Frontispiece: Yosemite Valley

One Hundred Years in Yosemite

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The Story of a Great Park and Its Friends

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BY CARL PARCHER RUSSELL
CHIEF NATURALIST, UNITED STATES NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

With a Foreword by Newton B. Drury

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley and Los Angeles · 1947

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
CALIFORNIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON, ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, 1932

COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
WASHINGTON BARTLETT LEWIS
1884-1930
AND
CHARLES GOFF THOMSON
1883-1937

FOREWORD

The National Park Service is primarily a custodian of andtrustee for lands—lands with unique and special qualities,so distinctive as to make their care a concern of the entirenation; lands, therefore, held under a distinctive pattern andpolicy, administered according to the national park concept.

Yosemite National Park comprises such lands. It is, so tospeak, a type locality for the national park idea. While Yellowstone,established in 1872, was the first real national park,Yosemite Valley, in 1864, under an act signed by President Lincoln,was transferred to the State of California to be protectedaccording to park principles, later to be re-ceded to the FederalGovernment. Here in Yosemite many of the national parkpolicies and techniques of protection, administration, and interpretationhave evolved and are still evolving, within theframework of the basic act of 1916, with its injunction to “conservethe scenery and the natural and historic objects and thewildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the samein such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpairedfor the enjoyment of future generations.”

Dr. Russell’s One Hundred Years in Yosemite, appearingnow in its new version, gives not only a chronology of events,and the persons taking part in them, related to this place ofvery special beauty and meaning. It also portrays, in terms ofviiihuman experience, the growth of a distinct and unique conceptionof land management and chronicles the thoughts andeffort of those who contributed to it. It tells of the obstaclesovercome, and of the pressures, present even today, to breakdown the national park concept, and turn these lands to commercialand o