The instance of land being set aside specifically for preservation and public use by the U.S. federal government is honored in today’s #stampoftheday, a 1-cent stamp issued on July 16. 1934 featuring a picture of Yosemite National Park. The stamp was the first of ten stamps issued in the latter half of 1934 picturing notable U.S. parks. (I discussed two of these stamps – one picturing Mesa Verde, the other featuring Acadia National Park – in earlier #stampoftheday postings).

Yosemite, which is located in the western Sierra Nevada of Central California covers an area of 748,436 acres (1,169 sq mi). Designated a World Heritage site in 1984, it is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. The name “Yosemite” (meaning “killer” in Miwok) refers to the name of a tribe which was driven out of the area (and possibly annihilated) by a U.S. Army battalion in the 1850s.
Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, although humans may have first visited the area as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. The indigenous natives called themselves the Ahwahnechee, meaning “dwellers in Ahwahnee”. Many tribes visited the area to trade, and a major trading route went over Mono Pass and through Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake, just to the east of the Yosemite area.

The California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century dramatically increased travel by European-Americans in the area, which created friction with the Native American residents. In 1851 as part of the Mariposa Wars intended to suppress Native American resistance, United States Army Major Jim Savage led the Mariposa Battalion into the west end of Yosemite Valley where they burned villages, captured tribal leaders and members, and forced them to move to a reservation near Fresno. Accounts from this battalion were the first well-documented reports of ethnic Europeans entering Yosemite Valle and helped to popularize the natural wonders of the Yosemite Valley and the surrounding area. So by the late 1850s, the area became an increasingly popular place to visit.

Concerned by the effects of commercial interests, prominent citizens advocated for protection of the area. A bill signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864 created the Yosemite Grant, which was the first instance of park land being set aside specifically for preservation and public use by action of the U.S. federal government, and set a precedent for the 1872 creation of Yellowstone as the first national park. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a state park. Tourism significantly increased after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.

The park wasn’t the pristine place we know today. Rather there was overgrazing of meadows (especially by sheep), logging of giant sequoia, and other damage caused by commercial interests. These problems convinced John Muir, a Scottish-born naturalist and writer to become an advocate for further protection from the federal government. In May 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt camped with Muir near Glacier Point for three days. Muir convinced Roosevelt to take control of key parts of the area away from California and return it to the federal government. In 1906, Roosevelt signed a bill that did precisely that.
However, Muir was not entirely successful in protecting the area. In the early 1900s, civic leaders in San Francisco began discussing building a dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley, in the northern part of the park, that would supply water and power to their growing city. In 1906, after a major earthquake and subsequent fire that devastated San Francisco, the inadequacy of the city’s water system was made tragically clear. San Francisco applied to the United States Department of the Interior to gain water rights to Hetch Hetchy, and in 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, granted San Francisco the rights to development of the Tuolumne River.

This provoked a seven-year environmental struggle with Muir and the Sierra Club who saw Hetch Hetchy as a priceless resource. Proponents of the dam replied that out of multiple sites considered by San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy had the “perfect architecture for a reservoir”, with pristine water, lack of development or private property, a steep-sided and flat-floored profile that would maximize the amount of water stored, and a narrow outlet ideal for placement of a dam. They claimed the valley was not unique and would be even more beautiful with a lake. Muir predicted that this lake would create an unsightly “bathtub ring” around its perimeter, caused by the water’s destruction of lichen growth on the canyon walls, which would inevitably be visible at low lake levels.

Since the valley was within Yosemite National Park, an act of Congress was needed to authorize the project. The U.S. Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act in 1913, which permitted the flooding of the valley under the conditions that power and water derived from the river could only be used for public interests. Ultimately, the city sold hydropower from the dam to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which led to decades of legal wrangling and controversy, much of which continues to this day.

Despite the loss, Yosemite has been one of the nation’s most popular and congested parks. About 4.5 million people visited the park annually (at least before the COVID-19 pandemic, making it the nation’s fifth most popular national park, trailing Great Smoky Mountain, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain, and Zion.

I’ve only been there once, on the same trip that took my family of origin to Mesa Verde. I don’t remember much about Yosemite except that it was the site of a legendary family story. While we all usually slept in the camper (a converted U-Haul truck we rented for the trip), my father convinced my mother to take a mattress outside so they could sleep under the stars at Yosemite. My mother was worried about the bears that sometimes (usually) rummaged in the campground garbage at night. My father assured her that she could wake him if that happened.

Sure enough, the bears came in the middle of the night. My mother, who was a light sleeper, woke up and, frightened, woke my father, who was a heavy sleeper. He asked what was up; she reminded him that he said she could wake him if there was a bear. And he told her that yes, he said she could wake him. But, he added, he hadn’t specified what he would do once she did wake him. And what he was going to do was go back to sleep, which he did. She, of course, didn’t fall back asleep until the bears finally left around daybreak.

We all thought this was hilarious but, as my wife pointed out years later, it was also pretty mean. And the story was one my mother loved to tell in the wonderful way that she would repeat certain well-worn family tales.

I have no other words of wisdom today other than writing about places like Yosemite and thinking about where I’ve been and where I’d like to go is, of course, bittersweet. Sweet because the memories make me smile. Bitter, of course, because I don’t know when (or even whether) I’ll be able to visit such places in the future. Right now, I’ll stick with the sweet, which makes me smile.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.