Historic Yosemite National Park: The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures

233 Pages·2016·5.95 MB·English

by  Tracy Salcedo Chourre

Historic
Yosemite National Park
The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures
Tracy Salcedo
Guilford, Connecticut
An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Salcedo- Chourré, Tracy, author.
Title: Historic Yosemite National Park : the stories behind one of America’s
great treasures / Tracy Salcedo.
Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2016] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003161 (print) | LCCN 2016003680 (ebook) | ISBN
9781493018116 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781493018123 (e- book)
Subjects: LCSH: Yosemite National Park (Calif.)—History. | Yosemite National
Park (Calif.)—Biography.
Classification: LCC F868.Y6 S193 2016 (print) | LCC F868.Y6 (ebook) | DDC
979.4/47—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn .loc .gov/2016003161
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/
NISO Z39.48-1992.
For the TP Princesses,
who know best why “dollops of wilderness” mean so much to me

Contents
Author’s Note: On the Brilliance of Faraway Eyes. . . . . . . . . . . vi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
The Ahwahneechee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Mariposa Battalion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Cutting Edge: The Creation and Evolution of
Yosemite National Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Building an Icon: Yosemite’s Roads, Trails, and Lodgings . . . . . . 49
The Quiet Giants: Galen Clark and the Big Trees. . . . . . . . . . 70
John Muir: The Wanderer Who Was Never Lost . . . . . . . . . . 89
Hetch Hetchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Images of Yosemite. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
The Climbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Sculpting Yosemite: Tales of Glaciers and Waterfalls . . . . . . . .154
Yosemite Wildlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169
Yosemite’s Furies: Wildfire, Rockfall, and Flood. . . . . . . . . . . 185
Appendix: Yosemite National Park Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
Resources and Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214
Author’s Note
On the Brilliance of Faraway Eyes
I can’t claim the cliché that Yosemite changed my life. My love of explor-
ing wild places was determined long before I walked in the park.
But Yosemite helped. My first backpacking trip was a two-w eek tour
of the park’s backcountry with a Sierra Studies class from my high school
in 1978. I wish now I’d paid closer attention, so I could tell you our route.
I know we started in Tuolumne Meadows; I remember fumbling the word
around in my mouth when I saw it on the sign. We climbed Cathedral
Peak; it was my first true mountaintop, and I saw the curve of the Earth
for the first time from the summit. The rest is a magical blur of walking
and looking, walking and looking, day after day, until I felt as shiny and
solid as the rock underfoot, and my breath felt easy no matter the slope,
and the ground beneath my thin sleeping pad was actually comfortable.
That trip helped anchor a passion for walking in wilderness that has
never ebbed. Not that I let anyone know at the time; I was a teenager,
after all. The friends who convinced me to take the class were sure I hated
it. The food was nasty. That first meal from a foil pouch I dubbed “hairy
chicken and maggots,” and I’ve never gotten over the crime that is dehy-
drated eggs. I won an award for the massive blisters that developed on my
heels; even the kids on the bus home were aghast when I finally took off
my boots in public. It takes a good amount of gross to make a teenage
boy cringe.
But if anything speaks to the power of Yosemite, it’s those blisters.
I had to hide them from the instructors, as we’d been warned that if we
got hurt, we’d be sent home, and blisters counted, since they could get
infected. I didn’t want to leave, so I powered through. Discovering the
best way to avoid the pain was to not stop walking, I hiked from camp
to camp without break. The poor teacher who had to keep tabs on me
vi
Author’s Note
only got me to stop when he brought out the map and compass. I don’t
remember the names of the pass we stood on or the steep-w alled valley
we gazed down, but I remember it clicking: lines on paper to peaks on a
ridgeline, this one with a sheer wall on the north side, this one a dome.
Now I was free to wander.
I also don’t remember the name of the trail we took down into Yosem-
ite Valley, but I do remember the massive camps on the floor. This was a
time when Yosemite struggled with crowds packed in campgrounds and
in long lines of traffic on the loop road. Trailers were parked side by side
between the trees, a subdivision complete with clotheslines and televi-
sions with rabbit-e ar antennas. As elated as I’d been on the mountaintop,
I deflated among the Airstreams.
I understand now that I came out of Yosemite’s backcountry with
faraway eyes. I’ve come to know them well over the years, having seen
them in friends and family, and recognizing them in myself. Faraway
eyes come with time spent scanning horizons for days on end, whether
on a boat or on foot or even looking out a car window on a long road
trip. What has struck me, as I’ve worked on Historic Yosemite National
Park, is how often I see faraway eyes in the pictures of Yosemite’s heroes.
Especially when they gaze past the camera, you get the impression they
are looking way over, way up, beyond. In those days, I imagine, it couldn’t
be helped. There were no rabbit- ear TVs or cell phones to pull you in. It
was all up and out.
The knowledge of faraway eyes informs all the essays in this book.
To understand how Yosemite came to be what it is—the “flagship,” the
“crown jewel,” the “mountain temple” of America’s national park system—
an understanding of how the place affects the people who’ve visited, and
especially the people who’ve lived it, is prerequisite. You can’t truly be in
Yosemite without losing yourself in distance and time.
Of the people who lived here, I am in awe of their fortitude, their
bravery, and their luck. They created homes in a wild place so monumen-
tal it’s impossible not to look faraway all the time. Somehow, still, they
managed to bake bread, split rails, break trails, raise crops, and keep the
books for their camps and hotels. All the while the mountains embraced
them, the waterfalls formed the backbeat, the meadows bloomed, and
vii
Author’s Note
The sun catches on clouds breaking over Sentinel Rock. PHOTO: TRACY SALCEDO
the river flowed. Drudgery amid such beauty requires a special kind of
discipline.
On that first backpacking trip, having seen all that makes Yosemite
superlative, I also saw the park’s dark side. I’ll admit, I’ve avoided the
Valley in summertime ever since. I can’t take the crowds. I can’t take the
noise, the push, and these days, the focus on the device over the mind’s
eye as the receptacle of memory. You can’t experience faraway when your
eyes are fixed on the screen at arm’s length.
I close my eyes and I see the full moon square in the notch on Half
Dome’s sheer face, the rainbow at the base of Vernal Fall, the glitter-
ing slide of Staircase Falls, the heart- clenching exposure from Columbia
Rock, the endless views from the top of Sentinel Dome. Even with lids
shut, I can enjoy the blessings of Yosemite’s first gift to me—the gift of
faraway eyes.
viii
Introduction
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to every-
thing else in the universe.
—John Muir
As it turns out, there are two wildernesses in Yosemite. One is full of
domes and waterfalls and deep woods; the other is composed of thou-
sands of pages recording the park’s natural and cultural history.
And just as trailblazers wound through Yosemite’s vast and convo-
luted backcountry establishing routes so others could follow, so too have
there been trailblazers among Yosemite’s historians. From explorers like
Lafayette Bunnell to conservationists like John Muir, from researchers
like Shirley Sargent, Hank Johnston, and Carl P. Russell to the rangers
who today compose blog posts for the park’s Nature Notes series, they
have plumbed stories, journals, newspapers, superintendents’ reports,
government documents, private photographic collections, and their own
experiences to tell Yosemite’s story. Each writer, no matter their calling or
trade, has contributed valuable personal insights into the most wondrous
of America’s national parks.
This is a humble addition to that treasury.
History is a moving target. Just as wind and water continue to sculpt
Yosemite’s landscapes, mind and pen reshape its story. How the park
came to be known as Yosemite is perhaps the best example of how fluid
this can be. Different spellings—uzamati, Yo- Hemite, Yo- Semite—all
come into play in different documents, along with different meanings.
Which is right? We might never know with certainty; the original speak-
ers and writers are long gone, and other resources may be uncovered down
the line. But the search is as much a part of Yosemite’s story as the truth.
One thing remains constant, threading through every book and every
document about Yosemite National Park: the writer’s passion for the
ix