Who Owns Yosemite?

A chain of low hills began to rise. Moving plates beneath the earth’s crust pushed them skyward. They climbed imperceptibly at first, fractions of an inch over centuries. On the western flank of the central range, a river accelerated into a torrent. The crashing water cut a narrow, V-shaped canyon out of the granite.

Twenty-three million years passed. An icecap enshrouded the summit of the range. Tongues of ice streamed down into the canyon. The ice thickened. It pushed and ground against the canyon walls and polished the granite domes. More glaciers came. They scoured the canyon into a U-shaped valley, about a mile wide and seven miles long.

Sheets and blocks of rocks broke loose from the valley’s granite sides. The falling rocks deepened the cliffs into abruptly rising walls. Sculpted spires, crevices and alcoves appeared. Waterfalls leaped over the recesses. During the past 10,000 years, the river filled the glacial lakes with sediment and gravel. Seeds blew in. And shimmering flower-sprinkled meadows grew, bordered by the towering, sheer walls of rock.

Man arrived about 3,000 years ago; from where, nobody is certain. He hunted deer and burned fires but left few enduring scars. And then descendants of European settlers discovered the wondrous valley, and the wars over Yosemite began. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE a special year for Yosemite National Park. It turns 100 tomorrow, and festivities and fanfare will mark the milestone. But a nasty, raging battle threatens to overshadow the entire centennial. It is a late-breaking skirmish in a classic American conflict: use versus preservation in the nation’s wild lands. This time, the battle lines have been drawn over a park concessioner’s contract. And the prize is the heart of Yosemite, the seven-mile-long Yosemite Valley.

In the high season, from a ledge halfway up the valley cliffs, the conflict is clear. Majestic granite walls, carved and sculpted over eons, tower overhead. Half Dome looms in the distance. But look downward, and Yosemite Valley might be taken for a suburban subdivision. The baby-blue tint of a large swimming pool catches the eye first; then dozens of brown buildings and white tent cabins compete for attention. Cars and buses sit sandwiched neatly into asphalt parking lots, a sea of metal gleaming in the sunlight. A garbage truck passes by, its engine loud enough to puncture the mesmerizing thunder of a waterfall only a few feet away.

There are about 1,300 buildings in Yosemite Valley, plus 30 miles of paved roads, eight miles of paved bikeways, 17 acres of asphalt parking lots, a vehicle maintenance garage, three swimming pools, a tennis court, an ice-skating rink, a jail, a courthouse, a gas station and two warehouses. To a preservationist, the roar of traffic and the stretch of development are intrusions. To a concessioner,the garbage trucks, parking lots and swimming pools are the price that must be paid if visitors are to enjoy comfortable access to the park.

In 1993, the biggest concessioner contract in Yosemite goes up for grabs. The Yosemite Park and Curry Co.--owned by MCA Inc., the entertainment giant that brought you “Jaws” and “Back to the Future I,” “II” and “III”--must negotiate to renew its for-profit hold on most of the buildings and many of the services in Yosemite, including the Ahwahnee Hotel and Yosemite Lodge. In the running against MCA will most likely be a nonprofit organization formed by conservationists.

The conservationists want nothing less than MCA’s ouster from the park. The terms of the new contract, they say, should mandate fewer hotel rooms, fewer cars, fewer parking spaces and less of everything that isn’t “natural” in Yosemite.

But the contract is just a symbol of the contention at Yosemite. The real conflict is about power and who will wield it. As the park’s 100th anniversary kicks off, the balance of power is clear: The advantage lies not with the National Park Service, the agency nominally in charge, nor with the preservationists, the self-styled defenders of nature. The advantage in the battle brewing in Yosemite Valley lies with the Curry Co. and MCA, the corporation that makes millions of dollars off the most scenic valley in the world.

SEATED AROUND A TABLE in the dining room of Yosemite’s luxurious Ahwahnee Hotel several years ago, two government bureaucrats from Washington watched in fascination as Edward Hardy, president of the Yosemite Park and Curry Co., held court. The federal officials had come to Yosemite to go over the park’s budget with Robert Binnewies, then park superintendent. “We had not asked to meet with the concessioner, but before we knew it, he was around us and we were around him,” remembers one of the bureaucrats. “They definitely wined and dined us. Ed was a wonderful host.”

The Park Service, the legal caretaker and administrator of Yosemite, should have been running the show. Theoretically, the Park Service has complete control over the concession. It writes and awards the contract under which the concession operates, determines how much the concession pays for the right to operate in the park, and decides what the concession can and cannot do. It also must approve the prices the concession charges in its stores and for its rooms, and the addition of each new vending machine and profit-making center in the park. The Park Service even has the final word over the decor in the concession’s accommodations.

But to the two Washington bureaucrats, Ed Hardy seemed to be in charge at Yosemite. He had his ideas about what the park needed, and he was a forceful advocate. When he took positions that contradicted those of Binnewies’, the superintendent fell quiet. In comparison to Hardy, one of the bureaucrats said, Binnewies seemed “almost timid. I got the impression that Hardy thought it was his park.”

More than anyone else, Hardy, 55, a barrel-chested, engaging former Marine, personifies the modern-day, MCA-owned Curry Co., and in some eyes, the park itself. Congressional staff members who know Hardy call him the “acting superintendent of Yosemite.” Park superintendents come and go at Yosemite, but Hardy is always there, so far outlasting five of them. And he is a man worth knowing. A room at the Ahwahnee that might require reservations a year in advance may be proffered by Hardy in an instant.

Schooled as a resort manager at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades and a Del Webb resort, Hardy came to Yosemite in 1974, the year after MCA bought the concession, and found himself in the midst of controversy. The corporation had used Yosemite as the setting for a television series called “Sierra.” MCA crews obtained the Park Service’s permission to paint a boulder in Yosemite Valley. They also crashed cars into a pine tree that had been covered with mattresses hidden under fake bark. Although the paint was water-soluble and the tree withstood the impact, environmentalists charged that the corporation had defaced a national shrine.

Hardy immediately got to work rebuilding the corporation’s image. “I want to establish a track record, over a period of time, as the No. 1 environmentally concerned company operating in any of the national parks,” Hardy told Backpacker magazine in 1976. “I really want that image. I need that image.”

He went a long way toward improving MCA’s reputation in the park. The Curry Co., like the largest employer in a company town, is responsible for much of what happens in Yosemite Valley. The company owns most of the stores and the accommodations, including tent cabins, restaurants and bars. It also rents horses, bicycles and rafts, and runs an ice-skating rink during the winter.

Hardy hired an environmental consultant and removed from company stores all products harmful to the ozone layer. A recycling program was established, and the company bear-proofed its garbage cans, dumpsters and food lockers. Early on, Hardy even talked about moving 90% of the Curry Co.’s employee housing out of Yosemite Valley. He joined the boards of directors of the Yosemite Assn., a nonprofit park educational group with conservationist leanings, and the Yosemite Fund, a private group that raises money to restore the park.

Someone who has worked with Hardy at the park for many years describes him this way: “He has the personality of a bulldog--very confident, very persistent. Someone once called him the great seducer. He is a very smooth P. R. guy. When you go into his office, he flatters you and treats you like you’re his long-lost brother. Then when you’re leaving, he opens this little cabinet where he keeps his goodies and gives you a couple of free books.”

Hardy, after agreeing to an interview, followed the script. He opened the door of his Yosemite Village office and beamed. “Thank you for coming,” he said, as though the meeting had been his idea. He wore tan trousers and a casual, long-sleeved shirt. Seated below portraits of David and Jennie Curry, the schoolteachers who founded the original Curry Co. in 1899, Hardy was congenial, complimentary and quick to withdraw an opinion if it seemed to offend. At the end of the interview, right on schedule, he walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a gift: a videotape about Yosemite.

Hardy’s commanding presence at the park stems in part from his clout in Washington. Park Service budgets that determine what is funded in a national park--and hence what happens in a park--are decided by Congress. The Park Service and its parent agency, the Interior Department, are run by political appointees susceptible to political influence. To ensure Congress and the Administration know their needs, concessioners are represented in Washington by the Conference of National Park Concessioners.

Individual concessioners also do their own lobbying, and one of the most effective lobbyists is Hardy. Those who know him in Washington say he manages to depict the interests of his company as the needs of Yosemite, and he shows a great love for the park. “I don’t know of anybody who didn’t like the man,” said Ira Whitlock, a former congressional liaison in the National Park Service’s Washington headquarters.

So influential is Hardy that he managed in 1986 to obtain a $1.2-million congressional appropriation for utilities for a new Curry Co. employee dormitory in Yosemite Valley--when the financially strapped Park Service was skimping on maintenance of trails, campgrounds and restrooms. Hardy could make such company needs known to congressmen in informal settings. He hosted lawmakers on company-paid, mule-pack trips to the high country. Former Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), one of Hardy’s guests on these trips, obtained the dormitory money through a line-item add-on to the Park Service budget.

For nearly two decades, MCA has benefited from the work of Hardy and his staff. The number of visitors to Yosemite has jumped from 2.3 million in 1974 to 3.4 million last year. Accordingly, MCA’s profits mushroomed and are estimated at $12 million to $17 million a year. The Curry Co. refuses to disclose any figures and contends that its profits are actually below average for resorts. It does acknowledge, however, that, while amounting to a mere fraction of MCA’s overall earnings, the Yosemite concession gives the corporation access to one of nature’s gems. “MCA takes great personal pride in participating in a place as world-renowned as Yosemite,” a Curry Co. official said.

Under the 30-year contract MCA acquired in 1973, the Curry Co. pays the federal government only .75% of its gross receipts each year. In 1988, the most recent year for which figures are available, that equaled $590,000, less than the Curry Co. spent that year on its public relations office and advertising, according to the Park Service.

Recent efforts by preservationists to portray his company as profiteering at the expense of the park could unravel all that Hardy has built. He claims that environmentalists are being “used” by unnamed outsiders who want a foothold in Yosemite when MCA’s contract expires. “They want to smear the Curry Co. so they can diminish the value of it and get the contract,” he said.

Yet Hardy does not seem particularly worried that the preservationists will succeed. “We have a long track record, we are well-financed and I believe we are the right players to be in the next contract,” he said. He points to accomplishments: an upgrading of concession buildings in the park, company-provided nature education programs for visitors and the relocation of some company operations, including the reservation office, from Yosemite to Fresno.

He no longer believes that 90% of Curry Co. housing can be moved outside the park. (As many as 1,200 Curry Co. employees--including Hardy--live in Yosemite Valley, a sore point for many preservationists.) Although he foresees the possibility of some cutbacks, he insists that most employees must be near guests to ensure good service. Moreover, he says, commuting would simply add to congestion on park roads.

Looking ahead to the next contract, Hardy argues that more accommodations should be kept for tour-bus travelers. The Park Service now permits the Curry Co. to set aside 18% of its rooms for tour buses. If the Park Service would raise this to 22%, Hardy said, there would be 120 fewer cars overnight in the parking lots. But, of course, the kind of people who ride tour buses do not want to walk 100 yards in the middle of the night for a bathroom, he continued. So Hardy would like to replace about 200 of the company’s historic tent cabins with two-story motel units with baths.

In spite of Hardy’s self-assuredness and his considerable plans, he occasionally is reminded that he does not call all the shots. After meeting with Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., the Park Service’s boss, this summer to discuss concession contracts, Hardy was approached by Steven Goldstein, a longtime and influential aide to Lujan. Hardy made known his displeasure over news stories emanating from the Interior Department about Lujan’s efforts to make concessioners share more of their profits with taxpayers. “Hardy gave Steve a steely-eyed look and said coldly, ‘I see your name in the paper too much,’ ” related a colleague of Goldstein’s who ran into the aide shortly after the encounter. “ ‘I don’t want to read your name in the paper in connection to this. Can’t we work something out without the papers?’ ”

Goldstein, who will not publicly discuss the incident, was indignant. “I work for the secretary of Interior and the President of the United States,” he replied icily.

HOWARD CHAPMAN was the first Park Service official to be rolled by MCA’s clout. For 15 years, until his retirement in 1987, the 40-year veteran of the Park Service served as director of its western region and was responsible for Yosemite. MCA came to the park just as Chapman and other park officials were developing a blueprint for Yosemite’s future. The document was to set policies and goals that the park and its concessioner would have to follow.

Chapman said the Park Service in the early 1970s envisioned a plan that would stress preservation of the park’s natural resources; what he said MCA had in mind was a plan that would draw more visitors.

A team of regional park officials led by Chapman met regularly with a team of corporate officials from MCA’s headquarters in Universal City. As Chapman remembers them, the gatherings were at the best unpleasant and at worst “downright nasty.”

“We found ourselves completely outgunned by the MCA people, who were dead set on pursuing the profit motive of their operation,” Chapman remembered. One of the MCA representatives, an accountant, “hard-lined it all the way. He made us feel like we were the ones who were carrying the black hat and trying to keep the public from enjoying the park.

“When they were not satisfied with the positions we took,” Chapman continued, “they would go over our heads to the (Park Service) director in Washington, and I’m reasonably sure, they were going over the director’s head to the Interior secretary.”

At the time of his meetings with MCA, Chapman said, the corporation wielded political influence within the Nixon Administration, and Nixon appointees overrode him when MCA balked over provisions in the plan.

Hardy, who participated in some of the talks, said he did not go over Chapman’s head and is not aware of any calls by MCA to circumvent the regional director. “Our philosophy has been that we operate with the superintendent at Yosemite,” he said. Hardy contends that the Park Service told MCA that it might be allowed an additional 300 lodgings in Yosemite when the corporation bought the concession. After the Park Service made it clear it did not want an expansion, he said, MCA settled for replacing some cabins and tent cabins without baths with 1974-style motel units with baths.

Chapman takes some consolation in the fact that MCA did not obtain everything it sought. He said the entertainment conglomerate wanted, among other things, to build an aerial tramway from the valley to Glacier Point (a concept once favored by the Park Service and renowned Yosemite photographer Ansel Adams) but dropped the idea after Chapman and his team resisted.

But the final plan--completed in 1974--left Chapman bitter. Whatever MCA’s compromises, one of the options attached to the plan included adding more than 100 hotel rooms in the valley and replacing tent cabins there with motel units. To conservationists and Park Service professionals, who had begun with a goal of reduced development, this represented a major defeat. The park already was too congested for their taste.

“We felt that we had been so knuckled under by MCA that our only salvation would be that we would present it to the public, and they would be so outraged they would throw it out,” Chapman said.

Chapman was right. Conservationists were furious. They denounced MCA in impassioned speeches in Yosemite Village, grabbed the attention of the national news media and enlisted support from members of Congress. An assistant Interior secretary quickly dumped the master-plan options, saying they “appeared to have been written by the concessioner.” Government investigations were launched, and a congressional report charged that the Curry Co. exercised “undue influence” over park matters. Park Service Director Ron Walker, who had been Nixon’s campaign advance man, resigned under fire.

The episode was emblematic of the difficulty all levels of the Park Service encounters when it tries to limit concessioners. “If the park superintendent crosses the concessioner, the next thing the concessioner does is escalate it to the National Park Service director’s office in Washington,” said Philip Stewart, 66, a retired Park Service official in charge of concessions during the Carter Administration. “And if he can’t get satisfaction or relief, then he elevates it to the next level, to Congress. It’s just like a game.”

Park Service officials who have crossed concessions have lost their jobs. Interior Secretary James Watt, appointed by President Reagan, left little doubt about where his sympathies lay. At a 1981 conference of concessioners, Watt listened to a complaint from a concessioner upset about the actions of a park official.

“If a personality is giving you a problem,” Watt told the concessioner, in widely quoted remarks, “we’re going to get rid of the problem or the personality, whichever is faster.” Shortly thereafter, a Park Service official in Washington who had been at odds with some concessions was removed from his job.

In addition, a revolving door exists between the Park Service and concessions. Those in charge of regulating concessions for the Park Service in Washington have included former concession employees and a relative of a park concessioner. A former Park Service director and former regional park director sit on the board of trustees of a corporation that runs three national park concessions.

On top of this, park officials, especially at the superintendent level, where most of the concessioner-park action takes place, are hardly expert at dealing with corporate negotiators. “In a place like Yosemite, a guy with a forestry degree like I have is suddenly dealing with very big and complex business issues,” said Binnewies, who granted Curry Co. requests for new profit-making services when he was Yosemite superintendent from 1979 to 1986. “We pride ourselves in thinking we can do the job, but dealing with multimillion-dollar corporations should suggest that some good business expertise on the Park Service’s side of the table would be helpful.”

The first master plan debacle prompted the Park Service to hold public hearings in the late 1970s to develop a new blueprint for Yosemite. More than $1 million was spent, tens of thousands of people testified and Park Service staff pored over draft after draft. The Curry Co. had the opportunity to make its case but did not exercise inordinate influence. The public, it turned out, wanted less development, not more, in Yosemite Valley but tended to favor keeping accommodations at their current level.

Nevertheless, the new master plan, completed in 1980 and approved by the Park Service hierarchy in Washington, called for reducing the number of guest rooms in the Valley by 17%. The plan also sought to remove about 370 Park Service and Curry Co. buildings and minimize traffic. Visitors without overnight reservations would be required to leave their cars at the periphery of the park and enter by bus. “The result will be that visitors can step into Yosemite and find nature uncluttered by piecemeal stumbling blocks of commercialism, machines and fragments of suburbia,” the plan promised.

As is the case with many national park master plans, which are not guaranteed funding, this one barely got off the ground: Fewer than 75 Park Service and Curry Co. buildings came down. The company says the Park Service never formally asked it to remove more. Chapman blames resistance from the Curry Co. “You would just be worn down over time,” he said. “They would stall and put you off. You would come back to them, and they would find reasons to throw up a roadblock.” And without money to reimburse the Curry Co. for buildings it owned by contract, Chapman said, “there was always the threat that they would take us to court.”

By 1986, Binnewies was reassigned and replaced by Jack Morehead, who had earned impressive conservationist credentials as superintendent of Everglades National Park in Florida. After three years at Yosemite, Morehead commissioned an “examination report,” or status report, on the 1980 master plan. It argued that much of the plan, including the restrictions on accommodations, might no longer be realistic. The plan represented 10-year goals, he said, and he wanted the public to know why the objectives were not being met.

But Morehead also had grown to consider Ed Hardy a “personal friend” while at Yosemite, and the relationship between the two men became a matter of much debate after the report was made public. Morehead and Hardy had lunch together once a week, often at the Ahwahnee, and Morehead seldom paid for his own meal. The two men and their wives dined at each other’s homes. Morehead also joined Hardy, congressmen and other Curry Co. guests on Hardy’s mule-pack trips.

Morehead says that the friendship did not influence his decisions but that if he had to do it all over again, he would change one thing: appearances. He would have paid for his own meals with Hardy in front of the Ahwahnee waiters.

Conservationists had paid little attention to Yosemite in the 1980s. “Yosemite wasn’t a priority then,” one of them said. But Morehead’s report lit the fire again. Conservationists had assumed that the 1980 plan eventually would be enacted once funding became available, so the report stung like a broken promise.

Just before the public outcry began, Morehead landed a promotion. He moved to Washington to oversee concession management, and Michael Finley, a park professional who was respected by conservationists, arrived in Yosemite as environmentalists were taking aim.

JOE BOLAND GESTURED OUT over the valley from a curbside seat in front of Yosemite Lodge. He had to shout to be heard over the rumble of the smoke-belching bus idling a few feet away. “What would I like to see done?” he asked, his voice hostile. “I would like to see everyone and everything pushed out of here for at least 100 years until we get wise enough as a species to take care of this place.”

Boland, 45, is tall, slender and dead serious. He doesn’t like to talk about the more likely possibility, that MCA and the Curry Co. will win the new contract in Yosemite in 1993. But he confesses to having another fantasy about just that prospect. In this fantasy, Boland, a tennis teacher who lives in a trailer in Mariposa, imagines that environmentalists become guerrillas, hide in the cliffs that surround Yosemite Valley and sneak down each night to attack Curry Co. holdings.

Boland is one of three activists leading the charge against MCA. A veteran of the 1970s master plan wars, he brings historical perspective to the campaign and a sizable collection of documents about MCA’s record in Yosemite. He considers the Curry Co. under MCA “the enemy,” and in 1974 formed an informal group called Friends of Yosemite as a platform for speaking out about the park.

Another longtime park-watcher, Dean Malley, joined the fight against MCA after the Morehead report was released. Perpetually reddened by the sun, with blond hair brushed to the side, Malley is an intense, 40-year-old, self-employed computer salesman in Sonora. He grew up in La Jolla and spent his summers in Yosemite camping, rock scrambling and riding his inflatable mattress down the Merced. Long active in his local Sierra Club, he responded to the examination report by establishing Coalition 94, a loosely knit group with preservation as its goal.

MCA’s most formidable opposition, however, came from Patricia Schifferle, a savvy, well-organized and well-placed activist. Schifferle, 39, was the top California representative of the Wilderness Society, a Harvard University-educated public administrator and former consultant to the state Assembly Transportation Committee. She is athletic-looking and enthusiastic, moving quickly and purposefully, the cane she acquired with a recent back injury failing to slow her momentum.

When she saw the examination report, she immediately demanded a full-blown environmental review and the opportunity for extensive public participation. The Curry Co. responded just as quickly. It sent 93,000 mailers to former park guests, asking them to oppose any reduction in accommodations and to support the replacement of some tent cabins with motel units. Schifferle was incensed. “If nothing were done,” she said, “the examination report could have sealed the fate for Yosemite.”

Although Schifferle, Boland and Malley are hard-pressed to admit it, there is no proof that MCA had triggered Morehead’s report despite its advantages for the company. Still, the corporation became the target of the preservationists’ wrath. They began to call for a new concession, one that would be willing to scale back accommodations and raze more buildings.

It was principally Schifferle who matched action with the idea of a revolt to unseat MCA. Working with a San Francisco attorney who sat on the board of a Yosemite educational group, Schifferle and the Wilderness Society began to assemble a nonprofit board of directors to compete with MCA for the Yosemite contract. This board would include environmentalists, former Park Service employees and businessmen with experience in concession management. Boland and Malley saw the advantages of a united front and joined forces with Schifferle.

If the Wilderness Society group was successful, it would enact the 1980 master plan. At the very least, the group, called the Yosemite Restoration Trust, would ensure conservationists a seat at the negotiating table where they could influence the terms of the new contract. “It is a serious effort,” Schifferle said. “You can’t do it without seriously wanting to take over the contract. But much of the purpose here has been to put some public light on what has been a rather cozy process between the Park Service and MCA.”

She and other preservationists were encouraged when Michael Finley took over Yosemite in September, 1989. Tall and robust, with short, brown hair, Finley, 44, had just finished three years as a superintendent in the controversial and ecologically threatened Everglades park, where environmentalists held him, as they had Morehead, in high regard.

Finley played it cool at Yosemite. On the one hand, he made it clear to the activists that the examination report was neither his nor binding. He more or less ignored it. On the other hand, when the nonprofit Yosemite Assn. publicly condemned the report, Finley complained to its board of directors. As an educational organization subsidized by the Park Service, it had no business taking a political stand, Finley told the directors. The charter to operate in the park, he reminded them, could be revoked.

The new superintendent also believed that the environmentalists were exaggerating what the master plan would do. “I keep hearing from Patty Schifferle of the Wilderness Society about making Yosemite natural,” he complained last spring. “I just watched her on the “Today Show” this morning, and she was with the cameramen up here saying, ‘This is a resort, this shouldn’t be here.’ ” Even under the master plan, there would still be many buildings in Yosemite Valley.

Having failed to find a strong ally in Finley, Schifferle, Boland and Malley took their case to the public. The trio’s campaign to oust MCA became a battle for the hearts and minds of Yosemite lovers. The conservationists pored over what little public documentation existed about MCA’s park revenues and accused the corporation of profiteering. Park Service files were scoured. Every MCA deviation from the master plan--even though approved by the Park Service--was noted. Officials at the Interior Department and some members of Congress started talking about concession reform. A steady stream of news media traveled to Yosemite, and conservationists were ready for them.

Typical of the conservationists’ campaign was a tour given by Malley this summer for a visiting reporter. He drove into the woods next to the Ahwahnee Hotel to point out Curry Co. valets. They were parking luxury automobiles between pines and firs. He headed to a Curry Co. store to criticize the merchandise--everything from shoes to centennial coffee mugs. At the Curry Co.’s ice rink, which the master plan said should be replaced with a portable rink in winter only, he stopped. He complained that the lights are so bright in winter that they dim the stars and that he can hear the rink’s music until 10 p.m. when he camps.

Schifferle and Boland distrust MCA, but Malley seems downright anxiety-ridden. He has taken to keeping with him electronic equipment that he says can detect eavesdropping devices. “Since I am interfering with a billion-dollar contract,” he said, “I assume at some point that they are going to throw some technology at me to find out what I am saying to people.”

Driving his truck through the valley under a light rain, he spotted a white jeep following him and shoved a transmission frequency counter out the door. “I’ve seen that jeep parked outside the Curry Co. headquarters,” he confided.

Yosemite employees sympathetic to the anti-MCA campaign share Malley’s worries and add to them the fear that speaking out may jeopardize their jobs. They meet reporters in the protective darkness of the park’s woods and spill tales of the concession’s domination of the Park Service. One staff member is known as “Deep Valley.”

A book called “Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA and the Mob,” by Dan E. Moldea, has sold a lot of copies around Yosemite, and Malley is one of its devotees. “It has pictures--I’ll show you,” he said, seated behind the wheel of his truck. “It has people with blown-up vehicles and stuff and bullets to their heads sitting in front of cars.”

There is no evidence that Malley or anyone else is being followed or physically threatened or that frequency counters are necessary. The Curry Co. spokesman dismisses such notions as “absurd.”

Some conservationists, removed from the action in the park, have watched the struggle with dismay. Environmentalist David Brower, for instance, is largely satisfied with MCA’s performance at Yosemite. The Curry Co. recently hosted a reception for Brower at the Ahwahnee, and Brower has been a guest at one of Hardy’s parties.

At the age of 78, the eminent environmentalist appreciates comfortable accommodations and sees no need to reduce them. Nor do the crowds bother him. “I can be alone in Yosemite Valley in 10 minutes,” he said. “I know where to be alone--but my lips are sealed.”

Brower believes that environmental groups cannot be watchdogs of parks if they are running a concession, and he objects to the Wilderness Society’s MCA contract challenge. Paul Pritchard, president of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., agrees. Instead, he said, environmental groups should be questioning the need for concessions at all in the parks. History may support Brower and Pritchard’s view of the inherent conflict. Alfred Runte, author of “Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness,” wrote that Ansel Adams lost his preservationist attitude toward Yosemite after he and his wife inherited a photographic studio in the valley. The photographer, who had once opposed camping in the valley, was by the 1970s declaring that as many people as possible should visit “ ‘one of the greatest shrines of the world.’ ” The Ansel Adams Gallery, Runte wrote, had become the “preservationist-turned-businessman’s bridge to his growing and adoring public.”

THE FIGHT OVER Yosemite Valley has already produced some changes. Interior Secretary Lujan has begun to overhaul both the concession contracting process and the terms of the deal. The government’s cut of the profits is virtually certain to be higher than .75%, and Lujan promises to use outside consultants to help the Park Service forge better deals in future negotiations. He also wants the federal government gradually to buy the buildings now held by park concessioners, including the Curry Co.

According to the Park Service, any rival bidder for the Yosemite contract would have to be able to purchase MCA’s interest in its physical plant in Yosemite, which by some estimates is worth as much as $200 million to $300 million. “Unless the Department of Interior is able to own those buildings, the concessioner still has control of the park,” a Lujan spokesman said. In the park itself, Superintendent Finley is still working at playing a mediator’s role. “The thing I am trying to do is defuse the rhetoric, all the torpedoes flying back and forth,” he said, seated in his office in Yosemite Village.

He betrays irritation at the ruckus raised by the preservationists. Their constant nattering about the park’s failure to enact the master plan or vigilantly oversee the Curry Co. has frustrated him. “The point is,” he says, “that even the 1980 master plan did not envision Yosemite returning to wilderness or a natural setting. It called for reduction.” Why can’t the environmentalists focus on threats from air pollution instead of what kind of coffee mugs the Curry Co. sells? he asks.

Despite his irritation, Finley has heeded the criticism about his predecessor. There will be no more dinners with the concessioner at the Ahwahnee--Finley refuses to socialize with Hardy. The new superintendent also appears intent about fulfilling more of the goals of the master plan: The Park Service announced in August that it will soon raze 20 park buildings. Finley, moreover, seems reluctant to allow the concession in the next contract to set aside more rooms for tour-bus travelers. “Due to the bus roar in Yosemite, my home in Yosemite Valley is noisier than it was in the Miami suburbs,” he said.

Over at the Curry Co., Ed Hardy seems satisfied with Finley’s decisions so far. Hardy, who refers to Finley as “my sixth superintendent”--says Finley is better at the job than his predecessors, even better than Morehead, who considered Hardy a friend. “He is articulate and understands the balance of preservation and use, and I don’t believe he is tainted by any side of the issue,” Hardy said.

In the wake of the controversy, however, Hardy is not happy with the way outsiders may be viewing his company. Every time the 100th anniversary of Yosemite comes up, it seems the contract challenge comes up, too, and with it, preservationists’ gripes about MCA. “I’m sick of being bashed,” Hardy grumbled.

As he did at the beginning of his tenure at the park, Hardy is spending time putting out image brush fires. Reporters who have covered the conflict at the park have learned to expect scathing letters from the Curry Co. to their editors and publishers. In a form of subtle intimidation, the company provides copies of these letters to other reporters in the park to cover the dispute. In one such letter the Curry Co. complained about a story in the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, a Park Service spokesman called the reporter to compliment the story’s fairness.

For their part, the preservationists are simply trying to keep the planning process for the contract challenge on track. This month, their side was dealt a setback. Schifferle resigned after the Wilderness Society reassigned her from director to senior counsel. She said the Park Service--unhappy with any attacks on its image as park caretakers--complained to the Wilderness Society about her role in the contract challenge.

The Wilderness Society strongly denied this and pledged a strong campaign at Yosemite. But to conservationists close to the action, Schifferle’s loss was significant. “She was the only person from the mainstream environmental movement willing to call a spade a spade,” Boland said.

Still, the Wilderness Society has forged ahead without Schifferle. With its board of directors in place, the Yosemite Restoration Trust began to search for an executive director. In the coming months, it will initiate studies to help it make an effective bid for the contract. Financing will be sought, including foundation money for the trust itself.

In the meantime, Yosemite’s centennial is under way. It will begin tomorrow with a low-key ceremony in a meadow in Yosemite Valley. Dignitaries will gather for speeches, an actor will portray John Muir in a short monologue and the 6th U.S. Army Band will perform. There also will be a moment of silence--even nearby traffic will be stopped--during which guests will be asked to envision Yosemite before people came.

And when the party ends, the tug-of-war at Yosemite will undoubtedly resume. The spotlight on MCA has caused an examination of the concessioner-Park Service partnership, with all its inherent strains. In the wake of the Yosemite battle, there are those who are no longer sure “partnership” is even the right term: “There should be no more than a landlord and tenant relationship,” says former Park Service Director George Hartzog, “and we don’t call that a partnership.”

Finley, who faces the challenge of working out this relationship every day, expresses confidence that he will call the shots in the park. Yet there are echoes in Yosemite Valley, and they bounce back and forth between the offices of Hardy and Finley. Who is adopting whose words is not always clear, but the two men tend to say the same things when they describe park matters. Buses are not “the panacea,” according to Hardy. “Buses are not the panacea,” Finley says. The superintendent even lets Hardy frame the park-concession relationship for him. “As Ed says,” says Finley, “we are the senior partner.”

ON BUSY DAYS in Yosemite Valley, it is possible to forget that you are in a national park. Conversations are drowned out by passing buses. Open-air tour trams glide by, and the Curry Co. guide speaking into the bullhorn is heard by more than just the visitors neatly sandwiched on the tram’s benches.

Lines snake everywhere, in the stores and in the cafeterias. Waiting for a sit-down meal can take as long as an hour and 45 minutes. A loudspeaker alerts diners waiting outside: “Gordon party of two, in the Mountain Room Broiler,” “Anderson party of four, in the Four Seasons.” If you weary of waiting and call over to Yosemite Village for a pizza, you would not be the first to ask if the Curry Co. pizza stand delivers. It doesn’t, but the point is that the valley can feel so urban that delivery would not be out of place.

But there also are times, even in summer, when Yosemite Valley loses its urban feeling, when the magic of the valley can still exist and the struggle to preserve it doesn’t seem futile. A spate of bad weather on the heels of a holiday weekend can thin the crowds and slow the pace. On such a rare summer weekend, the lines are short, the waits tolerable.

Man is in every scene, but he does not ruin it. A ragged coyote wanders among picnic tables, and a young boy watches it fearlessly. “Here, boy; here, boy,” the child beckons. The animal, scavenging for food, ignores him. A man drinking a cup of coffee stands with his young daughter on his shoulders at the edge of the Merced and watches the river flow by. On a trail leaving the valley and winding up to Glacier Point, the hikers are few and far between. At dusk, only occasional couples pass on the pathways that wind through the meadows. Deer graze in the grass; a gray squirrel scampers across the path. The lower part of the granite walls are brown and gray in the approaching darkness, the upper halves still bathed in a pink glow from the declining sun.

At times like these, you are reminded of what Yosemite Valley once was and, while the enduring struggle continues, what it still has the power to be.