Inheriting a Treasure

California and the nation have been fortunate the past two years to have had Barbara (B.J.) Griffin as superintendent of Yosemite National Park. She has been a forceful, visionary leader at the park and a popular one as well, a rare combination that will be missed.

Guiding Yosemite is not an easy job. The park is, in the minds of many, the nation’s grandest natural treasure. But it also is an area under tremendous stress because of its overwhelming popularity with visitors. And the challenge of Griffin’s job was compounded by last January’s flooding, which devastated many of the visitor facilities in Yosemite Valley but also gave park officials an opportunity to proceed with parts of a long-delayed master plan.

Now Griffin has moved on to an important new assignment as general manager of the Presidio in San Francisco, where she will guide development of the former Army post into a unique new Park Service unit.

Yosemite lovers need not fear for the future of their park, however. Griffin’s successor is one of the pros of the Park Service, Stanley Albright, 65, who has been the west regional director of the service for 10 years. Four decades ago, Albright was a young ranger at Yosemite. Now, he has delayed retirement to end his career back at the Sierra jewel.

Albright brings family tradition to Yosemite. He is the nephew of the late Horace Albright, a co-founder of the National Park Service in 1916 and its second director.

Yosemite is a uniquely California park. It was a state preserve first, then was incorporated into the national system at the urging of John Muir, the mountaineer-naturalist and Sierra Club founder who wrote so compellingly of the wonders of Yosemite. Sierra Clubbers David Brower, Jules Eichorn and others graced the granite walls and summits with their climbing prowess. Francis Farquhar and Francois Matthes spun magic tales of Yosemite’s history and geology. Ansel Adams spread the drama of Yosemite to the world in his photographs.

And now Stanley Albright has come home to Yosemite. This wondrous place is in good, gentle hands.