United States National Park Service

January 30, 1947

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I Discovery] 1 [II Mariposa Hills] 9 [III White Chief of the Foothills] 15 [IV Pioneers in the Valley] 36 [V Tourists in the Saddle] 50 [VI Stagecoach Days] 61 [VII Explorers] 71 [VIII Hotels and Their Keepers] 92 [IX East-side Mining Excitement] 117 [X The Interpreters] 129 [XI Guardians of the Scene] 146 [Chronology] 176 [Bibliography] 195 [Index] 217

ILLUSTRATIONS

FOLLOWING PAGE [Frontispiece, by Ralph H. Anderson] ii [The Yosemite Museum] x [The First Drawing Made in Yosemite] xviii [Mariposa in the ’Fifties] 8 [Joseph R. Walker] 44 [Maria Lebrado] 44 [Captain John Boling] 44 [Lafayette H. Bunnell] 44 [A Freight Outfit] 44 [Early Tourists in the Saddle] 44 [First Yosemite Photograph—“Upper Hotel”] 60 [The Big Tree Room] 60 [The Big Oak Flat Route] 60 [The First Automobile—July, 1900] 60 [Early Yosemite Buses] 60 [Old Tioga Road] 60 [New Tioga Road] 60 [John Conway, a Pioneer Trail Builder] 76 [On the First Trail to the Top of Vernal Fall] 76 [Mount Conness and the Observatory Camp] 76 [James T. Gardiner and Clarence King, Early Mappers] 76 [Professor Davidson (right) and the Conness Observatory] 76 [Present-Day Trail Work—Oiling the Eleven-Mile Trail] 80 [Gabriel Sovulewski in 1897] 80 [Mount Maclure and Its Glacier] 80 [Measuring the Mount Lyell Glacier] 80 [Ski Mountaineering Party near Mount Starr King] 88 [Climbing on the Three Brothers] 88 [Descending Lower Cathedral Spire] 88 [The Cosmopolitan, 1870-1932] 92 [The Lower Hotel, 1856-1869] 92 [Mill Built by John Muir in 1869] 96 [Glacier Point Mountain House, 1878 to date] 96 [Sentinel Hotel (left background), 1876 to 1938] 96 [The Ahwahnee Hotel, 1927 to date] 96 [Saddle Trip on a High Sierra Trail] 96 [Merced Lake High Sierra Camp, 1916 to date] 96 [Badger Pass Ski House] 100 [Ski Patrol at Work] 100 [Winter in the Yosemite High Sierra: Clark Range] 100 [Snow Gaugers Entering Tuolumne Meadows] 100 [Sketch map of Yosemite Region, illustrating discovery, first entry, east-side mining excitement, and some present-day culture] 124 [John Muir] 148 [Galen Clark] 148 [Colonel H. C. Benson] 148 [James M. Hutchings] 148 [Sierra Club Headquarters in Yosemite, 1898] 148 [William E. Colby] 148 [W. B. Lewis and Stephen T. Mather] 164 [A Presidential Party at the Grizzly Giant] 164 [Hetch Hetchy Valley before Inundation] 164 [Devils Postpile, Excluded from Yosemite in 1905] 164

By Thomas A. Ayres, 1855 The First Drawing Made in Yosemite

CHAPTER I
DISCOVERY

That picturesque type known as the American trapper ushered in the opening event of Sierra Nevada history. True, the Spaniards of the previous century had viewed the “snowy range of mountains,” had applied the name Sierra Nevada, and even had visited its western base. But penetration of the wild and snowy fastness awaited the coming of Americans.