Humans may have first visited Yosemite as early as 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, and people started to settle in Yosemite Valley around 4000 years before the present. In the 11th or 12th century. The band of indigenous people that lived in Yosemite Valley called the valley that provided them with nuts, berries, and small game Ahwahnee (meaning "place of a gaping mouth") and called themselves the Ah-wah-ne-chee (meaning dwellers in Ahwahnee).
Like humans before and since, the Ahwahnechee changed the Valley to suit their needs. Since the band depended upon acorns for 60% of their diet, they burned vegetation on the Valley floor, which favored Black Oak (an acorn-making tree). Fire management also expanded meadows and reduced brush within woodlands, thus making ambush by invading tribes difficult.
Displaced Native Americans from the coast of California moved to the Sierra Nevada in the early to mid-19th century. They brought their experiences with Spanish food, technology, and clothing as they joined tribes in the mountains. Together they raided ranchos on the coast and drove herds of horses to the Sierra, where horse meat became a major new food source.
Significant debate still surrounds the issue of who the first non-indigenous person to see the Valley was. In the autumn of 1833, Joseph Reddeford Walker may have seen the Valley; he later described trying to lead his party of trappers across that part of the Sierra Nevada and approaching a valley rim that plunged "more than a mile". He and his party also happened upon the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoia, becoming the first known non-indigenous people to see the giant trees (they may also have seen the Merced Grove).
The part of the Sierra Nevada where the park is located was long considered to be a physical barrier to non-indigenous settlers, traders, trappers, and travelers. That status changed, in 1848, due to the discovery of gold in the foothills west of the range in the California Gold Rush. Travel and trade activity dramatically increased in the area, competing with the local Native Americans and destroying resources they depended upon. The first reliable sighting of the Valley by a non-indigenous person occurred on October 18, 1849 by William P. Abrams and a companion. Abrams accurately described some landmarks but it is not known for sure whether or not he or his companion actually entered the Valley. In 1850, Joseph Screech became the first confirmed non-indigenous person to enter Hetch Hetchy Valley. He settled there, and noted that the Paiutes inhabited Hetch Hetchy before the coming of the Europeans.
The first intentional and systematic exploration of any part of the Yosemite area backcountry was conducted in 1855 by the surveying crew of Allexey W. Von Schmidt, as part of the Public Land Survey System. Von Schmidt's charge was to establish the Mount Diablo Base Line from the initial point at Mount Diablo east across the Sierra Nevada, preliminary to the General Land Office (GLO) rectangular survey in California and Nevada. This line passes through Tuolumne Meadows and very near the summit of Mount Dana, (although Von Schmidt, for unknown reasons, surveyed his line 5 to 6 miles south of the actual line, which was not surveyed until around 1880). This survey was the first crossing of the Sierra Nevada that did not follow established trails or the natural routes suggested by topography. In 1863–67, the California Geological Survey surveyed parts of Yosemite's high country and the boundary of the new state park. From 1879 to 1883 large areas of the park were contracted for survey by GLO contract surveyors. However, the individual contracted for the largest area, one S.A. Hanson, was associated with the Benson Syndicate, and he combined actual with probably fabricated surveys. In 1878–79 topographic surveys performed by Lieutenant Montgomery Macomb, under George M Wheeler's Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, made use of various peaks in the high country to connect with Wheeler's extensive surveys further east, north and south.
In 1851 the Mariposa Battalion was created under the authority of the Governor of California to put an end to raids carried out by Native Americans in the Mariposa Wars. Major James Savage led the Battalion into Yosemite Valley in that same year while in pursuit of around 200 Ahwaneechees led by Chief Tenaya who were suspected of raiding trading posts in the area — most notably Savage's. On Thursday March 27 of that year the company of 50 to 60 men reached what is now called Old Inspiration Point and saw the major features of the Valley laid out before them (they named the overlook Mt. Beatitude). Attached to Savage's unit was Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician who later wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite.
While camped at Bridalveil Meadow Bunnell suggested that the Valley be named '"Yo-sem-ity", after what the surrounding Sierra Miwok tribes, who feared the Yosemite Valley tribe, called them. At the time, Savage, who spoke some native dialects, translated this as "full-grown grizzly bear". Later translations found that the actual term, while possibly derived or at least confused with the similar uzumati or uhumati (meaning 'grizzly bear'), was in fact a Southern Sierra Miwok word Yohhe'meti meaning "they are killers". The name stuck even though the tribe they named the valley after called themselves Ahwahnechee.
Bunnell went on to name many other local topographic features on the same trip. Others in the company were also moved by what they saw and recounted their journey to friends and family after they returned, increasing interest in the Valley and surrounding area. Bunnell soon after drafted an article about the trip, but destroyed it when a newspaper correspondent in San Francisco suggested cutting his 1500 foot height estimate for the Valley walls in half (the walls are in fact twice the height that Bunnel surmised). So the first published account of the Valley was written by Lt. Tredwell Moore for the January 20, 1854 issue of the Mariposa Chronicle. The modern spelling of Yosemite was established by that article.
Chief Tenaya and his band were eventually captured and their village burned, fulfilling a prophecy an old and dying medicine man gave Tenaya many years before. The Ahwahnechee were escorted by their captor Captain John Bowling to the Fresno River Reservation near Fresno, California. Life on the reservation was unpleasant and the Ahwahneechee longed for their valley, prompting reservation officials to allow Tenaya and some of his band to return on their own recognizance in winter.
A group of eight miners entered the Valley in the Spring of 1852 and were allegedly attacked by Tenaya's warriors, with two of the miners being killed. A second battalion was organized, and executed six Ahwahneechee under the direction of Lt. Moore. Tenaya's band fled the Valley and sought refuge with the Mono, his mother's tribe. In Summer or early Fall of 1853, the Ahwahneechee apparently returned to the Valley, but later betrayed the hospitality of their Mono hosts by stealing some horses that the Mono had taken from non-indigenous ranchers. In return the Monos tracked down and killed many of the remaining Ahwahneechee, including Tenaya. Tenaya Lake is named after the fallen chief. Hostilities then subsided, and by the mid 1850s local non-indigenous residents started to befriend Native Americans living in the Yosemite area.
Mono Paiutes were the only group that kept returning to the Valley on a regular basis. They lived in established native villages in the Valley into the early 20th century. As older tribe members died, younger ones tended to favor non-traditional housing provided by the National Park Service. A few Paiute and Miwok families still live in the Valley and are employed by the Park Service. A reconstructed "Indian Village of Ahwahnee" is now located behind the Yosemite Museum, which is next to the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center. The museum has exhibits that interpret the cultural history of Yosemite's indigenous residents from 1850 to the present. In addition, the museum has regularly scheduled demonstrations of basket-weaving, beadwork, and traditional games by Native American presenters.
Entrepreneur James Hutchings, artist Thomas Ayres, and two others ventured into the area in 1855, becoming the Valley's first tourists. After returning to Mariposa Hutchings wrote an article about his experience which appeared in the August 9, 1855 issue of the Mariposa Gazette and was later published in various forms nationally. Ayres' sketch of Yosemite Falls was published in fall that year, and four of his drawings were presented in the lead article of the July 1856 and initial issue of Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine. These were the first known accurate pictures of Yosemite Valley. Ayres returned in 1856 and visited Tuolumne Meadows in the area's high country. His highly-detailed but angularly-exaggerated artwork and his written accounts were nationally published. An art exhibition of his drawings was later held in New York City.
Hutchings brought photographer Charles Leander Weed to the Valley in 1859. Weed took the first photographs of the Valley's features, and a September exhibition in San Francisco presented them to the public. Hutchings published four installments of "The Great Yo-semite Valley" from October 1859 to March 1860 in his magazine. A book by Hutchings titled Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California collected these articles and the book stayed in print well into the 1870s.
Stanford University mechanical engineering student Arthur Clarence Pillsbury arrived in Yosemite for the first time by bicycle in 1895. The young man fell in love with Yosemite and in 1897 bought a studio there. He visited Yosemite many times and photographed Muir, Galen Clark, George Fiske, and Teddy Roosevelt. These photos were published as postcards by the Pillsbury Picture Company. Pillsbury had begun producing postcards with his photos as soon as this innovative form of communication was authorized by Congress in 1898. His many nature films, eventually shown in theaters as well as in schools, clubs and for his lecture tours awakened the public to the need for conservation in the wake of Muir's death in 1914.
Photographer Ansel Adams was famous for his early 20th century pictures of Yosemite. He willed the originals of his Yosemite photos to the Yosemite Park Association, and visitors can still buy direct prints from his original negatives. The studio in which prints are sold was established in 1902 by artist Harry Cassie Best. Carleton Watkins exhibited his 17x22-inch Yosemite views at the 1867 Paris International Exposition.
In 1856, Milton and Houston Mann (2 of 42 tourists to visit the valley the year before) finished a toll road to the Valley that traveled up the South Fork of the Merced River. Before they were bought out by Mariposa County they charged the then large sum of two dollars per person. Under county control the road was free.
Wawona was an indigenous encampment in what is now the southwestern part of the park. Settler Galen Clark discovered the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia in Wawona in 1856; a year later he completed a bridge over the South Fork Merced in Wawona for traffic inbound to the Valley. Clark also provided a way station for tourists traveling on the road that the Mann brothers built to the Valley. Simple lodgings, later called the Lower Hotel, were completed soon afterward; Upper Hotel (later renamed Hutchings House and now known as Cedar Cottage) was opened in 1858. In 1879, the more substantial Wawona Hotel was built to serve tourists visiting the nearby Grove and those on their way to the Valley (at the time, it took 8 hours to travel from Wawona to the Valley via stage). The Washburns, owners of the hotel, bought Clark's land and covered the bridge he built. A year before the hotel was completed, A. Harris built the first public campground in Yosemite. As tourism increased, the number of trails and hotels also increased.
A Unitarian minister named Thomas Starr King visited the Valley in 1860 and saw some of the negative effects that homesteading and commercial activity were having on the area. Six travel letters by King were published in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1860 and 1861 (Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Greenleaf Whittier read and commented on them). King went on to become the first person with a nationally-recognized voice to call for a public Yosemite park. Pressure by King, photographs by famed photographer Carleton Watkins, and geologic data from the 1863 Geological Survey of California prompted legislators to take notice. But the American Civil War slowed progress by shifting the nation's attention.
Visitation and interest in Yosemite continued through the national crisis, however. Frederick Law Olmsted, the United States' most widely respected landscape architect, became interested by Kings' warnings and visited Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove in 1863 to see for himself. Concerned by what he saw, he convinced Senator John Conness of California to introduce a Park bill in the United States Senate.
The uncontroversial bills passed both houses of the United States Congress and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864, creating the Yosemite Grant as a public trust. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a state park for "public use, resort and recreation." A board of Yosemite commissioners was proclaimed by the state's governor September that year, but the body did not convene until 1866 (with Frederick Law Olmsted as chairman).
Galen Clark was appointed by the commission as the park's first guardian, but neither Clark nor the commissioners had the authority to evict homesteaders, starting an 11 year struggle. Josiah Whitney, the first director of the California Geological Survey, lamented that Yosemite Valley may become like what Niagara Falls was at the time - a tourist trap where proprietary interests place tolls on every bridge, path, trail, and viewpoint. Previously-mentioned Hutchings was one of a small group that had claims on 160 acres of the valley floor. The issue was not settled until 1875 when the land holdings of Hutchings and three others were invalidated. A State grant of $24,000 for improvements Hutchings made to Upper Hotel helped compensate for his loss. Two years after losing his land, Hutchings published a second Yosemite guide, Hutchings' Tourist Guide to the Yosemite Valley and the Big Tree Groves.
However, under Clark's on and off stewardship through 1896, access to the park by tourists improved, and conditions in the Valley were made more hospitable to humans. Tourism started to significantly increase after a Sacramento to Stockton extension of the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 and the Central Pacific Railroad reached Merced in 1872. The long horseback ride needed to reach the area was still a deterrent, so three stagecoach roads were built in the mid-1870s to provide better access to the growing number of visitors to the Valley and Grove.
|
