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Yosemite National Park, like most all national parks in the western half of the United States, started its life as a part of a vast Indian Territory. Yosemite was populated by many indigenous peoples during the decades before it was discovered; it was the Ahwahneechee tribe that populated it when the first white men came to valley. The Gold Rush brought many Americans across the country to California, and with that the land was no longer populated by Indians.
Obvious quarrels ensued and the White Man and the Indians became enemies. I’m sure we all know a little bit about the history of the “Cowboys and Indians” per say, but Yosemite was founded on it.
In 1851, Jim McDougall, Governor of California at the time, appointed Jim Savage to head a small group of soldiers called the Mariposa Battalion (named after the name that region was called at that time, and now currently Mariposa County where Yosemite is located).
One day on the hunt for some rouge Indians that raided one of their towns, Savage and the Mariposa Battalion where walking through the woods of the Sierra when they stumbled across a majestic valley. Unbeknownst to them at the time, they had become the first white men to look upon the vast Yosemite Valley. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician, wrote a book about their discoveries called simply The Discovery of Yosemite and is also credited with naming the Valley.
Throughout the rest 1850’s, and into the 1860’s, Yosemite Valley began getting attention as a tourist attraction by some of the prominent citizens of the day. This led to Galen Clark, known for his role in the discovery of the mariposa Grove Giant Sequoia, getting the government involved in stopping the industrialization of the area. A bill was written up, and passed both houses of the Congress. On June 30th, 1864, in the middle of the Civil War mind you, President Abe Lincoln signed the bill, and Yosemite National Park was born. With the signing of that bill, the first national park was created.
Another prominent man in the life of Yosemite was John Muir, a naturalist who wrote articles about Yosemite. Muir was the first to come up with the theory that the valley was created by giant glaciers, much to the disdain of the scientific community, who came down with heavy criticism on Muir’s theories.
Muir was fed up with the damage that over grazing, and logging was doing to the valley, he and Century Magazine editor lobbied Congress to for an act to section of Yosemite, and preserve its natural beauty.
The act was delivered, but it excluded the valley and the grove. It took a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt at Glacier Point to get Congress to make Yosemite a National Park. In 1906, Roosevelt signed the papers, and Yosemite was safe.
Throughout the years, Yosemite gained popularity and became one of the two most historical and famous (The other, of course, being Yellowstone) national parks in the United States. With its vast sects of protected lands that hold protected animals, it looks like Yosemite will be around for future generations to cherish, as it has been since it was discovered.
