Botanical studies other than investigations of the Big Tree were limited in the pioneer days to the work of John Muir. In the early 1900’s, Harvey M. and Carlotta C. Hall did important work in the present national park, and their published Works continue to be dependable guides for present-day botanists. Enid Michael, long a resident in Yosemite Valley, was untiring in her field studies, and her many published articles about the flora of the park are of importance to all investigators. Carl W. Sharsmith has studied intensively in the high mountain “gardens” of the park. Mary C. Tresidder published a very useful guide to the trees of the park in 1932. Emil F. Ernst has studied the forests and forest enemies in the park for many years. Willis L. Jepson’s work constitutes a substantial basis for all botanical studies in Yosemite as it is for other parts of the State, and the investigations of LeRoy Abrams, 1911, have been important to subsequent workers. The studies of George M. Wright, during his residence in the park in the 1920’s, resulted in significant papers on life zones in Yosemite and were the groundwork for the later important studies by him and his associates in founding and conducting broad biological surveys in the entire national park system—an undertaking briefly described later in this chapter.
The Yosemite fauna elicited no particular attention from pioneers other than James Capen Adams, who in 1854 captured grizzly bears for exhibit purposes, and John Muir, who applied himself to certain bird and mammal studies quite as enthusiastically as he did to botany and geology. In the opening years of the twentieth century, a few bird students, among them W. Otto Emerson, W. K. Fisher, Virginia Garland, C. A. Keeler, M. S. Ray, and O. Widman, published on their observations in the present park, but not until Joseph Grinnell initiated his publication program in 1911 did Yosemite zoölogy find reasonable representation in scientific journals. Grinnell and his staff from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoölogy of the University of California began formal field work in Yosemite in the fall of 1914 and continued through 1920 in making a complete survey of the vertebrate natural history of the region. Grinnell, Tracy I. Storer, Walter P. Taylor, Joseph Dixon, Charles L. Camp, Gordon F. Ferris, Charles D. Holliger, and Donald D. McLean participated in the work. The results of this survey, Grinnell and Storer’s Animal Life in the Yosemite, published by the University of California Press in 1924, constitutes an exhaustive and most useful reference on the subject. David Starr Jordan considered it the best original work on life histories published in the West. This study, like the geological work by Matthes, was endorsed and facilitated by the Sierra Club.
After the Museum of Vertebrate Zoölogy paved the way, wildlife studies in the park increased, and Yosemite found better representation in the biological literature. Most of the workers who had participated in Grinnell’s survey published extensively. Others who made notable contributions are Charles W. and Enid Michael, Barton W. Evermann, A. B. Howell, Vernon Bailey, J. M. Miller, John A. Comstock, E. O. Essig, and Edwin C. Van Dyke.
After 1920, when the National Park Service instituted a park-naturalist program in Yosemite, the regular and seasonal employees of the Naturalist Department made many contributions to the scientific knowledge of the park. Among the permanent park naturalists who conducted biological investigations are Ansel F. Hall, Carl P. Russell, George M. Wright, C. A. Harwell, C. C. Presnall, A. E. Borell, M. E. Beatty, James Cole, C. Frank Brockman, M. V. Walker, Harry Parker, and Russell Grater. D. D. McLean, who participated in the Grinnell Survey, also made further contributions as a regular employee of the Naturalist Department. Dr. H. C. Bryant, first as a seasonal employee and later as a regular member of the Director’s staff, published extensively on his studies in the park and was influential in starting many other workers on investigations of biological nature.
One important development in biological research in Yosemite had an influence on the wildlife program of the entire National Park Service. George M. Wright, ranger and Assistant Park Naturalist, during the late 1920’s sensed the dangers of the uncoördinated wildlife policy of the National Park Service and determined that there should be better administrative understanding of the normal biotic complex of Yosemite and all other national parks. In 1929, Wright was placed on a field status in order that he might organize a central unit of wildlife investigators to survey the wildlife problems of the National Park Service and recommend a broad Service-wide policy of wildlife management. Joseph S. Dixon and Ben W. Thompson were employed by Wright to assist him in this undertaking. Their work during the next several years was conducted from headquarters in Berkeley, California, and from Washington, D. C. It demonstrated that a Wildlife Division was an important administrative adjunct in the Director’s organization. In 1936, Wright lost his life while in the course of his significant work. Such progress had been made in establishing policy and procedure that the program persisted. It holds a strategic place in the regular administrative set-up of the Director’s office and reaches all field areas with its guidance.
The bibliography of scientific work done in Yosemite National Park since World War I is too extensive to be included here. A goodly part of it is contained in A Bibliography of National Parks and Monuments West of the Mississippi River. References to research projects published since the appearance of that bibliography appear in the publications of the Yosemite Natural History Association, particularly the monthly journal, Yosemite Nature Notes. Especially significant items dealing with wildlife policy and trends in park management are included in the references appended to the present volume. In brief, it may be said that the wildlife problems of Yosemite National Park are now fairly well defined and that administrative and technical practices are so aligned as to assure preservation of the faunal and floral characteristics of the reservation within the concept of “public enjoyment and use” of today and tomorrow. As Director of the National Park Service, Newton B. Drury has said, “It is national park policy to display wildlife in a natural manner. The normal habits of animals are interfered with as little as possible, and artificial management is refrained from except for protective purposes and then only as a last resort. The pauperizing or domestication of the native animals is avoided, as is also the herding or feeding of these animals to provide ‘shows.’ Under this policy the park is a wildlife refuge but it is neither a circus or a zoo.”
The wildlife of Yosemite, like its forests and wildflower displays, its renowned cliffs and waterfalls, its glacial pavements, its meadows and valleys, and its spectacular mountaintops, has enthralled its lay visitors quite as it has galvanized the scientist and technician. When Stephen T. Mather assumed the directorship of the national parks in 1916, he determined at the outset to provide park visitors with the information on the natural and historic features which they wanted. Educational endeavors were made a part of his projected program even before a staff had been organized. Surveys of outdoor educational methods and nature teaching as practiced in several European countries had been made in 1915 by C. M. Goethe, and his reports of the success of this work had inspired a few Americans to establish similar educational work in the United States. The California Fish and Game Commission in 1918 sent its educational director, Dr. Harold C. Bryant, into the Sierra to reach vacationists with the message of the conservationist. Yosemite National Park and the playground areas about Lake Tahoe witnessed the introduction of “nature guiding” several years prior to the inclusion of the work in the broad field program of the National Park Service.
In 1920, Mr. Mather and some of his friends joined in supporting this nature teaching in Yosemite, and Dr. Bryant and Dr. Loye Holmes Miller were employed to lay the foundation of what has continued to be an important part of the program of the Branch of Natural History.
A personal letter from Dr. Miller, University of California, Los Angeles, provides a firsthand account of his pioneering in interpretive work in Yosemite:
I think John Muir was the first Yosemite guide (see A Son of the Wilderness, by L. M. Wolfe). We smaller folk could only strive to emulate. My first experience in the valley involved a six-week period during the summer of 1917 under private auspices. Professor M. L. Maclellan (geology) and I (biology) held a summer school for public school teachers who were largely from Long Beach, California. The work consisted of lectures and field trips about the valley floor and the trails to the rim and to Merced Lake.
During the summer of 1919 I was doing similar work at Tahoe when Mr. Stephen T. Mather came through on a flying trip. He asked me to confer with him on the subject of Nature Guide work in Yosemite and urged me to come at once to the valley and begin the work there. It was late in the season and I had spent most of my free time for the year. Furthermore, it seemed to me that there should be some preparation made for the work, including a measure of publicity in the park guidebooks. I therefore urged Mr. Mather to wait until 1920 for the inauguration of an official Nature Guide service. He agreed and we parted with a definite plan for 1920.
In the meantime Mr. C. M. Goethe of Sacramento had become interested in the movement and had engaged Dr. H. C. Bryant in a tour of certain summer camps. I also urged the appointment of Dr. Bryant for the Yosemite work in 1920. My University schedule was such that Dr. Bryant was able to report earlier than I. He therefore gave the first official work in the valley. We coöperated in it after my arrival. I knew that I could not devote many summers to the service because of other duties as an officer of the University. Furthermore, it seemed to me that Dr. Bryant was just the man to carry on to a larger field of development. I therefore urged repeatedly that he make a full-time activity of the movement. This end was ultimately realized. Bryant made all the official reports of our work (with my endorsement). Those reports are in the files of the Superintendent’s office in the park.
During the month of January, 1921, Dr. Bryant and I gave our services to the cause in an extended lecture tour through the eastern and middle western states. This effort was underwritten personally by Mr. Mather. The purpose and theme in this series was to publicize and stimulate interest in the natural history values of the park and the appreciation of nature through an increased knowledge and understanding.
I returned to Yosemite in the summer of 1921—again in coöperation with Dr. Bryant. The movement seemed to be well on its feet so I withdrew at the end of that summer. We were appointed as temporary rangers with duties informally defined. Each morning a field trip was conducted by one or the other of us alternately, the alternate holding office hours for questions by visitors. (Questions averaged 45 to the hour). In the afternoon a children’s field class was held. In the evening we alternated with talks at Camp Curry and the “Old Village” near Sentinel Bridge. They were busy days but interest was good. Week ends were devoted to overnight trips by one or the other of us.
At the urgent request of Mr. Ansel Hall I initiated the same type of work at Crater Lake Park, Oregon, in 1926 and continued it in 1927. My son, Alden Miller, was associated with me and two students, Miss Leigh Marian Larson and Miss Ruth Randall, acted as volunteers in charge of wildflower display. Reports of this work should be in the Crater Lake files. During the summer we were visited by Mr. Mather, by Dr. John C. Merriam, and by Mr. John D. Rockefeller and family. The interest of these men was immediate and finally bore material fruit in improvement of Crater Lake Park and the whole Nature Guide movement in America. Just as had been the case at Yosemite, we were appointed as rangers. My duties at Crater Lake included nature guiding, directing traffic, comforting crying babies, rounding up stray dogs, and a wild drive down the mountain to Medford Hospital with a writhing appendicitis patient and his distracted wife in the rear seat.
I have not been officially connected with the work since but have sent many graduate students to the Yosemite Field School with what I hope was the right point of view. My own retirement at 70 years leaves me out of the picture except in an advisory capacity. Just last week in conference with my associates here, I urged Park Naturalist activity as one of the public services for which our department should train young men. So you see that my interests are still with the movement. It is a field of infinite horizon. Sincerely yours, Loye Miller
March 18, 1946.