Yosemite by James Kaiser

Author:James Kaiser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Yosemite, Yosemite National Park, California, Travel
Publisher: Destination Press
Published: 2018-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

Becoming A National Park

Yosemite Valley was officially protected in 1864, but under lax state management it developed into a cluttered series of roads, hotels, cabins, and pastures for cattle. Land was tilled and irrigated to provide food for residents, and a timber mill provided wood for construction and heating.

Meanwhile sheepherders marched thousands of sheep through the mountains above Yosemite Valley to graze in the pristine meadows. In 1870 Joseph LeConte remarked that “Tuolumne Meadows are celebrated for their fine pasturage. Some twelve to fifteen thousand sheep are now pastured here.”The combined munching, chomping, and trampling of the sheep left the delicate meadows in disarray. During John Muir’s first summer as a sheepherder in the High Sierra, he witnessed this destruction first hand. “To let sheep trample so divinely fine a place seems barbarous,” he wrote. Later he put the destruction in even sharper terms, referring to sheep as “hooved locusts.”

In 1889, after nearly a decade spent away from Yosemite, Muir returned with Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of the influential Century Magazine. Muir was shocked by what he saw. In the Mariposa Grove, a tunnel had been carved into a giant sequoia as a spectacle to draw tourists. In Yosemite Valley, trash lay in open view and once-pristine meadows had been converted to pasture. Distraught, the two men headed for the High Sierra.

Around a campfire in Tuolumne Meadows, Muir and Johnson discussed the beauty of Yosemite and the threat that development and grazing posed. Johnson suggested that Muir, who by this point was a well-known nature writer, become the public voice of a campaign to preserve Yosemite as a national park. Although Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were officially protected by the state (on paper, at least), Muir and Johnson believed the mountains surrounding Yosemite—and notably the watershed that fed Yosemite Valley—also deserved protection. Yellowstone had become America’s first national park 17 years earlier, and the men felt Yosemite deserved similar status.

Returning from their camping trip, the two men embarked on a savvy media campaign to rally public support for their cause. Muir wrote two articles for Century Magazine extolling the beauty of Yosemite and the threats that it faced. In his first piece, entitled “The Treasures of the Yosemite,” Muir penned some of his most enduring prose. “No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite,” he wrote, “Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life ... as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.”

Muir and Johnson also stumped for the creation of Yosemite National Park in speeches around the country. Their tireless efforts ultimately met with success. On October 1, 1890, Yosemite was officially designated a national park. To protect the nearly one million acres of pristine Sierra Nevada wilderness, units of the Army Calvary were dispatched to Wawona. In the summer, the Calvary patrolled the mountains on horseback, driving out sheepherders, cattlemen, and hunters.

Despite the creation of Yosemite National Park, the original Yosemite Grant, which included Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, remained under California’s protection.

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