Yosemite Was a National Park Before There Was an NPS
On Aug. 25, the National Park Service celebrated its 110th birthday.
But here’s an interesting piece of Yosemite history: when the National Park Service was created in 1916, Yosemite had already been a national park for 26 years.
So who was taking care of it?
For much of that time, the answer included people you might not picture when you think of Yosemite’s first park rangers.
The United States Army.
As the National Park Service celebrates 110 years during National Park Week, Yosemite offers a look at what protecting a national park meant before there was an agency specifically created to do it.
Yosemite Came First
Yosemite’s protected status actually reaches back even further than its national park designation.
In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation protecting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and granting them to California with the requirement that they be preserved for public enjoyment.
It was a groundbreaking idea at a time when the concept of a national park didn’t yet exist.
Then, on Oct. 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation establishing Yosemite National Park.
There was one unusual wrinkle.
Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove remained under California’s control under the earlier Yosemite Grant, while much of the surrounding land became the federally managed national park. California wouldn’t return the Valley and Mariposa Grove to federal control until 1906.
And there still wasn’t a National Park Service.
Before Rangers, There Were Soldiers
With no central agency responsible for America’s small but growing collection of national parks, the Department of the Interior turned to the U.S. Army for help.
Army troops began arriving from the Presidio of San Francisco in 1891 to patrol Yosemite during the summer months.
Their duties sound surprisingly familiar to anyone who knows what park rangers do today.
Soldiers patrolled Yosemite’s backcountry on horseback, confronted poachers, stopped illegal grazing and logging, fought fires and protected natural resources. Army officers also oversaw construction of roads, trails and buildings needed to administer the enormous mountain landscape.
Each summer, more than 200 soldiers could make the trip from San Francisco to protect Yosemite and Sequoia national parks.
In many ways, they were Yosemite’s first generation of park rangers.
Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite
Among those early guardians were African American soldiers whose role in Yosemite history wasn’t widely recognized for many years.
Buffalo Soldiers from the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry served in Yosemite and Sequoia in 1899, 1903 and 1904.
Approximately 500 Buffalo Soldiers served between the two parks, carrying out duties ranging from confronting poachers and timber thieves to fighting wildfires. They performed that work while also facing the racism and discrimination of the era.
Their work is now recognized as an important chapter in the early history of America’s national parks.
The Army’s contribution went beyond enforcement.
Military personnel helped develop roads and trails, campgrounds, administrative buildings and approaches to resource protection that influenced how national parks would later be managed.
Some of those trails eventually became part of the backcountry trail system hikers still use today.
From Soldiers to Rangers
The transition didn’t happen overnight.
The Army was called away from Yosemite in 1914, and civilian rangers began taking over responsibilities for protecting resources, fighting fires and assisting visitors.
The timing presented another challenge: automobiles had recently been allowed into Yosemite, changing how visitors moved through the park and creating new demands for the small ranger force.
Then, on Aug. 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act creating the National Park Service.
For the first time, the country had a federal agency specifically responsible for managing its national parks.
And the civilian rangers already working in Yosemite became some of the first National Park Service rangers.
Yosemite Helped Shape What Came Next
The creation of NPS didn’t mean Yosemite suddenly became the park visitors recognize today.
The decades that followed brought enormous changes.
During the 1920s, Yosemite saw construction of new administrative and visitor facilities, including the Rangers’ Club and Yosemite Village. The Ahwahnee opened in 1927. During the Great Depression, Civilian Conservation Corps crews completed projects including the Arch Rock Entrance, Glacier Point overlook and Ostrander Ski Hut.
Visitation and automobiles continued to transform the park as well.
But the basic challenge faced by those early soldiers and rangers remains recognizable 110 years later: how do you protect an extraordinary place while also allowing people to experience it?
It’s a question Yosemite was confronting before the National Park Service even existed.
Celebrating 110 Years
National Park Week runs Aug. 22–30 this year under the theme “Celebrate America’s Story,” part of the commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Entrance fees were waived for U.S. citizens and residents Aug. 25 in recognition of the National Park Service’s 110th birthday.
For Yosemite, however, the anniversary offers an opportunity to look even further back.
Yosemite was protected before America had fully developed the idea of national parks.
It became a national park before there was a National Park Service.
Soldiers once rode horseback through its backcountry doing work that would eventually become associated with the familiar flat hat and green-and-gray uniform of an NPS ranger.
And 136 years after Yosemite became a national park, the job continues.
The uniforms have changed.
The mission of protecting Yosemite for the people who come after us hasn’t.
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Feature Photo: U.S. Cavalry soldiers ride through Cook’s Meadow with Half Dome rising in the background. Army troops helped protect Yosemite National Park beginning in 1891, decades before the National Park Service was created in 1916.
Photo Credit: Photographer unknown/Yosemite National Park Archives, RL_13719