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YOSEMITE’S HUMAN HISTORY

California Miwok Native Americans had inhabited Yosemite Valley for many centuries, probably millennia, before a party of explorers headed by Joseph Walker first looked down upon it in 1833. During the subsequent two decades, tensions between the European settlers and Native Americans in the Sierra Nevada foothills increased, leading to an offensive by the Mariposa Battalion in 1851. In search of the Ahwahneechee, the band of Miwok living in Yosemite Valley, these soldiers became the first Europeans to enter Yosemite Valley. This encounter ended badly for the Miwok, who were driven from their home. Just 4 years later the first tourist party reached the valley, and their drawings of Yosemite’s waterfalls and vertical walls soon captivated the world. Yosemite quickly became another opportunity to earn easy money in the undeveloped West, as early settlers set up hotels and toll roads to extract money from the visitors streaming in.

Fortunately a few early visitors already recognized that this exquisite natural setting must be forever preserved and accessible to all—it must not be damaged by the extraction of its natural resources nor be allowed to fall into private ownership. Frederick Law Olmsted, a famed landscape architect, was one of its first advocates, successfully lobbying Congress to set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees for public use. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill creating the Yosemite Grant in 1864, thus creating the first public park by action of the U.S. federal government. Galen Clark became Yosemite’s first guardian, a quiet, respected man who was an effective caretaker in an era of ever-increasing visitation and divisive politics regarding how Yosemite should be managed and conserved.