11.

Upper Village (“     ”     ”)

C-9

12.

Cabin: Hutchings’ winter, and barn

C-9

12.

Orchard:     ”     and hayshed

C-9

12.

Cabin: Muir’s first

C-9

13.

Bridge: Sentinel

C-9

14.

Cemetery: (see Y. N. N. Vol. 38-No. 1 (May 1959), see map)

C-9

15.

Cabin: at Union Point (also listed as saloon, shelter)

C-9

16.

Village: Kennyville (see detail map)

C-10

17.

Le Conte Lodge (moved 1919)

C-10

18.

Camp: Curry

C-10

19.

Bridge: Stoneman

C-10

20.

Hotel: Stoneman House

C-10

20.

Saloon:     ”     ”

C-10

21.

Cabin: Manet’s

C-10

21.

Orchard: Lamon’s south

C-10

22.

Stables: Upper Lick House

C-10 & 11

23.

Cabin: Muir’s “Lost” and Lamon’s north orchard

C-11

24.

” ”     Lamon’s first (No. 16 L’s winter cabin)
(and Lamon’s east orchard)

C-11

25.

Bridge: Clark’s (also called Moraine & Georgia Ave.)

C-11

26.

Cabin: Anderson — east bank (Trail crew cabin)

D-11

26.

Bridge: Happy Isles — also Tis-ia-ack, Secretary

D-11

26.

Power House—near Happy Isles (west bank)

D-11

27.

Buildings: Boat House at Mirror Lake

C-11

27.

”     ” Ice     ”     ”     ”     ”

C-11

28.

Site: “Standpoint of Silence”

D-1

29.

Blacksmith: “Vulcan’s Smithy”

D-1

30.

Cabin: Dick Whorton’s

D-2

31.

” ”     Shelter (road crew)

D-4

32.

Site: “Rainbow View” or “Oh My! Point”

D-4

33.

Cabin: Shelter (mailman’s winter refuge)

D-4

34.

Mariposa Battalion: 1st Exped: forded river

D-5

35.

Cabin: Black Springs

D-5

36.

Bridge: El Capitan

D-6

37.

Hayshed: El Capitan Meadow

D-7

38.

Slaughter-house:

D-8

39.

Folsom Rancheria—two squaw-houses

D-8

40.

Ferry & Ford, Whitley’s, Coulter’s or Folsom

D-8

40.

Mariposa Battalion, 1st Exp. crossed river

D-8

41.

Bridge: Wildcat, “Diamond Cascade,” etc.

D-12

42.

Hotel: Mountain House (McCauley’s)

D-10

42.

Stables:

D-10

43.

Site: Anderson’s first ascent of Half Dome

C-13

43.

” ” Conway’s attempted “     ”     ” ”

C-13

44.

” ” Hutching’s & Tirrel’s attempted ascent of Half Dome

C-13

45.

Mariposa Battalion, 1st Exped. discovers Vernal & Nevada Falls

D-12

46.

Hotel: Snow’s Casa Nevada

D-12

47.

Conway’s “Staircase” see Trails No. 33

D-13

47.

Bridge: Nevada Fall

D-13

48.

Cabin: Fort Monroe

E-3

48.

Stage stables

D-3

49.

Cabin: Shelter, Henry Wilmer, “The Hermitage”

E-3

50.

Mariposa Battalion: 1st Exped. “First View of the Valley”

E-3

51.

Cabin: Artist Point or Trail maintenance

E-3

52.

Site: Where Ayres made 1st sketch of Yos. Valley

E-4

53.

Site: Artist’s Point

E-4

54.

Site: Mount Beatitude

E-4

55.

Site: “First View of the Valley” “Old Inspiration Point”

E-4

56.

Bridge: Pohono

E-4

57.

Site: Two miners killed by Indians

E-5

58.

Mariposa Battalion, 1st Exped. camped

E-5

58.

President Theodore Roosevelt camped

E-5

58.

Lt. Moore shot five Indians near here

E-5

59.

The Fissures (Taft Point) discovered by Muybridge

E-8

60.

Mariposa Battalion, 1st Exped. found deserted rancheria

D-6

61.

Mariposa Battalion, 1st Exped. found “old crone”

C-11

62.

Bridge: Tenaya

C-11

63.

Mariposa Battalion, 2nd Exp. Spencer injured

B-11

64.

Building for explosives

D-4

65.

Bridge, below Vernal Fall

D-11

66.

Cabin: Register rock - (also saloon?)

D-12

67.

Site: Lady Franklin Rock

D-12

68.

Site: “The Ladders”

D-12

69.

Bridge: Iron bridge near Rocky Point

C-8

70.

Bridge: Swinging

C-8

71.

Mariposa Battalion; 2nd exp. Trip up Indian Canyon

B-10

Telephone & Telegraph, see Park map.

C 2
Valley Roads and Trails

Roads

1.

Big Oak Flat Road

C1 to D6

2.

Coulterville Road

E1 to D1

3.

Merced Gorge Road

E1 to D1

4.

Cascade Avenue

D1 to D5

5.

El Capitan Avenue

D5 to D7

6.

Yosemite Avenue

D8 to C9

7.

Honto Avenue

C9 to C11

8.

Lake Avenue

C11

9.

Tissiack Avenue

C11

10.

Glacier Avenue

C9 to D11

11.

Georgia Avenue

C10 to C11

11a.

Road to South Orchard before 1880

C10

11b.

Road to North Orchard before 1880

C10

12.

Royal Arch Avenue

C10

13.

Sentinel Avenue

C9

14.

Meadow Avenue

C9

15.

Cosmopolitan Boardwalk

C9

16.

Cathedral Avenue

D6 to C8

17.

Pohono Avenue

E5 to D6

18.

Wawona Road

E2 to E5

19.

Glacier Point Road

D10 to E9

Trails

20.

Big Oak Flat Trail (Tamarack Flat to Hutchings)

C1 to C9

21.

Coulterville Trail (Lower Branch)

D1 to C2

22.

Old Mono Trail (Gentry Branch)

C2 to C5

23.

El Capitan to Eagle Peak Trail

C4 to B8

24.

Yosemite Fall Trail (Valley Floor to Rim)

C8 to B9

25.

Eagle Peak Trail (from Rim)

B9 to C8

26.

Yosemite Fall Trail (Rim to Yosemite Point)

B9

27.

Yosemite Fall Trail (Yosemite Point to Tioga Rd.)

B9 to A10

28.

Indian Canyon Trail

C9 to A9

29.

North Dome Trail (connecting with Mirror Lake-Snow Creek Trail)

A11 to B11

30.

Mirror Lake to Tenaya Lake

B12 to A12

31.

Nevada Fall to Little Yosemite and Half Dome Trail

D13

32.

Old Trail between Liberty Cap and Mt.

Broderick

33.

Conways Stairway (Snows to Top of Nevada Fall)

D12 to D13

34.

First Horse Trails to Top of Vernal Fall

D12

35.

Mist Trail

D12

36.

Trail to Foot of Nevada Fall on South Bank

D12 to D13

37.

Anderson Unfinished Trail (2 sections)

D11 and D12

38.

Trail Connecting Anderson’s Trail to Zig-Zags at Register Rock

D11

39.

Old South Bank Trail up Merced Canyon

D11 to C8

40.

Echo Cliffs Trail — Nevada Fall to Glacier Point

D13 to D10

41.

Old Mono Trail - Southern Route

E12 to D13

42.

Early Trail - Little Yosemite to Glacier Pt.

via 41, 42, 40

43.

Glacier Point Short Trail via Union Pt.

C8 to D10

44.

Glacier Point to Sentinel Dome Trail

D10

45.

Early Trail Peregoy’s to Sentinel Dome

E8 to D10

46.

Branch of 45 to the Fissures

E9 to E8

47.

Pohono or Dewey Trail

E4 to E9

48.

Old Mariposa Trail (Old Inspiration Pt. to Inspiration Pt.)

E4 to E3

49.

Old Mariposa Trail (Inspiration Pt. to Hutchings)

E2 to C9

50.

Tenya Cr. Trail Mirror L to Snow Cr.

B12

51.

Mirror L. Trail Hutchings to Mirror L.

C9 to B11

52.

Fulton Bridge to Sentinel Br. Trail

C8 to C9

53.

Merced Gorge Trail

E1 to C8

C 3

Legend for Valley Map

Roads before 1890

Trails before 1890

Roads constructed after 1890

Trails constructed after 1890

Fences

Cultivated areas

Orchards

Buildings

[click to enlarge]

Historical Base Map No. 2.

Early Roads in Yosemite National Park (five sheets)

DSC, #104 25008-12, May 1987.

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

[click to enlarge]

Historical Base Map No. 3.

Old Yosemite Village Area, Development from 1859 to 1959. A variety of documents provided the information for this map, including secondary sources and government documents. Locations of Lower Village structures are approximate.

DSC, #104 25005B, April 1987.

[click to enlarge]

Historical Base Map No. 4.

Yosemite National Park, showing roads, structures, sites, and archeological and historic districts. (A map from Sargent, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, provided the railroad data.)

DSC, #104 250068, April 1987.

[click to enlarge]

Historical Base Map No. 5.

Districts and sites on the National Register of Historic Places and potential nominations, Yosemite Valley.

DSC, #104 25007A, April 1987.

[click to enlarge]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

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Bancroft’s Tourist’s Guide. Yosemite. San Francisco and Around the Bay, (south). San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1871.

Barrett, S. A., and E. W. Gifford. Indian Life of the Yosemite Region: Miwok Material Culture. Bulletin of Milwaukee Public Museum, 2, no. 4 (March 1933).

Bartlett, Richard A. Great Surveys of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962.

Bingaman, John W. The Ahwahneechees: A Story of the Yosemite Indians. Lodi, Calif.: End-Kian Publishing Co., 1966.

________. Guardians of the Yosemite: A Story of the First Rangers. Yosemite National Park, 1961.

________. Pathways: A Story of Trails and Men. Lodi, Calif.: End-Kian Publishing Co., 1968.

Bowles, Samuel. Across the Continent: A Summer’s Journey to the Rocky Mountains, the Mormons, and the Pacific States. Springfield, Mass: Samuel Bowles & Co., 1865.

________. Across the Continent. Great Americana Series. Readex Microprint Corp., 1966.

Browning, Peter. Place Names of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1986.

Brubaker, Lloyd W.; Degnan, Laurence V.; and Jackson, Richard R. Guide to the Pioneer Cemetery. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1972.

Bunnell, Lafayette Houghton. The Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, which led to that event. Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1880.

________. Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to That Event. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.

California State Geologist. The Yosemite book; a description of the Yosemite Valley and adjacent region of the Sierra, Nevada, and the big trees of California. New York: J. Bien, 1868.

Chase, Joseph Smeaton. Yosemite Trails. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1911.

Churchill, Caroline M. Over the Purple Hills, or Sketches of Travel in California. Denver: Mrs. C M. Churchill, publ., 1884.

Clark, Galen. Early Days in Yosemite Valley. Los Angeles: The Docter Press, 1964.

________. Indians of Yosemite Valley and Vicinity: Their History, Customs and Traditions. Yosemite Valley, Calif.: Galen Clark, 1904.

Conservation Foundation. National Parks for the Future. Washington, D. C.: The Conservation Foundation, 1972.

Coulterville and Yosemite Turnpike Company. Laws and judicial decisions relating to the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa big tree grove. San Francisco: Cubery & Co., book & job printers, 1874.

Crampton, C. Gregory, ed. The Mariposa Indian War 1850-51, Diaries of Robert Eccleston: The California Gold Rush, Yosemite, and the High Sierra. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1957.

Cumming, C. F. Gordon. Granite Crags. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1884.

Darling, Frank Fraser, and Eichhorn, Noel D. Man & Nature in the National Parks; Reflections on Policy. 2d ed. Washington: Conservation Foundation, 1971.

Decisions of the United States Geographic Board: Yosemite National Park, California. No. 30—June 30, 1932. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1934.

Degnan, Laurence, and Hubbard, Douglass. Yosemite Yarns. Fresno: Awani Press, 1961.

Dennison, W. E., comp. Information for the Use of Yosemite Visitors. Sacramento: State Printer, 1886.

Ditton, Richard P., and McHenry, Donald E. Yosemite Road Guide. Rev. ed. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1981.

Evans, Willis A.; Wallis, Orthello L.; and Gallison, Glenn D. Fishes of Yosemite National Park. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1944. Rev. 1958 and 1961.

Farquhar, Francis P. Place Names of the High Sierra. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1926.

Foley, D. J. Yosemite Valley Guidebook. Yosemite Valley, Calif.: D. J. Foley, comp. & publ., 1892.

________. Yosemite Souvenir and Guide. Yosemite, Calif.: “Tourist” Studio-office, 1901.

________. Yosemite Souvenir and Guide. Yosemite, Calif.: “Tourist” Studio, 1903.

Foley’s Yosemite, Souvenir and Guide. Yosemite, Calif. “Tourist” office, 1907.

Fox, Stephen. John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981.

Gilbert, Bil. Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker. New York: Atheneum, 1983.

Godfrey, Elizabeth. Yosemite Indians. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1973. Rev. 1977 by James B. Snyder and Craig Bates.

Greeley, Horace. An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859. New York: C M. Saxton, Barker, and Co., 1860.

Grinnell, Joseph; Dixon, Joseph S.; and Linsdale, Jean M. Fur-Bearing Mammals of California. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937.

Gudde, Erwin G. California Place Names (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960).

Hall, Ansel F. Guide to Yosemite: A Handbook of the Trails and Roads of Yosemite Valley and the Adjacent Region. Yosemite National Park: National Park Service, 1920.

________. comp. and ed. Handbook of Yosemite National Park. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921.

Hampton, H. Duane. How the U. S. Cavalry Saved our National Parks. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.

Harlan, George H. An Island of Yosemite: the Story of White Wolf Lodge. Greenbrae, Calif.: Published by the author, 1981.

Heizer, R. F., and Whipple, M. A. comps. and eds. The California Indians: A Source Book. 2d ed. rev. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

History of the United States Naval Special Hospital. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Park and Curry Company, 1946.

Hubbard, Douglass H. Ghost Mines of Yosemite. Fresno, Calif.: Awani Press, 1958.

Hutchings, James Mason. Hutchings’ Tourist’s Guide to the Yo Semite Valley and the Big Tree Groves for the Spring and Summer of 1877. San Francisco: A. Roman & Co., 1877?

________. In the Heart of the Sierras. Oakland, Calif.: Pacific Press Publishing Co., 1886.

________. Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California. New York: A. Roman and Company, publ., 1872.

________. Yo Semite Valley and the Big Trees, What to See and How to See It. San Francisco: J. M. Hutchings, 1894.

Huth, Hans. Yosemite: The Story of an Idea. Repr. by Yosemite Natural History Association, from Sierra Club Bulletin, March 1948.

Ise, John. Our National Park Policy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961.

[Jackson, Helen Hunt.] Ah-wah-ne Days: A Visit to the Yosemite Valley in 1872, by “H. H.” San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1971.

________. Bits of Travel at Home. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894.

Johnston, Hank. Railroads of the Yosemite Valley. Long Beach, Calif.: Johnston-Howe, publ., 1963.

________. Short Line to Paradise: “The Story of the Yosemite Valley Railroad.” Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1962.

________. Thunder In the Mountains. Los Angeles: Trans-Anglo Books, 1968.

Jones, Holway R. John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1965.

Kieley, James F. CCC: The Organization and Its Work. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1938.

Kroeber, A. L. Handbook of the Indians of California. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 78. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1925.

Kuykendall, Ralph S. Early History of Yosemite Valley. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1919.

LeConte, Carrie E. Yo Semite, 1878, Adventures of N & C. San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1964.

Leitritz, Earl. A History of California’s Fish Hatcheries. Fish Bulletin 150. Sacramento: Department of Fish and Game, n.d.

Lewis, Dio. Gypsies. Boston: Eastern Book Co., 1881.

Mariposa County: Its Scenic Wonders, Its Gold Fields, Its Lumbering, Fruitraising, Stockraising. Issued by the Gazette - Mariposan, Mariposa, Calif., 1904.

Mendershausen, Ralph R. Treasures of the South Fork. Fresno: Panorama West Books, 1983.

Merriam, C. Hart. Ethnographic Notes on California Indian Tribes. Robert F. Heizer, comp. and ed. Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, No. 68, 3 Pts. Berkeley: University of California Archaeological Research Facility, Department of Anthropology, 1966, 1967.

Muir, John. The Proposed Yosemite National Park - Treasures & Features. 1890 articles reprinted by Outbooks, Olympic Valley, Calif., 1976.

________. The Yosemite. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1962.

Murphy, Thos. D. Three Wonderlands of the American West, rev. ed. Boston: The Page Co., pub!., 1912.

________. Seven Wonderlands of the American West. Boston: L. C. Page & Co., 1925.

Nordhoff, Charles. California: for Health, Pleasure, and Residence. New York: Harper & Brothers, publ., 1873.

Olmsted, Frederick Law. Governmental Preservation of Natural Scenery. Brookline, Mass., 1890.

O’Neill, Elizabeth Stone. Meadow in the Sky: A History of Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows Region. Fresno, Calif.: Panorama West Books, 1983.

Orland, Ted. Men & Yosemite: A Photographer’s View of the Early Years. Santa Cruz, Calif.: The Image Continuum Press, 1985.

Paden, Irene D., and Schlictmann, Margaret E. The Big Oak Flat Road: An Account of Freighting from Stockton to Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1959.

Perkins, James E. Sheep Husbandry in California. A Paper Presented Before the California State Agricultural Society. San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1863.

Perlot, Jean-Nicolas. Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian, Argonaut during the Gold Rush Years. Trans, by Helen Harding Bretnor. Howard R. Lamar, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Powers, Stephen. Tribes of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Pyne, Stephen J. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Quaife, Milo Milton, ed. Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard. Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1934.

Reisner, Marc P. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. New York: Viking Press, 1986.

Roth, Hal. Pathway in the Sky: The Story of the John Muir Trail. Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1965.

Runte, Alfred. National. Parks: The American Experience. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Russell, Carl Parcher. 100 Years in Yosemite: The Story of a Great National Park. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1957.

Sanborn, Margaret. Yosemite: Its Discovery, Its Wonder and Its People. New York: Random House, 1981.

Sargent, Shirley. John Muir in Yosemite. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1971.

________. Pioneers in Petticoats: Yosemite’s Early Women, 1856-1900. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1966.

________. Wawona’s Yesterdays. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1973.

________. Yosemite & Its Innkeepers. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1975.

________. Yosemite’s Famous Guests. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1970.

________. Yosemite’s High Sierra Camps. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1977.

________. Yosemite’s Historic Wawona. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1979.

________. Yosemite’s Rustic Outpost: Foresta, Big Meadow. Yosemite, Calif.: Flying Spur Press, 1983.

Sax, Joseph L. Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980.

Schaffer, Jeffrey P., and Winnett, Thomas. Tuolumne Meadows. High Sierra Hiking Guide #4. 2d ed. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 1977.

Scharff, Robert, ed. Yosemite National Park. New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1967.

Scott, Ferris H. The Yosemite Story. Santa Ana, Calif.: Ferris H. Scott, publ., 1954.

Secrest, William B. The Great Yosemite Hold-Ups. Fresno: Saga-West Publ. Co., 1968.

Shankland, Robert. Steve Mather of the National Parks. 3d ed. rev. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Shepherd, Major W., R. E. Prairie Experiences in Handling Cattle and Sheep. London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1884.

Stornoway, Lewis. [George G. Mackenzie] Yosemite: Where to Go and What to Do. San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., Printers, 1888.

Swain, Donald C. Wilderness Defender: Horace M. Albright and Conservation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Tilden, Freeman. The National Parks. 2d ed. rev. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Trexler, Keith A. The Tioga Road: A History, 1883-1961. Yosemite National Park: Yosemite Natural History Association, 1961. Rev. 1975, 1980.

Wentworth, Edward N. America’s Sheep Trails: History, Personalities. Ames, Ia.: The Iowa State College Press, 1948.

[Whitney, J. D., State Geologist]. Geological Survey of California. The Yosemite Guide - Book: A Description of the Yosemite Valley and the Adjacent Region of the Sierra Nevada, and of the Big Trees of California. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1870.

Whitney, Josia Dwight. Yosemite Guide Book. California Legislature, 1879.

Wirth, Conrad L. Parks, Politics, and the People. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

Wurm, Ted. Hetch Hetchy and Its Dam Railroad. Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1973.

Yard, Robert Sterling. Our Federal Lands. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1928.

Yosemite: Saga of a Century, 1864-1964. Oakhurst, Calif.: The Sierra Star Press, 1964.

The Yosemite Guide-Book. Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1870.

ARTICLES

1. General

“Ahwahnee—Yosemite’s New Hotel.” National Motorist. (August 1927): 13.

Bates, Craig D. “Ethnographic Collections at Yosemite National Park.” America Indian Art Magazine 7, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 28-30.

Bunnell, L. H. “How the Yo-Semite Valley was Discovered and Named.” Hutchings California Magazine (May 1859): 498-504.

Carpenter, Scott L., and Kirn, Laura A. “New ‘Underwater’ Archeological Discoveries at Lake Eleanor.” Yosemite Association (Summer 1986): 8-9.

Castillo, Edward D. “The Impact of Euro-American Exploration and Settlement,” 99-127, in California, vol. 8 of Handbook of North American Indians, Robert F. Heizer, vol. ed., William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.

Chase, Charles M. “The Live Stock Interests of California,” in California. San Francisco: California State Board of Trade, 1897-98, 80-84.

City and County of San Francisco. “O’Shaughnessy Dam Dedication Number.” Municipal Record 16, no. 29 (19 July 1923): 229-35.

Dennis, Lloyd B. “The High Sierra Camps.” Bay Views (July/August 1980): 65-68.

Eckart, Nelson A., and Stocker, Leslie W. “San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Water Supply.” In Compressed Air Magazine. New York: Compressed Air Magazine Co., 1922. Part I: 27, no. 8 (Aug. 1922): 207-12. “Sites for Three Reservoirs Including Tributary Watersheds Will Have an Area of 652 Square Miles—Construction Planned to Extend Over a Number of Years.” Part II: 27, no. 9 (September 1922): 247-50. Details of Some of the Constructional Facilities That Are Helping in the Execution of This Titanic Task. Part III: 27, no. 10 (October 1922): 283-88. The Structural Features of the Dams for the Lake Eleanor and the Hetch Hetchy Reservoirs. Part IV: 27, no. 11 (November 1922): 315-20. Details of the Aqueduct Tunnels and of the Mechanical Facilities Employed in Their Construction.

Fultz, Francis M. “Hetch Hetchy: A Valley of Wonders now Threatened with Extinction.” Excerpt from World To-day 16 (May 1909): 524-30.

“Golden Crown Mining Co.” Mining & Scientific Press 78 (1899): 239.

Gordon, Charles T. “In the Yosemite.” The Californian 2, no. 2 (July 1892): 174-89.

Hartzog, George B., Jr. “Clearing the Roads—and the Air—in Yosemite Valley.” National Parks & Conservation Magazine (August 1972): 14-17.

“History of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad.” The Western Railroader 24, no. 10 (October 1961): 2-12.

Johnson, Robert Underwood. “Destructive Tendencies in the Yosemite Valley.” The Century 39 (January 1890): 477-78.

Johnston, Hank. “The Great Yosemite Logging Operations.” Yosemite Sentinel 13 (21 February 1975): 2. Publ. by Yosemite Park and Curry Co.

Jones, William R. “Our First National Park: Yellowstone? . . . or Yosemite?” Audubon Magazine 67, no. 6 (November-December 1965): 382-84.

________. “The Sheepherder Versus the Geologist.” Audubon (January-February 1967): 47-48.

Kelly, Howard A. “Lafayette Houghton Bunnell, M. D., Discoverer of the Yosemite.” Repr. from Annals of Medical History 3, no. 2 (1921): 179-93. Publ. by Paul B. Hoeber, N. Y.

Kuykendall, Ralph S. Early History of Yosemite Valley, California. Reprint of article published in The Grizzly Bear, July 1919. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919.

Levy, Richard. “Eastern Miwok,” 398-413, in California, vol. 8 of Handbook of North American Indians, Robert F. Heizer, vol. ed., William C. Strutevant, gen. ed. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978.

Lillard, Richard G. “The Siege and Conquest of a National Park.” American West 5, no. 1 (January 1968): 28-32, 67-72.

Lockwood, John A. “Uncle Sam’s Troopers in the National Parks of California.” Overland Monthly, 2d ser. 33 (1899): 356-68.

Muir, John. “The Treasures of the Yosemite.” The Century Magazine 40, no. 4 (August 1890): 483-500.

Olmsted, Frederick Law. “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Trees: A Preliminary Report (1865).” Repr. from Landscape Architecture 43, no. 1 (October 1952): 12-25.

O’Neill, Elizabeth S. “Edward Taylor Parsons Memorial Lodge.” Sierra 63, no. 7 (September 1978): 34-35.

Sargent, Shirley. “Camp Curry, 1899-1974.” Repr. fr. California Historical Quarterly (Summer 1974).

Shinn, Charles Howard. “With the Sheep, in California.” Source unknown. (March 1891): 483-89.

Snyder, James B., and Castle, Walter C, Jr. “Draft Mules on the Trail in Yosemite National Park.” Draft Horse Journal (Summer 1978): 10-13.

Wurdinger, Gus A. “‘X’ Marks My Room.” Old West (Spring 1967): 44-45, 50.

Wurm, Ted. “Short Line to Yosemite.” National Railway Historical Society Bulletin 41, no. 4 (1976): 4-12, 36.

Yard, Robert Sterling. “The Problem of Yosemite Forests.” National Parks Bulletin 9, no. 55 (May 1928): 1-3.

“Yosemite.” National Parks Magazine (August 1963).

“Yosemite Valley Railway, 1907-1945.” The Western Railroader 24, no. 5 (May 1961): 3-4, 8-9, 11-12; 38, no. 11 (November 1965).

2. Sierra Club Bulletin

Colby, William E. “The Completed LeConte Memorial Lodge.” Sierra Club Bulletin 5 (1904-1905), no. 1 (January 1904). San Francisco: The Sierra Club, 1950, 66-69.

________. “Yosemite and the Sierra Club.” Sierra Club Bulletin 23, no. 2 (April 1938): 11-19.

Colby, William E.; LeConte, J. N.; and Bade, William F. “Report on Parsons Memorial Lodge.” Sierra Club Bulletin 10, no. 1 (January 1916): 84-85.

Farquhar, Francis P. “Walker’s Discovery of Yosemite.” Sierra Club Bulletin 27, no. 4 (August 1942): 35-49.

Garfield, James Rudolph, Secretary of the Interior. Decision of the Secretary of the Interior re Application for Lake Eleanor and Hetch Hetchy Valley Reservoir Sites, 11 May 1908. In “Notes and Correspondence,” Sierra Club Bulletin 6, no. 5 (June 1908): 321-27.

Hall, Ansel F. “The Educational Development of Yosemite National Park.” Sierra Club Bulletin 11 (1923): 411-16.

“The Hetch-Hetchy Situation,” in Editorials, Sierra Club Bulletin 9, no. 3 (January 1914): 174-76 (by W. F. B.).

“High Sierra Camps.” Sierra Club Bulletin 12 (1924): 37-42.

Hirt, Ray R. “Fifty Years of White Pine Blister Rust in the Northeast.” Journal of Forestry 54, no. 7 (July 1956): 435-38.

Huber, Walter L. “The John Muir Trail.” Sierra Club Bulletin 15, no. 1 (February 1930): 37-46.

LeConte, Joseph N. “The High Mountain Route Between Yosemite and the King’s River Canon.” Sierra Club Bulletin 7, no. 1 (January 1909): 1-22.

LeConte, J. N., and Bailey, Charles A., to the President and Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, 9 June 1898, in “Notes and Correspondence,” Sierra Club Bulletin 2, no. 4 (June 1898): 239-40.

“Lodges and Lands.” Sierra Club Bulletin (Handbook Edition) 52, no. 11 (December 1967).

McClure, N. F. “Explorations Among the Canons North of the Tuolumne River.” Sierra Club Bulletin 1, no. 5 (January 1895): 168-86.

“Memorial of the Sierra Club of California to the President and Congress of the United States in Relation to the Recession of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the United States by the State of California.” Sierra Club Bulletin 6, no. 1 (January 1906): 58-61.

Merriam, C. Hart. “Indian Village and Camp Sites in Yosemite Valley.” Sierra Club Bulletin 10, no. 2 (January 1917): 202-9.

Muir, John. “The Hetch-Hetchy Valley.” Sierra Club Bulletin 6, no. 4 (January 1908): 211-20.

“National Parks.” Sierra Club. Bulletin 9, no. 4 (January 1915): 316-19.

“Parsons Memorial Lodge,” in Editorials, Sierra Club Bulletin 9, no. 4 (January 1915): 287 (by W. E. C.)

“Report of the Secretary of the Interior.” From the annual report of the Secretary of the Interior for the year 1910. Sierra Club Bulletin 8, no. 1 (January 1911): 58-63.

Russell, Carl P. “Early Mining Excitements East of Yosemite.” Sierra Club Bulletin 13 (1928).

Solomons, Theodore S. “The Beginnings of the John Muir Trail.” Sierra Club Bulletin 25, no. 1 (February 1940): 28-40.

________. “A Search for a High Mountain Route from the Yosemite to the King’s River Canon.” Sierra Club Bulletin 1, no. 6 (May 1895): 221-37.

“Statement Concerning the Proposed Recession of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove by the State of California to the United States.” Sierra Club Bulletin 5, no. 3 (January 1905): 242-47.

Uhte, Robert F. “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins.” Sierra Club Bulletin 36 (May 1951): 49-71.

“Yosemite Park” and “Yosemite Valley,” in Forestry Notes, Sierra Club Bulletin 5, no. 3 (January 1905): 267-69.

3. Yosemite Nature Notes

Bates, Craig. “Names and Meanings for Yosemite Valley.” Yosemite Nature Notes 47, no. 3 (1978): 42-44.

Beatty, M. E. “History of the Firefall.” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 6 (June 1934): 41-43.

Borell, A. E. “History of Fishing in Yosemite.” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 8 (August 1934): 57-60.

Brockman, C. Frank. “Development of Transportation to Yosemite.” Yosemite Nature Notes (June-December 1943).

Brubaker, Lloyd W. “Captain John J. McGurk.” Yosemite Nature Notes 37, no. 4 (April 1958).

Bryant, Harold C. “The Beginning of Yosemite’s Educational Program.” Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 161-65.

________. “Early Trout Plantings in Yosemite.” Yosemite Nature Notes 9, no. 1 (January 1930).

Carlson, Reynold E. “Yosemite First Seen One Hundred Years Ago.” Yosemite Nature Notes 12, no. 11 (November 1933): 102-3.

Colby, William E. “Jean (John) Baptiste Lembert—Personal Memories.” Yosemite Nature Notes 28, no. 9 (September 1949): 113-17.

Degnan, Laurence V. “The Yosemite Valley School.” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 5 (May 1956): 54-61.

Ernst, Emil. “Insect Control in Yosemite.” Yosemite Nature Notes 13, no. 7 (July 1934): 49-52.

Ferretti, John V. “Surveying the Tioga Road.” Yosemite Nature Notes 27, no. 9 (September 1948): 109-12.

Foote, Elizabeth. “Interesting Notes from the Whitney Guide Book.” Yosemite Nature Notes 16, no. 9 (September 1937): 65-68.

Godfrey, E. H. “Yosemite Indians: Yesterday and Today.” Yosemite Nature Notes 20, no. 7 (1973).

Godfrey, William C. “Tunnelled Big Trees.” Yosemite Nature Notes 10, no. 6 (June 1931): 54-56.

Goethe, C. M. “Nature Study in National Parks Interpretive Movement.” Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 156-58.

Hartesveldt, Richard J. “Indian Sites Study Adds to Yosemite’s Story.” Yosemite Nature Notes 32, no. 6 (June 1953): 53-59.

Hubbard, Douglass. “The Happy Isles Nature Center.” Yosemite Nature Notes 36, no. 12 (December 1957).

________. “Yosemite Bears Chip Teeth.” Yosemite Nature Notes 34, no. 3 (March 1955).

Hussey, John Adam. “Discovery of the Tuolumne Grove of Big Trees.” Yosemite Nature Notes 16, no. 8 (August 1937): 60-63.

Jacobs, Duane D. “Snow Surveying.” Yosemite Nature Notes 32, no. 1 (January 1953).

McHenry, Donald E. “Foresta’s Yesterdays.” Yosemite Nature Notes 34, no. 3 (March 1955): 43-45.

Michael, Enid. “Nature Garden a New Feature of Yosemite Museum.” Yosemite Nature Notes 11, no. 10 (October 1932): 4-5.

Miller, Loye H. “The Nature Guide Movement in National Parks.” Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 159-60.

Morris, J. N. “An Old Nature Trail Is Found Near Wawona.” Yosemite Nature Notes 9, no. 3 (March 1930): 17-18.

Robinson, Homer W. “The History of Business Concessions in Yosemite National Park.” Yosemite Nature Notes 27, no. 6 (June 1948): 83-90.

Russell, Carl P. “A 40th Anniversary.” Yosemite Nature Notes 39, no. 7 (July 1960): 153-55.

________. “The Geography of the Mariposa Indian War.” 4 pts. Yosemite Nature Notes 30, nos. 3-4, 6-7 (March-April, June-July 1951): no. 3: 23-30; no. 4: 33-35; no. 6: 53-56; no. 7: 63-71.

________. “Seventy Five Years in the Famous Valley.” Yosemite Nature Notes 5, no. 6 (June 30, 1926): 41-47.

________. “The Wawona Tree Tunnel.” Yosemite Nature Notes 4, no. 15 (September 1925): 83.

Sovulewski, Gabriel. “The Story of Campgrounds in Yosemite Valley.” Yosemite Nature Notes 16, no. 11 (November 1937): 81-84.

Tresidder, Mary Curry, “Story of the Snow Creek Cabin.” Yosemite Nature Notes 32, no. 1 (February 1953).

Uhte, Robert F. “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins.” Yosemite Nature Notes 35, no. 9 (September 1956): 135-43; and 36, no. 10 (October 1956): 144-55.

Wallis, Orthello L. “For Better Fishing.” Yosemite Nature Notes 32, no. 5 (May 1953).

“Yosemite’s Pioneer Arboretum.” Yosemite Nature Notes 30, no. 9 (September 1951): 83-85.

Wason, Richard R. “Yosemite Nature Trails.” Yosemite Nature Notes (September 1953).

MANUSCRIPTS, THESES, DISSERTATIONS

Bates, Craig. “A History of the Indian People of Mariposa County.” Spring 1975. MS no. 10937, 33 pages in Yosemite Research Library and Records Center.

Blaud, Henry Camille. The Basques. A Thesis, College of the Pacific, 1957. Repr. in 1974 by R and E Research Associates, San Francisco and Saratoga, Calif.

Bryan, Harry. “Views (and Prejudices) Regarding Yosemite Valley Planning.” February 1975. In Master Plan files for Yosemite National Park, Denver Service Center, 8 pages.

Cogan, James M. “Historical Visitors: A Historical Analysis of the Man-Land Relationship in the Tuolumne Meadows Basin.” MS, 1975.

Demars, Stanford E. “The Triumph of Tradition: A Study of Tourism in Yosemite National Park.” Ph. D. diss., University of Oregon, 1970.

Evison, S. Herbert. “The National Park Service: Conservation of America’s Scenic and Historic Heritage,” 1964. Typed draft, 663 pages. Library and Archives, Division of Reference Services, Harpers Ferry Center, Harpers Ferry, W. Va., NPS.

Fitzsimmons, Allan Kress. “The Effect of the Automobile on the Cultural Elements of the Landscape of Yosemite Valley.” MA thesis, San Fernando Valley State College, Northridge, Calif., 1969.

Goppert, Theodore A. “The Yosemite Valley Commission: The Development of Park Management Policies, 1864-1905.” MA thesis, California State University, Hayward, 1972.

Hampton, Harold Duane. “Conservation and Cavalry: A Study of the Role of the United States Army in the Development of a National Park System, 1886-1917.” Ph. D. diss., University of Colorado, 1965.

Hartesveldt, Richard John. “The Effects of Human Impact Upon Sequoia Gigantea and Its Environment in the Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California.” Ph. D. diss., University of Michigan, 1962.

Hood, Mary and Bill. “James C. Lamon: Yosemite’s First Settler.” MS, Hood Collection, Palm Desert, Calif.

Mclntyre, Robert N. “Recreational Prospectus for Crane Flat Development in Yosemite National Park, 1949.”

Milestone, James F. “The Influence of Modern Man on the Stream System of Yosemite Valley.” MA thesis, San Francisco State University, 1978.

“Preliminary Case Report: Executive Order 11593 and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. General Management Plan. Final Environmental Statement. Cultural Resources Management Plan. Yosemite National Park, California.” Denver: National Park Service, 1979.

Tweed, William C. “‘Parkitecture’: Rustic Architecture in the National Parks.” draft, 1978, 133 pages.

Whedon, Hazel M. “The History of the Roads, Trails, and Hotels In and Near Yosemite National Park.” MA thesis, University of Southern California, 1934.

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

1. Acting Superintendent Reports

Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1900. Report of the Secretary of the Interior. Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900.

Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the,Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1905. Report of the Secretary of the Interior and Bureau Officers, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1905.

Benson, H. C. Major, 14th Cav., “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1906, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906. Report of the Secretary of the Interior and Bureau Officers, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906.

________. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” in Reports of th_e Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1907. Administrative Reports, in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907.

________. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1908, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1908. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908.

Bigelow, John, Jr., Maj., 9th Cav. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 June 1904, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1904. Miscellaneous, Reports. Part J. Bureau Officers, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904.

________. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 23 September 1904, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1904. Miscellaneous Reports. Part I. Bureau Officers, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904.

Caine, Joseph E., Capt., First Utah Vol. Cav. “Report of Acting Superintendent Capt. Joseph E. Caine,” January 1899 (report on season of 1898). (Available in Yosemite Research Library.)

Craig, L. A. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 10 October 1901, in Annual Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1901. Miscellaneous Reports. Part L Bureau Officers, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1901.

Forsyth, Wm. W., Maj., 6th Cav., “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1909, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1909. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1910.

________. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1910, in Reports of tihe Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1910. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911.

________. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” 15 October 1911, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1911. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912.

________. “Report of Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 30 September 1912, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1912. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913.

Garrard, Jos. Lt-Col., 14th Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park in California to the Secretary of the Interior, 1903. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903.

Hein, O. L., Maj., 3d Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park in California to the Secretary of the Interior, 1902. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902.

Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1915. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume I Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916.

Rodgers, Alex., Capt., 4th Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the; Interior, 1895. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1895.

________. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year Ended June 30, 1897. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897.

Rucker, L. H., Maj. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the Interior, 1900. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900.

Sovulewski, Gabriel, Park Supervisor. “Report of the Park Supervisor, 15 October 1913, in Report of the. Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1913. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914.

“Report of the Park Supervisor,” 27 September 1914, in Reports of the Department of the Interior for the Fiscal Year. Ended June 30, 1914. Administrative Reports in 2 volumes. Volume 1. Secretary of the Interior, Etc. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1915.

Willcox, E. F., Capt., 6th Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park (to June 30, 1899), and William Forse, 2d Lt., 3d Art. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park (June-August 1899), in Annual Reports of the Department, of the interior for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1899. Misc. Reports. Part I. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1899.

Wood, A. E., Captain, 4th Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary, of the Interior, 1891. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891.

Young, S. B. M., Lt.-Col., 4th Cav. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park to the Secretary of the Interior, 1896. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896.

Zevely, J. W., Acting Superintendent. Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park for the Year. 1898, in Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite), RG 79, NA.

2. National Park Service Publications

Bates, Craig D., and Wells, Karen P. Late Aboriginal and Early Anglo Occupation of El Portal, Yosemite National Park, California. Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981.

Bennyhoff, James A. An Appraisal of the Archaeological Resources of Yosemite National Park. Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, No. 34. Berkeley: The University of California Archaeological Survey, Department of Anthropology, 1956.

Crosby, Anthony, and Scrattish, Nick. Historic Structure Report, Design and Installation of a Fire Detection and Suppression System, Wawona Hotel, Yosemite National Park, California. Denver: National Park Service, 1983.

Ervin, Richard G. Test Excavations im the Wawona Valley. Publications in Anthropology No. 26. Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1984.

Final Environmental Statement, Proposed Wilderness Areas, Yosemite National Park, California. San Francisco: National Park Service, 1973.

Good, Albert H. Park and Recreation Structures. 3 pts. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1938.

Heady, Harold F., and Zinke, Paul J. Vegetational Changes in Yosemite Valley. National Park Service Occasional Paper Number Five. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978.

Historic Structure Report, Best’s Studio, Yosemite National Park. San Francisco: National Park Service, 1985.

Management Program: An Addendum to the Natural Resources Management Plan for Yosemite National Park. Denver: National Park Service, 1977.

Moratto, Michael J. An Archeological Research Design for Yosemite National Park. Publications in Anthropology No. 19. Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981.

Napton, L. Kyle. Archeological Overview of Yosemite National Park, California. 2 pts. Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological Center, 1978.

Natural Resources Management Plan and Environmental Assessment. Denver: National Park Service, 1977.

Paige, John C. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Park Service, 1933-1942: An Administrative History. Denver: National Park Service, 1985.

Story, Isabelle F. The National Parks and Emergency Conservation. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933.

Tweed, William C; Soulliere, Laura E.; and Law, Henry G. National Park Service Rustic Architecture: 1916-1942. San Francisco: National Park Service, 1977.

Unrau, Harlan D., and Williss, G. Frank. Administrative History: Expansion of the National Park Service in the 1930s. Denver: National Park Service, 1983.

van Wagtendonk, Jan W. Refined Burning Prescriptions for Yosemite National Park. National Park Service Occasional Paper Number Two. Washington: National Park Service, n.d.

Whittaker, John C. Archeology in Yosemite National Park: The Wawona Testing Project. Publications in Anthropology, No. 18. Tucson: National Park Service, Western Archeological and Conservation Center, 1981.

Yosemite Ranger-Naturalist Manual. 2d ed. Yosemite National Park: National Park Service, 1929.

3. U. S. Forest Service Publications

Hurt, Bert, comp. U. S. Forest Service. A Sawmill History of the Sierra National Forest: 1852-1940. Fresno: U. S. Forest Service, 1941.

U. S. CONGRESS

“Memorial of J. M. Hutchings, Praying a grant of lands in the Yosemite Valley, California.” 13 February 1871. 41st Cong., 3d sess., Misc. Doc, no. 72.

Report of Comm. on Public Lands on House bill no. 184—“An act to confirm to J. M. Hutchings and J. C. Lamon their pre-emption claims in the Yo-Semite valley, in the State of California,” in U. S. Congress, House Committee on Public Lands, “The Yo-semite Valley and the Right of Pre-Emption,” Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 10.

UNPUBLISHED GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

San Bruno, California. Federal Archives and Records Center. U. S. Department of the Interior. Record Group 79. Records of the National Park Service.

Washington, D. C. National Archives. U. S. Department of the Interior. Record Group 79. Records of the National Park Service. Central Files, 1907-39 (Yosemite).

________. ________. ________. ________. ________. Letters Received by the Office of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to National Parks, 1872-1907 (Yosemite).

STATE OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS

1. Mining Bureau Reports

Eighth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist. For the Year Ending October 1, 1888. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1888.

Tenth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist. For the Year Ending October 1, 1890. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890. 2. Yosemite Valley Commission Reports

2. Yosemite Valley Commission Reports

Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage, the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1866-7. San Francisco: Towne and Bacon, 1868.

Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, 1885-86. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1886.

Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove For the Years 1887-88. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1888.

Biennial Report of the Commissioners to Manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove, For the Years 1889-90. Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1890.

3. Historic Resource Inventories

El Portal Library (El Portal Store), 1981; Hotel Del Portal (Site), 1981; McCauley Ranch, 1981; The Second School House in El Portal, 1981; Three Yosemite Valley Railroad houses in El Portal, 1981; Yosemite Lumber Company Logging Incline, south side of Merced River, 1981; and Yosemite Lumber Company Logging Incline, north side of the Merced River, 1981.

4. Historical Surveys

Mariposa County Planning Commission. El Portal Historical Survey, 1981-82 (historical site survey inventory forms for El Portal). Robert L. Borchard, Planner/Grantsman.

5. Department of Water Resources

Snow Survey Measurements Through 1970. Bulletin No. 129-70. Sacramento: State of California, 1971.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

1. Maintenance Office, Administration Building

Building files.

Completion reports.

Maintenance files.

2. Property Management Office

Catalog, Federally Owned Improved Properties, Section 35, Wawona, January, 1980.

3. Research Library

Historical photograph collection.

Ephemera files.

Separates files.

Superintendent’s Monthly Reports. Microfilm.
Roll #1 - Jan. 1924 - Dec. 1927
Roll #2 - Jan. 1928 - Dec. 1933
Roll #3 - Jan. 1934 - Dec. 1938
Roll #4 - Jan. 1939 - Dec. 1956
Roll #5 - Jan. 1957 - Dec. 1963

Yosemite National Park Company. 3 photo albums.

#1 - Pictures of Yosemite Lodge Group, Camp Tecoya, Tecoya Annex, and Camp Seventeen - July 1923.
#2 - Pictures of Outlying Lodges - July 1923 (Glacier Point, Hetch Hetchy Lodge, Big Tree Lodge, Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, Camps at Tuolumne Meadows, Tenaya Lake camps, Merced Lake camps, Chinquapin Group).
#3 - Pictures of Industrial Group - July 1923. (General Office Group, Store, Meat Market, Warehouses, Sentinel Hotel and River Cottage, El Portal train shed, Garage Group, Kenneyville).

4. Records Center

Annual reports, Yosemite Park and Curry Company.

Box 3: Washburn Papers.

Box 10: Advisory Board Correspondence and Files.

Box 11: Floods and Water Supply.

Boxes 15, 58-59: Park Buildings - Removed.

Box 17: Land Appraisals (Foresta and Wawona).

Box 22: Backcountry.

Box 24: Misc. Records, Washburn/Wawona.

Box 28: Yosemite Park and Curry Company.

Box 47: Yosemite Park and Curry Company.

Box 51: Yosemite Roads.

Box 56: Misc. Correspondence, Washburn/Wawona/Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company.

Box 57: Misc. Correspondence, Washburn/Wawona/Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company.

Box 58: Non-Existing Buildings.

Box 60: Museums.

Box 61: Wawona.

Box 63: Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company.

Box 69: Wawona/Washburn Correspondence.

Box 74: National Register background information compiled by Leslie Starr Hart - LCS data file containing Classified Structure Field Inventory Reports, 1975.

Box 77: NPS files.

Box 78: NPS files.

Box 83: Trails.

Box 84: Hetch Hetchy.

Box 85: Hetch Hetchy.

Box 86: Tioga Mine.

Mary Curry Tresidder Papers - Drawer 13.

Wawona data - Drawer 14.

5. Yosemite Research Center

Pavlik, Robert C. “Biledo Meadow Cabins Study.” 5 August 1986. Typescript, 8 pages.

________. “El Portal Hotel - Building 762.” Ca. 1986. Typescript, 3 pages.

________. “The El Portal Road, Yosemite National Park, California.” 1986. Typescript, 11 pages.

________. “A History of Snow Survey in Yosemite National Park.” 1984. Typescript, 3 pages.

________. “A History of Yosemite’s Fish Hatcheries.” 13 December 1984. Typescript, 3 pages.

________. “The Hutchings-Sovulewski Homesite, Yosemite Valley.” Ca. 1986. Typescript, 13 pages.

________. “Like a Mirror Hung in the Sky”: The Story of Stella Lake, Wawona, Yosemite National Park, California.” 1986. Typescript, 39 pages.

________. “Notes on Historic Logging Debris in area adjacent to the South Entrance Station, Yosemite National Park,” 5 September 1985. Typescript, 2 pages.

________. “Stella Lake Ice Reservoir.” 1986. Typescript, 19 pages.

________. “A Summary of Nine Buildings Being Considered for National Register Nomination.” 1985. Typescript, 2 pages.

________. “Water Gaging Stations in the Merced River Drainage 1904-1984.” 1984. Typescript, 1 page.

NEWSPAPERS

Denver (Colo.) Post
Fresno (Calif.) Bee
Inyo Register (Bishop, Calif.)
Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette
Merced (Calif.) Sun Star
Riverside (Calif.) Daily Press
San Bernardino (Calif.) Daily Sun
San Francisco (Calif.) Chronicle
Sierra Star (Oakhurst, Calif.)
Stockton (Calif.) Daily Independent
Stockton (Calif.) Record
Yosemite (Calif.) Sentinel (Published by Yosemite Park and Curry Company)

MISCELLANEOUS

1. General

Corcoran, May, comp “‘Yosemite Valley’ and the ‘Mariposa Big Tree Grove’ in the Statutes of California.” A collection of abstracts of material pertinent to the history of Yosemite National Park. Collected and compiled for NPS Field Division of Education, Berkeley, Calif., 1934.

[Ellis, Dorothy] Ahwahnee, Yosemite National Park, California, 1942. Booklet, 30 pages.

The Emergency Conservation Committee, October 1932. “Save the Yosemite Sugar Pines!” Pamphlet.

“‘Foresta’: Your Own Private Summer Home in Yosemite.” Advertising brochure. Copyright 1914 by Robert N. Shaw.

McLean, John T. Statement concerning Senate Bill no. 2708 and House Bill no. 7712, authorizing the purchase by the U. S., and the making free of the toll roads passing over the national park.

“The Settlers of Yo-Semite. Memorial of J. M. Hutchings and J. C. Lamon.” (To the Senate and Assembly of the State of California), December 1867?

“Veto Message of the Governor in Relation to Assembly Bill no. 238, an Act Granting Lands in Yosemite Valley,” 4 February 1868.

“Yosemite National Park—Camp Curry. “Pamphlet, 1919 season.

2. National Park Service

Cox, Robert M. “Ahwahnee Hotel, Architectural Description.” 8 July 1975.

________. “Field Trip Notes—Yosemite National Park. Visit to the Degnan/Donohoe House on 7 June 1974 with Bob Lake and Bob Flemming.”

“Design Criteria for the Camp Curry Historic District, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California.” 1980. Typescript, 13 pages.

“Environmental Assessment, South Entrance/Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California.” 1986.

“Final Environmental Statement. Proposed Wilderness Areas, Yosemite National Park, California.” 1973.

Greene, Jerome A., to Merrill J. Mattes. “Evaluation of Structures in Sequoia/Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks, California.” 17 June 1974.

Historic Preservation Team (Gordon S. Chapped, Roger E. Kelly, Robert M. Cox), to Assoc. Reg. Dir., Professional Services, Western Region, 26 July 1974. “Evaluation of McCauley - Meyer Sawmill, Yosemite National Park, July 16-17, 1974.”

“Preliminary Case Report/Section 106, General Management Plan, Yosemite National Park.” 2 vols. 1979.

“Preliminary Case Report, Yosemite Hydroelectric System, Pursuant to 36 CFR 800.13(b).” February 1986.

“Preliminary Feasibility Report, Glacier Point Aerial Tramway, Yosemite National Park.” Vol. One. San Francisco, Calif.: Tudor Engineering Co., 1969.

Thompson, Erwin N. “Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California: Evaluation of Historic Resources, Historic Base Map, Determination of Effect, DCP.” 1974. Typescript, 37 pages.

Transportation Study, Summary Report, Yosemite National Park, 1974. Prep, for USDI, NPS, DSC by VTN, Engineers, Architects, Planners.

INTERVIEWS

DeMoss, Everett, by Robert C. Pavlik, at Crane Flat BRC (YI), 11 July 1984.

Degnan, John, Mr. and Mrs., by Ralph Anderson, 13 December 1934.

Gutleben, Daniel, by C. P. Russell, 22 May 1952.

Harlan, George D., by Linda W. Greene, at White Wolf Lodge, Yosemite National Park, 1985.

Hutchings, Cosie, by Elizabeth H. Godfrey, 1941.

Murchison, Jack, by Robert C. Pavlik, 25 June 1984.

Shaffer, Dick, by C. P. Russell, 22 April 1951. (“The First Garage in Yosemite.”)

Shaffer, Dick, by C. P. Russell, 2 July 1951. (“Some Historical Facts Regarding the Desmond Company”).

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1987—773-038/60,006 REGION NO 8

As the nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has basic responsibilities to protect and conserve our land and water, energy and minerals, fish and wildlife, parks and recreation areas, and to ensure the wise use of all these resources. The department also has major responsibility for American Indian reservation communities and for people who live in island territories under U. S. administration.

Publication services were provided by the graphics staff of the Denver Service Center. NPS D-206 September 1987.

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_resources/