BRIDAL VEIL FALLS AND THE THREE BROTHERS (SOLID ROCK).
Of all the beautiful places in the world for a schoolhouse, surely “The Valley” is the most beautiful. One rarely hears YoSemite on the coast. It is always with a lingering caress in the voice, “The Valley.” A dainty little white schoolhouse stands in a grove on the border of a glade. Here school is in session six months of every summer. The valley is only seven miles long and one and a half miles in width at its widest point.
There are usually only five or six children of school age in the valley, but in the spring and summer people come into the valley to spend the summer. Many camp while others live at the hotel and in cottages. In many instances their children have left their home school before its close, and in order to make their grades for the ensuing year, attend “The Valley School.”
Here the student of botany may find dainty asters, tiny wild peas, larkspur, monkey flowers, great ferns, the leaves two or three feet long; wild poppies, delicate sunflowers, purple gilias and broad faced primroses. Fiery castillèjas lend color to gray rocks and shady nooks.
Stately pines, silver firs and graceful tamaracks stand massy, tall and dark, make a landscape Mercury himself might pause to behold, no matter how urgent his errand.
The Manzanita trees are now loaded with fruit. Manzanita is Spanish for little apple. The fruit of the tree is a perfect apple about the size of a gooseberry. Leather wood, a strange shrub naked as to leaves but abloom with bright yellow blossoms grows up in the mountains.
For the student of zoology there are the bears which have their dens in the rocks a short distance from the school. Wild deer and lion roam the mountains, while trout disport themselves in the Merced river near by.
The student of astronomy may see the sun rise five times every morning, and the White Fire Maiden, by mortals called the moon, lights up YoSemite falls and the north wall of the valley long before she appears in the blue sea above.
The student in trigonometry will easily find a summer’s work, the geologist a life-time study, while the anthropologist will be interested in the few Indians who inhabit the valley.
The valley is not without its early history when white man and Indian fought for supremacy.