Early Inhabitants Yosemite Valley was home to the Ahwahneechee people for thousands of years before settlers arrived in the area. Although not the first Native American tribe, the Ahwahneechee were present when the first outsiders encountered them in the s.
In fact, the tribe is responsible for the naming of Yosemite Valley. Called "Ahwahnee", the valley became "Yosemite" due to the mispronunciation of settlers. During to fervor of the California Gold Rush in , the valley was slated to be cleared by the United States Army, resulting in a conflict with the tribe.
Chief Tenaya put up a resistance and the fight culminated into the Mariposa Wars. The Native American eventually relented, were captured, and relocated to a reservation, thus ending the tribal habitation of Yosemite Valley and ushering in the era of the settler. Early Settlers and Pioneers Years before the Mariposa Wars, the Sierra Nevada had been visited by small parties of fur trappers, though none ventured into Yosemite Valley, with was thought impassable.
The first confirmation of a non-Native American visitor was in , only two years before the conflict with the native tribes. With the Gold Rush in the s came miners, some of which were killed in the wars with the Army.
It was not until after the tribe was relocated that tourists began to slowly trickle into the Valley. Most of the tourists were early photographers and artists seeking to capture the beauty of the wilderness. Journalists wrote articles detailing the majesty of the valley and there were numerous sketches and photographs displayed in exhibits to bring awareness of Yosemite to Americans. Galen Clark was one of the first settlers to establish a permanent residence within Yosemite.
The Mariposa Grove in Wawona Valley is shrouded by the Giant Sequoia trees and was isolated by the Merced River before a bridge was built to ease crossing the water in Clark erected a Pioneer Village made up of several rustic cabins, a hotel for tourists, and a ranch in the Valley. Today, the Pioneer Village is a historical landmark and the oldest buildings have been preserved for tourists and posterity.
There are around residents that live in Wawona all year round but the population increases during tourist season due to the availability of cabins for rent. Galen Clark saw the potential of the location and the need to preserve the wilderness for future generations. Clark would prove to be one of the frontrunners in the effort to declare Yosemite a National Park. The Journey To Becoming A National Park As the park attracted more settlers and tourists, concerns were being raised about the damage to the natural environment.
Casual observers, Thomas Starr King, a minister, and Frederick Law Olmsted, an architect, were among several witnesses to threats to the wilderness. Both men wrote and published letters expressing their concerns in newspapers. Perhaps more influential, were the photographs of Carleton Watkins that were clear, unobtrusive portrayals of the scenery and uncultivated landscape of Yosemite.
In , Abraham Lincoln was convinced of the threats posed by humans, their animals, and the subsequent development of roads and hotels to Yosemite and signed a bill called The Yosemite Grant, that ceded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the state of California.
This measure was used as a first step to protect the land. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. John Muir. Actor Lee Stetson portrays John Muir in one-person theatrical presentations at 7 p. Sunday-Wednesday in Yosemite Valley. Call John Muir arrives in Yosemite at age Actor Lee Stetson portrays John Muir in one-person theatrical shows at 7 p.
Sunday-Wednesday in the Yosemite Valley auditorium next to the visitor center during the summer season. He has performed his Yosemite show in the park for more than 25 years. Call for information.
Sources Muir, J. My First Summer in the Sierra. Muir, J. The Yosemite. Letters to a Friend: Written to Mrs. Ezra S. But his later recollections reveal a young man plagued with self-doubt and uncertainty, often lonely and confused about the future. But was I in it? John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, in , the eldest son of a Calvinist shopkeeper father.
Though his days were consumed with farm work, he was a voracious reader. By his mids, Muir seemed to have a career as an inventor ahead of him. His gadgets included an "early-rising bed," which raised the sleeper to an upright position, and a clock made in the shape of a scythe, to signify the advance of Father Time. But after being nearly blinded in a factory mishap in , Muir decided to devote his life to studying the beauties of Creation.
With almost no money and already sporting the full beard that would become his trademark, he set off on a 1,mile walk from Kentucky to Florida, intending to continue to South America to see the Amazon.
But a bout of malaria in Florida's Cedar Key forced a change in plans. He sailed to San Francisco via Panama, intending to stay only a short time. Muir would later famously, and perhaps apocryphally, recall that after hopping off the boat in San Francisco on March 28, , he asked a carpenter on the street the quickest way out of the chaotic city. This glorious landscape had an ignoble history. The first white visitors were vigilantes from the so-called Mariposa Battalion, who were paid by the California government to stop Indian raids on trading posts.
They rode into Yosemite in and in pursuit of the Ahwahneechee, a branch of the southern Miwok. Some Indians were killed and their village was burned. The survivors were driven from the valley and returned later only in small, heartbroken bands.
The vigilantes brought back stories of a breathtaking seven-mile-long gorge framed by monumental cliffs, now known as El Capitan and Half Dome, and filled with serene meadows and spectacular waterfalls. The first tourists began arriving in Yosemite a few years later, and by the early s, a steady trickle of them, most from San Francisco, miles away, was turning up in summer. Traveling for several days by train, stagecoach and horseback, they would reach Mariposa Grove, a stand of some ancient giant sequoias, where they would rest before embarking on an arduous descent via 26 switchbacks into the valley.
Once there, many did not stray far from the few rustic inns, but others would camp out in the forests, eating oatcakes and drinking tea, hiking to mountain vistas such as Glacier Point, reading poetry around campfires and yodeling across moonlit lakes.
By , a group of Californians, aware of what had happened to Niagara Falls, successfully lobbied President Abraham Lincoln to sign a law granting the roughly seven square miles of the valley and Mariposa Grove to the state "for public use, resort and recreation"—some of the first land in history set aside for its natural beauty.
Thus, when Muir came to Yosemite in , he found several dozen year-round residents living in the valley—even an apple orchard. Because of a gap in his journals, we know little about that first visit except that it lasted about ten days.
He returned to the coast to find work, promising himself to return. It would take him over a year to do so. In June , Muir signed on as a shepherd to take a flock of 2, sheep to Tuolumne Meadows in the High Sierra, an adventure he later recounted in one of his most appealing books, My First Summer in the Sierra.
Muir came to despise his "hoofed locusts" for tearing up the grass and devouring wildflowers. But he discovered a dazzling new world. He made dozens of forays into the mountains, including the first ascent of the 10,foot granite spire of Cathedral Peak, with nothing but a notebook tied to his rope belt and lumps of hard bread in his coat pockets. By fall , Muir had decided to stay full time in the valley, which he regarded as "nature's landscape garden, at once beautiful and sublime.
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