Celebrate the 126th anniversary of Yosemite!
Enter now for a chance to win the book
High Country Women: Pioneers of Yosemite National Park
The United States was preoccupied with a Civil War when Congress approved the measure signed by President Abraham Lincoln that made Yosemite a National Park. In spite of the terrible strife the country was experiencing politicians and conservationists believed action needed to be taken to preserve the wilderness nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.1
The seven-hundred and sixty-one thousand acres that featured giant sequoia groves with trees thousands of years old and many unique geological formations was the destination of choice for many fur trappers and adventurers. In the mid-1820s beaver, bear, and mountain lion hides were in great demand, and expanding the western boundaries beyond the Mississippi river was encouraged by entrepreneurs and officeholders. Fearful that Yosemite’s natural beauty would be eroded away by the progress of civilization, concerned individuals pressed lawmakers to make the area off limits to Argonauts, hunters, and land developers. On June 30, 1864, Yosemite became the first scenic reservation by a central government.2
Frontiersman Joseph Reddeford Walker is credited with discovering Yosemite Valley in 1833 when he led an expedition of fifty men into the mountainous California territory. By 1849 a sea of humanity was migrating west. Driven by the Gold Rush and a desire to settle in a new land, prospectors, farmers, businessmen, ranchers, innkeepers, cooks, laundresses, teachers, and entertainers hurried to the West Coast. Men and women miners and their families pushed their way passed the Native Americans living in the Yosemite Valley with the intention of stripping the region of its gold. Indians who resisted the incursion of small gold mining operations on the Merced River were moved to a reservation near Fresno.3
White men such as naturalist John Muir and women such as author and political activist Jessie Fremont opposed the idea of mining in the scenic locale. Both believed the natural beauty of the area and wildlife would be threatened if exposed to toxic chemicals used to separate gold ore from rock. John spent years studying Yosemite Valley’s geology and botany and had determined its mountain ranges were formed by glacial erosion. The Maidu, Miwok, and Paiute Indians disagreed with his research. Indian legend passed down from father to son and mother to daughter insists that the mountain Half Dome, her husband, Washington Tower, and their infant son did it all.4
As the story goes, Half Dome lived with her husband, Washington Tower on the bank of the Merced River at a point on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley. Owing to some quarrel with her husband, Half Dome ran away toward the east. As she proceeded up through the mountains she created the upper course of the Merced River and the Yosemite Valley itself. She carried a burden basket, a finely feathered basket and her baby in its cradle. In the finely feathered basket she carried a smaller basket containing seeds of various kinds which she planted all along the way. Hence, there are many different kinds of these trees and foods now.5
Finding that his wife had left him, Washington Tower cut a white oak club and started after her. He overtook her near the point where this great peak now stands. She had taken her baby out of its cradle basket and placed it on the top of the load in the burden basket, carrying the cradle meanwhile under her arm.
Washington Tower whipped Half Dome severely. The burden basket was broken and fell with its contents into Mirror Lake. It has never since been seen. The basket containing the seeds was thrown to the north side of the canyon. It landed bottom up and became North Dome.
Half Dome threw the baby cradle against the north wall of the canyon where it now appears in the Royal Arches.
As Half Dome received her punishment she wept bitterly and was transformed into the great peak. The dark colored streaks on the vertical wall on the north of Half Dome are the tear stains on her face. She wore, at the time, a buckskin dress but nothing now remains to indicate it.
The club Washington Tower used was finally thrown aside. It landed upright in the center of Mirror Lake and remained there for some time as a large, black snag. When Washington Tower had spent his wrath he went over to the north side of the valley where he has since remained a great shaft of granite.6
Maria Lebrado, a member of the original Yosemite Indian tribe, shared this tale about the origin of the region with the pioneers who moved into the valley, the majority of which were men. Only ten percent of the white population that invaded Yosemite in the early 1850s were women. Though their numbers were few, the impact they had on the areas was as lasting as the exploits of Half Dome. For example, Elvira Hutchings came to Yosemite with her husband in 1855 and began her career as one of the original innkeepers in the valley. She was more than twenty years younger than her husband, James Mason Hutchings, the man who led the first tour party into Yosemite. Their marriage didn’t last but the inn she helped establish did.7
Ida Tinsley Howard was the valley’s first schoolmarm in 1876. She came west with her father who operated a resort on Mirror Lake at the east end of Yosemite. Ida made sure her students were proficient in math, especially algebra.8
Carefree maid and waitress Kitty Tatch was a pioneer in the field of photography in Yosemite, in front of the camera, however, not behind. She was unafraid of heights and posed precariously on ledges and cliffs around the park. Pictures of her were sold as postcards to visitor at valley restaurants and stage stops.9
In 1905, Agnes Wikenson, Ann Taurer, Ethel and Ann Fullerton were the first women in Yosemite to be held up by a highwayman. The stagecoach the ladies were traveling in was stopped by an armed, masked bandit who took all the money the women had. The stage passengers continued on to their destination, a campsite near Indian Village, and were in the valley when the fugitive was arrested by authorities in Sacramento two days after the incident.10
To learn more about the women who helped make
Yosemite a National Park read
High Country Women: Pioneers of Yosemite National Park
