As a result of his own travels and surveys in the region, J. N. LeConte prepared a map of the Sierra adjacent to Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy valleys, which was published by the Sierra Club in 1893, and army officers in charge of park administration did much important map making in the 1890’s. The United States Geological Survey began its mapping of the region embraced within the present park in 1891 and completed the surveys in 1909. R. B. Marshall and H. E. L. Feusier surveyed the Yosemite, Dardanelles, and Mount Lyell sheets; A. H. Sylvester and George R. Davis, the Bridgeport Quadrangle. Operating as they did with limited funds, their efforts spread over a vast territory, and confronted with a short season, they inevitably made some errors on their maps. In correct editions of these maps some ridges, lakes, and canyons have been moved, but today’s travelers may still find lakes and glaciers which are not on the map, and may find a few of these features on the map but not on the ground. It is not the errors of Sierra mapmakers, however, but the measure of success they achieved, which is remarkable. In the higher reaches of the Sierra today it is extremely difficult to discover, after a particularly heavy winter, which snow field conceals a lake and which covers merely a meadow or an expanse of ice. Nor is the Sierra itself utterly static. At least two small lakes which formed behind dams of glacial moraine have disappeared recently when the dams were undermined.
Perhaps the ultimate in Yosemite mapping, from the geomorphologist’s point of view, is the Yosemite Valley Sheet, prepared by the United States Geological Survey in coöperation with the State of California. The map is of large scale, and the topography, the work of François E. Matthes, is extremely accurate, giving it something of the quality of a relief map on a plane surface. Even the overhangs of the cliffs are depicted. The 1946 edition of this sheet falls short in that detail has been lost through the overprinting of topographical shading.
Considered for their practical guidance to the user of Yosemite trails, the U. S. Geological Survey maps of the back country are most important. The 700-odd miles of maintained trails which make much of the park accessible to the hiker and rider appear upon these topographical maps in true relationship to the physical features through which they pass. A useful guidebook covering the routes in and around Yosemite Valley, as well as many of the park trails south of the Tuolumne River, is the Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley, by Virginia and Ansel Adams. In this volume road and trail diagrams are stylized to impart, simply and directly, information on distances, altitudes, and relative positions. Walter A. Starr, Jr.’s Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region includes a section (Part I) on the trails of the Yosemite National Park region, and the map which accompanies it relates the high country trails to the road systems of both the east and west slopes. This guide, published by the Sierra Club, is kept up-to-date through the production of frequent editions.
Early Indian Routes
Before the story of trail building within the national park is presented, it is worthwhile to review briefly the history of the approach routes outside the present limits of the park—the trails followed by the Indian fighters and miners.
Most of the early routes of the white man across the Yosemite Sierra and out of the valley itself followed Indian trails. The discovery of arrow points and knife blades on the slopes of some of the higher Yosemite peaks indicates that the Miwok Indians entered the high, rough country in pursuit of game. Their regularly established trade with the Monos also is a matter of record. Indian Canyon and the Vernal and Nevada falls gorge of the Merced provided two much used routes out of the valley to the east, and the Old Inspiration Point-Wawona-Fresno Flats-Coarse Gold route gave access to the foothill country to the west. There were other ancient routes on the valley walls accessible to an able-bodied Indian; however, except in emergency they probably found little use.
Walker, west-bound in 1833, followed the Miwok-Mono trail on the divide between the Merced and Tuolumne watersheds, having reached this divide, in all likelihood, via the maze of canyons formed by the tributaries of the East Walker River and the feeder streams of the Tuolumne River. White men in pursuit of eastward-fleeing Indians in 1851 penetrated to the Tenaya Lake basin, and one party in 1852 crossed to the east side via Bloody Canyon, as already described. This party returned to the San Joaquin on a branch of the Mono Trail which crossed Cathedral Pass, thence into Little Yosemite Valley, Mono Meadows, Peregoy Meadows, and Wawona. In all these travels definite trails of the aborigines could be followed even though many parts of the routes were buried in snow.
In the foothill region west of the park ancient Indian paths enabled gold seekers to reach much of the terrain in which they were interested. Barrett and Gifford (1933, p. 128) report that a Mr. Woods discovered gold on Woods Creek near the present Jamestown, Tuolumne County, in June, 1848, several months before the general rush of miners into the territory of the Southern Miwok. In this locality Indian trails connected the several rancherias near the present town, Sonora, with similar Indian villages on the Merced. In the Tuolumne country, also, a primitive transmountain route gave access via Sonora Pass to the favored locality now known as Bridgeport Valley. The wagon road which was opened here very early in the gold-rush period followed closely the route of the Indians. That there were prehistoric lanes of travel in the high mountains which connected the Sonora Pass and Mono (Bloody Canyon) routes seems likely but no record of such north-south trails of the Indians has been handed down, other than the statements made by Walker and Leonard regarding their route from the Walker River country to the Tuolumne-Merced divide.
The country south of the Merced drainage system was popular, both with the Miwok and the Chukchansi, a group of the Yokuts Indians. Kroeber (1925, pp. 446, 481-482, 526) has recorded the distribution of ancient Miwok villages on the South Fork of the Merced, on Mariposa Creek, and on the Chowchilla and Fresno rivers. The primitive trails which connected these villages provided a network of lanes through the hills well known to J. D. Savage and his contemporary forty-niners who frequented the hills and stream courses north of the San Joaquin River. These Indian trails became the first routes followed by the miner and his pack outfits. A few were “improved” by their first white users to become fairly good horse trails and later some of them were transformed into wagon roads. Today the old routes are not easily distinguished from the more recent logging roads which lace back and forth everywhere through the pine country south of the park, but the investigative motorist who will check against the maps made prior to the period of logging at the turn of the century may identify the old routes and follow them in exploring the country surrounding Wawona, Mariposa, Miami, Nipinnawasee, Hites Cove, Fish Camp, Bear Valley, Hornitos, and several other historic and prehistoric sites in the Mariposa region.
The Chukchansi, northernmost of the Yokuts, occupied the country south of the Fresno River and at times crossed that stream and overlapped upon the lands of the Miwok. Prior to the Yosemite Indian War with the whites, 1850-1852, they seem to have been on friendly terms with the Miwok. Chukchansi villages close to the border of Miwok territory existed at Fresno Flats (near the present Oakhurst, Madera County), Coarse Gold, Magnet, and on the San Joaquin near Hutchins. As was true of the Miwok villages, primitive trails connected these rancherias and extended into the country of the Chukaimina on the south and into the Mono territory to the east. In this part of the Sierra, the Monos claimed a goodly part of the west slope, including the present Bass Lake region and the higher country drained by the San Joaquin and Kings rivers. At the time of the Yosemite Indian War, these west-slope Piutes (Monos) were allied with the Chowchillas and Chukchansi. The intricate trail system of the densely populated belts, characterized by the Digger pine (Upper Sonoran Zone) and the oaks and ponderosa pine (Transition Zone), fed westward into major routes to the great San Joaquin Valley and eastward to high passes on the crest of the Sierra. Of these last-mentioned routes, those across Sonora Pass, Bond Pass, Buckeye Pass, Bloody Canyon, Agnew Pass, Mammoth Pass, Mono Pass (headwaters of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River), Pine Creek Pass, and Piute Pass were especially important to the Indians of the Yosemite region. At least some of these passes were traversed by horses before the advent of the white man.