Your National Parks Part 6

Surely the Parsons Memorial Lodge will become a world-celebrated rendezvous for mountain-climbers and for those who desire to see mountain scenery where it is peculiarly lovely and sublime. A number of trails converge at this point. It will be interesting to follow the future of the Lodge and to observe the thousands of enthusiastic people who will enjoy the surrounding scenes.

About twelve miles to the west of it is Mount Hoffman, which rises near the center of the Park and is probably the most commanding view-point in it. This is one of the places that visitors to the Park should not fail to enjoy.

Only a few miles to the southwest of the Lodge is Cathedral Peak. This imposing ice-burnished structure is one of the most celebrated pieces of nature statuary in the Park. Near by is Cathedral Lake. About fifteen miles to the south of the Lodge is a region of burnished rocks, numerous lakes, canons, and moraines--a wonderful array of glacial stories. This region is several miles southwest of Mount Lyell.

Mountain-climbers will find Dana Mountain, to the east of the Lodge, an excellent view-point. To see a sunrise from it is a rare enjoyment.

From its summit one looks down on the Mono Desert, the lake, and the craters. It is an easy one-day journey from the Lodge across Tioga Pa.s.s to Mono Lake.

At the door of the Lodge are the magnificent Tuolumne Meadows. There are a series of them, the lower one being about four miles long and about half a mile wide. Its meadowy expanse is in places attractively sprinkled with trees, and across it, with beautiful folds and hesitating bends, lingers the Tuolumne River.

The wonderful rapids in the upper end of the canon of the Tuolumne are perhaps the greatest in the world. The white and rushing river is intensely impressive. Some distance below the Lodge begins the Big Tuolumne Canon. It is eighteen miles long and terminates in the Hetch-Hetchy Valley. A journey through this is a joy for the mountaineer. The canon is comparatively narrow for its depth, which in places is one mile. There are a few romantic parklike openings along the way, and at some points the statuary is stupendous and magnificent.

6. HISTORY OF YOSEMITE

Indians formerly called the Yosemite Valley _Ah-wah-nee_, meaning "gra.s.sy valley." Early one morning a young brave started for Mirror Lake to spear fish. On the way he encountered a huge grizzly bear. He fought the beast with his spear and a club. After a long and furious battle, in which he was badly wounded, the bear was killed. For this exploit the Indian was named Yosemite, which means a full-grown grizzly bear. This name was transmitted to his children and eventually given to the entire tribe of Indians inhabiting the valley.

The Yosemite Valley was first made known to the public by Major James D. Savage and Captain John Boling, who discovered it in 1851. Joseph R. Walker, frontiersman and explorer, claims to have discovered the valley in 1833.

Tourist travel to the valley began in 1857. It became a state park in 1864, and in 1890 a National Park was made around it. In 1905 the boundaries were changed, and in 1906 a vigorous state and national campaign was waged, under the leadership of John Muir, the Sierra Club, and Robert Underwood Johnson, which resulted in the entire region becoming a National Park.

John Muir enjoyed telling of the experience of an English gentleman who years ago made a trip to the valley. Journeying from the railroad on horseback, he missed the way and spent a long day descending into gulches and canons, then climbing out upon the high ridges. At last, late one evening, he arrived on the rim of the Yosemite. After a swift glance down into the valley, he exclaimed, "Great G.o.d! have I got to cross this too?"

John Lamon, a roving Westerner, was the first settler in the Yosemite Valley, where in 1859 he built a cabin, made a garden, and planted fruit-trees. He was so charmed with the scenery and the climate that he quit his roving life and here made his home till his death in 1876.

The Hetch-Hetchy appears to have been discovered in 1850 by a hunter named Joseph Screech. In 1903 the San Francisco supervisors applied for permission to make commercial use of the valley by building a dam and making of it a reservoir. John Muir and the Sierra Club led the opposition to this. The fight went on for ten years with uncertain results. At times it was intense and bitter. Congress finally decided in favor of San Francisco, but up to this date San Francisco has not complied with the conditions imposed.

In 1915 plans were made for the improvement of the Yosemite Village.

In the same year occurred an event of greater importance for the Park.

Chiefly through the efforts of Stephen T. Mather, the disused Tioga Road became a part of the Yosemite road-system. This road has been reopened and will be a great advantage and convenience to Yosemite visitors. It extends across the Park from east to west, pa.s.sing near the Big Trees, the Parsons Memorial Lodge, and Tuolumne Meadows, invading the High Sierra, and crossing the range through Tioga Pa.s.s.

Henceforth automobilists from the East may leave the main continental highway in Nevada and reach the Yosemite Park _via_ Mono Lake and this road.

The name of Galen Clark is pleasantly interwoven with the history of the Yosemite National Park. John Muir thus described the man: "The best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.... His kindness to all Yosemite visitors and mountaineers was marvelously constant and uniform."

Galen Clark enjoyed showing people of all ages the various wonders of Yosemite Valley, never tired of answering questions, and endeavored carefully to explain the facts concerning each point of interest.

Thousands of visitors to the valley came to know him intimately. He came to the Park to live in 1857, and for more than fifty years it was his permanent home. For twenty-four years he was a member of the Yosemite State Park Commission. The Indians of the valley were fond of him, and from them he gathered much interesting information. His serene disposition and his almost constant outdoor life kept his body and mind normal to the day of his death. After he reached the age of ninety, deciding to become an author, he wrote and published three little books relating to the Indians and to the natural wonders of the Yosemite National Park.

III

THE SEQUOIA AND THE GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS

The Sequoia National Park has a crowded luxuriance of wild flowers. It abounds in varied bird-life and has a number of wild sheep, bears, deer, and other animals. It has lakes, canons, and glaciated mountains. But the supreme attraction of this and the neighboring General Grant Park is the sequoia or Big Tree. Nowhere else on earth are trees found that are so large or so imposing. In places the Big Trees are attractively mixed with other forest trees. Besides the large aged trees, there are middle-aged ones, young trees, and seedlings.

The General Grant Park has a sequoia that is thirty-five feet in diameter. This Park, like the Sequoia, was established princ.i.p.ally to preserve Big Trees. Both became National Parks in 1890, chiefly through the efforts of George W. Stewart. The General Grant Park has an area of four square miles, the Sequoia Park of two hundred and thirty-seven square miles.

The proposition to enlarge the Sequoia National Park should meet with early consummation. The region would then embrace about twelve hundred square miles, including the present General Grant and Sequoia Parks and Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the United States, exclusive of Alaska. Near Mount Whitney are a number of other peaks. In fact, the region is the highest and most rugged section of California.

Says Gilbert H. Grosvenor, editor of "The National Geographic Magazine":--

Switzerland, the playground of Europe, visited annually (until 1915) by more than one hundred thousand Americans, cannot compare in attractiveness with the High Sierra of central California.

Nothing in the Alps can rival the famous Yosemite Valley, which is as unique as the Grand Canon. The view from the summit of Mount Whitney surpa.s.ses that from any of the peaks of Switzerland. There are no canons in Switzerland equal to those of the Kern and the King Rivers, which contain scores of waterfalls and roaring streams, any one of which in Europe would draw thousands of visitors annually. Many of the big yellow and red pines, of the juniper and cedar, eclipse the trees of Switzerland as completely as these pines are eclipsed by the giant redwoods.

And then, as to birds and flowers, the High Sierra so excels the Alps that there is no comparison. Never will the writer forget the melodies of the birds and the luxuriance of the meadows pa.s.sed in the marches from Redwood Meadow to Mineral King, and then up over Franklin Pa.s.s; the fields of blue, red, yellow, orange, white, and purple flowers, all graceful and fragrant, or the divine dignity of the great Siberian Plateau, nearly eleven thousand feet above the sea, and yet carpeted from end to end with blue lupine and tiny flowers.

From the educational point of view, the High Sierra so surpa.s.ses the Alps that again no comparison can be made.

Magnificent is the King's River Canon. The Kern River Canon is seven thousand feet deep; this is equal, if not superior, to the depth of the Grand Canon of the Colorado. Here is the celebrated Tehipitee Dome. There are numerous lakes, streams, waterfalls, and meadows. This was the original home of the golden trout. Besides the King's and Kern Rivers, there is the Kaweah.

The glaciation of this region is on a stupendous scale and is of extraordinary interest. The peculiar topography, the heavy snowfall, and the character of the rocks all combined to cause the Ice King to execute wonderful works in this Park and to leave behind a splendid record. From the summit of this high region one looks into Death Valley, less than one hundred miles away, which is the lowest point in the United States, a section of it being three hundred to four hundred feet below sea-level. This region includes the southern extension of the High Sierra in California, is near the Nevada line, and is about one hundred miles north of Los Angeles.

Clarence King, the distinguished geologist and first Director of the United States Geological Survey, had a number of mountain-climbing experiences in this Greater Sequoia region. These are tellingly related in that cla.s.sic volume, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada."

John Muir also wrote of this region, and it seems fitting that this enlarged reservation should be called the "Muir National Park."

Here the skies and the weather are great changing attractions, and the big wild folk are alert neighbors. Here are forests made up of trees each of which is an heroic giant! Here the Ice King left vast and splendid stories. Here is perhaps the deepest gorge in this round world, and here the highest peak within the bounds of the States of the Union--a peak that commands vast and varied scenes. The streams and lakes are of the greatest. The variety of wild flowers is probably not equaled in any other park or territory. The birds, too, are numerously and abundantly represented.

If I were sentenced to end my days in a National Park of my choosing, without the least hesitation I should choose the region now proposed for the Greater Sequoia or Muir Park.

THE BIG TREES

The General Sherman is the largest tree on earth, and it may be the oldest living object that has a place in the sun. It is thirty-six and one-half feet in diameter and two hundred and eighty feet high. Nearly as large are the General Grant and the Grizzly Giant. A number of veteran sequoias are more than thirty feet in diameter and nearly three hundred feet high. Many are more than twenty feet in diameter, and thousands have a diameter of ten feet or more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOUR BROTHERS SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK]

The Big Tree (_Sequoia gigantea_) is scattered in thirty-two groves along the western slopes of the Sierra for a distance of two hundred and sixty miles. Most of the trees are between the alt.i.tudes of five thousand and eight thousand feet. There are gaps of miles between groves. The southern extension has a continuous forest for seventy miles, except where it is cut in two by canons, and it contains a majority of all Big Trees. There are three Big-Tree groves in the Yosemite National Park, one in the General Grant, and twelve in the Sequoia. One of these twelve is the famous Giant Forest.

The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks have more than a million Big Trees. Of these, more than twelve thousand are ten or more feet in diameter. A few of these trees are upwards of three hundred feet high, but the majority are about two hundred and fifty feet.

Galen Clark, who made a long and careful study of the Big Trees, expressed the opinion that the Grizzly Giant was at least six thousand years old. A number may be four thousand or more years of age, but the majority probably are less than three thousand. Careful counts of the annual rings of trees that have been felled show that a number of these had lived more than three thousand years. One had more than four thousand annual rings. W. L. Jepson, author of "The Trees of California," believes that the general tendency is to exaggerate the age of the living Big Trees.

These trees bear seeds each year. In a fruitful year a Big Tree may produce one million seeds. These are exceedingly small and light. The tree blooms in late winter, while the earth is still covered with snow. The flowers are pale green and pale yellow. The cones are bright green and are about two and one-half inches in length. They shed their seeds as soon as they are ripened, but the cones sometimes cling to the trees for months. If the seeds alight on freshly upturned soil or soil recently burned over, they usually sprout and grow vigorously.

They do best in the sunlight. But if the seeds fall upon a gra.s.s- or trash-covered forest floor, they fail to sprout.

With branches nearly to the earth, the outline of a young tree is that of a slender pyramid. As the tree ages, the lower branches fall off.

In middle-aged trees, the trunk commonly is free of branches from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet above the ground. The tiptop of aged trees usually is a dead snag, surrounded by living, up-curved side branches from the trunk. The original tops of nearly all old trees have been smashed by lightning.

Usually in young trees the bark is almost purplish; in old ones it is cinnamon-color. This bark is fire-resisting, is from one to two feet thick, and is good protection to the vitals of the tree. The roots are short, but the base of the trunk is heavily, artistically b.u.t.tressed.

Living or dead, the Big Tree has extraordinary durability. It has exceptional vitality and recuperative power. Its long life probably is due to the fact that it is almost immune from insect pests, the most deadly enemies of all other kinds of trees. Men, fire, and lightning are the worst enemies of the Big Tree. Most of the old ones have had their heads shattered by lightning again and again, but they still insist on living and will produce a new top even though the old one is entirely smashed off. These trees appear to be almost immortal. Unless they starve or meet a violent death, they live on and on.

John Muir says that the wood in the Big Trees has an endurance almost equal to that of granite, and gives the following ill.u.s.tration. He cut a piece of sound wood from the trunk of a fallen monarch that had been lying upon the earth several hundred years. In falling, the trunk of this Big Tree was cracked across in a number of places. Into these cracks fire ate its way each time a forest fire swept the locality.

Each of these fires probably was separated from the following one by a number of years, and it probably took a great many burns to cut this slow-burning wood into sections. But at last this was done. Between the ends of two of these sections a fir tree took root and grew. After all these years, and after the fir tree had lived three hundred and eighty years, the sections of the Big Tree still lay upon the ground, apparently as sound as the day the tree fell.

All Big-Tree groves appear to have gone through forest fires. It is probable that most of these groves have been repeatedly fire-swept.

Many of the trees show fire-scars that cannot be entirely healed for centuries.