Podcast Transcript
In the heart of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains lies a landscape of towering granite cliffs, ancient sequoias, cascading waterfalls, and deep valleys carved by ice.
It has inspired Indigenous peoples, explorers, artists, conservationists, and millions of visitors.
Its story also helped create the modern idea of protecting wild places for everyone.
Learn more about Yosemite National Park on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The United States has perhaps the greatest national park system in the world. Of those parks, three are considered the crown jewels of the system: Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite. I have previously done episodes on Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and this episode is Yosemite’s turn.
Yosemite’s landscape has been changing for hundreds of millions of years. One of the things that makes it unique is just how much granite is visible at the surface.
Granite is an igneous rock that forms when underground magma cools incredibly slowly deep within the Earth, a crystallization process that takes millions of years. While granite is usually subterranean and referred to as ‘basement rock,’ Yosemite’s colossal formations were forced thousands of feet into the sky by a massive tectonic fault.
These granite peaks were sculpted over millions of years by water, weather, and glaciers, which stripped away the surface layers and carved the sheer, vertical walls visible in the Yosemite Valley.
Tectonic shifts and time have created an environment dominated by a surface that is 90% granite. The result is one of the most picturesque landscapes in the world.
It should come as no surprise that at least seven different Native American tribes have called the region home. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans have lived in the Yosemite Valley for more than 8,000 years.
The main group that occupied the region was the Ahwahnechee. The Ahwahnechee play an important role in the region’s culture as their stories and geologic myths are essential to Yosemite’s mythology.
Ahwahnechee stories recount the formation of El Capitan, Half Dome, and many of the valley’s waterfalls, as well as the relationship between Native Peoples and the area’s indigenous animals.
Perhaps the most famous Ahwahneechee tale is the terrifying, spontaneous formation of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot (900 m) sheer granite face above the Yosemite Valley floor.
According to legend, two bear cubs were asleep on a sunny rock adjacent to the Merced River. While they slept, the rock began to grow thousands of feet into the sky. The panicked mother grizzly heard her cubs’ cries and called out to all the animals for help getting them down. The mountain lion, grizzly, and cougar all failed; only the small measuring worm, able to leave a slimy trail for the cubs to follow down, succeeded.
The Ahwahneechee served as ancient environmental engineers of the Yosemite Valley. By setting frequent, low-intensity fires, they kept the valley’s open meadows from being choked out by dense conifer forests.
These controlled burns cleared underbrush, recycled nutrients into the soil, and stimulated the growth of black oaks, a vital resource, as acorns were a staple of their diet and those of the animals they hunted. The Ahwahneechee practiced controlled fires for centuries, but they were abandoned in the early years of the national park.
The consistent, small-scale fires of the Ahwahneechee actively prevented the larger, more disastrous wildfires that the park has experienced in recent years.
Later park policies enforced fire suppression, altering the park’s appearance and leading to an expansion of forest cover and a decline in biodiversity in the meadows.
Ahwahneechee control over the region collapsed in the years after the California Gold Rush. Settlers began exploring the region for gold, culminating in the Mariposa Battalion’s conquest in 1851.
Commissioned by the State of California, which was founded a year earlier, the Battalion had an ominous mission and produced devastating effects, as noted by the National Park Service:
In 1851, a band of volunteers formed the Mariposa Battalion, sanctioned by the state of California, to rid the area of the perceived threat of Indians. When they entered Yosemite Valley, they systematically burned villages and food supplies and forced men, women, and children away from their homes. When the Indians returned, Yosemite was no longer theirs. New settlers had claimed it as their own. The Yosemite people did whatever they could to survive in this strange world in which they find themselves.
This new reality brought about many changes.
Perhaps the biggest change was the name. Lafayette Bunnell, a young doctor in the Mariposa Battalion, convinced the others in the militia to rename the pristine valley “Yosemite” in honor of the tribe that had controlled it.
However, Bunnell’s origin of the word was completely off. The word he probably heard was “Yohé’meti,” meaning “they are the killers,” which likely referred to the bears that inhabited the region or to the ferocity with which Chief Tenaya protected the valley.
After the Battalion’s conquest and renaming of the region, settlers began arriving in the valley in search of precious metals or to capitalize on the valley’s timber resources.
The settlers who arrived were not only interested in the region’s resources, but the landscape also attracted a wave of passionate naturalists and artists. Among the creators who arrived to chronicle this beauty was the German-born painter Albert Bierstadt.
Bierstadt’s emotionally charged landscapes fetched vast sums in eastern markets. His masterpiece, The Domes of the Yosemite, sold for twenty-five thousand dollars in 1867, the largest sum an American painting had ever commanded at the time.
Bierstadt’s paintings and early literary descriptions of Yosemite served to lure the next great force of change to the valley: tourists.
Among those early travelers was Galen Clark. Clark became an informal protector and guardian of Yosemite, and he beautifully chronicled the raw emotion of those who followed him into the mountain wilderness, writing: ‘I have seen persons of emotional temperament stand with tearful eyes, spellbound and dumb with awe, as they got their first view of the Valley from Inspiration Point, overwhelmed in the sudden presence of the unspeakable, stupendous grandeur.’
Clark perfectly captured the influence Yosemite would soon have on the park’s greatest advocate: John Muir.
Born in Scotland, raised and educated in Wisconsin, John Muir is widely considered the primary figure in establishing Yosemite as a protected natural site.
Muir arrived in the region after leaving civilization to avoid participating in the Civil War. During his “skedaddle”, he wandered across the country, drawn to Yosemite after seeing a brochure. His arrival changed him and the way the United States would view the environment as a resource to be protected.
His journals reflect the power of Yosemite in changing his outlook: We are now in the mountains, and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell…I am captive. I am bound.
When he first saw the great vista of Yosemite Valley, he was overwhelmed and called it: by far the grandest of all of the special temples of nature…
As National Park Historian and Ken Burns collaborator Dayton Duncan noted, “If Yosemite was God’s Temple, Muir would become the high priest.“
Muir spent decades familiarizing himself with every inch of Yosemite; he climbed its peaks, chronicled its flowers, sketched its falls, drew maps, and even tried to study grizzly bears at close range.
Along the way, Muir became an ardent conservationist. Motivated by the awe and beauty of Yosemite, Muir sought to protect it. Among his many activities in that pursuit was the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892, whose goal was to arouse public and political interest in protecting the Sierra Nevada region.
Thanks in part to his tireless efforts, Yosemite was officially declared the United States third national park in 1890.
While he advocated for the National Park system as a whole and strongly pushed for the creation of additional parks, particularly in the Grand Canyon, Muir always maintained his deepest connection to Yosemite.
Yet despite its new status as a National Park, a glaring legal loophole threatened Yosemite’s future.
An earlier law signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 had granted the state of California ownership of the Yosemite Valley floor and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.
Muir watched in frustration as the state mismanaged the sanctuary, allowing commercial logging, destructive livestock grazing, and unchecked hotel development right in the heart of the valley. To save Yosemite, Muir knew he needed an ally with political power and a shared passion for the wilderness.
He found it in President Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt approached Muir in 1903 about a trip to the region, as he wanted Muir to show him the High Sierra. Hosting Roosevelt was just what Muir needed to secure the next big change in Yosemite’s future: enhanced Federal protection of the Park and preservation of its beauty.
Muir quickly realized that Roosevelt was the perfect person to support his quest.
Roosevelt had two vital characteristics that were invaluable to Muir.
First, Roosevelt was a man of incredible energy and action. When he wanted something done, he didn’t rest until it was done. Second, Roosevelt had a long attachment to nature, having built a reputation as a skilled hunter and outdoorsman.
Muir needed to introduce him to the power of Yosemite, and he did so as only he could: they went camping together. Roosevelt insisted that he and Muir abandon their party and leave behind their handlers. It needed to be just them and the wild.
In a letter to Muir, Roosevelt wrote, I do not want anyone with me but you; I want to drop politics absolutely and just be in the open with you.
Muir had found a soulmate; perhaps more importantly, he had found his greatest weapon in protecting the park. Predictably, Roosevelt began to speak of the need to protect the park, and he made it a priority to have the land transferred from state to federal control.
It only took three years, which was fast for the early 20th century. Roosevelt’s stewardship of the park was immediately put to the test as Yosemite faced its greatest challenge.
The administration had repeatedly denied San Francisco’s application to dam the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, about 15 miles north of the Yosemite Valley, and nearly equal in beauty.
San Francisco’s application for access to Yosemite water took on greater significance following the San Francisco earthquake in 1906.
President Roosevelt faced a dilemma: his personal advisor, Gifford Pinchot, and his Interior Department advisor, James Rudolph Garfield (son of President James Garfield), had convinced him that the Hetch Hetchy project was essential. Though both advisors were environmentally conscious, they did not share the same perspective as Muir or Roosevelt.
Garfield and Pinchot believed in the importance of preserving these spaces, but also advocated for prudent use of natural resources. In their mind, the development of San Francisco, particularly in the wake of disaster, was worth changing the Hetch Hetchy.
Roosevelt’s correspondence with Muir shows his trepidation when he wrote, Everyone is for the project, and I have been in the disagreeable position of seeming to interfere with the development of the state for the sake of keeping a valley.
Pinchot and Garfield had convinced Roosevelt, yet the flooding of this section of Yosemite required congressional approval.
Fortunately for Muir, Roosevelt’s term was nearly over, and he was able to woo the new president, William Howard Taft, a Roosevelt acolyte on many issues, including the power of Yosemite.
After some reflective time at Yosemite, with Muir as his guide, Taft spoke out in opposition to the Hetch Hetchy project, but San Francisco refused to yield. When Taft’s term ended, he and Roosevelt both ran for President in 1912.
They split the Republican vote, even though Roosevelt ran as an independent under the “Bull Moose Party”, handing the election to Woodrow Wilson.
Despite Muir’s best efforts, the Raker Act authorizing construction of the dam passed Congress and was quickly signed by Woodrow Wilson.
Now 75, Muir was disappointed, yet upbea as he wrote, The battle for conservation will go on endlessly.
Muir died nearly one year after the passage of the Raker Act. Three years after his death, the Tuolumne River was dammed at the Hetch Hetchy Valley, flooding one of Yosemite’s marvels.
Yosemite National Park is more than a collection of granite cliffs, waterfalls, and giant sequoias. It is a place where geology, ecology, human history, and conservation all come together. Its protection helped shape the modern national park movement, and its landscapes continue to inspire visitors from around the world.
Yosemite remains one of the clearest examples of why extraordinary places are worth preserving for generations to come.
