Yosemite National Park has had its problems, but it will endure.
Only erosion onto infinity can take away the massive granite formations that withstood the brutality of Ice Age glaciers. One glacier in particular left a beautiful legacy, where ice-resistant rock forms an intimate gathering of spires, domes, cliffs and waterfalls flanking the small but magnificent Yosemite Valley.
The Valley defines Yosemite National Park for most who have seen it, and it might well define the national park system as a whole.
People love the grandeur of Yosemite. They love its distinct personality. No other American mountain range has this collection of features. Half Dome, the park’s main focal point, turns out to be better than a whole dome, because of the way its flat wide face reflects the sun and changes colors according to the time of day and season. Mighty El Capitan enchants those who like to climb things that are slippery and sheer, as well as those content to stand at its base, look up and feel the awe. Outside the Valley, two groves of giant and ancient sequoia trees bring even more wonder to the party.
Yosemite boasts the large scale of any other national park. Wildlife abounds, flowers brighten the meadows, evergreens and oaks march on for miles, and a river runs through its beautiful valley–the intimate part everyone remembers, a space just 7 miles long and a mile wide. Seven square miles out of 1,200 square miles. We give Yosemite Valley capital letters, because its compacted scenery commands recognition as one of Earth’s best treasures.
People come to Yosemite National Park from all over the world, and to some–perhaps most–it is the American national park, offering nearly everything they believe a park should have.
Purists, however, may believe the park is too easy. Vehicles can drive right up ($20 for the week). Less ambitious hikers find plenty of flat trails. Vacationers with a little time can drive over from San Francisco or wander up from Fresno on a whim. There they’ll find a lodge with motel-style units, cabins, campgrounds and a luxury accommodation called the Ahwahnee with chocolates on the pillow and gourmet menus in its long, timbered dining room.
For a short time in 1997, however, Yosemite became extremely difficult. On Jan. 1 and 2 of that year, the Merced River, that valley sparkler, overflowed its banks and wiped out some campgrounds, cottages, employee housing, parts of Yosemite Lodge and a few of the most accessible recreation areas.
Meadows were inundated, and the flood rendered California Highway 140–a major route into the park–completely impassable. Yosemite Valley closed for a time as officials tried to regroup.
Soon, the people who operate Yosemite had a tangible and official indication of just how much the public loves their park. In June of 1997, Congress approved a $178 million
appropriation to repair the flood damage and redevelop parts of the park to better handle the annual flood of close to 3.5 million visitors a year.
“This was far and away the largest single appropriation ever for a national park,” said Scott Gediman, the park ranger who heads up the Yosemite public affairs team. “Before, it was something like $50 million to the Everglades for restoration after Hurricane Andrew.”
Following that legislative embrace, park planners began submitting proposals to improve traffic patterns, relocate awkward camping and housing sites and initiate scores of other projects that they believed would make the park even better than it had been before the flood.
Nothing much could improve the monoliths that people come to see, or make the trails and waterfalls any prettier. But the National Park Service mandate requires it not only to preserve and protect nature but to make it accessible and enjoyable. That can lead to conflicts, because a highway improvement or a safer bridge might be viewed as a detriment to the natural environment. After the Yosemite Valley Plan began taking shape, park officials encountered tough love from environmental groups who believe some aspects of the proposal would have a negative impact on wildlife, plants, air purity and general tranquillity and–in short–violate sections of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The legal fighting isn’t over yet.
Meanwhile, the planning team encountered the possessive love of the general public, listening to highly personal outpourings at public meetings held two years ago across California, 21 cities in all.
“We called it the Road Show,” Gediman said. “We had a bus and we would set up exhibits, and we ended up with almost 11,000 public comments on the Yosemite Valley Plan. We had people in tears at these meetings, people screaming, people yelling.”
Deb Schweizer, a ranger who also conducted the Road Show, read through a few thousand of the public comments. “I think the main thing we walked away with is that people definitely love this park,” she observed. “The thing is, almost no one agrees on how it should be managed.”
Park officials surmised that the public agreed that the broken places should be fixed, but that view still would bring up a wide range of conflicting ideas. For example, a great many couples or families make annual treks to the same cabin in the same valley location. What if it were decided to rebuild that cabin on another site or design it differently? Or what if they didn’t rebuild it at all? Life simply would not be the same! Still others wanted changes that would improve ease of movement: more lights to make walking at night safer and easier, more restaurants, cable access, better cell-phone reception . . . whatever.
Hard-core nature-lovers argued that more lights would ruin the view of the starry night sky and that softies should just stay home or vacation at resorts. “There definitely are extremes of feeling about this park,” Schweizer said. “There are literally people who believe if you aren’t able to hike in Yosemite, you shouldn’t be able to get there. Others were saying, in effect, we need lodges, we need condos and all the services available to us in the city.”
What cannot be denied or even altered much is the stunning natural beauty of the park. Among the scattered opinions are those held by dedicated backpackers who point out that Yosemite National Park covers 1,200 square miles of wonderful terrain. A rare few won’t even consider setting foot in bustling Yosemite Valley. It may have the most spectacular features in the most condensed space, but the Yosemite backcountry has its own charms, among them blessed solitude. Also, the climbers who scale El Capitan have their own special needs, and those users, too, must be heard.
What with the lawsuits and the tendency of governmental bodies to move slowly, the post-flood Yosemite has not changed as much as some people might have hoped–or feared. A lot of the work doesn’t jump out at visitors–the removal of a rickety bridge here, a meadow restoration project there. Authorities may restrict automobile traffic in the valley, requiring day-trippers to park on the periphery and take shuttle buses into the park. Bob Roney, Yosemite’s master interpreter of all things natural and cultural, is among those who would like to see that shuttle service. But he wants to clear up one thing.
“There will never come a time when people cannot drive to their campsite or to their hotel and motel lodgings,” he insists. “That policy will never change.”
But those cars that line up alongside El Capitan, or jam the parking lots at the foot of Yosemite Falls, or make the twisting climb up to Glacier Point for its sweeping panorama of Half Dome and the valley–those vehicles may someday yield to a system of shuttle buses. Yosemite is loved by so many that there has to be some kind of crowd control, especially in summer.
“The idea of reducing overcrowding in Yosemite Valley was even going on in the 1920s,” Roney pointed out. Those who would like to see Yosemite turn back the clock to more pristine times must be reminded that the valley once accommodated such unnatural attractions as a one-hour Fotomat, an ice cream stand, a zoo, a gas station and a Cadillac dealership. “It used to be a tradition that each new superintendent would come in and buy their Cadillac here,” Gediman said. “And people were allowed to feed the bears,” Schweizer added.
Yosemite was the first wilderness land to be set aside by the federal government purely for its scenic value, but it can’t lay claim to the title of first national park. In 1864 Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias was given in trust to California, and eight years later the people who were putting Yellowstone together wanted to create a similar trust. But because Yellowstone’s federal land was then part of a territory and there was no state to serve as trustee, “they created what they called a national park,” Roney said. “Had California not been a state, Yosemite would have been the first national park.”
Yosemite people might tell Yellowstone people that Yosemite, by rights, was the first national park because even though it was administered by the state of California, it was the sense of Congress and most conservationists that Yosemite was a national treasure rather than a regional one.
“Frankly, I don’t care,” said Roney. “We kid about it, but it’s a little like saying, ‘My daddy can beat up your daddy.’ “
Creating the national park system not only required an abundance of wild land–with which America happened to be blessed–but a human willingness to set some of it aside. Roney, who is a student of Yosemite’s human history, has a firm grasp of the process involved.
“We’re really lucky that this country was so young. It was essentially wild when it was populated by Euro-Americans and others. In the early to mid-1800s, I think we were searching for some sort of a national identity. And we realized that we had this wilderness. At the time, the wilderness seemed unlimited. Setting aside some big pieces of land in territory like Wyoming and Montana didn’t seem like a big deal.
“Europe had already gone through and settled and exploited their countrysides. In the Alps, forests were completely removed, set up as pasture lands. I’m not saying those lands aren’t beautiful, but I think the people coming here from over there appreciate how this land is untrammeled.”
But it wasn’t simply that America could spare several million acres of unspoiled wilderness; other factors came into play.
“There was that 19th Century transcendentalist movement, for one thing,” Roney said. “Even Wordsworth in England was writing poetry about the Lake District. That attitude was part of what made people want to protect places like Yosemite and Yellowstone, Sequoia and Grand Canyon.”
Poetic notions aside, many of those natural wonders survived as parks because potential developers deemed them worthless. Rugged wilderness areas like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite just didn’t seem profitable to farmers, miners and lumber interests, Roney said.
“As a matter of fact, when the Yosemite Grant was put before Congress, one of the things said was that Yosemite Valley was for all other purposes worthless land. There wasn’t agriculture to be had here–season too short. Too isolated. No mineral wealth. The Giant Sequoias, that was a different thing. People love trees. They love their trees.”
Public sentiment may have saved the giant sequoias, but not before entrepreneurs managed to scoop tunnels out of a few trunks so tourists might enjoy the novelty of driving through them in their Model T’s. And not before the lumber industry figured out that sequoia wood is too soft for anything stronger than garden stakes or matches.
I spent a few days hanging around Yosemite a few weeks ago, the first time I had been there since the flood and my fourth since I had first laid my amazed eyes on it in the early 1970s. A lot of the people I met seemed to be renewing an old friendship with their Yosemite. They noted the changes but seemed relieved that nothing had changed radically. In the Yosemite Lodge Mountain View Restaurant one night, I could overhear nostalgia from almost every table: “Remember when we had that spot in Housekeeping Camp?” “I’ll never forget that week we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.” “The Lodge is OK, but let’s try to get our old cabin next summer.”
Once again I could sense a pride of ownership that seems to prevail all through the national park system. We are glad to be there. And we are glad to be there, even if we aren’t there. Having these parks somehow makes us healthier even when we stay home.
One morning, a worker in the lodge food court came out from behind the steam tables and bellowed, “Hello, everybody. Word has come down from management that we have a very attractive group here this morning.” You don’t hear that at the office.
Parks make us better somehow, more attractive, perhaps, or more open to possibility, or more humble. As interpreter Bob Roney mentioned when we got together that morning, the world is full of beautiful places, from the Andes to Mt. Kilimanjaro to the heights of Patagonia.
Those, too, belong to everyone, and those, too, make humankind more attractive.
“Yosemite is everyone’s park,” Roney said. “Whether they come here or not, it’s theirs. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore, or if I’ll see how the National Park Service takes care of the Liberty Bell. But I know they’re there, and I’m very happy they exist.”
A park warrior selects his favorites
My first experience with Yosemite National Park was on a road trip with a college pal. Not long after graduation, we drove through the Yosemite Valley, marveled at the sights and, after a couple of hours, drove back out again. On other trips with other people, I gave the same sort of cursory attention to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Grand Teton. n Eventually, I became a travel writer. And one of my ongoing assignments has been to visit all 56 of the national parks (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). I’m up to 45 parks now, and in each one I had to spend some time, pay attention, take notes. That gives me the right to express a few opinions.
– BEST PARKS FOR VIEWING WILDLIFE
At Katmai in Alaska, outfitters can drop visitors near streams where bears swat at salmon during the summer run. At Glacier in Montana, hikers find congenial mountain goats grazing near the trails.
– BEST PARK FOR A GOOD SCARE
The Badlands in South Dakota are so bad, they’re beautiful. Bleak but thrilling.
– MOST MEMORABLE SIGHT
The view of Mt. Denali (or McKinley, if you prefer) from a lake just outside Alaska’s Denali National Park.
– IF YOU MUST DRIVE THROUGH
Check out Grand Teton, just north of Jackson, Wyo., where terrific mountains grace the windshield.
– BEST CAVES
Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico has the most wondrous features, but Wind Cave (South Dakota) and Mammoth (Kentucky) aren’t too shabby.
– HIKERS’ DELIGHT
Almost all the national parks–even the caves, which have a lot of above-ground territory–would qualify. But in Guadalupe Mountains (Texas) nary a road cuts through it, and the backcountry begins just a few steps outside the visitor center.
– FAMILY FRIENDLY
Again, a lot of parks would fill the bill, but Glacier in Montana has inner-tube-welcoming lakes, well-sited cabins and lodges, wildlife on view and a road that climbs to the sky with great scenery at every turn.
– THE BIG ADVENTURE
All of Alaska’s national parks demand some action and a bit of mobility. To see the glaciers, fiords, mountains and streams, you may need the assistance of trains, planes, boats and comfortable hiking boots.
– MOST LUMINOUS
In Bryce Canyon (Utah), the eroded spires–called hoodoos–glow so vividly in the morning and evening sun that they look as if they have light bulbs inside.
– MOST UNDERRATED
Death Valley (California) sounds ominous, but, withering heat aside, it offers some of the most mind-boggling scenery in the national park system.
— Robert Cross
