Читать книгу 50 Best Short Hikes: Yosemite National Park and Vicinity онлайн

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John Muir, the man most associated with Yosemite, arrived a few years later. He spent the summer of 1869 in Yosemite’s high country helping shepherd 2,000 sheep and quickly developed a boundless enthusiasm for Yosemite’s landscape, geologic history, plants, and animals—as well as distaste for the damage to high meadows caused by sheep. His first attempts in 1881 to expand the Yosemite Grant to include the higher elevation reaches failed. For the following decade Yosemite’s landscape became increasingly degraded by excessive tourism and construction in Yosemite Valley and vast flocks of sheep denuding its mountain meadows. In 1890 with the help of Robert Underwood Johnson, a friend and influential magazine editor, Muir succeeded in pushing the bill for an all-inclusive Yosemite National Park through Congress. It followed Yellowstone to become the United States’ second national park.

Creating the national park was a veritable success, but Muir knew that a legislative designation was only the beginning. Next he needed to assemble a group of supporters to help expound the importance of undisturbed wilderness to a wider audience. The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, became his venue. It became and remains a powerful voice for both preservation of natural areas and the importance of people visiting these locations—for as John Muir knew well, the public will only become vested in a national park’s worth as a place of national heritage if they experience the wonders for themselves. The same debate rages today, with policy makers debating the right balance between keeping Yosemite wild and natural and encouraging people to visit Yosemite, thereby becoming stronger proponents of its future. During your visit, consider how important the story of Yosemite National Park is to the history of the conservation movement and the existence of public lands—and that you as an engaged visitor are part of its future.