Map 9 Curator's Notes
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Though most of the earliest non-natives to settle in the American West were attracted by the region's considerable natural and mineral resources (see Map 8), the striking beauty of the Western deserts, mountains, and forests also attracted tourists almost immediately after an American presence was established in the region. Today, tourism continues to form a major part of the economy of most Western states. But like any other industry that exploits natural resources, without proper management tourism can strain and even destroy the very resources upon which it depends. The history of California's Yosemite National Park, the subject of our core map, illustrates well the environmental stresses that tourism sometimes creates and the delicate balance that policymakers and park administrators must strike between different, and often conflicting, human uses of the environment. Our map shows many of the most remarkable features of Yosemite National Park, located in one of the most rugged and scenic portions of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Ninety-three percent of the park is considered wilderness, but some portions of the park, especially Yosemite Valley itself, are so heavily used that in recent decades the National Park Service has had to limit certain kinds of uses in order to reduce the environmental impact of the more than four million visitors the park receives each year. During the last half of the nineteenth century, many Americans began to realize that the country's considerable natural resources were not in fact limitless. For example, massive deforestation gave rise to efforts to protect the forests that once seemed inexhaustible (see Map 7). The accelerating urbanization of the East and Midwest also prompted social reformers to advocate outdoor rest and recreation as antidote to the stresses of city life. These diverse concerns gave rise to the modern conservation movement in the United States, dedicated to the protection and appreciation of the natural world. Among their greatest accomplishments in this country was the establishment of our present system of national parks (formally created by federal law in 1916), a process which, in a sense, began in California's Yosemite Valley. The heart of the Yosemite National Park is the stunning Yosemite Valley, nine miles long and about one mile wide. This canyon of the Merced River was deepened and widened by an ancient glacier. Today, its granite walls rise 3,500 feet above the valley floor and are punctuated by delicate and breathtakingly high waterfalls. The valley's potential as a resort and recreational area was quickly realized after California became a state (1848). The first non-Indians to descend into the valley did so in 1851. The first tourist party to the area was organized in 1855, and the first hotel constructed in 1856. Federal legislation passed in 1864 set aside the Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees under California state administration "for public use, resort, and recreation…inalienable for all time," making it the first such federally-mandated reserve and the birthplace of the national park idea. Eight years later Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park was created as the first national park (1872). Yosemite achieved formal status as a national park in 1890. From the beginning of its modern history, the Yosemite region has been a focus of debate over appropriate human uses of the environment. The great naturalist John Muir wrote extensively and appreciatively about the beauty and ecology of the area. He fought vigorously to limit development and commercial exploitation of the lumber and mineral resources of the area and championed the elevation of Yosemite and other nearby California reserves to national park status in 1890 - status that prohibited non-recreational uses of the land. Muir was a major figure in the conservation movement that rose in the United States during the last half of the nineteenth century. In the last part of his life Muir and his followers disagreed with other leaders of the movement about the way in which preserved lands could be used. Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, was a leading spokesman of a utilitarian conservation philosophy, which held that forests and other resources should be protected not merely for their own sake, but also so that their economic value - as a source of lumber, for example - could be sustained for the longest possible period. Under Pinchot's guidance the National Forest Service developed a policy that allowed logging and other commercial uses of the forests in many areas, but managed these uses so that entire forests were not permanently destroyed. Muir, on the other hand, believed that national forests and other such reserves should be inviolable preserves left in their pristine state without human intervention and only a transient human presence. The distinction, as Muir and his contemporaries saw it, between the preservation of natural areas as wilderness and their conservation as useful resources is a subtle one that reverberates in many contemporary debates about how natural areas such as parks and national forests are to be maintained. The early twentieth-century struggle over the fate of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, on the northern margin of Yosemite National Park, is an important instance of this debate in which Muir played a major part. Though less well-known than Yosemite Valley itself, in its natural state the Hetch Hetchy Valley shared many of Yosemite's notable features: a narrow glacial valley with a verdant, forested floor, sheer granite cliffs and monoliths surrounding it on all sides. But at the beginning of the twentieth century the rapidly growing cities of the California coast had begun to outgrow their own local sources of fresh water. They looked to the water-rich Sierra Nevada Mountains to quench their thirst, and busily began building aqueducts from the natural mountain lakes and damming mountain streams to artificial ones they might tap as needed. The steep walls and narrow exit of the Hetch Hetchy Valley made it an ideal site for a dam and reservoir. In 1901 the city of San Francisco applied to the federal government for permission to dam the Tuolomne River in the valley in order to construct a reservoir that would supply the city both with water and electricity. Supported by Pinchot and Roosevelt himself, the proposal was vigorously and eloquently opposed by Muir. In 1913, however, San Francisco's application for reservoir rights in the Hetch Hetchy Valley was granted, in spite of the fact that the dam and reservoir (which appears at the upper center of the core map) would be constructed in an "inviolable" reserve. Our core map was prepared for an illustrated souvenir booklet published by the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, a private firm that operated the hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops in the park. Most of the park's natural landmarks appear on the map, including the Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite Valleys, many of the park's famous waterfalls, and its groves of giant sequoia trees. The map also shows many recent human additions to the environment, including the Ahwahnee Hotel (opened in 1927), the Tuolomne Meadows Lodge, the Badger Pass ski facilities (opened in 1935), and the park's extensive new system of paved roads. Many of these improvements were the inspiration of Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service. The Park Service was created in 1916 to improve management of the national parks, which were proliferating and experiencing a huge influx of visitors. The rapid growth of the national park system during the first decades of the twentieth century was due in part to advent of the automobile. But since most of the older national parks had been developed with railroad transportation in mind, they were poorly suited to the influx of the motoring tourist. To accommodate this new traffic Mather embarked on an ambitious program of road building in the parks and ordered the construction of many new hotels, campgrounds, and other facilities designed to accommodate the increases in park visitors. In many instances, increased human access to the unique landscapes of the national parks has also endangered their survival. Yosemite National Park is easily reached from the major population centers of the California coast. It now welcomes more than 4 million visitors each year. Most of these visitors arrive by car and confine their visit to the park's main roads and its main attractions: the valley itself and the groves of big trees. Since Yosemite Valley is a relatively small and confined space, so many visitors and so many cars threatened its health. Its steep walls tend to trap car exhaust in the valley, creating air pollution problems. Overuse of campgrounds and other forms of human habitation, too, has strained the park's water supplies and contributed to their pollution. In response to these and other problems, the park has closed parts of the valley to private automobiles, redesigned or closed some park facilities, prohibited some activities such as downhill skiing, and dispersed campgrounds to other parts of the park.
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