t’s not easy to improve upon nature, but over the last few years, workers at Yosemite National Park have been aiming to do just that. Thanks to a cooperative agreement between the Park Service and the Yosemite Fund, hiking paths and visitor areas in and around Yosemite Falls have undergone a dramatic transformation. New wayside exhibits and log benches adjacent to trails now offer visitors even more ways to take in the park’s cultural and natural heritage.
“This is one of the most visited areas in the park, and it’s just been hammered over the years,” says Scott Gediman, a spokesman for Yosemite National Park. “The trail had crumbled, the rest rooms were old and too small to serve the needs of the people, and there was resource damage on the east side: People had been walking into areas of braided streams, having picnics, leaving litter, all of which interrupted the hydrologic flow and affected the aquatic habitat.”
The project was ten years in the making, including more than two years of construction work, all to improve access to 3.5 million visitors each year, while boosting resource protection at the same time. Because rangers recognize how many people come to Yosemite only once in a lifetime, one of the two trails was always open, providing access to the falls, while small segments of the other trail were being upgraded. Bridges were installed over braided streams, completing a hiking loop and making the area accessible to disabled visitors. The park’s trail crew built rock walls using no mortar, by simply piecing the rocks together in place. Archaeologists were on site the entire time, to supervise any digging and ensure the use of sifting screens to make sure none of the work led to damage of valuable artifacts just below the surface.
In addition to the trail work, workers removed a parking lot, which had previously welcomed visitors with gas fumes and the rumble of idling buses. In its place is now a quiet, picturesque setting featuring native pine and oak trees, a picnic area, and a new shuttle bus stop, where new, quieter hybrid buses drop visitors at the foot of the trail.
There were even some unexpected surprises. A bronze relief statue of Yosemite Falls was designed simply as an artistic way to show people the intricate geology of the falls, which sometimes seem more like a picture postcard than a three-dimensional wall of flowing water and rock. But seeing-impaired visitors have discovered the statue helps them discover the falls with their fingers.
The entire project was completed at the staggering cost of $13 million. Although some of the funding came from government coffers, the lion’s share was donated by the Yosemite Fund, a friends group that has been supporting the park for nearly 20 years.
A specialized Yosemite license-plate program begun in 1993 put the organization on the map, and today it generates about a million dollars a year.
“Yosemite itself is what has really allowed us to reach people with a great affection for the park,” says Bob Hansen, president of the Yosemite Fund. “Many of our supporters have had some sort of lifelong association with Yosemite, not unlike the association a lot of people have with their university—it’s a kind of alumni group of sorts.” The Yosemite Fund capitalizes on that commitment by creating a shopping list of specific funding opportunities, then encouraging supporters to sign on, and it’s a formula that’s clearly working. Some of the group’s earlier projects involved installing more than 2,000 bear-proof food lockers in the park to reduce run-ins between visitors and black bears, funding studies of owl habitat and bat habitat, and restoring Glacier Point.
“Our donors love the idea that they can actually go to the park and see something that’s associated with their philanthropic contributions—really feel it and touch it, walk on a trail or sit in an amphitheatre and see a movie they funded,” says Hansen.
Some worry, however, that the more private philanthropy funds big-ticket items like the Yosemite Falls project, the more the federal government will step back and rely on donors to fund more basic operations. Rather than providing the icing on the cake, friends groups and philanthropists might end up baking the cake itself.
“Our donors give to a specific project because it represents that margin of excellence,” says Hansen. “If the government stopped paying for the operational expenses in the park, philanthropy dollars would just blow away like sand. Donors’ contributions shouldn’t be used to buy squad cars and radio systems, pay for rangers to be patrolling the roads or park maintenance workers to be plowing snow—things the government is responsible for doing. Philanthropists still want to know that the government is doing its part.”
As long as that’s the case, the Yosemite Fund will continue to do its part as well. Some upcoming projects among the list of more than 50 include the restoration of Royal Arches Meadow where Miwok people once gathered tule for basket weaving; reintroduction of the mountain yellow-legged frog, which has all but disappeared from Yosemite’s lakes because of non-native trout; and a survey of rare plants, all of which aim to restore the park’s natural grandeur.
