_THE INTERPRETERS_
The superlative qualities of the scenic features and such outstanding
biological characteristics as the forests of the Yosemite region
compelled the interest of scientists as soon as the area received wide
mention in the press. The miners’ concern with mineral values directed
the attention of mining engineers upon the sections both east and west
of Yosemite Valley. As early as 1853 Professor John B. Trask attempted
to explain the geology of the Tuolumne-Merced watersheds.
The California State Geological Survey was established in 1860. Josiah
Dwight Whitney, of Harvard University, was made State Geologist. He
enlisted the services of several young men who were destined to become
leaders in American geological and topographical work. William H.
Brewer, William Ashburner, Chester Averill, Charles F. Hoffmann, William
M. Gabb, James T. Gardiner, and Clarence King were among the members of
the Whitney Survey. Over a period of ten years they penetrated the
remote and unknown canyons and climbed the peaks of the Sierra Nevada,
recording their findings and mapping the wild terrain. They made the
first contribution to accurate and detailed knowledge of the region
embraced in the present Yosemite National Park.
In 1863, Whitney himself began studies in the Yosemite region.[12] He
concluded that the Yosemite Valley resulted from a sinking of a local
block of the earth’s crust. His assistant, King, recognized evidences of
a glacier’s having passed through the valley, but Whitney, although he
published this fact in his official report, later stoutly denied it.
Whitney at first believed the domes to have risen up as great bubbles of
fluid granite.
Galen Clark, while not a trained geologist, was a careful observer and
commanded considerable respect from the public. He believed that
Yosemite Valley originated through the explosion of close-set domes of
molten rock and that water action then cleared the gorge of debris and
left it in its present form.
King, although he was the first to observe glacier polish and moraines
in the Yosemite Valley, did not attribute any great part of the
excavation of the valley to the glacier. He regarded the Yosemite as a
simple crack or rent in the crust of the earth.
John Muir, who followed these early students, maintained that ice had
accomplished nearly all the Yosemite sculpturing.
H. W. Turner, on the other hand, found no reason to believe that
anything other than stream action, influenced by the peculiar rock
structure, had had an important role in the origin of the valley,
although he recognized that it had been the pathway of a glacier.
Joseph LeConte,[13] W. H. Brewer, M. G. Macomb,[14] George Davidson,[15]
I. C. Russell,[16] George F. Becker, Willard D. Johnson, E. C. Andrews,
Douglas W. Johnson, F. L. Ransome, J. N. LeConte, A. C. Lawson, Eliot
Blackwelder, Ernst Cloos, John P. Buwalda, M. E. Beatty, and George D.
Louderback have all studied the geology of the Yosemite Valley or the
Yosemite region and have published the results of their work. The
influences of the topography of the Sierra Nevada upon meteorological
conditions were studied and reported upon by W. A. Glassford in the
early ’nineties.
Prior to 1913, however, no one had made a comprehensive study of the
geology of the entire Yosemite region. Ideas regarding the origin of the
valley and related features were still hazy. In 1913, at the instance of
the Sierra Club, the U. S. Geological Survey sent out a party of
scientists to begin a systematic and detailed investigation. These men
were François E. Matthes and Frank C. Calkins. The former was to study
especially the history of the development of the Yosemite Valley; the
latter to study the different types of rock. In the years that have
elapsed, Matthes has carried his investigations over the entire Yosemite
region and into the areas to north and south. Thus he has worked out
quite definitely, back to its beginning, the story of the origin of the
Yosemite and of the other valleys of the same type in the Sierra Nevada.
His conclusions, published by the government, have stood the test of
criticism by other members of his profession.
An extensive bibliography of the geology of Yosemite appears in _A
Bibliography of National Parks and Monuments West of the Mississippi
River_, Vol. I, 1941, pp. 95-106. The list of Matthes’ contributions to
Yosemite literature is long. Probably the most significant and generally
useful item is _Geologic History of the Yosemite Valley_. This is a
thorough report on the author’s study and also contains a paper by Frank
C. Calkins on the granitic rocks of the Yosemite region.
Indians provided the motive for the first penetration of the whites into
Yosemite Valley, but the ethnology of the region received scant
attention during the first years of contacts with the aborigines.
Lafayette H. Bunnell, a member of the “discovery” party of 1851, has
provided satisfying accounts of the primitive Ah-wah-nee-chees in the
valley, and Galen Clark, who was intimately acquainted with members of
the original band, recorded their history, customs, and traditions many
years after his early contacts with them. In the early ’seventies,
Stephen Powers gave to them the attention of a professional ethnologist,
and Constance F. Gordon-Cumming studied them in the ’eighties.
In 1898, the Bureau of American Ethnology investigated the Indians of
the Tuolumne country, and William H. Holmes published the findings.
Samuel A. Barrett first published on the geography and dialects of the
Miwok (of which the Yosemite Indians were a part) in 1908. Barrett’s
work with the Miwok continued for many years, and he is credited with
several important papers. Alfred L. Kroeber, a leading authority on
California Indians, first published on the Miwok in 1907 and since has
published extensively on the Ah-wah-nee-chees and all their neighbors.
E. W. Gifford, who has been associated with both Barrett and Kroeber in
the ethnological work of the University of California, has made
important contributions to the published history and culture of the
Miwok. His first paper on his work in the Yosemite region appeared in
1916. C. Hart Merriam devoted careful study to the myths, folk tales,
and village sites of the Yosemite Indians early in the 1900’s, and his
published accounts appeared in 1910 and 1917. Mrs. H. J. Taylor, working
in Yosemite Valley, obtained much important data from one of the last
members of the Yosemite band, Maria Lebrado, and since 1932 has
published several significant items. In 1941, Elizabeth H. Godfrey, of
the Yosemite Museum staff, compiled a popular summary of the work done
on the Yosemites entitled, “Yosemite Indians Yesterday and Today,”
_Yosemite Nature Notes_, 1941. The Yosemite Museum collections of
objects and documents include valuable local Indian materials, which
provide a most interesting and convincing story of the Ah-wah-nee-chees.
In the field of biology, the Yosemite forests attracted the first
attention of scientists. Botanists generally agree that in the Big Tree,
the sugar pine, the yellow pine (ponderosa and Jeffrey), the red and
white firs, and the incense cedar of the Sierra is the finest and most
remarkable group of conifers in the world. The Big Tree (_Sequoia
gigantea_), of course, is the most phenomenal and claims first place,
chronologically, in the scientific literature. In the number of workers
concerned with it and in the quantity of their writings, the Big Tree
also holds a respected place.
Among the early writers who dealt with the Big Tree groves of the
present Yosemite National Park were Hutchings, Whitney, Asa Gray, Isaac
N. Bromley, J. Otis Williams, Muir, Bunnell, and Clark. The latter was
among the first to study the Sequoia groves of the Yosemite but he did
not publish for nearly half a century after he made his first
observations. Following the early announcements of the existence of the
Tuolumne, Merced, and Mariposa groves, another group of botanists and
semiprofessional workers concentrated upon the study of the Big Tree.
Walter G. Marshall, Charles Palache, Paul Shoup, Julius Starke, George
Dollar, and W. R. Dudley made their contributions at this time, and Muir
redoubled his initial efforts. After the turn of the century, botanists
and foresters in numbers concentrated upon the Big Tree. Their
publications are too numerous to list, but special mention must be made
of the work of Willis L. Jepson, George B. Sudworth, Ellsworth
Huntington, James C. Shirley, L. F. Cook, and the continued inspired
writing of Muir. The sequoia, oldest living thing, is now and always
will be a fascinating subject for scientific and philosophical study.
Until a thorough investigation of the ecology of a grove of giant
sequoias has been made and its result published, there remains a
practical need for research in this realm.
Botanical studies other than investigations of the Big Tree were limited
in the pioneer days to the work of John Muir. In the early 1900’s,
Harvey M. and Carlotta C. Hall did important work in the present
national park, and their published Works continue to be dependable
guides for present-day botanists. Enid Michael, long a resident in
Yosemite Valley, was untiring in her field studies, and her many
published articles about the flora of the park are of importance to all
investigators. Carl W. Sharsmith has studied intensively in the high
mountain “gardens” of the park. Mary C. Tresidder published a very
useful guide to the trees of the park in 1932. Emil F. Ernst has studied
the forests and forest enemies in the park for many years. Willis L.
Jepson’s work constitutes a substantial basis for all botanical studies
in Yosemite as it is for other parts of the State, and the
investigations of LeRoy Abrams, 1911, have been important to subsequent
workers. The studies of George M. Wright, during his residence in the
park in the 1920’s, resulted in significant papers on life zones in
Yosemite and were the groundwork for the later important studies by him
and his associates in founding and conducting broad biological surveys
in the entire national park system—an undertaking briefly described
later in this chapter.
The Yosemite fauna elicited no particular attention from pioneers other
than James Capen Adams, who in 1854 captured grizzly bears for exhibit
purposes, and John Muir, who applied himself to certain bird and mammal
studies quite as enthusiastically as he did to botany and geology. In
the opening years of the twentieth century, a few bird students, among
them W. Otto Emerson, W. K. Fisher, Virginia Garland, C. A. Keeler, M.
S. Ray, and O. Widman, published on their observations in the present
park, but not until Joseph Grinnell initiated his publication program in
1911 did Yosemite zoölogy find reasonable representation in scientific
journals. Grinnell and his staff from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoölogy
of the University of California began formal field work in Yosemite in
the fall of 1914 and continued through 1920 in making a complete survey
of the vertebrate natural history of the region. Grinnell, Tracy I.
Storer, Walter P. Taylor, Joseph Dixon, Charles L. Camp, Gordon F.
Ferris, Charles D. Holliger, and Donald D. McLean participated in the
work. The results of this survey, Grinnell and Storer’s _Animal Life in
the Yosemite_, published by the University of California Press in 1924,
constitutes an exhaustive and most useful reference on the subject.
David Starr Jordan considered it the best original work on life
histories published in the West. This study, like the geological work by
Matthes, was endorsed and facilitated by the Sierra Club.
After the Museum of Vertebrate Zoölogy paved the way, wildlife studies
in the park increased, and Yosemite found better representation in the
biological literature. Most of the workers who had participated in
Grinnell’s survey published extensively. Others who made notable
contributions are Charles W. and Enid Michael, Barton W. Evermann, A. B.
Howell, Vernon Bailey, J. M. Miller, John A. Comstock, E. O. Essig, and
Edwin C. Van Dyke.
After 1920, when the National Park Service instituted a park-naturalist
program in Yosemite, the regular and seasonal employees of the
Naturalist Department made many contributions to the scientific
knowledge of the park. Among the permanent park naturalists who
conducted biological investigations are Ansel F. Hall, Carl P. Russell,
George M. Wright, C. A. Harwell, C. C. Presnall, A. E. Borell, M. E.
Beatty, James Cole, C. Frank Brockman, M. V. Walker, Harry Parker, and
Russell Grater. D. D. McLean, who participated in the Grinnell Survey,
also made further contributions as a regular employee of the Naturalist
Department. Dr. H. C. Bryant, first as a seasonal employee and later as
a regular member of the Director’s staff, published extensively on his
studies in the park and was influential in starting many other workers
on investigations of biological nature.
One important development in biological research in Yosemite had an
influence on the wildlife program of the entire National Park Service.
George M. Wright, ranger and Assistant Park Naturalist, during the late
1920’s sensed the dangers of the uncoördinated wildlife policy of the
National Park Service and determined that there should be better
administrative understanding of the normal biotic complex of Yosemite
and all other national parks. In 1929, Wright was placed on a field
status in order that he might organize a central unit of wildlife
investigators to survey the wildlife problems of the National Park
Service and recommend a broad Service-wide policy of wildlife
management. Joseph S. Dixon and Ben W. Thompson were employed by Wright
to assist him in this undertaking. Their work during the next several
years was conducted from headquarters in Berkeley, California, and from
Washington, D. C. It demonstrated that a Wildlife Division was an
important administrative adjunct in the Director’s organization. In
1936, Wright lost his life while in the course of his significant work.
Such progress had been made in establishing policy and procedure that
the program persisted. It holds a strategic place in the regular
administrative set-up of the Director’s office and reaches all field
areas with its guidance.
The bibliography of scientific work done in Yosemite National Park since
World War I is too extensive to be included here. A goodly part of it is
contained in _A Bibliography of National Parks and Monuments West of the
Mississippi River_. References to research projects published since the
appearance of that bibliography appear in the publications of the
Yosemite Natural History Association, particularly the monthly journal,
_Yosemite Nature Notes_. Especially significant items dealing with
wildlife policy and trends in park management are included in the
references appended to the present volume. In brief, it may be said that
the wildlife problems of Yosemite National Park are now fairly well
defined and that administrative and technical practices are so aligned
as to assure preservation of the faunal and floral characteristics of
the reservation within the concept of “public enjoyment and use” of
today and tomorrow. As Director of the National Park Service, Newton B.
Drury has said, “It is national park policy to display wildlife in a
natural manner. The normal habits of animals are interfered with as
little as possible, and artificial management is refrained from except
for protective purposes and then only as a last resort. The pauperizing
or domestication of the native animals is avoided, as is also the
herding or feeding of these animals to provide ‘shows.’ Under this
policy the park is a wildlife refuge but it is neither a circus or a
zoo.”
The wildlife of Yosemite, like its forests and wildflower displays, its
renowned cliffs and waterfalls, its glacial pavements, its meadows and
valleys, and its spectacular mountaintops, has enthralled its lay
visitors quite as it has galvanized the scientist and technician. When
Stephen T. Mather assumed the directorship of the national parks in
1916, he determined at the outset to provide park visitors with the
information on the natural and historic features which they wanted.
Educational endeavors were made a part of his projected program even
before a staff had been organized. Surveys of outdoor educational
methods and nature teaching as practiced in several European countries
had been made in 1915 by C. M. Goethe, and his reports of the success of
this work had inspired a few Americans to establish similar educational
work in the United States. The California Fish and Game Commission in
1918 sent its educational director, Dr. Harold C. Bryant, into the
Sierra to reach vacationists with the message of the conservationist.
Yosemite National Park and the playground areas about Lake Tahoe
witnessed the introduction of “nature guiding” several years prior to
the inclusion of the work in the broad field program of the National
Park Service.
In 1920, Mr. Mather and some of his friends joined in supporting this
nature teaching in Yosemite, and Dr. Bryant and Dr. Loye Holmes Miller
were employed to lay the foundation of what has continued to be an
important part of the program of the Branch of Natural History.
A personal letter from Dr. Miller, University of California, Los
Angeles, provides a firsthand account of his pioneering in interpretive
work in Yosemite:
I think John Muir was the first Yosemite guide (see _A Son of the
Wilderness_, by L. M. Wolfe). We smaller folk could only strive to
emulate. My first experience in the valley involved a six-week period
during the summer of 1917 under private auspices. Professor M. L.
Maclellan (geology) and I (biology) held a summer school for public
school teachers who were largely from Long Beach, California. The work
consisted of lectures and field trips about the valley floor and the
trails to the rim and to Merced Lake.
During the summer of 1919 I was doing similar work at Tahoe when Mr.
Stephen T. Mather came through on a flying trip. He asked me to confer
with him on the subject of Nature Guide work in Yosemite and urged me
to come at once to the valley and begin the work there. It was late in
the season and I had spent most of my free time for the year.
Furthermore, it seemed to me that there should be some preparation
made for the work, including a measure of publicity in the park
guidebooks. I therefore urged Mr. Mather to wait until 1920 for the
inauguration of an official Nature Guide service. He agreed and we
parted with a definite plan for 1920.
In the meantime Mr. C. M. Goethe of Sacramento had become interested
in the movement and had engaged Dr. H. C. Bryant in a tour of certain
summer camps. I also urged the appointment of Dr. Bryant for the
Yosemite work in 1920. My University schedule was such that Dr. Bryant
was able to report earlier than I. He therefore gave the first
official work in the valley. We coöperated in it after my arrival. I
knew that I could not devote many summers to the service because of
other duties as an officer of the University. Furthermore, it seemed
to me that Dr. Bryant was just the man to carry on to a larger field
of development. I therefore urged repeatedly that he make a full-time
activity of the movement. This end was ultimately realized. Bryant
made all the official reports of our work (with my endorsement). Those
reports are in the files of the Superintendent’s office in the park.
During the month of January, 1921, Dr. Bryant and I gave our services
to the cause in an extended lecture tour through the eastern and
middle western states. This effort was underwritten personally by Mr.
Mather. The purpose and theme in this series was to publicize and
stimulate interest in the natural history values of the park and the
appreciation of nature through an increased knowledge and
understanding.
I returned to Yosemite in the summer of 1921—again in coöperation with
Dr. Bryant. The movement seemed to be well on its feet so I withdrew
at the end of that summer. We were appointed as temporary rangers with
duties informally defined. Each morning a field trip was conducted by
one or the other of us alternately, the alternate holding office hours
for questions by visitors. (Questions averaged 45 to the hour). In the
afternoon a children’s field class was held. In the evening we
alternated with talks at Camp Curry and the “Old Village” near
Sentinel Bridge. They were busy days but interest was good. Week ends
were devoted to overnight trips by one or the other of us.
At the urgent request of Mr. Ansel Hall I initiated the same type of
work at Crater Lake Park, Oregon, in 1926 and continued it in 1927. My
son, Alden Miller, was associated with me and two students, Miss Leigh
Marian Larson and Miss Ruth Randall, acted as volunteers in charge of
wildflower display. Reports of this work should be in the Crater Lake
files. During the summer we were visited by Mr. Mather, by Dr. John C.
Merriam, and by Mr. John D. Rockefeller and family. The interest of
these men was immediate and finally bore material fruit in improvement
of Crater Lake Park and the whole Nature Guide movement in America.
Just as had been the case at Yosemite, we were appointed as rangers.
My duties at Crater Lake included nature guiding, directing traffic,
comforting crying babies, rounding up stray dogs, and a wild drive
down the mountain to Medford Hospital with a writhing appendicitis
patient and his distracted wife in the rear seat.
I have not been officially connected with the work since but have sent
many graduate students to the Yosemite Field School with what I hope
was the right point of view. My own retirement at 70 years leaves me
out of the picture except in an advisory capacity. Just last week in
conference with my associates here, I urged Park Naturalist activity
as one of the public services for which our department should train
young men. So you see that my interests are still with the movement.
It is a field of infinite horizon.
Sincerely yours,
Loye Miller
March 18, 1946.
Dr. H. C. Bryant, the coworker referred to by Dr. Miller, became
Assistant Director of the National Park Service in charge of
interpretive work for all national parks. To Dr. Miller’s statement may
be added Bryant’s words about interpretive work:
In the spring of 1921, through a coöperative arrangement with the
California Fish and Game Commission, the National Park Service
instituted a free nature-guide service in Yosemite. The aim of this
service was to furnish useful information regarding trees,
wildflowers, birds, and mammals, and their conservation, and to
stimulate interest in the scientific interpretation of natural
phenomena. The means used to attain this aim were: trips afield;
formal lectures, illustrated with lantern slides or motion pictures;
ten-minute campfire talks, given alternately at the main resorts of
the park; a stated office hour when questions regarding the natural
history of the park could be answered; a library of dependable
reference works, and a flower show where the commoner wildflowers,
properly labeled, were displayed. Occasionally, visiting scientists
helped by giving lectures.
About this same time, a Yosemite ranger, Ansel F. Hall, conceived the
idea of establishing a Yosemite museum to serve as a public contact
center and general headquarters for the interpretive program.
Superintendent W. B. Lewis endorsed the plan, and the old Chris
Jorgenson artists’ studio was made into a temporary museum; Hall was
placed in charge as permanent educational officer. The same year found a
museum program under way in Yellowstone National Park, where Milton P.
Skinner was made park naturalist, and in Mesa Verde National Park, where
Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum organized a museum to care for the
archeological treasures brought to light among the ruins of prehistoric
man’s abode. Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain,
Sequoia, and Zion quickly organized educational programs similar to
those established by Yosemite and Yellowstone, and in 1923 Hall, with
headquarters in Berkeley, was designated to coördinate and direct the
interpretive work in all parks. Working with Dr. Frank R. Oastler, Hall
in 1924 organized a comprehensive plan of educational activities and
defined the objectives of the naturalist group.
In 1924, C. J. Hamlin was president of the American Association of
Museums. The opportunities opened by national park museums were called
to his attention by Hall, and the American Association of Museums
immediately investigated the possibilities of launching adequate museum
programs in the parks. In response to recommendations made by the
Association and the National Park Service, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller
Memorial made funds available with which to construct a fireproof museum
in Yosemite National Park. This, one of the first permanent national
park museums, became the natural center around which revolves the
educational program in Yosemite. Even before the Yosemite museum
installations had been opened to the public, demonstration of the
effectiveness of the institution as headquarters for the educational
staff and visiting scientists convinced leaders in the American
Association of Museums that further effort should be made to establish a
general program of museum work in national parks. Additional funds were
obtained from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and new museums
were built in Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks. Dr. Herman C.
Bumpus, who had guided the museum planning and construction in Yosemite,
continued as the administrator representing the association and
Rockefeller interests, and Herbert Maier was architect and field
superintendent on the construction projects. It was Dr. Bumpus who
originated the “focal-point museum” idea.
When the museums of Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone had
demonstrated their value to visitors and staff alike, they were accepted
somewhat as models for future work, and upon the strength of their
success, the Service found it possible to obtain regular government
appropriations with which to build several additional museums in
national parks and monuments. When P.W.A. funds became available,
further impetus was given to the museum program, and a Museum Division
of the Service was established in 1935, embracing historic areas of the
East as well as the scenic national parks. It was my privilege to serve
as the first head of this unit. The work of the Museum Division has
expanded until there are more than one hundred small national park and
monument museums and historic-house museums; more are planned for the
future.
In order to stimulate balanced development of interpretive programs, Ray
Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior, appointed a committee of
educators under the chairmanship of Dr. John C. Merriam to study the
broad educational possibilities in national parks (see Wilbur, 1929). In
1929, this committee recommended that an educational branch, with
headquarters in Washington, be established in the Service. It was
further recommended that the committee continue to function on a
permanent basis as an advisory body, “whose duty it shall be to advise
the Director of National Parks on matters pertinent to educational
policy and developments.”
Dr. Bryant, who since 1920 had served as a summer employee on the
Yosemite educational staff and who had been a member of the Committee on
Study of Educational Problems in National Parks, was made head of the
new branch on July 1, 1930. Antedating the establishment of the branch
by one year was the previously mentioned wildlife survey instituted in
national parks by George M. Wright, who began his career in the National
Park Service as a park ranger in Yosemite in 1927.
Thus it is evident that the pioneer interpretive work done in Yosemite
projected its influence and its personnel into the wider fields of
“nature guiding” and museum programs throughout the National Park
Service. It may be shown, also, that the educational work done by the
Yosemite staff has been instrumental in advancing the naturalist
programs in state parks and elsewhere where out-of-door nature teaching
is offered to the public.[17] Some three hundred public areas and
agencies in the United States provide naturalist services modeled on the
Yosemite plan. Only ten per cent of these are in the National Park
System.
One of the far-reaching influences of the Yosemite naturalist department
is the Yosemite School of Field Natural History, a summer school for the
training of naturalists, where emphasis is placed on the study of living
things in their natural environment. The school was founded in 1925 by
Dr. H. C. Bryant in answer to a demand for better trained naturalists
for the Yosemite staff. There was need for a training not furnished by
the universities. The California Fish and Game Commission coöperated
with the National Park Service in starting this school program. The
staff is composed of park naturalists and the regular Yosemite
ranger-naturalist force, aided by specialists from universities and
other government bureaus. The last week of the field period is spent in
making studies at timberline.
As the name implies, emphasis is placed on field work. The work is of
university grade, although no university credit is offered. Graduates of
this school are filling positions as nature guides in parks and summer
camps throughout the country. Many of the naturalist and
ranger-naturalist positions in the National Park Service are held by
graduates of this field school.
The Park Naturalist position in Yosemite National Park has been held by
Ansel F. Hall, 1922-1923; Carl P. Russell, 1923-1929; C. A. Harwell,
1929-1940; C. Frank Brockman, 1941-1946; and now, Donald Edward McHenry.
These men and their assistants have supervised the naturalist activities
including the Yosemite Museum program, directed the Yosemite School of
Field Natural History, and the activities of the Yosemite Natural
History Association, including the editing and publishing of _Yosemite
Nature Notes_. This last-named organization has existed since 1924 as a
society coöperating with the National Park Service in advancing the work
of the Yosemite Naturalist Department. It is the successor of the
Yosemite Museum Association formed by Ansel F. Hall in 1920. On April
24, 1925, members of its advisory council and board of trustees defined
these purposes of the Association:
1. To gather and disseminate information regarding birds, mammals,
flowers, trees, Indians, history, geology, trails, scenic features,
and other subjects so well exemplified by Nature in Yosemite National
Park and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada.
2. To develop and enlarge the Yosemite Museum (in coöperation with the
National Park Service) and to establish subsidiary units, such as the
Glacier Point Lookout and branches of similar nature.
3. To contribute in every way possible to the development of the
educational activities of the Yosemite Nature Guide Service.
4. To publish (in coöperation with the National Park Service)
_Yosemite Nature Notes_, a periodical containing articles of
scientific interest concerning the matters referred to in this
statement of purposes.
5. To promote scientific investigation along the lines of greatest
popular interest and to publish from time to time bulletins or
circulars of a nontechnical nature.
6. To maintain in Yosemite Valley a library containing works of
historical, scientific, and popular interest.
7. To study the living conditions, past and present, of the remaining
Indians of the Yosemite region, for the purpose of preserving their
arts, customs, and legends.
8. To strictly limit the operations, business, property, and assets of
the association to purposes which shall be scientific and educational,
in order that the association shall not be organized, constituted, or
operated for profit, and so that no part of the net income of the
association shall inure to the benefit of any member or other party
thereto.
These objectives in almost every particular are also the objectives of
the Naturalist Department of Yosemite National Park. In 1937 the
Congress authorized park naturalists and other government employees to
devote their regular working hours to the program of the Yosemite
Natural History Association and similar “coöperating societies” in
national parks which might be designated by the Secretary of the
Interior. In effect, the Yosemite Natural History Association is an
auxiliary of the naturalist department. For nearly twenty-five years it
has adhered to its defined purposes, and the support it has given to the
interpretive program has furthered research in the park, enriched the
collections of the Yosemite Museum, and promoted the dissemination of
the Yosemite story.
The function of the interpreters has been, and their purpose must be, to
enrich the mountain experience of the Yosemite traveler and thereby
demonstrate that a national park is far more than a tourist’s way
station. Upon today’s visitor and his full awareness of national-park
values the future of the national-park concept must depend. A public
which, in its enjoyment of the parks, comprehends the importance of “the
scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein”
will insist that they remain unimpaired.