The first people to set eyes on Yosemite were the Miwok Indians, who lived throughout the central Sierra Nevada for thousands of years. To the Indians, Yosemite Valley must have seemed like paradise on earth: a fortress-like hideaway filled with fresh water, edible plants, and wild game. They called the Valley Ahwahnee, “Place Like A Gaping Mouth,” and the Miwok living there were called the Ahwahneechee, “People of the Ahwahnee.”
The Valley’s abundant natural resources supported roughly 200 people—a fraction of the estimated 100,000 Indians living throughout the Sierra Nevada, but a relatively large number for a single location. Over 35 Ahwahneechee living sites have been identified in Yosemite Valley, including permanent and temporary villages, as well as seasonal hunting and fishing camps. The largest and most important village, Koomine, was located below Yosemite Falls and stretched roughly three-quarters of a mile.
During the hot summer months the Ahwahneechee wore few clothes. Men covered themselves with a single piece of deerskin folded about the hips, women wore a two-piece buckskin skirt, and children went naked until they were about 10 years old. Important villagers decorated themselves with buckskin sashes, and decorated their hair with wildflowers. When temperatures dropped, the Ahwahneechee wrapped themselves in animal-skin robes. Although the Ahwahneechee went barefoot in the village during the warmer months, they wore moccasins lined with cedar bark in the winter. Snowshoes, fashioned out of split saplings, were also used for winter travel in the High Sierra.
Edible plants, gathered by Ahwahneechee women, made up most of the tribe’s diet. Greens and bulbs were harvested in the spring, seeds and fruits in the summer, and acorns in the fall. All told, over 100 plant species were harvested. In bountiful years excess crops were dried and placed in storage. In lean years Indians turned to alternate crops and traded for food with neighboring tribes, including the Mono, Yokuts, and Midou. In exchange for Ahwahneechee acorns, berries, baskets, and arrow shafts, the neighboring tribes traded salt, pinyon pine nuts, red pigment for paint, and obsidian (volcanic glass) used for arrowheads.
In the summer the Ahwahneechee slept outside, but in the winter they lived in large, conical huts made of cedar bark strips placed closely together. The entrance always faced east to greet the rising sun, and a central fire kept the structure warm. According to one observer, “there is no other form of a single-room dwelling that can be kept warm and comfortable in cold weather with so little fire.”
Basket making, a task performed only by women, was one of the most important aspects of Ahwahneechee culture. In the absence of pottery, baskets were essential to daily life. There were dozens of baskets with hundreds of uses: storing food, collecting trash, transporting firewood, trapping fish, etc. Baskets were given as gifts and buried with the dead, and basketry skills helped determine a woman’s social status within the tribe. Ahwahneechee women were such skilled weavers that many of their baskets were watertight.
Serving more than just practical needs, basketry was a form of self-expression with important symbolic meanings. Ahwahneechee women wove beautiful baskets decorated with beads and feathers, and top basket makers were as dexterous as professional musicians, often weaving into old age, long after their eyesight had failed. Basketry was a combination of technical skill and encyclopedic botanical knowledge. Plants left to grow wild produced inferior weaving products, so Indians cultivated plants through burning and pruning to produce the longest, straightest fibers. The quality of fibers also depended on the timing of the harvest. Such intimate botanical knowledge, mastered over thousands of years, was passed down every generation from mother to daughter.
Not merely a casual way to pass the time, basket making was a full-blown industry in the Sierra Nevada. Roughly 50 percent of harvested plants were used to make baskets. Large, complex baskets often required thousands of shoots, and over the course of a year an entire village might require hundreds of thousands of shoots from various plants. Such demand could only be satisfied through large-scale harvesting practices. Most basketry materials also required prolonged storage of one to three years to properly season the fibers, which meant weavers had to plan their basketry needs several years in advance.
In 1542 Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed north from Mexico to become the first non-Indian to explore California. Just south of present-day Monterrey he spied snow-capped mountains in the distance and described them as la sierra nevada, “The Snowy Range.” But the mountains he saw were not the present-day Sierra Nevada, which has since led to much confusion in the history of the range. It wasn’t until 1776 that Pedro Font, a Spaniard who helped colonize San Francisco Bay, saw the mountains and described them as una gran sierra nevada, “A Great Snowy Range.” That same year he produced a map of the region, labeling the mountains “Sierra Nevada.”
For the next five decades the Sierra Nevada was essentially ignored. As far as the Spanish were concerned, the range was simply a massive barrier to eastern travel, and the Spaniards already had their hands full along the coast. Their Catholic missions were in disarray, and Mexico was threatening to revolt.
Following the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), Mexico gained control of California. Around this time American beaver trappers started venturing into California from the east, searching for new hunting grounds away from the overtrapped Rockies. In 1827 legendary fur trapper Jedediah Smith, fresh from blazing an overland route from the Rockies to Southern California, led two companions up and over the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Just 27 years old, Smith became the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada, trudging through deep spring snow just north of Yosemite.
Seven years later the U.S. Army dispatched a 58-man expedition to cross the Sierra from the east. Led by 34-year-old Joseph Walker—a man whose “chief delight” was “to explore unknown regions”—the expedition’s goal was to gather basic information about California. In mid-October 1833, after leading his men across the Great Basin Desert, Joseph Walker reached the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada. By the time he arrived, winter had already blanketed the mountains in a fresh layer of snow.
Undaunted, the men scaled the sheer eastern slope. It was a grueling journey. Deep snow made travel difficult and foraging virtually impossible for the expedition’s pack animals. The men, dressed in knee-length buckskin shirts and leather leggings, battled frostbite and starvation as they descended the western slope. As food supplies dwindled, the men were reduced to eating horses that died along the way. “Our situation was growing more distressing every hour,” one party member wrote, “and all we now thought of was to extricate ourselves from this inhospitable region.”
Pushing on, the men followed a large stream they hoped would lead them to the base of the mountains. After a short distance the stream burst through the forest and plunged over the edge of a sheer cliff. Standing on a rocky precipice, the men became the first non-Indians to set eyes on Yosemite Valley.
Pulling out a spyglass, Walker scanned the surroundings. Yosemite Valley was free of snow and in full autumn glory. Sheer cliffs, granite domes, and dramatic waterfalls towered above open forests and meadows. A sparkling river twisted through the center of the Valley. To the shivering, half-starved men, it seemed like divine intervention—the perfect place to hunt fresh meat and for their horses to graze on tall grasses. For two days the men tried to find a route down the sheer cliffs, but ultimately they concluded that it was “utterly impossible for a man to descend.”
Dejected, the men spent three days bushwhacking an alternate route down the mountains. Although Walker’s party never entered Yosemite Valley, the fact that they viewed it at all is a miracle. Tucked away in the heart of the Sierra Nevada, guarded on all sides by sheer cliffs and forests, Yosemite Valley is one of the most geographically well-concealed locations in California. In the mid-1800s, you literally had to stumble upon Yosemite Valley to find it—which is exactly what the next white people did.
In October 1849, two gold miners tracked a grizzly bear just south of Yosemite. Bushwhacking through the trees, the men stumbled upon an Indian trail that led them to the entrance of Yosemite Valley. They were spellbound by the scenery. Laid out before them were “stupendous cliffs rising perhaps 3000 feet from their base which gave us cause for wonder.” Content simply to savor the view, the two men never entered Yosemite Valley. Had they ventured farther they would have encountered a world virtually unchanged since the Walker expedition. In the years between, however, life just outside the Valley had been turned completely upside down.
On January 24, 1848, nine days before the U.S. acquired California from Mexico, a man named James Marshall noticed something sparkling in the American River in the foothills northwest of Yosemite. “It made my heart thump,” he later recounted, “for I was certain it was gold.” Marshall tried to keep his discovery secret, but rumors quickly spread. When local store owner Sam Brannan heard the news, he purchased enormous quantities of mining supplies. He then headed to San Francisco and waved a bottle of gold dust over his head shouting, “Gold! Gold from the American River!” Within a few weeks, 75 percent of the men living in San Francisco had left town to dig for gold.
News of California’s instant riches spread like wildfire across the globe. At the start of 1848, 800 people lived in San Francisco. By the end of 1849, 100,000 people had arrived in California, and thousands more were on their way. They came from Europe, China, Australia, South America—anywhere the news spread. In 1850 California demanded statehood and got it. By the end of the decade, over 300,000 people had flooded the state and two million pounds of gold (worth over $15 billion today) had been pulled out of California mines and streams.
In 1848, when miners first arrived in the foothills, local Indians greeted them with characteristic hospitality. Natives watched the mining process with great interest, and when they realized the value of the shiny metal many Indians panned for it themselves. Indians eagerly exchanged gold dust for blankets and other supplies. For a short while, everything was fine.
Then, as tens of thousands of miners poured into the foothills, the situation quickly deteriorated. Miners competed with Indians for deer and chopped down acorn-bearing oak trees—the Indians’ primary source of food. Many miners were inherently distrustful of Indians, and they often confiscated Indian territory by force. Within months Indians became second class citizens in a land they had occupied for thousands of years.
Angry and starving, some Indians were reduced to raiding mining camps and trading posts. Such incidents, reported widely among miners, further fueled white suspicion, leading to a downward spiral of white-Indian relations.
Just south of Yosemite, a ruthless, charismatic man named James Savage employed hundreds of Indians to work his lucrative mining claims. A former cattle thief, Savage turned his attention to gold when the news broke, and soon he oversaw a small empire of gold mines and trading posts. By 1850 he was earning roughly $20,000 a day. To ensure the Indians’ goodwill, he learned their language, adopted their customs, and married the daughters of several chiefs. He also intimidated the Indians through claims of supernatural powers. According to one story, he once let an Indian shoot at him with a gun filled with six blanks. As each shot went off, Savage made a grabbing gesture in the air. When the smoke cleared, Savage produced six bullets in his hands—proof, he declared, that guns could not harm him. According to one observer, “Jim Savage was the absolute and despotic ruler over thousands of Indians ... and was by them designated in their Spanish vernacular El Rey Guero—the blonde king.”
As Savage amassed a small fortune, he grew increasingly flamboyant. His Indian workers, meanwhile, grew increasingly unhappy as they realized he was growing rich at their expense. On a trip to San Francisco with Indian leader José Juarez, Savage visited a gambling hall, jumped up on a table, and bet his weight in gold on a playing card. In an instant he lost $35,000. He paid the debt with money given to him by Indians to purchase supplies. Juarez, outraged, berated Savage in the street. Savage responded by knocking Juarez to the ground.
Word of Savage’s exploits quickly spread among his Indian workers, and Savage returned home to a flurry of discontent. With the situation spiraling out of control, Savage called several Indian leaders together. Addressing them in their native tongue, Savage explained that, “If war is made and the white men are aroused to anger, every Indian engaged in war will be killed.”
Juarez, still fuming, stated that white men in faraway cities would not help miners fight Indians. But even if they did, “we will go to the mountains. If they follow, they cannot find us. Our country is now overrun with white people; we must fight to protect ourselves.”
In December of 1851, two of Savage’s trading posts were raided by angry Indians. Fearful of reprisal, hundreds of Savage’s Indian workers fled to the mountains. In response, Savage assembled a 200-man militia called the Mariposa Battalion, with Savage serving as commander.
Before the Battalion could take action, however, federal Indian commissioners arrived and demanded a halt to all hostile activities. Hoping for a diplomatic solution, the commissioners tried to negotiate peace treaties with local tribes. In exchange for leaving the mountains, most “hostile” tribes accepted government land in the Central Valley. But the Ahwahneechee refused. White men had yet to enter Yosemite Valley, and the Ahwahneechee had no interest in leaving their home. A stalemate ensued. The Indian commissioners gave the Indians eight days to leave the mountains, but the Indians stood their ground. With no solution at hand, the Mariposa Battalion was sent to Yosemite Valley.
At the time, the Ahwahneechee were led by a powerful chief named Tenaya, who had only recently led his people back to Yosemite. Several decades earlier, a terrible plague had swept through the mountains, and Yosemite Valley was abandoned. The survivors, including Tenaya’s father, fled to the desert at the eastern base of the Sierra to live with the Mono Indians. Tenaya’s father took a Mono wife, and Tenaya was raised among her people, listening to stories of the old days in Yosemite Valley. When Tenaya was a young man, an old shaman urged him to leave the desert and reestablish his people in the mountains. Sometime around 1821, Tenaya returned to Yosemite Valley with 200 followers.
Now, having recently reclaimed their homeland, the Ahwahneechee were confronted with a new threat. As the Mariposa Battalion approached Yosemite Valley, Tenaya headed down to meet with Savage. Tenaya asked why the Indians were being expelled from their homeland. Savage explained that the white man would give the Indians everything they needed, including protection.
“We have all we need,” Tenaya responded, “we do not want anything from white men … let us remain in the mountains where we were born.” Savage was unmoved by the chief’s argument. If a treaty is not signed, Savage told Tenaya, “your whole tribe will be destroyed; not one of them will be left alive.”
Torn between expulsion and war, Tenaya reluctantly surrendered. A few days later, roughly 70 Ahwahneechee trudged out of the mountains through deep snow. But Savage believed many Indians remained hiding in the mountains, so he continued on to Yosemite Valley with roughly 60 Battalion members.
On March 27, 1851, the soldiers reached an overlook with breathtaking views of Yosemite Valley. The light was soft and a fine mist swirled over the trees. One man in the party, Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, was moved to tears by the scenery. Savage thought Bunnell foolish and ordered him to move on. Descending towards Bridalveil Fall, they became the first white men to enter Yosemite Valley.
The next day the men searched the Valley but found only an abandoned Ahwahneechee village. The remaining Indians had fled to higher elevations, and the Battalion, running low on supplies, was forced to turn around. Making matters worse, Tenaya and the other captive Indians somehow managed to escape in the middle of the night. To Savage, the expedition was a failure. But Bunnell would later write that, “We had discovered, named, and partially explored, one of the most remarkable … geographical wonders of the world.”
A few weeks later, a second expedition was sent to Yosemite Valley, and the Indians were rounded up and marched to the reservation at gunpoint. But life on the reservation was miserable. Tenaya pleaded with his captors to return to Yosemite, and finally he was granted permission to leave. The rest of the tribe quietly followed Tenaya, and no effort was made to bring them back.
Then, in 1852, a group of miners wandered into Yosemite Valley to pan for gold. A skirmish broke out that left two miners dead, and another militia was promptly dispatched to Yosemite. Five Indians were shot and several more were hung from oak trees, but Tenaya, certain that the hostility was not over, ordered his people to cross the Sierras and take shelter with the Mono tribe.
The following year, Tenaya led his people back to Yosemite Valley. According to one story, later that fall a group of young Ahwahneechee stole horses from the Mono without Tenaya’s permission. The Mono sent a war party to Yosemite Valley in response, and in the skirmish that followed Tenaya was stoned to death. Many young Ahwahneechee were also killed, and the women and children were taken captive by the Mono and marched back over the Sierra. Only a handful of elderly Ahwahneechee were allowed to remain in Yosemite Valley. From that point forward, traditional Ahwahneechee life would never be the same.
In 1849 a bankrupt Massachusetts shoemaker named James Adams headed to California to try his luck in the Gold Rush. After making and losing several fortunes, Adams grew despondent. “I abandoned all my schemes for wealth,” he wrote, “and took the road towards the wildest and most unfrequented parts of the Sierra Nevada, resolved to make the wilderness my home, and wild beasts my companions.” In 1856 Adams moved to San Francisco and opened The Mountaineer Museum, which featured elk, eagles, vultures, wildcats, mountain lions, and trained grizzlies that performed tricks. Holding court was Adams himself, dressed in fringed buckskin, moccasins, and a deerskin hat. The museum was a hit, and Adams, who had a knack for publicity, was often seen walking the streets of downtown San Francisco with his grizzlies in tow. His star attraction, Samson, a 1,500 pound grizzly captured in Yosemite, became the model for California’s official state flag.
In 1855 Galen Clark visited Yosemite Valley as a member of the second tourist party. Several months later he developed serious lung problems, and he was told that he only had a short time to live. In 1857 Clark, who was then 42, moved to present-day Wawona. “I went to the mountains,” he wrote, “to take my chances of dying or growing better which I thought were about even.” Shortly thereafter, he completely recovered, and Clark spent most of his next 53 years in living in Yosemite.
Born in Dublin, New Hampshire in 1814, Clark was a polite, sickly child who attained little success as a young man. In 1853, at the age of 39, he was broke and living in New York City when he saw an exhibition displaying gold dust from the Sierra Nevada. Enchanted, he immediately set sail for California and sought work as a gold miner.
After developing lung problems, Clark claimed 160 acres in Wawona and built a small cabin in the meadow. Awed by the immense size of the nearby giant sequoias in the Mariposa Grove, Clark wasted no time publicizing the “Big Trees” in local newspapers. Before long he was hosting paying guests at his cabin and leading them on guided tours of the Mariposa Grove. The influential Thomas Starr King called Clark, “one of the best informed men, one of the very best guides, I ever met in California or any other wilderness.” Another guest described him as, “handsome, thoughtful, interesting, and slovenly.”
Although well-liked, Clark had many unusual habits. He frequently walked barefoot, claiming that shoes and boots were, “cruel and silly instruments of torture, at once uncivilized, inhuman, and unnecessary.” Clark also insisted on breathing through his nose while he hiked, believing that, “As the air rushes through the nostrils on its way to inflate the lungs, the brain attracts and inhales electricity from it.”
When the Yosemite Grant was created in 1864, Clark was a natural choice to become the first “Guardian of Yosemite” (a position comparable to park superintendent today). Clark later befriended John Muir and became a charter member of the Sierra Club. Muir described Clark as “the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.”
In 1910, 53 years after coming to Yosemite to die, Galen Clark passed away at the age of 96. He was buried near Yosemite Falls at a spot he had personally selected decades earlier. His gravesite, marked by a granite tombstone, is surrounded by giant sequoia seedlings that Clark himself planted. Today, over a century later, those young sequoias continue to grow.
At first, most Californians knew nothing of the discovery of Yosemite Valley by the Mariposa Battalion. The foothills were still filled with gold, and miners could think of little else. Then, in 1855, a writer named James Hutchings came across a printed account of the Battalion’s expedition. He found himself stunned. The discovery of a thousand foot waterfall—six times higher than world-famous Niagara Falls—was extraordinary news, and it had yet to be widely reported. Hutchings, who was in the midst of launching an illustrated monthly magazine, immediately set off for the mysterious valley.
Hutchings arrived in Yosemite Valley in June with three companions and two Indian guides. The group spent five days exploring the Valley, taking notes, sketching illustrations, and basking in the scenery. Hutchings was beside himself. The springtime glory of Yosemite Valley far exceeded his expectations—the waterfall he had read about was in reality over two thousand feet high—and shortly thereafter he wrote a glowing article for a Mariposa newspaper describing the “luxurious scenic banqueting.” By the end of the summer, over 40 people had visited Yosemite Valley.
The following year, two enterprising miners opened a 50-mile horse trail to Yosemite, charging $2 per horseback rider. The multi-day ride, which involved steep climbs and sheer drop-offs, was enough to deter most visitors, but a few dozen adventurous souls were willing to brave the hardship to witness the extraordinary scenery firsthand. The first hotel in Yosemite Valley opened for business in 1857, followed by an even larger hotel two years later. Both structures consisted of dirt floors, rooms separated by hanging sheets, and windows with no panes. But by all accounts the hospitality made up for the rustic accommodations.
Halfway along the trail to Yosemite was a large meadow called Wawona, and Galen Clark, one of the first visitors to Yosemite Valley, took up residence there in 1856. Clark built an inn for overnight guests and guided visitors to the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Before long, the “Big Trees” had become a must-see destination on par with Yosemite Valley.
As news of Yosemite’s extraordinary scenery rippled through California society, more and more people stopped by for a look. Artists were among the earliest arrivals, and their photos, paintings, and illustrations further fueled public curiosity. In 1861 the influential Reverend Thomas Starr King visited Yosemite Valley. Upon returning to San Francisco he preached its wonders from his pulpit and wrote compelling articles that reached a national audience.
That same year, Hutchings published Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California, an illustrated book that lavished praise upon Yosemite. To Hutchings, who would soon purchase a hotel in the Valley, Yosemite was an underexploited scenic gold mine. But as hoteliers and settlers snatched up plots of land, some visitors grew concerned at the pace of unchecked development.
In early 1864, a group of influential citizens approached California Senator John Conness with a novel idea. The group believed that a location as unique as Yosemite should belong to the public, as opposed to a handful of private landowners, and they urged the creation of a state-owned land trust to preserve Yosemite for the enjoyment of future generations.
Spearheading the effort was Israel Raymond, a wealthy San Francisco businessman. Raymond sent Conness a letter urging him to transfer Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove from the federal government to the State of California “for public use and recreation.” Included with the letter was a set of large-format photographs of Yosemite taken by celebrated photographer Carleton Watkins.
By 1864, nearly a decade after James Hutchings first arrived in Yosemite, fewer than 700 tourists had visited Yosemite Valley. But Conness was suitably impressed by the photographs to introduce a bill in Congress. “This bill,” he announced, “proposes to make a grant of certain premises located in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the state of California, that are for all public purposes worthless, but which constitute, perhaps, some of the greatest wonders of the world.” To assure the bill’s passage, Conness promised his colleagues that it would not cost the federal government a dime. Congress, preoccupied with the Civil War, passed the bill without objection.
On June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law, creating the Yosemite Grant. Although hardly anyone realized it at the time, the Yosemite Grant was a radical achievement unprecedented in human history. Never before had a government set aside a piece of wilderness for its citizens based solely on its natural beauty. It was an idea that would turn out to be highly contagious, not just in America but around the world.
Eadweard Muybridge was not the first photographer to visit Yosemite, but he was the first photographer to take a romantic approach, composing his shots like landscape paintings and adding embellished details like clouds as he saw fit. Following his first visit to Yosemite, Muybridge (who had a flair for drama) secretly adopted the pseudonym “Helios.” He then exhibited Helios’ Yosemite photographs in a San Francisco gallery and handed out brochures commenting on the “anonymous” artist’s supreme talents. The response was overwhelming: people loved the mystery photographer’s painterly approach. When it was revealed that Muybridge was Helios, critics were appalled, but the public reacted with a collective shrug and Muybridge’s career continued to thrive.
In 1871, at the age of 41, Muybridge married his 21-year-old photography assistant. A few years later, convinced his wife was cheating on him, Muybridge tracked down her supposed lover to a home near Calistoga and shot him through the heart. He then apologized to several women present, calmly sat down in the parlor, and began reading a newspaper. He was ultimately acquitted of the murder on the grounds of “justifiable homicide.” Later Muybridge abandoned landscape photography to focus on photographic motion studies, which laid the groundwork for the invention of motion pictures a decade later.
Many painters visited Yosemite in the mid-1800s, but none derived as much fame or success from the scenery as Albert Bierstadt. When Bierstadt arrived in Yosemite in 1863, landscape painting exhibitions drew blockbuster crowds in major American cities, offering the public a rare glimpse of the mysterious American West that few people had the time or the money to visit. Landscape artists were treated like rock stars, and Bierstadt’s massive, melodramatic landscapes were among the most popular. A master of self-promotion, he displayed his works as if they were performances: charging admission, unveiling them from behind velvet curtains, lighting them dramatically, and even recommending that viewers scan them through binoculars to heighten the visual effect.
His first monumental Yosemite painting, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (above), measured 40 square feet and was unveiled to the public in 1865. The painting established Bierstadt as America’s top landscape artist, and the giant canvas promptly toured several major cities. In 1867 a wealthy financier commissioned a massive 140 square-foot Yosemite painting for the astounding sum of $25,000. When that painting, The Domes of Yosemite, was unveiled to the public, it caused a firestorm of criticism. Some considered it Bierstadt’s finest work, but others accused Bierstadt of vulgar exaggeration. The scenery was simply too perfect. When Mark Twain viewed the canvas he joked that it was, “considerably more beautiful than the original,” describing it as, “more the atmosphere of Kingdom-Come than of California.” Although some critics scoffed, Bierstadt remained one of the most popular and influential landscape artists of the 19th century.
Of all the great artists and thinkers that Yosemite has nurtured, none has been more celebrated, more influential, and more romanticized than John Muir. His eloquent nature writing helped inspire the modern environmental movement, and his tireless efforts were vital to the establishment of Yosemite National Park.
Born in Scotland in 1838, Muir moved to Wisconsin with his parents when he was a child. His father was a Presbyterian preacher who demanded that young John memorize the Bible word for word, which he did. Later, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, but he quit before graduation to enter what he called “the University of the Wilderness.” In 1867, after recovering from a factory accident that nearly left him blind, he embarked on a 1,000 mile walk to Florida.
From Florida Muir set sail for California, arriving in San Francisco in 1868. He immediately set out on a six-week walk to Yosemite. Spellbound by Yosemite’s scenery—“every feature glowing, radiating beauty that pours into our flesh and bones like heat rays from fire”—Muir found employment the following summer as a sheepherder in the Sierra Nevada. Wandering among the alpine meadows with a St. Bernard, Muir rejoiced in the mountain wilderness. In his free time he studied plants and climbed the granite peaks. “This June seems the greatest of all the months of my life,” he wrote, “the most truly, divinely free.” By the end of the summer, Muir had developed a passion for the Sierra Nevada, which he christened the “Range of Light.”
The following summer Muir worked at a sawmill in Yosemite Valley, and for the next several years he rambled about the Sierra Nevada, meticulously studying the natural landscape and taking notes. He often wandered for days in the wilderness, carrying nothing more than a blanket, a notebook, some tea, and dry bread. Around this time Muir began writing popular nature articles for newspapers and magazines.
In 1880 Muir married the daughter of a wealthy California fruit farmer. Settling down for the first time in his life, he spent the next several years working the farm and raising two daughters. But domestic life wore on Muir, and in 1888 his wife sold parcels of the family estate to allow Muir to focus on his wilderness studies. Shortly thereafter he teamed up with the influential editor Robert Underwood Johnston to spearhead the creation of Yosemite National Park.
In 1892 Muir co-founded the Sierra Club and became its first president. His first book, The Mountains of California, was published two years later when he was 56 years old. The book was an instant success, and several books followed that are now considered nature classics. “Strange is it not that a tramp and vagabond should meet such a fate,” he wrote, “I never intended to write or lecture or seek fame in any way, I now write a great deal, and am well known.” In 1903 Muir embarked on a year-long, round-the-world journey, then spent the final decade of his life fighting to stop the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite—a battle that was lost in 1913. Several months later, Muir died of pneumonia.
Although Muir is often portrayed as a contemplative mountain poet, his younger days were characterized by brash, youthful machismo. His testosterone-fueled exploits included fleeing avalanches in winter, riding out storms in 100-foot trees, and generally risking life and limb. At one point he shimmied to the lip of Yosemite Falls just to check out the view. Such death-defying exploits profoundly influenced his writing. Whereas earlier environmental thinkers such as Emerson and Thoreau took leisurely strolls through the woods, Muir threw himself into nature with the physical vigor of an athlete.
Muir’s eloquent, adventurous writing continues to resonate with a huge audience today. His extraordinary ability to communicate the importance of wilderness preservation has influenced generations of prominent thinkers, and his once local celebrity has morphed into environmental superstardom. Today his cult of personality can be seen on T-shirts, posters, and bumper stickers that read “Muir Power to You!”
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. But California was clearly not up to the task. In 1895 Muir described Yosemite Valley as “downtrodden, frowsy, and like an abandoned backwoods pasture. It looks ten times worse now than ... seven years ago. Most of the level meadow floor of the Valley is fenced with barbed and unbarbed wire and about three hundred head of horses are turned loose every night to feed and trample the flora out of existence ... As long as the management is in the hands of eight politicians appointed by the ever-changing Governor of California, there is but little hope.”
Muir believed that Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove needed to be permanently transferred to Yosemite National Park in order to be truly protected. That was far easier said than done. Hotel owners in Yosemite Valley vigorously opposed the idea, fearing that their businesses would be shut down if the Yosemite Grant was transferred to the federal government.
Salvation came in the form of President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Yosemite in 1903. Although Roosevelt had specifically requested that no fanfare or celebrations herald his arrival, local residents planned a lavish banquet attended by the Governor of California and followed by an expensive fireworks display. Dismayed, Roosevelt asked Muir to show him the real Yosemite, and the two men quietly slipped into the backcountry for several nights of camping.
Around a roaring campfire, Roosevelt and Muir talked late into the night, slept in the brisk open air, and woke up to a dusting of snow. “I’ve had the time of my life,” Roosevelt later told reporters. “Just think of where I was last night. Up there amid the pines and the silver firs, in the Sierran solitude, and without a tent. I passed one of the most pleasant nights of my life.”
With Roosevelt’s support firmly in place, Muir and the Sierra Club lobbied hard to transfer the Yosemite Grant to the National Park Service. After a bitter fight in the California legislature, the bill was passed and sent to Washington. Again Muir stepped into action, cajoling Congressmen and pulling strings to secure the necessary votes. Finally, on June 11, 1906, President Roosevelt signed the bill into law.
Elated, Muir wrote to his old friend Robert Underwood Johnson: “Sound the loud trimble and let every Yosemite tree and stream rejoice ... The fight you planned by that famous Tuolumne camp-fire seventeen years ago is at last fairly, gloriously won, every enemy down.” But unknown to Muir, a new battle was looming on the horizon.
Six weeks before Yosemite Valley officially became part of Yosemite National Park, San Francisco lay in ruins. On April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake shook the town, demolishing buildings and other man-made structures. Most of the damage occurred after the earthquake, however, when a massive fire raced through town and incinerated over 500 city blocks. With hopelessly limited access to water, residents could do little but watch their glorious city burn. In the end, more than half of the city’s 400,000 citizens were left homeless and roughly 3,000 people died. A century later, it remains the largest loss of life due to a natural disaster in California’s history.
In spite of the catastrophe, the human spirit prevailed and the citizens of San Francisco rallied to rebuild their home. It was a remarkable effort, but a vexing problem remained: San Francisco, which is situated at the tip of a small peninsula, has no natural water supply.
During the boom years of the Gold Rush, fresh water was ferried to San Francisco on schooners, poured into large casks, and hauled up the city’s steep streets by weary horses and mules. (Such sorry sights inspired Andrew Hallidie, an animal lover, to invent the cable car.) Later a Roman-style aqueduct—the first in America—delivered water from a large creek 20 miles distant.
By 1906, however, this limited water supply was completely inadequate for the city’s booming population—a fact that became painfully clear in the wake of the earthquake. As civic leaders struggled to build a new and improved San Francisco, one of their top priorities was securing a large, reliable source of water. And one of the most promising sites for a new reservoir was Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
Lying just 25 miles north of Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy was considered by many to be Yosemite’s sister valley. It too was surrounded by massive granite cliffs and thundering waterfalls, and though smaller, it was similarly impressive. The famous geologist Josiah Whitney described Hetch Hetchy as “almost an exact counterpart of the Yosemite Valley [although] not on quite as grand a scale as that valley. But if there were no Yosemite, the Hetch Hetchy would be fairly entitled to a worldwide fame.”
In 1871 John Muir called Hetch Hetchy “one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.” When talk of a potential dam in Hetch Hetchy first surfaced, Muir readied himself for battle. Other rivers could quench San Francisco’s thirst, and Muir was determined to protect the beautiful valley where he had spent many happy days and nights. It was illegal, he pointed out, to build a dam in a national park. Dam proponents responded by introducing legislation to remove that technicality. When the legal sleight-of-hand was blocked, dam proponents presented the conflict as all of San Francisco against a few wealthy hiking enthusiasts from the Sierra Club.
Following the earthquake, Muir was up against even longer odds. The emotionally and financially shattered residents of San Francisco were desperate for peace of mind, and feasibility studies indicated that Hetch Hetchy was the most cost-effective source of water for the devastated city. Again the cry went up to dam Hetch Hetchy, but Muir and the Sierra Club fought back.
Insults were hurled back and forth, and soon the local battle spilled over into the national arena. One of the most prominent supporters of the dam was Gifford Pinchot, the brilliant young head of the U.S. Forest Service who preached conservation over preservation, so-called “wise use” that sought to sustainably protect natural resources while utilizing them for the greatest possible good. His argument for the dam at Hetch Hetchy struck a similar chord. “The injury,” he wrote, “by substituting a lake for the present swampy floor of the valley ... is altogether unimportant compared with the benefits to be derived from its use as a reservoir.” Visitation numbers seemed to support this—rarely did more than 200 people visit the swampy, mosquito-infested valley each summer.
Both Muir and Pinchot were devout proponents of wilderness protection, but their ideologies shared little else in common. Pinchot believed wild resources, used sustainably, should be put to the greatest possible good, while Muir, ever the romantic, wanted strict preservation for recreational use only. “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches,” wrote Muir, “for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” It was classic Muir, wrapping nature preservation in condemnatory, religious rhetoric. In a lighter moment Muir confided to a friend, “How this business Hetch-hetchs one’s time. It won’t even let me sleep.”
As the two sides traded barbs, the fight dragged on for many years. Using his considerable influence, Muir enlisted support from many powerful friends, including Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, who blocked any legislation favoring the dam. When Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election in 1912, however, he sided with proponents of the dam.
In less than a year, the Raker Act, which authorized the damming of Hetch Hetchy, passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law. John Raker, the bill’s main proponent, claimed the reservoir would be the “highest form of conservation,” making the valley more accessible and useful for recreation. “As to damning the dammers they are damned already and buried beneath a roaring flood of lies,” wrote Muir, who died a year later at the age of 76.
The battle over Hetch Hetchy was a milestone in American politics. It was the first national debate to pit the necessities of urban growth against environmental preservation. As such, it set the tone for many future battles. The lessons learned by both sides were analyzed, critiqued, and refined to a high art. In the 1950s, dam builders flooded scenic Glen Canyon in southern Utah. A few years later, the Sierra Club blocked two proposed dams in Grand Canyon using a brilliant PR campaign that paraphrased John Muir. Today the ongoing debate of wise-use versus strict preservation continues to rage.
Throughout the Hetch Hetchy debate, the U.S. Calvary dutifully looked after Yosemite. Although several national parks had been established by the turn of the century, the National Park Service had not yet been established, so Yosemite’s operation fell to the military. After decades of exemplary service, the cavalry was replaced by a civilian force in 1914.
That same year, a wealthy industrialist named Stephen Mather wrote a letter of complaint to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. Mather, who made his fortune mining borax in Death Valley, was frustrated with the way America’s national parks were being managed, and he demanded that something be done. Lane’s response: “If you don’t like the way the national parks are being run, come on down to Washington and run them yourself.” Mather did just that, and for the next 14 years he shaped a strong vision for America’s national parks.
Mather’s first step was to establish a government agency to oversee the national parks. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, which established the National Park Service. Mather was named director of the new agency, and his first priority was to boost park visitation. Mather realized that more visitors would translate to greater public support, which the fledgling agency desperately needed to justify its existence and ensure its future survival.
To accommodate automobiles, which were becoming increasingly popular in Yosemite, Mather secured funds to replace roads designed for horses with improved automobile roads. The result was predictable: visitation boomed. In 1915 roughly 15,000 people visited Yosemite. Five years later, that number jumped to nearly 69,000.
To accommodate the new visitors, Mather championed the construction of new hotels. “Scenery,” wrote Mather, “is a hollow enjoyment to a tourist who sets out in the morning after an indigestible breakfast and a fitful sleep on an impossible bed.” The park soon offered a wide range of lodging options, but the crown jewel was the sumptuous Ahwahnee Hotel—Mather’s architectural masterpiece for his favorite national park.
Despite the physical improvements, many basic problems remained. Yosemite was still riddled with “inholdings” (privately owned parcels of land purchased before the creation of the park) that were vulnerable to mining, logging, and development. In 1930 John D. Rockefeller, Jr. put up half the money needed to purchase 15,000 acres of private land; the rest was provided by Congress.
Under Mather’s watchful eye, Yosemite Valley became a recreational wonderland that lured thousands of tourists each year. Decades later, with annual visitation well into the millions, some would question the wisdom of this policy. But at the time, Mather’s policies were essential to ensure the long-term survival of the National Park Service.
Many artists have been inspired by Yosemite, but none has been as singularly identified with the park as Ansel Adams. His stunning black and white photographs elevated landscape photography to lofty new heights, and his visual genius has rarely been eclipsed.
Born to an upper-class San Francisco family, Adams was an odd, hyperactive child. A talented musician, he dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, but while recovering from an illness he discovered a copy of James Hutchings’ book In the Heart of the Sierras. Captivated by the photographs, Adams begged his family to visit Yosemite. In 1916 his wish was fulfilled, and upon entering Yosemite Valley Ansel’s loving father presented him with a fateful gift: a small Kodak camera.
At 17 Adams joined the Sierra Club and participated in many High Sierra camping trips. But he soon became frustrated with his simple camera, which took drab pictures that failed to convey the powerful emotions he felt. To remedy the situation, Adams immersed himself in advanced photography.
Over the next two decades, Adams produced hundreds of dazzling landscapes distinguished by bold, lush tonality. Assorted darkroom techniques allowed him to heighten the drama, infusing wilderness scenes with personal emotion—what he felt in addition to what he saw. “When I’m ready to make a photograph,” he said, “I see in my mind’s eye something that is not literally there ... I’m interested in expressing something which is built up from within, rather than extracted from without.”
Adams’ rigorous work ethic and finely-tuned creative instincts catapulted him to the top of the art world. Although his best work was done in his 20s and 30s—sometimes working at an unsustainable manic pace—in later life Adams eagerly adopted the role of elder statesmen. He campaigned on behalf of the American Wilderness and endeared himself to the public with his enthusiasm and charm. Unlike many landscape photographers, Adams was a gregarious bon vivant. He always relished a party, frequently holding forth at the piano while strong drinks were poured late into the night.
Adams served on the board of the Sierra Club for 37 years, and throughout the 20th century his wildly popular photographs inspired millions of Americans to embrace environmentalism. In 1940 his photographs helped establish Kings Canyon National Park. By 1980, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he had become that rarest of breeds: an internationally famous living artist. Following his death in 1984, both the Ansel Adams Wilderness and Mount Ansel Adams in Yosemite were named in his honor.
By the dawn of the 20th century, most famous peaks in Yosemite had been summited. A few first ascents were made by the California Geological Survey, which mapped the entire Sierra Nevada in the 1860s, but the Survey labeled several rugged peaks “inaccessible.” Predictably, such declarations only whetted the appetites of hardy adventurers, and soon every notable peak in Yosemite had been conquered.
In 1931 Robert Underhill visited the Sierra Nevada and introduced mountaineering techniques from Europe. The Europeans had pioneered mountain climbing in the 1800s, and they remained the sport’s preeminent practitioners for decades. Underhill helped the Americans play catch up, blazing difficult new routes up previously conquered peaks.
Following WWII and the introduction of nylon ropes, the sport of rock climbing forever changed. Prior to nylon, ropes were made out of hemp that snapped under sudden, intense pressure—a taught rope caused by a falling climber, say. As a result, falling was anathema, a fatal mistake avoided at all costs. But the new, virtually unbreakable nylon ropes allowed climbers to tackle previously unthinkable challenges. Confident that the new ropes would protect them, climbers attempted risky new moves that often caused them to fall. In the brave new post-nylon world, falling was suddenly acceptable. Through dedicated trial and error, climbers perfected complex gravity-defying moves and were soon scampering up vertical faces where no rational human belonged.
Armed with impressive new skills, climbers sought out bigger and bigger walls. And no place on Earth had more fantastically big walls in a more gloriously accessible location than Yosemite. In the 1940s and 50s, a motley collection of climbing personalities descended on the park to put their skills to the test. Among the new arrivals was a 47-year-old Swiss ironworker named John Salathé, who pioneered an important new piece of climbing equipment: the steel piton. This strong metal spike, fashioned with an eye-hole at one end, could be hammered into cracks to provide a safe, secure anchor for ropes.
Although pitons already existed in Europe, they were made with soft, malleable iron that often buckled in Yosemite’s hard granite cracks. Salathé’s steel pitons, by contrast, held strong and could be reused, which meant carrying much less equipment on big climbs. Salathé then unleashed another revolutionary concept in Yosemite: the multi-day climb. After climbing all day, Salathé spent the night strapped to the face of the rock. No longer constrained by equipment or daylight, climbers could rise as high as their bodies would take them.
Yosemite’s pioneering “granite astronauts” soon conquered the Valley’s most storied landmarks. Salathé kicked off the trend by completing the first multi-day ascent of Lost Arrow Spire (1947) and 1,500-foot Sentinel Rock (1950). In 1957 Royal Robbins, Jerry Gallwas, and Mike Sherrick climbed the vertical 2,000-foot Northwest Face of Half Dome in five days. The trio was graciously greeted at the top by Warren Harding, Robbins’ rival, but the jealous Harding quickly made it his personal mission to bag the granddaddy of them all: El Capitan.
In 1958 Harding and two friends (Wayne Merry and George Whitmore) reached the top of El Capitan using “siege tactics”—setting ropes higher and higher and rappelling down for rest and supplies. It took the team 45 days spread over 18 months. Robbins considered such tactics poor form, and in 1960 he assembled a group and retraced Harding’s route in a committed seven-day push.
Over the next decade, many future climbing legends came to Yosemite Valley and left their mark, establishing dozens of challenging new routes. By the early 1970s, however, the popularity of rock climbing was exploding, and the once-minimal damage caused by pitons began to raise concerns. Hammering pitons into and out of cracks distorted the rock, leaving behind a rounded scar. Many popular routes were riddled with piton marks, and the damage was compounding each year.
In 1973 three climbers—Galen Rowell, Dennis Henneck, and Doug Robinson—climbed the Northwest Face of Half Dome using radical “clean” gear that left no trace. Rather than hammering in pitons, they wedged bolt-sized pieces of aluminum into hairline cracks. The aluminum pieces were fashioned in a wide variety of shapes and sizes to accommodate whatever cracks the trio encountered, and they could easily be un-wedged without leaving a scar. National Geographic devoted a cover story to their endeavor, and soon chocks and nuts (as the aluminum pieces came to be called) were commercially available. A new era of rock conservation had begun. Any half decent climber could hammer their way to the top of a route, the new climbing philosophers preached, but it was better to rise to meet the challenge of the rock than to lower the difficulty of the climb to compensate for personal weakness.
Then, in the 1980s, American climbers at other popular climbing destinations began drilling many small permanent bolts into rock faces to standardize climbs. This allowed climbers to focus less on equipment and more on pure athletic ability. Although bolts were often spaced widely apart to retain the challenge of the rock, this new style of climbing, called sport climbing, met with vehement resistance in Yosemite. Purists deplored the “excessive” bolt-drilling, and many verbal—and sometimes physical—confrontations ensued. “Sport Climbing Is Neither” mocked a popular bumper sticker. Gradually, however, the practice was grudgingly accepted, and an uneasy truce has remained in place ever since.
Today roughly five percent of Yosemite visitors—nearly 200,000 people—identify themselves as rock climbers. Young climbers come to follow in the footsteps of living legends, while old timers climb well into their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. Today, as always, Yosemite Valley lies at the heart of American rock climbing. Its history, legends, and personalities have influenced several generations of climbers, and they will continue to shape the sport’s culture for years to come.
Today Yosemite is one of America’s most popular national parks. Its world-class scenery lures visitors from around the globe, but the park’s immense popularity now poses significant challenges. In 1855, the first year of tourism in Yosemite, 42 people visited the Valley. A century later annual visitation topped one million, and the numbers kept on climbing—two million in 1967, three million in 1987, four million in 1994. In Yosemite Valley, where most visitation is concentrated, peak-season traffic jams and long lines became as much a part of the scenery as cliffs and waterfalls. To alleviate congestion, the park service established one-way roads, initiated a free shuttle service, and reduced the number of hotel rooms and campsites.
Managing a park as large and popular as Yosemite is a complex, difficult job. The National Park Service bears the burden of both protecting the natural resources and providing for the enjoyment of park visitors—two often conflicting goals. In 2000 a general management plan outlined five main priorities for Yosemite: reduce visual intrusion of administrative and commercial services, reduce crowding, reduce traffic congestion, allow natural processes to prevail, and promote visitor understanding through enhanced interpretive programming and educational facilities. Successfully achieving these goals is a challenge. But with a dedicated staff, a passionate public following, and the support of terrific organizations like the Yosemite Conservancy, Yosemite’s future looks bright.