Guide to Yosemite by Ansel Hall, chief information officer, 1920 first edition

Description: This listing is for 1 copy of GUIDE TO YOSEMITE. by Ansel Hall, in charge of information, Yosemite National Park. Pocket guide (4 in x 6 1/2 in) from 1920 explores the roads and trails of this California Park, where Hall was a pioneer in providing information and museum services and development for the National Park Service at Yosemite. Also described are the rock-mass cliffs and promontories, the waterfalls and minor waterfalls, the early Indians and the discovery of the valley by white men. Of historical and geological interest is Hall's discussion of how an early theory of the origin of Yosemite Valley by Professor Josiah Whitney had been entirely displaced and the origin was now being considered with reference to the relative roles of glaciers and water erosion, referencing Dr. F. E. Matthes of the U. S. Geological Survey. Interestingly, John Muir is not mentioned in this context, although he is now credited with providing the glaciation theory as the correct alternate to the cataclysmic theory of Whitney. In fact, a cursory glance at the text reveals little mention of Muir, even though Muir is in other venues largely credited with getting the larger park established as well as its protecting Sierra Club and had already written extensively on park features. Large "swimming tanks" were present at Yosemite Lodge and Camp Curry, still present in 2024. A map of Yosemite Village shows that the Old Village, on the south side of Yosemite Valley, was at the time a prominent development; now there is little at that location. Where the present Yosemite Village is located on the north side of the valley there was a "menagerie" of several wild animals captured in the region [quite contrary to national park policy today], chief of which were a mountain lion and a number of bears. The map shows the location of Best's Studio (now Ansel Adams Gallery) when Ansel's to-be-father-in-law operated a painting studio there. There were about twenty campgrounds for free use in the valley in addition to lodging. Today there are four campgrounds and they are not free. Hall expected more of hikers than we might today; for instance, he suggests 7 hours for the one-way hike from Yosemite Valley to Ten Lakes, 17 miles one way. Hall was instrumental in securing funding and construction of the Yosemite Museum, still in use today, and founded the first of the park cooperating associations (known at first as natural history associations and more recently morphing into conservancies, now contributing more to the park and the parks than ever before. A later book by Hall is Handbook of Yosemite National Park, another item that has been done in many different forms in the century since its first printing. This copy of Guide to Yosemite was produced by Sunset Publishing House (predecessor of Sunset Magazine) of San Francisco and later Menlo Park, California, as a first edition in 1920. It contains 98 pocket-sized pages + 8 front pages and has 3 maps: an aeroplane view of valley features, of Yosemite Village, and a contour map of the valley region with roads and trails (that map is present and intact except for a 2 inch tear on one of the map folds). Many of the trails shown are still in use, but some have been partly relocated or are no longer extant; for instance the Capitan Trail leading from near Cascade Creek to El Capitan and a series of trails west of the Wawona Road and north of Chinquapin. The Tioga Road is in an earlier alignment than that of today. These simple references, as well as the locations shown on the maps, make this early guide a valuable historical record of this important national park. Condition: The book's cover is a brown color with a textured pattern, and is secured with staples and glue; it is firm, with a slight crease on the front. Cover type and illustration of Half Domes with clouds and trees is black; no type on back cover. While the text is mainly unmarked, there is an x in each margin of pages 2 and 3. There are crude penciled drawings on a blank opening page and on page 99, plus a penciled name and address on the title page and page 98. It is intriguing that the penciled name is that of Margaret C. Jorgensen of Santa Rosa, Calif. in that Yosemite Village map entry 22 locates the Old Jorgensen Studio; could there be a connection? As lister of this item I wish to explain my association with Yosemite as once, half a century after author Hall and much like him, I was the chief park naturalist there, and now another half-century and more has gone by! Hall's book has been in my collection much of that time. An additional aside is that, when it was determined by the park service that Jorgensen's house near the Merced River in Yosemite Valley (at Yosemite Village map entry 22) was slated for removal but first would be used for building fire training, I was a member of the brigade that burned it. (Another Jorgensen structure was relocated to the park's Pioneer Yosemite History Center.) See sample pages, illustrations.ISBN: None. Lister's #: VINT3661 paper. Ships via U.S. media mail to U.S. addresses only. If order is needed before stated handling time, email via eBay with your needs before ordering as we can usually comply--we will email our response; we just don't want to suggest more than what we might be able to do in case we're in a crunch or on a trip.

Price: 68 USD

Location: Silverthorne, Colorado

End Time: 2025-01-26T05:16:47.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10 USD