Preserving the Progress at Yosemite

I remember the first time I saw California. It was 1967, an early spring just before the Summer of Love. I had dropped out of college and come chugging across the great American desert in a rusty Ford with no spare tire. My hair snaked down my neck and I was, in all respects, a cliche of the period except for one thing. I was not headed to San Francisco to be a revolutionary. I was headed here, to Yosemite.

Having quit the academic life, I needed a place of refuge. So, for about three weeks, I spent my days settled into an armchair in the great hall of the Ahwahnee Hotel here. If you have lived long in California, surely you know this place. The ceilings are as high as a cathedral, the walls draped with Navajo rugs, the windows bright with the light of the valley.

Every morning I would find my armchair and read murder mysteries while the sun warmed up the valley. In the afternoons I would take walks and at night sleep in the car. Yosemite was the most benign and lovely place I had ever seen. I was mostly broke and paid for nothing except a few groceries. I finished a half-dozen books in my chair and watched spring arrive through the windows. No one ever questioned my right to the armchair or asked me to leave, and that first spring remains one of the best memories of California.

I tell this story to illustrate a point. You can walk into the Ahwahnee Hotel today and still find that same armchair in the same place. The Ahwahnee and Yosemite Valley have changed very little in the 20 years or so since my first visit. It’s part of what I love about this place. I can depend on the status quo here.

I bring up this subject because this year marks the centennial for Yosemite. In the coming months you will hear more and more about the centennial celebration, and you will also hear a rising debate over the future of the park.

Some of our more esteemed environmental groups will lay claim to the argument that the National Park Service has betrayed Yosemite. They will say the government has failed to carry out a management plan to institute major changes in the park. It is true enough that the plan was not carried out. It is not true that this amounts to a betrayal of the park.

Perhaps you recall this plan, which became famous for its unusual approach. The Park Service sent tens of thousands of questionnaires to people of all persuasions, trying to find what kind of Yosemite they wanted. About 20,000 answers came back. The vast majority indicated that they preferred the park to remain pretty much as it was. In other words, they wanted the status quo.

A couple of examples from the survey: Only about one-third of the respondents said they would favor excluding cars from the park, and only one-fourth wanted the number of overnight accommodations reduced.

Yet the final plan included both these elements. It proposed a scheme whereby no one could simply drive into the valley. A bus trip would be required. Hotel rooms would decline in number and employee housing would be moved out of the valley, forcing the workers to commute over the same roads used by visitors.

Why did the Park Service endorse a plan that the public clearly did not want? Most likely it was intimidated by the major conservation groups who have always regarded Yosemite as holy ground. Yosemite is the place, after all, that nurtured the naturalist John Muir, environmentalist David Brower, photographer Ansel Adams. You can go on and on. If social engineering was necessary to “save” a place as sacred as Yosemite, then so be it.

But save Yosemite from what? It’s true that on three or four weekends each summer the valley becomes so crowded it looks like Van Nuys with scenery. Anyone crazy enough to visit Yosemite on July 4 deserves all the misery they get.

Otherwise, Yosemite’s problems are minor, and this truth has finally been recognized by the Park Service. Instead of enforcing its mandated nightmare, the Park Service has tinkered here and there. Traffic flow has been smoothed and a free shuttle bus operates inside the valley. Some ugly congestion spots have been removed.

And it works. You can still drive into the valley with a picnic basket or a couple of bicycles and have a swell time. You can, in the summertime, walk 100 feet from the road and hardly be aware that you share Yosemite with thousands of others.

You could even snuggle into my armchair for a good read, and I bet no one would bother you. That’s the kind of place Yosemite was, and still is. Not such a bad gift for a centennial.