The Price of Great Beauty

Yosemite Falls, the global icon of California’s most spectacular national park, plunges 2,425 feet in three leaps that naturalist John Muir described as “a throng of comets.” More than a million visitors a year hike the quarter-mile trail to the foot of the lower falls to wonder at the beauty and power of the water dashing onto granite.

But walking the trail to the falls today is hardly the bushwhacking that Muir did. It’s more like negotiating a busy street in a blighted city--from a fume-filled parking lot choked with tour buses and trash dumpsters, past the blockhouse restrooms and down a cracked asphalt pathway bordered by denuded earth.

Happily, all that will change over the next two years as the 56-acre access area is rebuilt and landscaped as part of a $12.5-million project financed primarily by the Yosemite Fund, a private nonprofit organization that has raised more than $18 million since 1985 for Yosemite projects.

Crews will raze the parking lot and put in picnic tables. They’ll build restrooms in a less conspicuous spot, restore stream banks, replace bridges and make viewing sites more hospitable, providing access for the disabled. The area will remain open while the work is underway.

The revitalized falls access is of particular significance as the first major project of the valley restoration plan adopted by the National Park Service in 2000 to provide a more natural, less congested Yosemite Valley. The 1-by-7-mile valley is the heart of the park, a natural cathedral ringed by massive rock temples such as Half Dome and El Capitan and waterfalls including Nevada, Vernal and Bridalveil.

The Yosemite Fund already has raised $8.5 million for Yosemite Falls access. The park is putting up $1.5 million and the fund must raise an additional $2.5 million. Why doesn’t the federal government foot the full bill for this project, a Park Service priority for a dozen years? Primarily because Congress has been shamefully tightfisted for years despite every administration’s promise to fix or replace deteriorating national park facilities.

So nearly 70,000 donors have dug into their pockets to improve the park. Fund President Bob Hansen says many people develop a close connection to Yosemite, just as they might to their college or university. They treasure their Yosemite experiences, and they give back. Because of this generosity, future visitors will have a more natural and richer experience as, at the roaring base of the falls, they are mesmerized by the throng of comets.

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Contributions may be sent to Yosemite Fund, 155 Montgomery St., Suite 1104, San Francisco CA 94104-9765.