King, although he was the first to observe glacier polish and moraines in the Yosemite Valley, did not attribute any great part of the excavation of the valley to the glacier. He regarded the Yosemite as a simple crack or rent in the crust of the earth.
John Muir, who followed these early students, maintained that ice had accomplished nearly all the Yosemite sculpturing.
H. W. Turner, on the other hand, found no reason to believe that anything other than stream action, influenced by the peculiar rock structure, had had an important role in the origin of the valley, although he recognized that it had been the pathway of a glacier.
Joseph LeConte,[13] W. H. Brewer, M. G. Macomb,[14] George Davidson,[15] I. C. Russell,[16] George F. Becker, Willard D. Johnson, E. C. Andrews, Douglas W. Johnson, F. L. Ransome, J. N. LeConte, A. C. Lawson, Eliot Blackwelder, Ernst Cloos, John P. Buwalda, M. E. Beatty, and George D. Louderback have all studied the geology of the Yosemite Valley or the Yosemite region and have published the results of their work. The influences of the topography of the Sierra Nevada upon meteorological conditions were studied and reported upon by W. A. Glassford in the early ’nineties.
Prior to 1913, however, no one had made a comprehensive study of the geology of the entire Yosemite region. Ideas regarding the origin of the valley and related features were still hazy. In 1913, at the instance of the Sierra Club, the U. S. Geological Survey sent out a party of scientists to begin a systematic and detailed investigation. These men were François E. Matthes and Frank C. Calkins. The former was to study especially the history of the development of the Yosemite Valley; the latter to study the different types of rock. In the years that have elapsed, Matthes has carried his investigations over the entire Yosemite region and into the areas to north and south. Thus he has worked out quite definitely, back to its beginning, the story of the origin of the Yosemite and of the other valleys of the same type in the Sierra Nevada. His conclusions, published by the government, have stood the test of criticism by other members of his profession.
An extensive bibliography of the geology of Yosemite appears in A Bibliography of National Parks and Monuments West of the Mississippi River, Vol. I, 1941, pp. 95-106. The list of Matthes’ contributions to Yosemite literature is long. Probably the most significant and generally useful item is Geologic History of the Yosemite Valley. This is a thorough report on the author’s study and also contains a paper by Frank C. Calkins on the granitic rocks of the Yosemite region.
Indians provided the motive for the first penetration of the whites into Yosemite Valley, but the ethnology of the region received scant attention during the first years of contacts with the aborigines. Lafayette H. Bunnell, a member of the “discovery” party of 1851, has provided satisfying accounts of the primitive Ah-wah-nee-chees in the valley, and Galen Clark, who was intimately acquainted with members of the original band, recorded their history, customs, and traditions many years after his early contacts with them. In the early ’seventies, Stephen Powers gave to them the attention of a professional ethnologist, and Constance F. Gordon-Cumming studied them in the ’eighties.
In 1898, the Bureau of American Ethnology investigated the Indians of the Tuolumne country, and William H. Holmes published the findings. Samuel A. Barrett first published on the geography and dialects of the Miwok (of which the Yosemite Indians were a part) in 1908. Barrett’s work with the Miwok continued for many years, and he is credited with several important papers. Alfred L. Kroeber, a leading authority on California Indians, first published on the Miwok in 1907 and since has published extensively on the Ah-wah-nee-chees and all their neighbors. E. W. Gifford, who has been associated with both Barrett and Kroeber in the ethnological work of the University of California, has made important contributions to the published history and culture of the Miwok. His first paper on his work in the Yosemite region appeared in 1916. C. Hart Merriam devoted careful study to the myths, folk tales, and village sites of the Yosemite Indians early in the 1900’s, and his published accounts appeared in 1910 and 1917. Mrs. H. J. Taylor, working in Yosemite Valley, obtained much important data from one of the last members of the Yosemite band, Maria Lebrado, and since 1932 has published several significant items. In 1941, Elizabeth H. Godfrey, of the Yosemite Museum staff, compiled a popular summary of the work done on the Yosemites entitled, “Yosemite Indians Yesterday and Today,” Yosemite Nature Notes, 1941. The Yosemite Museum collections of objects and documents include valuable local Indian materials, which provide a most interesting and convincing story of the Ah-wah-nee-chees.
In the field of biology, the Yosemite forests attracted the first attention of scientists. Botanists generally agree that in the Big Tree, the sugar pine, the yellow pine (ponderosa and Jeffrey), the red and white firs, and the incense cedar of the Sierra is the finest and most remarkable group of conifers in the world. The Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea), of course, is the most phenomenal and claims first place, chronologically, in the scientific literature. In the number of workers concerned with it and in the quantity of their writings, the Big Tree also holds a respected place.
Among the early writers who dealt with the Big Tree groves of the present Yosemite National Park were Hutchings, Whitney, Asa Gray, Isaac N. Bromley, J. Otis Williams, Muir, Bunnell, and Clark. The latter was among the first to study the Sequoia groves of the Yosemite but he did not publish for nearly half a century after he made his first observations. Following the early announcements of the existence of the Tuolumne, Merced, and Mariposa groves, another group of botanists and semiprofessional workers concentrated upon the study of the Big Tree. Walter G. Marshall, Charles Palache, Paul Shoup, Julius Starke, George Dollar, and W. R. Dudley made their contributions at this time, and Muir redoubled his initial efforts. After the turn of the century, botanists and foresters in numbers concentrated upon the Big Tree. Their publications are too numerous to list, but special mention must be made of the work of Willis L. Jepson, George B. Sudworth, Ellsworth Huntington, James C. Shirley, L. F. Cook, and the continued inspired writing of Muir. The sequoia, oldest living thing, is now and always will be a fascinating subject for scientific and philosophical study. Until a thorough investigation of the ecology of a grove of giant sequoias has been made and its result published, there remains a practical need for research in this realm.