The Mentor: The Yosemite Valley, Vol 4, Num. 16, Serial No. 116, October 2, 1916

For anyone who has two or three days to spare for a single expedition, the trip to Merced Lake is a choice one. The lake is reached in one day by the trail that leads to Vernal and Nevada Falls. After the falls have been left behind the trail is a rough, wild path, disclosing scenes of great beauty on every hand. There is a comfortable lodge at the Lake, and in its waters are more fish than you can catch – yes, you and all your friends – in many a day.

Some of these trails lead on into the larger spaces of Yosemite National Park. The great majority of visitors confine themselves to the territory included in the Valley.

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
The Camps

FIVE

The Valley is a camper’s paradise. Years ago travelers discovered its many advantages. The combination of deep shaded woods and open meadows, with a fine water supply close at hand, made its appeal to all lovers of nature, and long ago the Valley became a favorite resort for campers. Out of single parties, there soon developed an organized camping system in the Valley. As a result, there are now a number of little tent and bungalow communities, with populations varying from two or three hundred up to nearly two thousand. At one time, during 1915, the population of Camp Curry exceeded two thousand. To the lover of out-door life who wants to rest close to the earth, there is nothing more delightful than tent and bungalow life. The United States Government and the Park Service Company offer every convenience to campers, so that no one need bring material nor any supplies into the Valley. The camper may determine the conditions under which he will live. He may bring his own tent, if he cares to. Then, after securing a permit, he may pick out his own spot and raise his simple roof tree. Aside from the established camps there are spaces of land set apart and numbered, and these are for the use of those utterly care-free pilgrims who prefer to settle on a spot of their own choosing and lead the simple life. Upon arriving, the prospective camper can get a full equipment on reasonable terms. A list will be supplied to him, from which he can select every necessary thing for camp life – from a can-opener and tin pan to tents and tables. He can purchase these articles, or he can rent them by the week. If a vagrant life is desired, the camper may secure a pack-mule, pull up stakes from time to time, and move about as he chooses.

This is camp life in its most elementary aspect. From that the conditions of tent and bungalow life in the Valley range up to the finely equipped and organized camps, where the visitor may enjoy all the advantages and luxuries of comfortable hotel life, while at the same time living close to the ground. The established camps at present are Awahnee, El Capitan, Yosemite Camp, Lost Arrow and Camp Curry. The affairs of each camp are managed from its own central office, a building where mail is received and the interests of the campers are looked after. The daily life of these communities is full of incident. Each camp has its entertainments and its gala performances. One has a fine, large bathing pavilion and plunge; another, a festival hall. Moving pictures are exhibited in the evenings; there are lectures and concerts; and a large, well equipped dancing pavilion makes the hours fly fast for young people. Communication between the camps is easy, for there are auto-buses, “jitneys,” as well as ponies and burros, and things are stirring actively among the camps most of the time. No one need lack for entertainment. Between the single tent in a remote part of the Valley and the populous camp community there is a wide range for choice, and variety of conditions enough to make everyone happy.

THE YOSEMITE VALLEY
The Big Trees

SIX

A most interesting feature of the Yosemite region is the Big Trees. There are three groves of giant trees near the valley – the Tuolumne, Merced, and Mariposa. The first two named are small groves. The important grove is the Mariposa. This grove is so called from its situation in Mariposa (Butterfly) County. It occupies a tract of land about four square miles in area, and consists of two definite groups of trees. Its elevation above the sea level varies from 5,000 to 8,000 feet.

The Big Tree, or Sequoia gigantea, is found only on the west slope of the Sierra Range. The Redwood, or Sequoia sempervirens, its twin brother, is strictly a seaboard tree, being confined to the coast ranges. The Big Tree, however, is the giant of all, and it is of this species that the Mariposa Grove is made up.

The first grove of Big Trees discovered by white men was the Calaveras Grove of Big Trees in California. This was in the spring of 1852, and the discoverer was A. T. Dowd. Soon the story of the Big Trees found its way into the newspapers, and no other plant ever attracted so much attention or gained such celebrity within so short a period. The species was named in honor of Sequoyah, or Sequoia, to give it the Latin spelling, a Cherokee Indian of mixed blood, who was also known as George Guess. He invented an alphabet and written language for his tribe.

The Big Trees are the oldest living things in the world. It is impossible to appreciate their huge size from a mere description. They must be seen; and even then a sense of futility strikes the beholder. The Big Trees grow in groves, never forming groups by themselves, but always scattered among a much larger number of trees of other kinds.

Says John Muir, the famous naturalist: “The whole tree for the first century or two, or until it is a hundred or one hundred and fifty feet high, is arrowhead in form, and, compared with the solemn rigidity of age, seems as sensitive to the wind as a squirrel’s tail. As it grows older, the lower branches are gradually dropped and the upper ones thinned out, until comparatively few are left. The immensely strong, stately shafts are free of limbs for one hundred and fifty feet or so. The large limbs reach out with equal boldness in every direction, showing no weather side, and no other tree has foliage so densely massed, so finely molded in outline, and so perfectly subordinate to an ideal type. A particularly knotty, angular, ungovernable-looking branch, from five to seven or eight feet in diameter, and perhaps a thousand years old, may occasionally be seen pushing out from the trunk as if determined to break across the bounds of the regular curve, but like all the others it dissolves in bosses of branchlets and sprays as soon as the general outline is approached. Except in picturesque old age, after being struck by lightning or broken by thousands of snow-storms, the regularity of forms is one of their most distinguishing characteristics. Another is the simple beauty of the trunk, and its great thickness as compared with its height and the width of the branches, which makes them look more like finely modeled and sculptured architectural columns than the stems of trees, while the great limbs look like rafters, supporting the magnificent dome-head. But though so consummately beautiful, the Big Tree always seems unfamiliar, with peculiar physiognomy, awfully solemn and earnest; yet with all its strangeness it impresses us as being more at home than any of its neighbors, holding the best right to the ground as the oldest, strongest inhabitant.”

The Mariposa Grove – which was discovered in 1857 by Galen Clark – lies in a little valley occupying a depression on the back of a ridge. The Lower Grove contains 240 fine Big Trees. The Grizzly Giant is the largest of all. It has a circumference of ninety-three feet and a diameter of thirty and six-tenths feet. Its main limb is six and one-half feet in diameter. This tree is very much injured, and its size has been decreased by burning. It has long since passed its prime, and has a battered and worn appearance.

In ascending to the Upper Grove the road goes through a tunnel cut through the heart of the “Wawona,” a living Sequoia. This tunnel is ten feet high and nine and one-half feet wide at the bottom.

The Upper Grove contains 360 Big Trees, averaging in age about 2,500 years. About ten of the trees exceed 250 feet in height. Three of these have a circumference of over ninety feet.

The bark of the largest trees is from one to two feet thick. Toward the end of winter the trees bloom, while the snow is still eight or ten feet deep. The flowers are pale green and pale yellow. The seeds are small and light. The cones remain on the tree for many years.