Visiting Yosemite History

 Yosemite National Park -- To avoid the TV and the worries of 2020 we spent election day in Yosemite National Park. Looking for history.

The visit marked 40 years since my first visit after we moved west in 1980. That visit was with two then-small children (Pat was traveling back east) in our bright orange VW Westfalia camper. I got slightly lost driving to the park, but eventually found our way. It cost $5 to get into the park. Much to my surprise it was crowded and the only camping spot we could find was on the Tioga Pass Road at a place called Smokey Jack Campground. We woke up to snow on the ground, both a delight and a concern. (The campground no longer exists, a victim of NPS policy to concentrate visitors and eliminate low-cost lodging.)

Forty years later Pat and I drove  into Yosemite early, arriving around 9 a.m. in time to see the sun coating the north said granite walls with light. It was a cool but beautiful morning.

We visited a few of the scenic sites, admired the surroundings, but spent the best part of our day in the Pioneer Cemetery, reading tombstones and remembering the people who were here 150 years ago.

James Lamon (no relation) was the first white settler in Yosemite. He homesteaded before Abraham Lincoln declared the valley a national treasure, then Lamon built a log cabin and established a farm with crops and orchards. The local Indians had been run off or killed  less than 10 years earlier, and he got along with the few who had returned. 

Like many men of that era he had come west for gold, didn't find much, and located a place to call home. His cabin was located in the upper or Eastern end of the valley, near what is now used for a horse stable and tourist parking. Some of his trees survive to this day, and volunteers come in and pick the fruit so they will not attract bears.

We drove into the area where his cabin was located, and then went to the cemetery to pay our respects.

Lamon's grave

Here is a link to Lamon and the park: https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/the-first-pioneer-settler-of-yosemite-valley.htm

The Pioneer Cemetery in Yosemite includes the graves of many pioneers and early settlers, and victims of the then-harsh lives they lived. 

 John Muir is not buried here but near his home in Martinez, Ca.  But if you want a  glimpse of Muir in Yosemite you can hike the paved trail below Yosemite Falls and see the site of the lumber mill where he lived and worked when he first arrived. It is marked by a hard-to-spot stone bench alongside the creek.

Muir was hired to produce lumber by a pioneer entrepreneur and resident named James Mason Hutchings, who has not one but two tombstones marking his grave in Yosemite.  The larger stone, a chunk of granite, was apparently put in place when his teenage daughter Florence, the first white child born in the Valley,  died in an accident on the trail while leading a group of tourists up a steep trail. Mount Florence is named for her. The inscription for her is located on the top side of the granite.

Hutchings is not what you could call a popular hero of the early days. He was apparently a rather stuffy Englishman, with  opinions about everything. By trade he was a publisher, and that led him to come to Yosemite very early leading a tourist group that included artists, and then deciding to promote Yosemite as a destination. He bought a partially-completed hotel/cottage near the Merced River with a view of the tall waterfall, promoted the Valley through magazine articles and books, and saw himself as the "father of Yosemite."  In stereographic pictures from 1860 he shows up in almost every photo, posing in a boat on the river or on horseback in a meadow. He would hire the photographer, and then be the model.

Here is his history from the park service site: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/hutchings.htm

He picked the site for his grave, and I suspect dictated the carving which says:

Father of Yosemite

Builder of the first trails, roads, 

bridges and dwellings of this

valley

In the same plot are his daughters and his second wife. It has been rumored for years that Hutchings and Muir did not like each other, perhaps because Muir was well liked by the ladies in his family. Whatever the truth, neither man ever really mentioned the other in their extensive writings about Yosemite.

Hutchings fought the federal and state governments for years, disputing the claim he was on public land. He eventually lost the argument, but won some money for his trouble.

Hutchings "hotel" was a rustic place on the south side of the river looking at the waterfall. He improved it and it grew through the years, notably with an enclosed back porch that featured a giant cedar tree in the middle of the room. He added glass to the windows, which had been holes, and partitions inside instead of sheets hanging from the rafters.

Today, the site of the hotel can be located by crossing the south side road at the Sentinel Bridge, directly across from the stop sign is a broken tree in a small clearing.

That's what remains of Hutchings' once-famous hotel, along with a flat stone that may have been a fireplace hearth. Look  up about ten feet and you can see wire which apparently supported part of the porch roof, and marks in the back left from where the roof was attached to the tree.

Hutchings essentially was kicked out of Yosemite when the settlement was done, but he came back after a political change in the commissioners who "ran" the valley fired the first guardian, Galen Clark, and replaced him with Hutchings. That didn't last, and Hutchings eventually gto the job of managing a tourist attraction in Calaveras County, at Calaveras Big Trees. He died at 84 while driving a buggy on the Big Oak Flat Road heading for a visit to Yosemite.

Hutchings legacy has always been clouded by his less-than-popular style. He was identified by one pioneer as grumpy. But he was the person more than any other who promoted the beauty of the valley, brought artists and authors and photographers into the valley to spread its fame, and played a significant role in making Yosemite known to the world.

Galen Clark, on the other hand, was a competent quiet man who had come to the Wawona area to escape to the woods for his failing health. Clark's Station was a popular stage stop on the route into the park in the 1800s, and he had a reputation as a warm host. His experience in the area led to his being named the first guardian of Yosemite once the state took control, a role he fulfilled for decades.  He was, as the state likes to point out, the very first park ranger.

Unlike Hutchings, Clark made friends, did what he was asked, and when he got older voluntarily stepped down from his guardian role, suggesting that  a younger man would be better for the demanding job. Here is a site with a lot more detail: https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/galen-clark.htm

Clark's Grave

Clark selected his gravesite and planted four Giant Sequoia seedlings at the corners. Today they mark his gravesite, along with one new tree that has sprung up.

He originally came to the area because his health was failing, and he decided the mountains would either kill him or cure him. Like Hutchings, he lived a very long life.

Every graveyard has stories to tell, and Yosemite's are compelling even when incomplete. How did John Anderson get killed by a horse? He was best known as one of the earliest people to climb Half Dome. 

Who exactly were the dozen or more native Americans buried in the graveyard and what sort of lives did they lead?

The cemetery is a place that speaks through the decades of triumphs and tragedies. It is a good place to spend a little time. Read more at: https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_indians_and_other_sketches/cemetery.htm