The Yosemite Valley was first made known to the public by Major James D. Savage and Captain John Boling, who discovered it in 1851. Joseph R. Walker, frontiersman and explorer, claims to have discovered the valley in 1833.
Tourist travel to the valley began in 1857. It became a state park in 1864, and in 1890 a National Park was made around it. In 1905 the boundaries were changed, and in 1906 a vigorous state and national campaign was waged, under the leadership of John Muir, the Sierra Club, and Robert Underwood Johnson, which resulted in the entire region becoming a National Park.
John Muir enjoyed telling of the experience of an English gentleman who years ago made a trip to the valley. Journeying from the railroad on horseback, he missed the way and spent a long day descending into gulches and cañons, then climbing out upon the high ridges. At last, late one evening, he arrived on the rim of the Yosemite. After a swift glance down into the valley, he exclaimed, "Great God! have I got to cross this too?"
John Lamon, a roving Westerner, was the first settler in the Yosemite Valley, where in 1859 he built a cabin, made a garden, and planted fruit-trees. He was so charmed with the scenery and the climate that he quit his roving life and here made his home till his death in 1876.
The Hetch-Hetchy appears to have been discovered in 1850 by a hunter named Joseph Screech. In 1903 the San Francisco supervisors applied for permission to make commercial use of the valley by building a dam and making of it a reservoir. John Muir and the Sierra Club led the opposition to this. The fight went on for ten years with uncertain results. At times it was intense and bitter. Congress finally decided in favor of San Francisco, but up to this date San Francisco has not complied with the conditions imposed.
In 1915 plans were made for the improvement of the Yosemite Village. In the same year occurred an event of greater importance for the Park. Chiefly through the efforts of Stephen T. Mather, the disused Tioga Road became a part of the Yosemite road-system. This road has been reopened and will be a great advantage and convenience to Yosemite visitors. It extends across the Park from east to west, passing near the Big Trees, the Parsons Memorial Lodge, and Tuolumne Meadows, invading the High Sierra, and crossing the range through Tioga Pass. Henceforth automobilists from the East may leave the main continental highway in Nevada and reach the Yosemite Park via Mono Lake and this road.
The name of Galen Clark is pleasantly interwoven with the history of the Yosemite National Park. John Muir thus described the man: "The best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.... His kindness to all Yosemite visitors and mountaineers was marvelously constant and uniform."
Galen Clark enjoyed showing people of all ages the various wonders of Yosemite Valley, never tired of answering questions, and endeavored carefully to explain the facts concerning each point of interest. Thousands of visitors to the valley came to know him intimately. He came to the Park to live in 1857, and for more than fifty years it was his permanent home. For twenty-four years he was a member of the Yosemite State Park Commission. The Indians of the valley were fond of him, and from them he gathered much interesting information. His serene disposition and his almost constant outdoor life kept his body and mind normal to the day of his death. After he reached the age of ninety, deciding to become an author, he wrote and published three little books relating to the Indians and to the natural wonders of the Yosemite National Park.