Nature and History

on the Sierra Crest

Devils Postpile and the

Mammoth Lakes Sierra 

Christopher E. Johnson

Historian, PWRO–Seattle

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Devils Postpile National Monument

California
Nature and History on the Sierra Crest:
 

Devils Postpile and the Mammoth Lakes Sierra
 
Devils Postpile formation and talus. (Devils Postpile National Monument Image Collection) 
Nature and History on the Sierra Crest
 

Devils Postpile and the Mammoth Lakes Sierra

Christopher E. Johnson 

Historian, PWRO–Seattle 

National Park Service 

U.S. Department of the Interior 

2013 
Production Project Manager Paul C. Anagnostopoulos 

Copyeditor Heather Miller 

Composition Windfall Software 

Photographs Credit given with each caption 

Printer Government Printing Office 

Published by the United States National Park Service, Pacific West Regional Office, Seattle, Washington. 

Printed on acid-free paper. 

Printed in the United States of America. 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 

As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of the Interior has 

responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural and cultural 

resources. This includes fostering sound use of our land and water resources; protecting 

our fish, wildlife, and biological diversity; preserving the environmental and cultural 

values of our national parks and historical places; and providing for the enjoyment of life 

through outdoor recreation. The Department assesses our energy and mineral resources 

and works to ensure that their development is in the best interests of all our people by encouraging stewardship 

and citizen participation in their care. The Department also has a major responsibility for American Indian 

reservation communities and for people who live in island territories under U.S. administration. 
Contents
 

Acknowledgments xi 

Introduction 1 

Converging Pasts: Nature and Culture in the Postpile Region 

One	 A Landscape in Time: Nature and History along the Middle Fork 

San Joaquin 9 

Two	 Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental 

Change 19 

Three	 Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 

1700s–1800s 35 

Four	 The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of Conservation 

in the Sierra Nevada, 1864–1890 59 

National Monument, Regional Politics: The Administrative Evolution 

of Devils Postpile, 1890–2011 

Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values: From National Park 

to National Forest to National Monument, 1890–1911 71 

Six Defining the Monument: Jurisdiction, Agency Values, and the 

Return to Yosemite, 1912–1934 85 

Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 93 

Eight The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service Cooperation, 

1941–1951 105 

Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and 

“Mutual Cooperation” under Yosemite, 1952–1953 115 

Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 

1954–1972 129 

Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, 

and the Origins of the Shuttle, 1972–2000 151 
Contents 

Twelve	 Toward a “Quality Monument Experience”: Resource Management
 

and Wilderness Politics, 1972–2000 167
 

Thirteen	 The Making of a Network Park: Ecological Management and
 

Regional Politics, 2000–2010 177
 

Historical Contexts for the Period of Federal Management:
 

The Mammoth Lakes Sierra, Recreation, and Science
 

Fourteen Regional Context: The Mammoth Lakes Sierra 191
 

Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 195
 

Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 215
 

Conclusion: Regional Cooperation and the Future of Devils Postpile 233
 

App. A Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 237
 

App. B National Register Recommendations 245
 

Selected Bibliography 247
 

Index 259
 

vi 
List of Figures
 

Devils Postpile formation and talus. ii
 

Regional Map. xiii
 

Devils Postpile National Monument and vicinity. xiv
 

Devils Postpile park map. xv
 

Geologic map showing types of rocks and a self-guided nature trail. 10
 

Glacial polish and striations at the top of the Postpile. 10
 

Devils Postpile columns and talus. 11
 

Rainbow Falls. 12
 

A part of the soda spring in Soda Springs Meadow. 15
 

1992 Rainbow Fire burning near Reds Meadow. 16
 

Obsidian point. From a 2006 Park Service archaeology site condition assessment report. 21
 

Monument at Casa Diablo. Note the geothermal plant in the background. 22
 

North Fork Mono brush shelter with bedrock mortars. 23
 

Acorn and seed baskets. 25
 

North Fork Mono woman pulverizing manzanita berries. 26
 

Owens Valley Paiute Tule House. 26
 

Owens Valley Paiute Jack Stewart demonstrating a fire drill. 29
 

John C. Fremont par  ́ ty crossing the Sierra Nevada in 1843. 37
 

Map of the expeditions of the Mariposa Battalion during 1851. 38
 

Robert Eccleston, 1830-1911. 39
 

Devils Postpile cabin in 1934. 43
 

Overhead shot of the Postpile cabin. 44
 

1939 photo of the Postpile cabin showing its proximity to the Postpile formation. 44
 

Mammoth City resident Tex Cushions’s team of sled dogs across the river from the Postpile in 

winter. 45
 

Miners on the summit of Iron Mountain west of Devils Postpile. 46
 

Sketch of the Postpile formation from an 1892 State Mineralogist report on the North Fork 

Mining District. 46
 

1892 sketch map of the North Fork Mining District showing the soda spring, Reds Meadow 

(labeled “Peck’s Meadow”), and the Yosemite National Park boundary north of Agnew 

Meadow. 47
 

1939 photo of John Beck’s cabin near Beck’s Lake west of Devils Postpile. 48
 

1916 Madera County map showing Devils Postpile at its extreme eastern terminus. 48
 
List of Figures 

1981 photo of a cabin at the Minaret Mine site. 49
 

1981 photo of a partially collapsed structure at the Minaret Mine site. 49
 

Remnant of the Minaret Mine road bed adjacent to the present Minaret Lake Trail. 50
 

Ruins of one of J. W. Starkweather’s mining operations in the area, date and location
 

unknown. 51
 

“Hoofed Locusts.” 52
 

Sheepherder carving in Devils Postpile showing the initials “E. S.” 54
 

Notch carved in a tree, presumably for supporting a table or sleeping platform. 55
 

Portrait of James M. Hutchings. 60
 

Early sketch of Yosemite Valley. 61
 

Hutchings’s photograph of Devils Postpile in 1875. Note the leaning column and the man
 

standing below and to the right of it. 63
 

The Brewer Party of 1864. From left to right: James T. Gardiner, Richard Cotter, William H.
 

Brewer, and Clarence King. 64
 

George Bayley’s sketch of Rainbow Falls, 1878. 65
 

Cavalry “T” blaze in Devils Postpile National Monument. 72
 

Sheepherder and sheep in a meadow. 73
 

Cavalry officer Nathaniel F. McClure’s 1896 map of patrol routes in Yosemite National
 

Park. 74
 

Close up of the same map showing Reds Meadows as a patrol hub. 75
 

Walter L. Huber. 79
 

Original Map drawn by Walter Huber and filed with the 1911 proclamation establishing
 

Devils Postpile National Monument. 80
 

Walter L. Huber surveying the Devils Postpile boundary in 1912. 81
 

1927 map of Sierra National Forest showing Devils Postpile at the top right. 86
 

Reds Meadow guard station built in 1927 by Ranger Malcolm McLeod and occupied by he
 

and his wife Emma McLeod. 87
 

The original National Park Service ranger station set up at Devils Postpile in 1934 following
 

the transfer from the Forest Service. 94
 

Ranger Duane Jacobs inspecting a site at the base of the Postpile talus for the placement of an
 

interpretive sign. 95
 

1937 photo of the Reds Meadow Bath House, built by a CCC crew in 1935. 95
 

The CCC bath house as it appears today. 96
 

Yosemite engineer Theodore Cronyn establishing the Devils Postpile National Monument
 

boundary during the 1934 boundary survey. 97
 

Cronyn’s 1934 map based on the corners established in 1912 by Walter Huber. 98
 

Regional map included with Cronyn’s 1934 report. 99
 

Photo of Soda Springs Meadow from Cronyn’s 1934 report. 100
 

1937 proposed boundary adjustment to match the rectangular shape of the monument as
 

depicted in the map filed with the 1911 proclamation. 102
 

1941 tourist brochure map showing a rectangular boundary. 102
 

viii 
List of Figures 

Campers in the monument campground in 1940. 108
 

A family on the original bridge over the San Joaquin River south of Soda Springs Meadow,
 

1939. 108
 

Backpackers in a meadow near Devils Postpile in the 1940s. 109
 

1940 tourist brochure for Devils Postpile. 110
 

Back cover of a 1941 tourist brochure. 111
 

Ranger-led walk. 118
 

The partially collapsed Postpile cabin, 1949. 121
 

The cabin after its collapse in 1954. 121
 

Hikers with ranger at the Devils Postpile flagpole, 1955. 125
 

Mother and daughter at the Rainbow Falls viewpoint, 1955. 130
 

Map of the proposed Minaret Summit Highway, 1966. 135
 

Development plan, 1963. Note the location of the proposed Mammoth Pass road and the
 

space reserved for expansion across the river opposite the campground. 136
 

Close-up of an alternate development plan, 1963. Note the 3,000-square-foot visitor center
 

and the expanded parking areas. 136
 

Bishop local and former Sequoia and Kings Canyon superintendent Stanley Albright with
 

Lou Roeser at Mule Days. 138
 

Governor Ronald Reagan with former Reds Meadow Pack Station owner Arch Mahan (left)
 

and Rock Creek Pack Station owner Herbert M. London (right), 1972. 141
 

Governor Reagan beginning the ride to Summit Meadow, 1972. 142
 

Mules in the monument parking lot, 1974. 144
 

Postpile–Soda Springs Meadow Bridge. Note the cracked piling on the left, 1970s. 145
 

Stock trails in Soda Springs Meadow, 1974. 146
 

Wymond Eckhardt, 1983. 152
 

Postpile-Soda Springs Meadow Bridge. 154
 

Publicity for Devils Postpile, 1974. 155
 

Mules and cars in the monument parking lot, 1974. 156
 

Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow shuttle brochure. 160
 

Line for the shuttle bus at the monument ranger station, 1980. 161
 

One of the blue Quicksilver Stage Line shuttle busses that operated from 1981 to 1986. 162
 

Ranger Coy sitting in the Postpile talus, 1972. 168
 

The 1992 Rainbow Fire from Reds Meadow Pack Station. 173
 

Burnt sign. 173
 

The “shingle factory” near the junction of the King Creek Trail, 1977. 175
 

Devils Postpile, 1935. 192
 

Devils Postpile camp, 1935. 196
 

Displaying the catch, 1940. Note the fly rods. 198
 

A full stringer of trout, 1940. 199
 

Hikers on the Beck Lake trail, 1939. 203
 

ix 
List of Figures 

John Muir Trail backpackers resting in Soda Springs Meadow, 1970s. 204
 

Lou and Marye Roeser, owners of Mammoth Lakes Pack Station, 1960s. 207
 

Mules crossing the Middle Fork San Joaquin River beneath Rainbow Falls. 208
 

Mules crossing the Middle Fork San Joaquin at Soda Springs Meadows. 210
 

Francois M ̧ atthes in the field. 218
 

Cover of Your Guide to Devils Postpile, 1963. 221
 

x 
Acknowledgments
 

This report is a credit to the vision and commitment of dozens of people. First, I would like to 

thank my colleagues in the National Park Service Pacific West Regional Office for their support 

and encouragement. I am especially grateful to David Louter for giving me the opportunity 

to take on the project and for his invaluable advice and encouragement. I am also indebted to 

Elaine Jackson-Retondo for seeing the project through to completion. Special acknowledgment 

goes to Charles Palmer who conducted the initial research for this project and drafted some of 

the early chapters. 

A historian’s work would not be possible without the assistance of those who preserve, catalog, 

and make accessible the records of the past. I am grateful to the staffs of the Bancroft and 

Water Resource libraries at the University of California, Berkeley; the San Bruno branch of 

the National Archives; the Yosemite National Park Archives; the Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

National Park Archives; the Inyo National Forest Supervisor’s Office; the Mammoth District 

Ranger Station; and the Mammoth Lakes Public Library. At the risk of omitting someone, I 

would especially like to thank Paul Rogers, Brenna Lissoway, Linda Vida, Ward Eldredge, and 

William Michael. 

The Mammoth Lakes Sierra may be known for its stunning scenery and diverse recreational 

opportunities, but it is the people who make the place special. A number of local residents and 

others with connections to the monument and the surrounding area helped with this project. 

Their insights and experiences enlivened the narrative while deepening my appreciation for the 

region’s rich history. Special thanks go to Lou and Marye Roeser, Bob Tanner, Genny Smith, 

Bob Schotz, the Honorable Ron W. Goode, Michael Morse, Jack Fisher, Norman Livermore 

III, Robert Pavlick, Wymond Eckhart, Walt Hoffman, and Nancy Wirth. 

I am also indebted to the reviewers whose close readings of drafts and frank, insightful 

comments helped me clarify my arguments, identify problems with sources, and sharpen my 

writing. Thank you to William Tweed, Char Miller, Heather Miller, Laura Kirn, Matthew 

Nelson, and Timothy Babalis. Of course, any errors of fact or misrepresentations that remain 

are entirely my responsibility. 

The staff of Devils Postpile National Monument and the Mammoth District of the Inyo 

National Forest also provided invaluable support and assistance over the course of this project. 

I am most grateful to Superintendent Deanna Dulen whose enthusiasm and commitment to 

the park carried this project from start to finish. Her efforts to locate source materials, contact 

people with knowledge of the area’s history, and help me understand current management 

issues were essential. I am also thankful for the aid of others on the Devils Postpile staff 

including Isaac Vaughn, Sarah Bondereff, Maureen Finnerty, and John Anderson. From the 

Inyo National Forest, Debbie Nelson provided valuable source material. Nancy Upham also 

offered support and encouragement. 
Acknowledgments 

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my wife Tomoko for her patience and support during 

the nearly four years I spent researching and writing this report. I am also grateful to my two 

sons, Sai and Hiro, both of whom were born during the course of the project. My family is the 

main inspiration in my personal and professional life. This project is dedicated to them. 

Christopher E. Johnson 

NPS Pacific West Regional Office, Seattle, Washington 

July 29, 2013 

xii 
Regional Map. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks) 
Devils Postpile National Monument and vicinity. (Inyo National Forest, Mammoth Lakes Ranger District) 
Devils Postpile park map. (Devils Postpile National Monument) 

Introduction
 

The Devils Postpile formation is one of the most recognizable geologic features in California’s 

Sierra Nevada range. Visitors today appreciate it as a striking demonstration of the successive 

waves of volcanic and glacial activity that shaped the surrounding High Sierra scenery. But 

responses to the Postpile’s otherworldly columns of dark basalt have also varied over time and 

among observers. North Fork Mono traders who crossed the Sierra crest near Devils Postpile 

for generations regarded the pillars as lumber that had become rock.1 In the late nineteenth 

century, itinerant sheepherders associated the strange outcrop with more sinister forces, naming 

it “the Devil’s Woodpile.”2 Other nineteenth-century observers described the oddly symmetric 

posts as “regular in shape as if they had been made by the hand of man.”3 

President William H. Taft proclaimed Devils Postpile a national monument in 1911 in 

recognition of its unique geology. The proclamation also protected nearby Rainbow Falls 

where the Middle Fork San Joaquin River plunges 101 feet over a sheer cliff of volcanic rock. 

For Sierra Club leader Joseph N. LeConte, the creation of the monument also brought what he 

felt to be much-deserved attention to the dramatic scenery of the little-known upper reaches 

of the Middle Fork San Joaquin River Valley.4 Enclosed by the volcanic bulk of Mammoth 

Mountain to the east and the jagged Ritter Range to the west, the remote Middle Fork Valley 

constituted “the most magnificent piece of mountain scenery we have in the Sierra Nevada,” he 

wrote. “Not only does this basin embrace such curiosities as the recently established monument, 

but also one of the finest groups of mountain peaks, the finest group of residual glaciers, and 

the finest evidences of recent volcanic activity to be found in the Sierra Nevada.”5 

During the twentieth century, Devils Postpile’s strange appearance, scientific interest, and 

dramatic setting drew increasing numbers of tourists, most from the growing city of Los 

Angeles 340 miles to the south. In the early years, visitors approached the monument by 

trail, with most crossing the Sierra crest from the east by way of Mammoth Pass on the 

south shoulder of Mammoth Mountain. In the late 1920s, automobile tourists began braving 

the narrow mining road over Minaret Summit north of Mammoth Mountain to view the 

monument’s features, fish the Middle Fork San Joaquin, camp in a rustic setting, and explore 

the alpine basins and peaks of the Minarets and Ritter Range. As scientists in recent years 

have gained a better understanding of the complexity and sensitivity of the Sierra Nevada 

ecosystem, the National Park Service has reinvented the monument as a test park for ecological 

management, taking advantage of Devils Postpile’s location near the Sierra crest for monitoring 

the environmental health of the entire range. 

Throughout the human history of the Sierra Nevada, harsh winters, frequent volcanic activity, 

and difficult access have kept the Devils Postpile area relatively insulated from the dramatic 

transformations apparent in more populated areas to the east and west. Even today, the valley’s 

meadows, forests, rushing streams, and glacier-sculpted volcanic rocks appear little changed 

by the frenetic advance of modern technological society. But by viewing the Devils Postpile 

area as a place defined by the relative absence of human history, we risk obscuring its rich 

human past. People have been present here for thousands of years, making it as much a cultural 
Introduction 

landscape as a natural one. The human history of Devils Postpile can deepen our appreciation 

for the area by revealing how different groups of people including Native Americans, miners, 

sheepherders, conservationists, scientists, public land agency employees, local residents, and 

tourists have valued and engaged with the High Sierra environment over time. Though not 

always self-evident, these stories are reflected in archaeological sites, roads, trails, structures, 

and environmental features in Devils Postpile National Monument and the surrounding 

national forests. These resources highlight the contested and changing meaning of nature in 

American history and provide glimpses into the stories of conflict, cooperation, and individual 

effort that have shaped the monument and the Mammoth region. Finally, these stories are 

reminders that while the Postpile may have non-human origins, its significance cannot be 

considered independently from the human history of the Sierra Nevada and the history of 

American conservation. 

Historical Overview 

Beginning at least 7,500 years ago, Native Americans inhabiting the east and west slopes of 

the Sierra Nevada used the Middle Fork Valley as part of a seasonal transmountain trade route 

and location for hunting and resource collection. The intervening Ritter Range and the steep 

canyon downstream from Devils Postpile prevented European and American exploration of 

the area from the west. Few non-Indians had knowledge of the Middle Fork Valley until the 

1860s when gold strikes near Mono Lake brought a wave of fortune seekers to the Sierra’s 

remote east side and eventually to the vicinity of Mammoth Pass. Also in the 1860s, itinerant 

sheepherders ventured into the area from the Central Valley to the west and over Mammoth 

Pass from the east to graze their flocks on the alpine meadows in and around the Middle Fork 

Valley. 

The Devils Postpile area came under federal protection in 1890 with its inclusion within 

the original boundaries of Yosemite National Park. However, few national park advocates 

recognized the significance of this difficult-to-access corner of the High Sierra, and in 1905, 

mining, timber, and grazing interests succeeded in having the area removed from the park. 

Following the boundary adjustment, the Middle Fork Valley became part of the newly created 

Sierra National Forest. While this transfer ensured continued federal oversight, it also meant 

that the area’s mineral, timber, and other natural resources would be open to commercial 

development if the US Forest Service found a use that met its utilitarian criteria. 

The first test of the Forest Service’s commitment to regulating commercial development in the 

area came in 1910 when District Engineer Walter L. Huber received an application to blast 

portions of the Postpile formation for materials for a rock-fill dam. Arguing that the scenic 

and scientific value of the Postpile outweighed the limited benefits of a dam in the area, Huber 

convinced Forest Service officials and President Taft (a typically reluctant preservationist) to 

join Sierra Club members John Muir, Joseph LeConte, and William Colby in supporting the 

establishment of a national monument under the American Antiquities Act of 1906. 

Taft’s proclamation creating Devils Postpile National Monument came just as the heated battle 

over the proposed damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park reached its 

peak. While the Hetch Hetchy controversy came to symbolize the philosophical gulf between 

those who would manage natural resources for use and those who would preserve them for all 

time, the campaign for Devils Postpile signified the possibility of common ground.6 Though 

philosophical differences remained, cooperation between preservationists and utilitarian 

conservationists became a recurring theme in the monument’s administrative evolution, as 

would be reflected in frequent collaboration between the Forest Service and the Park Service. 

2 
Historical Overview 

A second theme in the administrative history of Devils Postpile is the strong influence of 

regional interests and politics on management priorities and actions.7 Although established 

for its scientific interest to the nation, Devils Postpile evolved primarily as a park with regional 

connections and significance, becoming an integral part of the tourism- and recreationbased economy of the area travel books came to refer to as the Mammoth Lakes Sierra.8 As 

the Mammoth region developed into a backyard playground for Southern Californians, the 

Middle Fork Valley became valued regionally for its rustic camping, excellent trout fishing, 

and opportunities for hiking, climbing, and packing into the High Sierra. 

Limited federal resources and guidance for the management of national monuments also 

shaped Devils Postpile’s administrative evolution. Although the Antiquities Act allowed for the 

protection of dozens of natural and historic sites as national monuments by nothing more than 

executive decree, it offered no appropriations for individual monuments and few guidelines for 

their management. Monuments commonly suffered from severe funding and staffing shortages 

as a result.9 Devils Postpile’s small size, short operating season, and difficult access exacerbated 

these problems. Responsibility for the monument also changed hands several times. At first a 

unit of the Forest Service, the monument was placed under Yosemite National Park in 1934 

following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s order transferring the national monuments to the 

Park Service. The Forest Service and Park Service shared jurisdiction as a wartime expediency 

from 1943 until 1952 when Yosemite resumed oversight. However, Yosemite continued to 

struggle to provide adequate funds and staffing for the small, distant monument, and in 

1972, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks took over administrative responsibilities. 

In 2007, the monument was assigned to the Park Service Pacific West Regional Office as an 

independent park. 

Meanwhile, on-site staff made the most of the situation, developing creative responses to 

minimal staffing, severely limited budgets, and difficult access. In the early years, rangers 

worked with the Forest Service and its permit holder at nearby Reds Meadow Resort and 

Pack Station to improve facilities and accommodate increasing visitation. On-site managers 

also developed interpretive programs to communicate the scientific significance of monument 

resources. Still, the Park Service maintained a weak presence in the region through most of the 

twentieth century, even as Devils Postpile became an integral component of visitors’ experience 

of the area. 

The Park Service’s limited commitment to Devils Postpile became apparent in the 1950s 

and 1960s as a plan took shape to build a multilane, all-weather, trans-Sierra highway to 

pass just outside the monument boundary. Despite the proposed highway’s impact on the 

monument, Park Service officials for the most part stood aside while regional interests battled 

over the future of the Middle Fork Valley and the Mammoth Lakes area. A coalition of packers, 

tourism business owners, and local conservationists led the fight to block the road. In 1972, 

the group overcame powerful pro-development interests in the Central Valley and convinced 

then-governor Ronald Reagan to oppose construction. During a much-publicized pack trip 

from Reds Meadow to Summit Meadow in June 1972, Reagan announced President Richard 

Nixon’s Executive Order to officially halt the highway project. 

The fight to block the trans-Sierra highway marked a turning point in the history of the 

monument, keeping Devils Postpile isolated from the more populated areas to the west, thus 

preserving its rustic character while also strengthening its bonds with Mammoth Lakes and the 

Eastern Sierra. The highway debate also signaled that effective protection of the monument 

would require the Park Service to more actively participate in regional planning. In 1979, 

monument officials responded by collaborating with the Inyo National Forest and private 

3 
Introduction 

interests in Mammoth Lakes to operate a mandatory shuttle bus from the Mammoth Mountain 

Ski Area to Devils Postpile and Reds Meadow. The shuttle, the first of its kind in the nation, 

helped mitigate environmental damage and overcrowding resulting from increased numbers 

of automobiles entering the Middle Fork Valley by way of the newly paved road from Minaret 

Summit. 

Through the late twentieth century, budget shortfalls, increasing visitation systemwide, and 

an agency culture that historically favored tourism development over ecological management 

continued to hamper the Park Service’s ability to respond to threats originating outside 

monument boundaries.10 In the early 1980s, local conservationists again led the way, working 

to close the “wilderness gap” west of the monument that the trans-Sierra highway had been 

slated to pass through and to prevent ski resort development on the west side of Mammoth 

Mountain. These efforts resulted in the enlargement of the two existing wilderness areas west 

of the Middle Fork Valley in 1982. In 1984, Congress passed the California Wilderness Act, 

expanding the newly designated Ansel Adams Wilderness to cover approximately 75 percent 

of the monument. 

In recent years, managers at Devils Postpile have worked to increase the presence of the Park 

Service in the Mammoth region. Their efforts reflect the Park Service’s increasing commitment 

to scientific management, whole-ecosystem monitoring, and partnerships. The change in 

2007 to independent park status has also allowed on-site managers more discretion to establish 

formal partnerships with Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, the regional office, and 

other internal and external organizations in the design and implementation of a number of 

ecosystem monitoring and climate change response programs. These projects take advantage 

of the monument’s location near the Sierra crest, providing environmental data relevant to 

both the Mammoth Lakes Sierra and the entire San Joaquin River watershed to the west. 

The recent history of Devils Postpile exhibits the opportunities and challenges of balancing 

ecological management with other local and regional priorities. In placing greater stress on 

scientific research, Devils Postpile staff have gained a better understanding of the connections 

between the health of park resources and the health of the monument’s ecosystem, providing 

the Park Service greater leverage in regional politics and planning. Although the potential for 

conflict exists, this broader ecosystem approach provides a valuable information base to guide 

responsible regional planning. In recent years, Devils Postpile staff members have also worked 

to establish government-to-government relationships with Indian tribes in the area. They have 

also built on existing partnerships with commercial recreation interests and other public land 

agencies to ensure the protection of the region’s natural and cultural resources. 

Purpose and Organization 

This study is prepared as a combined historic resource study and administrative history. 

Typically, these documents are undertaken separately since they serve different purposes. 

Historic resource studies narrate the history of a park, both before and after its creation, 

in order to provide historical contexts for evaluating and interpreting cultural resources. 

Conversely, administrative histories detail a park’s management history in order to familiarize 

Park Service officials with the area and to provide guidance for future management. Combining 

the two studies makes sense for a small monument like Devils Postpile with few conventional 

cultural resources. A combined study also provides a more integrated narrative of the history 

of the surrounding region and the history of the park itself than is possible in two separate 

documents. 

4 
Notes 

The report is divided into three parts. Part 1 covers the environmental history of the Devils 

Postpile area prior to its inclusion in Yosemite National Park in 1890, addressing the themes 

of Native American land use and trans-Sierra trade, Euro-American exploration and conquest, 

mining, sheepherding, and early conservation and tourism. Part 2 traces the administrative 

evolution of Devils Postpile National Monument with a focus on the period of National Park 

Service management beginning in 1934. Part 3 provides additional regional and national 

context for the period of federal administration, describing the development of the Devils 

Postpile area and the Mammoth Lakes Sierra more broadly as a recreational hinterland of 

Los Angeles. This part also considers the Park Service’s shift in emphasis from geologic 

interpretation to ecological management in the context of the broader history of science in 

the Sierra Nevada and in national park management generally. Finally, the report includes 

two appendices. The first summarizes historical themes covered in the study and identifies 

associated resources in and around Devils Postpile. The second provides recommendations for 

nominations to the National Register of Historic Places for resources in the monument and 

the surrounding area. 

Overall, this study enriches our appreciation of Devils Postpile National Monument by 

recording the stories of the diverse groups of people who have passed through, used, altered, 

protected, interpreted, and enjoyed this remote, scenic, and ecologically significant component 

of the Sierra Nevada. The study also complements current administrators’ emphasis on 

ecological management and climate change research by highlighting connections between the 

history of the Devils Postpile area and the broader historical and environmental transformations 

affecting the headwaters of the Middle Fork San Joaquin, the Mammoth Lakes Sierra, and the 

Sierra Nevada range as a whole. 

Notes 

1.	 Gaylen Lee, Walking Where We Lived: Memoirs of a Mono Indian Family (Norman: University of Oklahoma 

Press, 1998), 140. 

2.	 Theodore S. Solomons, “Among the Sources of the San Joaquin,” Sierra Club Bulletin 1, no. 3 (January 1894): 

74. 

3.	 Quoted in Kathleen L. Hull and Mark R. Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey of Devils Postpile National
 

Monument, Madera County, California (Chico, CA: Dames and Moore, 1993), 23.
 

4.	 Hereafter, I refer to the valley of the Middle Fork San Joaquin River alternately as the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

River Valley, Middle Fork San Joaquin Valley, or Middle Fork Valley. In the literature, it is sometimes referred 

to as Reds Meadow Valley in reference to Reds Meadow, located just outside the monument boundary. 

5.	 Joseph N. LeConte, “The Devil’s Postpile,” Sierra Club Bulletin 8, no. 3 (1912): 170. 

6.	 The classic treatment of the preservation/use divide is Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), chap. 10. Also see Stephen R. Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The 

American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little Brown, 1981). Char Miller has argued that this divide was 

not as clear as historians and environmentalists have often made it out to be Gifford Pinchot and the Making of 

Modern Environmentalism (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001). 

7.	 Historians and other scholars have begun to examine the relationship between parks and their “gateway 

communities” in more depth. A good introduction is Hal K. Rothman, “A History of US National Parks and 

Economic Development,” in National Parks and Rural Development: Practice and Policy in the United States, 

ed. Gary E. Machlis and Donald R. Field (Washington, DC.: Island Press, 2000), 51–66. For an excellent 

account of how regional imperatives affected the establishment and development of Mount Rainier National 

Park, see Theodore Catton, National Park, City Playground: Mount Rainier in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: 

University of Washington Press, 2006). 

8.	 Genny Smith, Dean Rinehart, Elden Vestal, and Bettie E. Willard, eds., Mammoth Lakes Sierra: A Handbook 

for Roadside and Trail , 7th ed. (Mammoth Lakes: Genny Smith Books, 2006), 9–11. 

5 
Introduction 

9.	 Hal K. Rothman, “Second-Class Sites: National Monuments and the Growth of the National Park System,” 

Environmental Review 10 (Spring 1986): 44–56. Rothman notes that while many monuments, such as Grand 

Canyon and Zion, were created with the intent that they would eventually become national parks, many 

others contained resources of historic or scientific but did not measure up in terms of scenic grandeur, and so 

were to remain monuments. He refers to the monuments in this latter category as “second-class sites.” 

10.	 John C. Freemuth, Islands under Siege: National Parks and the Politics of External Threats (Lawrence: University 

Press of Kansas, 1991); For a more complete history of natural resource policies in the national parks, see 

Richard West Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 1997). 

6 
Converging Pasts: Nature and Culture 

in the Postpile Region 

The human and natural histories of the area now-protected within Devils Postpile National 

Monument are deeply intertwined. The Middle Fork Valley’s remote, rugged landscape has 

facilitated, impeded, and inspired human activities during the approximately 7,500 years of 

human presence there. Humans have also engaged with and shaped the landscape in ways that 

reflected their respective cultural values and aspirations. Native people to the east and west 

used the area as a place to meet or pass through for trade, as a sanctuary in times of conflict, 

and as a location for hunting and resource collection. In the late 1800s, miners were drawn to 

the area, but often found the valley’s remoteness and harsh winters as impediments to resource 

extraction and development. Also during this period, itinerant sheepherders spent summers 

grazing their flocks in the alpine meadows in and adjacent to the Middle Fork Valley. 

By the early twentieth century, geologists, conservationists, and tourist parties had surveyed the 

region and proclaimed the significance of its most scenic or scientifically interesting features. 

Though visited by a few intrepid explorers during this period, Devils Postpile remained far 

from the centers of Sierra Nevada tourism development. The reservation of the Yosemite Valley 

as a state park in 1864 and the growing popularity of nature tourism in the Sierra Nevada 

nevertheless prefaced subsequent conservation efforts in the Middle Fork Valley. 

Devils Postpile National Monument contains a number of cultural resources associated with 

these early human interactions with the environment. These resources include archeological 

sites and landscape features exhibiting Native American uses of the area; the route of a late 

nineteenth-century trans-Sierra toll route; artifacts reflecting the area’s hard-rock mining past; 

the ruins of an early settler’s cabin near the base of the Postpile; and tree carvings indicating 

the presence of sheepherders in the area in the late nineteenth century. Last, the few tourist 

accounts from this period provide a glimpse into the cultural and political tensions that 

accompanied the later transformation of the High Sierra from a mining and sheepherding 

frontier into a tourism destination managed by federal agencies. 

Chapter One 

A Landscape in Time: Nature and History 

along the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

The Devils Postpile landscape is the product of the geologic, climatologic, biologic, and human 

forces that shaped the Sierra Nevada generally. The environment of the Middle Fork Valley 

also exhibits some unique characteristics due to frequent volcanic activity and its location near 

Mammoth Pass, which at 9,300 feet is the lowest point for more than 250 miles along the 

Sierra crest. 

“Born of Fire, Sculpted by Ice”: The Geologic Past 

Through its namesake outcrop of columnar basalt, its mineral springs, and the waterfall on 

the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin, Devils Postpile National Monument preserves, in a small 

area, evidence of some of the central Sierra Nevada’s most geologically recent volcanic and 

glacial activity.1 While large, uniform displays of columnar basalt are rare in the Sierra Nevada, 

the Postpile is similar to a number of basalt formations throughout the world, including those 

at Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of 

Northern Ireland, the Isle of Staffa in Scotland, and Garni Gorge in Armenia. 

Approximately 25 million years ago, the granitic batholith that would form the core of the 

Sierra Nevada Mountains began to be forced upward along its eastern edge by fault activity, 

ultimately producing the characteristic gradual western slope of the range and the steep eastern 

escarpment near the crest. As the uplift increased, streams flowing to the southwest carved 

increasingly deep canyons as their gradients increased. Before the formation of the eastern 

escarpment, the main channel of the San Joaquin River had its origins well to the east, crossing 

the present Sierra crest north of Minaret Summit. The resilient metamorphic rock forming the 

Ritter Range forced the river to flow southward through the Postpile region before resuming 

its course toward the Central Valley to the southwest. 

Lava flows blocked the river channel north of Minaret Summit approximately three million 

years ago, further isolating the river from its former drainage basin in the east. Continued uplift 

prevented restoration of the original course, and the San Joaquin became a river fed entirely 

by sources in the Sierra proper. During the Pleistocene epoch, glaciers deepened and widened 

the earlier stream-cut canyons, forming U-shaped valleys similar to those found throughout 

the Sierra Nevada range. The Middle Fork San Joaquin Valley experienced glaciations several 

times over this period. The cirques formed at the heads of the glaciers are responsible for the 

sharp peaks of the Ritter Range and Minarets. The geologic processes responsible for the uplift 

of the Sierra Nevada also created a region of active volcanism. The Long Valley Caldera, south 

of Mono Lake, is one of the largest calderas in North America, and in erupting 760,000 years 

ago, produced ash deposits as far east as present-day Nebraska and Kansas. The distinctive 

11,500-foot-tall bulk of Mammoth Mountain is composed of twelve volcanic domes that 

formed on the southwest rim of the Caldera between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago. 

According to the most recent radiometric dating, the Devils Postpile outcrop began forming 

approximately 82,000 years ago when trachybasaltic lava erupted in the canyon of the Middle 
Chapter One A Landscape in Time: Nature and History along the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

Geologic map showing types of rocks and a self-guided nature 

trail. (From a 2011 NPS geology brochure, Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

Fork San Joaquin. Surveys conducted in the 1980s suggested that the lava flow reached the 

surface near the present Upper Soda Springs Campground at the north end of Pumice Flat. 

Current research suggests that the Pumice Flat vents might overlay the actual source. The 

Park Service is presently working with US Geologic Survey scientists to better understand this 

eruption. 

The lava from this outflow filled the canyon from side to side, pooling 

on the granite bedrock to a depth of at least 400 feet. As the lava 

cooled, tensional stresses caused the formation of cracks within the 

solidifying rock perpendicular to the cooling surfaces. Where it overlay 

bare granite, the lava cooled inward at roughly the same rate from both 

above and below. This even cooling, coupled with the homogeneity 

of the original lava flow, created conditions favorable to the formation 

of vertical or nearly vertical columnar joints in the middle of the rock 

mass. The curved columns visible at the north end of the Postpile show 

where cooling occurred at a less regular rate than in the areas with more 

linear joints. The uniformity of the cooling also resulted in the irregular 

polygonal shape of the “posts” of the Postpile. The formation is visible 

today due to the slow work of glaciers, which eroded most of the original lava deposit and 

10 

Glacial polish and striations at the top of the 

Postpile. (Devils Postpile National Monument 

image collection) 
“Born of Fire, Sculpted by Ice”: The Geologic Past 

Devils Postpile columns and talus. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, 

and Library) 

exposed the internal columns. Striations on the polished top of the Postpile show the direction 

the ice traveled. 

The other primary feature of the monument, Rainbow Falls, is framed by a cliff of andesite 

and/or rhyodacite lava that flowed into the canyon at an earlier time from a vent south of the 

present Postpile location. Unlike the vertical column jointing of the Postpile basalt, the rock at 

Rainbow Falls is distinguished by thinly spaced horizontal joints. Because the rock at the top 

of the falls is harder than the underlying layer at the base, the action of the water undercuts 

the cliff and causes it to retreat gradually up the river channel. Early literature described the 

height of the falls as 140 feet. Measurements in 1978 established the actual height at 101 feet. 

11 
Chapter One A Landscape in Time: Nature and History along the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

Rainbow Falls. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, and Library) 

Other periods of volcanism are also evident in the monument and the surrounding area. The 

Buttress, a large basalt cliff opposite the river and downstream from the Postpile, is a remnant 

of the oldest visible lava flow in the valley. More recent activity is displayed in cliffs of welded 

tuff (fused volcanic ash) near Reds Meadows and in two basalt cinder cones southeast of the 

monument boundary. 

The volcanic activity that formed the landscape of Devils Postpile is continuing in the Long 

Valley area to the east. “Swarms” of earthquakes occurred during the 1980s and 1990s, some 

of which dislodged columns within the Postpile formation. In March 1990, a Forest Service 

supervisor taking shelter in an abandoned cabin near Mammoth Lakes nearly died after 

breathing odorless carbon dioxide gas that had seeped from nearby volcanic vents. Within the 

past decade, carbon dioxide gas has also killed trees at Mammoth Mountain. Soda Springs, 

12 
Landscape Characteristics and Vegetation 

the carbonated cold spring bubbling to the surface in areas along the river near the northern 

boundary of the monument, is another reminder of the volcanic forces still active beneath 

the surface. Numerous hot springs also exist in the area, and the pumice that covers much of 

the area is geologically young, blasting from the vicinity of the Mono and Inyo craters to the 

northeast in approximately 1350 AD.2 

Future volcanic activity can potentially change the landscape dramatically in and around 

Devils Postpile. The frequency of eruptions along the western rim of the Long Valley Caldera 

in the past 5,000 years suggests that the probability of an eruption occurring in any given year 

is slightly less than 1 percent per year. This is comparable to the annual chance of a magnitude 

8.0 earthquake (such as the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906) along the San Andreas Fault 

in coastal California or of an eruption from one of the more active volcanoes in the Cascade 

Range, such as Washington State’s Mount Rainier or California’s Mount Shasta.3 

Increased volcanic unrest in the Long Valley area since 1980 may increase the likelihood of 

an eruption occurring in the near future, but scientists lack adequate data to calculate by how 

much. Volcanic unrest in some other large volcanic systems has persisted for decades or even 

centuries without an eruption. But since volcanic unrest can escalate to an eruption in as little 

as a few days, the activity is monitored closely.4 

For residents of the Mammoth Lakes and Long Valley area, continuing volcanic activity has 

presented opportunities as well as dangers. In 1984, Mammoth Pacific LP began developing 

the area around the Casa Diablo geothermal site near the intersection of Highway 395 and 

State Route 203 for the production of geothermal energy. The plant employs a “binary” system 

of energy production that works by pumping hot groundwater into a closed loop that indirectly 

heats liquid isobutene. The high-temperature, high-energy gas released from this process turns 

turbines to produce power for approximately 40,000 residences.5 

Landscape Characteristics and Vegetation 

Since the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers approximately ten thousand years ago, the Middle 

Fork San Joaquin River has sustained the forests, meadows, wetlands, and wildlife of the Devils 

Postpile area.6 From its headwaters at Thousand Island Lake, the Middle Fork tumbles down a 

steep boulder-choked canyon until leveling out at Agnew Meadows into a series of broad lowgradient meanders, which give way to scattered pools, fast-flowing rapids, cascades, and falls. 

South of Devils Postpile, the river rushes through a narrow, nearly inaccessible granite gorge 

toward Mammoth Pool, the first of many manmade obstructions on the San Joaquin River. 

Three small creeks enter the Middle Fork within or near the monument: King Creek from the 

west, and Boundary and Reds Creeks from the east. 

Although the Middle Fork drains into the westward flowing mainstem San Joaquin River, 

the Ritter Range west of Devils Postpile is higher in elevation than the actual Sierra crest to 

the east. As a result, biological communities in the Middle Fork Valley have east-slope as well 

as west-slope affinities. Within the monument, Great Basin plant types such as juniper and 

sagebrush grow in proximity to mountain hemlock, gooseberry, and other Western Sierra 

species. The principal vegetation is montane forest, mostly dominated by red fir or lodgepole 

pine. Along the river, montane riparian vegetation dominates, represented by quaking aspen, 

black cottonwood, alder, and willows.7 

A recent vascular plant inventory of Devils Postpile documented 380 different plants, a more 

than 125 percent increase from the 169 documented previously. Eight species of invasive 

13 
Chapter One A Landscape in Time: Nature and History along the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

nonnative plants remain prevalent in the monument, with bull thistle and Kentucky bluegrass 

being of the highest concern.8 

A number of meadows of various subtypes can be located within Devils Postpile. Dry meadows, 

where seeps or intermittent drainages occur, form shallow meadows occupied by sedges and 

grasses. In years with low precipitation, these may remain dry even after the snow melt. A few 

larger meadows and wetlands occur in the southern portion of the monument and are formed 

by sedges, mannagrass, wildryes, and other grasses. Some are bordered with quaking aspen. 

The largest meadow within Devils Postpile is Soda Springs Meadow, which likely formed from 

sediments deposited by the Middle Fork San Joaquin. The soda spring for which this meadow 

is named is located at the southern edge of the meadow. The spring is submerged by the river 

during the June snowmelt, gradually becoming more accessible by July. The reddish brown 

color of the oxidized iron in the water clearly marks the spring’s location. The spring provides 

a continuous flow of cold, carbonated water throughout the year. 

The soils in this part of the Sierra have high concentrations of ash and other volcanic material, 

and pumice covers most of the northern section of the monument. The predominance of 

pumice limits the area’s vegetation development. Sparse groves of conifers grow on pumicecovered slopes underlain by basalt and andesite where the water table is low and the rate 

of drainage is high. In these areas, pines and firs contribute little organic matter for soil 

formation. This, coupled with insufficient moisture, leaves much of the area barren with sparse 

undergrowth. On steeper slopes, it is common to see bare granite or basalt with few plants. 

Climate and Atmospheric Conditions 

The Devils Postpile area experiences the dry summers and wet winters characteristic of the 

west coast of North America. At approximately 7,600 feet of elevation, most of the area’s 

precipitation falls in winter as snow. Also, because the Sierra crest near Mammoth Mountain 

is comparatively low, winter storms retain much of their moisture as they pass over. As a result, 

the area just to the east of the divide receives heavy snowfall (hence its attraction for ski resort 

developers). Devils Postpile receives from 200 to 400 inches of snow each winter, making it 

nearly inaccessible for much of the year. 

Summer days in the valley are typically mild with high temperatures averaging in the midseventies. However, temperatures can vary significantly, often reaching into the nineties or 

plummeting below freezing. In fact, snow can fall during any month of the year; and while 

summers are typically dry, afternoon thunderstorms occur frequently during July and August. 

Atmospheric conditions in the Devils Postpile area are influenced by both the San Joaquin 

Valley and Great Basin Valleys air basins. Ozone and particulate matter are the primary airquality concerns in the San Joaquin basin, while in the Great Basin particulate matter is 

most prominent. Area-wide sources are the main contributor of particulates for both districts. 

Mobile sources are the most influential in contributing precursors of ozone in the San Joaquin 

Valley. Recent research suggests that increased ozone levels in high mountain environments 

could increase the susceptibility of some coniferous forests to fatal insect attacks. Additional 

research is currently underway regarding the potential effects on wildlife and other biological 

communities.9 

Anthropogenic climate change has the potential to significantly affect the riparian ecosystem 

in and around Devils Postpile and the environment of the Sierra Nevada generally. Recent 

research has shown that in the last century, the average annual temperature of the Sierra 

14 
Climate and Atmospheric Conditions 

A part of the soda spring in Soda Springs Meadow. (Photo: Christopher E. Johnson) 

Nevada has increased approximately 1 to 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Milder winters and a lower 

snowpack already appear to have affected the pace of spring runoff in the region. Researchers 

estimate as much as a sixty to eighty percent reduction in Sierra snowpack in the coming years. 

The period of peak runoff for the Middle Fork San Joaquin could also come as many as thirty 

days earlier with potentially damaging consequences for the agricultural economy of the San 

Joaquin Valley. A drier, warmer climate may also cause grasses and shrubs to overtake many 

coniferous zones. Climate variations could also alter the summer and winter ranges of native 

birds including woodpeckers and chickadees.10 

15 
Chapter One A Landscape in Time: Nature and History along the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

Wildlife 

The riparian corridor of the Middle Fork San Joaquin supports a variety of fauna common 

to the High Sierra. A total of 143 vertebrates have been documented for Devils Postpile. 

Birds, small diurnal mammals, and invertebrates are most frequently observed. Common birds 

include the Steller’s jay, the western tanager, dark-eyed juncos, and the hairy woodpecker. Some 

nonnative species including the brown-headed cowbird are also present. Mammals in Devils 

Postpile include the golden-mantled ground squirrel, the lodgepole chipmunk, chickaree, and 

Belding ground squirrels. Porcupines, coyotes, long-tailed weasels, martens, and marmots are 

occasionally sighted. Mule deer visit Soda Springs Meadow in the evening and early-morning 

hours. Black bears also frequently pass within Devils Postpile’s boundaries. A survey conducted 

in summer 2001 documented ten species of bats, six of which are species of special concern.11 

There are few known species of reptiles or amphibians within Devils Postpile. Fish, however, 

are plentiful. The Middle Fork San Joaquin contains four introduced species of trout: golden 

trout, rainbow trout, brown trout, and brook trout (actually a species of char).12 

Fire 

As in other locations in the Sierra Nevada, the vegetation and wildlife in Devils Postpile are 

adapted to periodic fire; and evidence of past fires can be found in the form of charcoal scars 

on some trees. While fire operates differently depending on local conditions, biologists have 

found that, in general, periodic burning prepares seedbeds by cycling nutrients through the 

soil; affects patterns of succession; encourages changes in the landscape favorable to wildlife; 

influences the ages and types of understory vegetation; alters the numbers of trees susceptible 

to pests and disease; and shapes the patterns of large, destructive fires.13 

Fire history studies in similar forests in other areas of the Sierra Nevada 

have shown that fires in lodgepole pine forests occur at an average of 

every 150 years, and more frequently in lower elevation mixed conifer 

forests. A recent fire history survey of Devils Postpile indicates that before 

the late 1800s, fires affected the region more often, approximately every 

5 to 30 years. The causes of these fires are difficult to pinpoint. On 

rare occasions, volcanic activity could have started fires. The warmer 

climate pattern that began in the mid-nineteenth century also may 

have subtly affected fire regimes. There are also indications that Native 

Americans burned the forest in and around Devils Postpile to facilitate 

hunting, clear trails, and encourage the growth of certain plant species. 

Thunderstorms occur frequently in the area, and many past fires were 

probably lightning caused.14 

In 1992, the lightning-caused Rainbow Fire burned through approximately two-thirds of 

the monument, with the most severe burning in the southeast portion. In some areas, tree 

mortality was high and seedlings have not yet reestablished due to the long distances between 

living trees. In other areas, the fire crept along the forest floor, occasionally burning into trees. 

In these areas, reestablishment of seedlings has been more rapid. Future studies may be able 

to determine more conclusively the degrees in which the ferocity of the Rainbow Fire can be 

attributed to the cessation of Native American burning, vegetation loss due to grazing in the 

late nineteenth century, climate change, and early federal policies of fire suppression. 

1992 Rainbow Fire burning near Reds Meadow. 

(Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

16 
Notes 

Notes 

1.	 Unless otherwise noted, information in this section is from N. King Huber and Wymond W. Eckhardt, Devils 

Postpile Story (Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural History Association, 1985). 

2.	 Linda Mutch, Meryl Rose, Andi Heard, Rosamonde R. Cook, “Vital Signs Monitoring Plan, Phase III,” 

ed. Gary Entsminger, Draft Report, Sierra Nevada Network, National Park Service, 2006. Appendix A: 

Description of Sierra Nevada Network Parks, 4; Story of the Forest Supervisor from David Beesley, Crow’s 

Range: An Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004), 2. 

3.	 Mutch et al., “Vital Signs Monitoring Plan,” 4–5. 

4.	 Ibid., 5. 

5.	 From the Mammoth Pacific website, accessed April 1, 2010, www.mammothpacific.com/awardfacilities.html. 

6.	 Except where otherwise noted, information in this section comes from National Park Service, “Natural 

Resources Management Statement for Devils Postpile National Monument,” March 1982, Devils Postpile 

National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

7.	 See Melanie Arnett and S. Haultain, Vascular Plants of Devils Postpile National Monument, Final Report to 

Sierra Nevada Inventory and Monitoring Network (Three Rivers, CA: National Park Service, 2005). 

8.	 Ibid; and Mutch et al, “Vital Signs Monitoring Plan,” Appendix E: Non-native Plants and Animals for Sierra 

Nevada Network Parks, 1. 

9.	 Mutch et al., “Vital Signs Monitoring Plan,” Appendix C: Air Quality Synthesis, 14; and Sierra Nevada
 

Network, “Stressor: Air Pollution,” accessed April 27, 2010, http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/sien/
 

AirPollution.cfm.
 

10.	 L. M. Edwards and K. T. Redmond, “Climate Assessment for the Sierra Nevada Network Parks,” Natural 

Resource Report NPS/2011/NRR – 2011/482 (Fort Collins, National Park Service, 2011), 36-40; and Sierra 

Nevada Network, “Climate Change in the Sierra Nevada Network: A Summary of Recent Findings and Efforts 

to Monitor Change” (Three Rivers: Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, 2013). 

11.	 See Mutch et al., “Vital Signs Monitoring Plan,” Appendix F: Special Status Plants and Animals for the Sierra 

Nevada Network Parks. 

12.	 William A. Dill and Almo J. Cordone, History and Status of Introduced Fishes in California, 1871–1996 

(Sacramento: State of California, The Resources Agency, Department of Fish and Game, 1997), 107. 

13.	 Bruce Kilgore, “The Ecological Role of Fire in Sierran Conifer Forests and its Application to National Park 

Management,” Journal Quaternary Research 3, no. 3 (October 1973), www.nps.gov/archive/seki/fire/f_conif 

.htm. 

14.	 Anthony C. Caprio and Karen Webster, National Park Service Fire Ecology Report 2006: Sequoia & Kings 

Canyon National Park and Devils Postpile National Monument (Three Rivers, CA: Natural Resources Division 

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, 2006), 21; Anthony C. Caprio and Karen Webster, Fire Effects 

Monitoring of the 1992 Rainbow Fire, Devils Postpile National Monument: Vegetation Response Ten Years Postfire 

(Three Rivers, CA: Natural Resources Division Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, 2006), 1–3; and 

Christopher E. Johnson, e-mail correspondence with Tony Caprio, April 1, 2010. 

17 

Chapter Two 

Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, 

and Environmental Change 

J

ust as it occupies a physiographic boundary between the east and west slopes of the Sierra 

Nevada, Devils Postpile also sits at a cultural crossroads where the traditional territories of 

Native tribes to the east and west intersect. Like other high-elevation areas in the Sierra Nevada, 

the Middle Fork Valley probably saw limited seasonal use through most of the precontact era. 

Even so, the area was and still is profoundly significant to Indian communities on both sides 

of the range as part of a trans-Sierra trade route, a sanctuary in times of conflict, a source of 

culturally important natural resources, and a locus of intercultural exchange. 

While the upper Middle Fork Valley has received only minimal attention in the archaeological 

and ethnographic literature, the human history of the surrounding region has been extensively 

studied. This chapter provides a summary of the relevant literature, while also taking into 

consideration contemporary Indian perspectives on the traditional meaning and continuing 

cultural significance of the Devils Postpile area. That said, this chapter is only an overview. 

A complete ethnohistorical survey is necessary to more fully explore the tribes’ traditional 

associations with Devils Postpile, the Mammoth Pass area, and the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

River Valley. 

Native Stories 

The Middle Fork Valley features prominently in the creation stories of the North Fork 

Mono tribe, whose ancestral territory includes the Sierra crest east of Devils Postpile as its 

eastern terminus. According to stories collected by anthropologist Edward Gifford in the early 

twentieth century, the world was made when Falcon (yayu), Crow (sebitim), and Coyote (esha) 

dammed the waters in the east, allowing the land to appear. Before it was held back, the water 

washed out the valleys. Falcon, Crow, and Coyote then made the creeks. The three of them 

remain in the east, keeping watch over the dam they made to ensure it does not break and 

allow the waters to once again destroy the world.1 

A number of North Fork Mono stories take place during this time of creation and reference 

specific upper Middle Fork Valley locations. One notable story describes the journey of 

brothers Haininu and Baumegwesu from the headwaters of the Middle Fork San Joaquin to 

where the main stem San Joaquin reaches the Central Valley. The journey began at a high 

mountain lake named Wiitcunap (believed to be Lake Ediza) where the brothers encountered a 

“water baby” (a manifestation of the power of water). The water baby attempted to overwhelm 

Haininu with a rush of water that he managed to elude by jumping from rock to rock. The 

water then pursued him up through a hole he created in the sky. When the water receded, 

Haininu returned to the lake where he killed the water baby. 

During their subsequent journey down the river valley, the brothers encountered a number of 

other powerful entities including Bear, Wind, Rattlesnake, Coyote, Deer, and Elk. They were 

able to kill each of these entities, thus limiting the power of their descendants. In the process, 

Haininu and Baumegwesu created the present world. North Fork Mono shaman Singing Jack, 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

who related this story to Gifford, ended by observing that “it would be hard for mortals today, 

if Haininu had not killed the mother Wind. Only her offspring blow in the world today 

and the caves in the mountain passes are their homes. The killing of mother Rattlesnake by 

Haininu made life better for people today, for her descendants are not so powerful as she. The 

same is true of the she-Bear that he killed. Her posterity have never equaled her in strength.”2 

Native stories serve a number of purposes besides explaining how the world was made safe for 

present-day people. They preserve traditional knowledge of place by emphasizing the potency 

of the forces of water, wind, and fire and by describing the characteristics and powers of 

specific locations, plants, and animals. This story, in particular, also describes the traditional 

territory of the North Fork Mono people. While many of the places mentioned are identifiable 

today, the locations are not “mapped” in the same manner as modern boundaries; instead, 

they are established through a process of creation via movement through and interaction with 

the landscape and its various features and occupants. In this sense, the stories contribute to 

what environmental historian Jared Dahl Aldern calls “native sustainment,” referring to the 

“persistent, reciprocal support and nourishment among Nium [North Fork Mono] people, 

land, and water over time.”3 They illustrate a connection between the North Fork Mono and 

their traditional territory based not on “ownership” or “management” but on kinship, implying 

a relationship between people and land that is more interactive and mutually sustaining than 

controlling.4 In a contemporary political context, these stories function as claims to sovereignty 

and, as such, provide an important basis for collaboration between Indian peoples and the 

National Park Service in cultural and natural resource management at Devils Postpile. 

Archaeological Record 

Archaeological surveys of Devils Postpile and the surrounding area suggest that humans began 

crossing the Sierra crest west of present-day Mammoth Lakes as far back as 5,500 BC. Although 

periods of climatic warming may have made the area habitable at times, a combination of 

difficult access, high elevation, heavy snowpack, frequent volcanic activity, and territorial 

conflict meant that the Postpile region typically saw less human activity than areas to its east 

and west. In 1968, a San Francisco State College survey located a number of obsidian sites 

dating from between 3,000 BC and 500 AD along the banks of the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

within the monument. A 1993 study confirmed the source of the obsidian as the Casa Diablo 

geothermal area in Long Valley—one of the most significant sources of obsidian in the region 

and an important meeting point for groups engaged in trans-Sierra trade. The presence of 

obsidian in the Middle Fork Valley, combined with the paucity of evidence of long-term 

habitation in the area, suggests that the valley was probably used seasonally by groups on the 

west and east sides of the Sierra as part of a trade route to and from Casa Diablo, and likely 

as an occasional site for hunting and resource collection.5 The numerous bedrock mortars 

found along the western edge of the Long Valley suggest that eastside populations also likely 

acquired acorns via trans-Sierra trade.6 A more recent archaeological survey also noted basalt 

chips interspersed with the obsidian scatter in the monument. These chips appear to be from 

local sources and may have also constituted an important trade item.7 

Surveys throughout California have shown that the trans-Sierra obsidian trade dropped 

off markedly beginning around 500 AD. While it remains a topic of debate, a number 

of explanations have been given for this. Early researchers proposed that the production of 

obsidian tools at Casa Diablo may have slowed due to decreasing demand from “consumers” on 

the west side of the mountains who had recently acquired the bow and arrow, which required 

different materials and modes of construction. Archaeologists now dispute this, pointing to 

20 
Ethnohistorical Overview 

Obsidian point. From a 2006 Park Service archaeology site condition assessment report. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

a number of transregional environmental, economic, and sociocultural developments that 

were more likely to have affected obsidian trade. These include a change to a hotter and drier 

climate pattern in the west Sierra; an increase in volcanic activity in the Long Valley that may 

have blocked access to the Casa Diablo site; increasing societal complexity and territoriality 

among Long Valley inhabitants; and a population intrusion or replacement on the west side of 

the mountains that may have disrupted previous exchange networks between the two regions.8 

Ethnohistorical Overview 

The Sierra crest east of Devils Postpile is typically described as the boundary between the 

North Fork Mono to the west and the Northern Paiute to the east. Both groups are considered 

part of the Uto-Aztecan language group that extends across the Great Basin into parts of the 

Colorado Plateau, though their precise origins remain a subject of debate. Archaeologists in 

the mid-twentieth century suggested that a period of prolonged drought, possibly less than 

1,000 years ago, forced some Numic-speaking peoples to migrate to the base of the Sierra 

and, in some cases, over the crest of the range. Eastern and Western Sierra tribes contest this 

interpretation, arguing that the linguistic link between east-slope Paiutes and some west-slope 

tribes is not sufficient evidence that these groups are recent arrivals to the region. Instead, tribal 

histories suggest that contemporary tribes are descendants of the original inhabitants of the 

area. Archaeologists continue to debate the character and influence of Numic migrations in the 

western Great Basin. While some argue that Numic-speaking peoples have been widespread in 

the Great Basin for at least 10,000 years, others suggest that these populations expanded and 

contracted during various periods in response to social and environmental changes.9 

21 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

Monument at Casa Diablo. Note the geothermal plant in the background. (Photo: Christopher E. Johnson) 

While genetic connections are difficult to determine, archaeologists have documented cultural 

continuities between Pleistocene hunting societies and Northern Paiute populations. In a 

1963 survey of the Mono Lake and Long Valley areas, Emma Lou Davis found that successive 

waves of indigenous groups used the same sites in their seasonal transhumances, suggesting 

a common “Desert Culture complex” extending over a much broader spatial and temporal 

scale than earlier archaeologists had presumed.10 While the concept of a universal Desert 

Culture may not sufficiently account for the diversity of Great Basin lifeways, the idea of 

“cultural transmission”—referring to the passage of knowledge, technical skills, and practices 

from individual to individual and group to group—has gained currency in recent years. This 

concept suggests that historical migrations between regions did not preclude the transmission 

of cultural forms and environmental knowledge. In this interpretation, contemporary Great 

Basin peoples can be regarded as “culturally affiliated” with the region’s previous inhabitants 

without a clear genetic connection if continuity of cultural practices can be established.11 

The identity of the principal users of the Middle Fork Valley also remains open to debate. 

In their 1993 survey of the monument, Kathleen L. Hull and Mark R. Hale indicate that 

the Postpile region was most likely “utilized seasonally” by North Fork Mono groups from 

the west and Northern Paiutes from the Mono Lake Basin to the north, with Owens Valley 

Paiutes at times likely also using the Middle Fork Valley. Forest Service anthropologist Wallace 

B. Woolfenden has suggested that Long Valley, adjacent to Mammoth Pass, may have been 

“a separate district of the Owens Valley Paiute occupied by highly mobile groups of families” 

who sometimes crossed over Mammoth Pass to hunt, fish, and collect resources.12 

North Fork Mono 

Early twentieth-century ethnographies identified the North Fork Mono as part of a larger 

ethnographic group known as the Monache who inhabited the western slope of the Sierra 

22 
North Fork Mono 

North Fork Mono brush shelter with bedrock mortars. (Source: Gifford, 

“The Northfork Mono,” plate 3b) 

Nevada. At the time, North Fork Mono groups inhabited a number of small, seasonal 

settlements surrounding the North Fork of the San Joaquin, and on the north bank of the 

main stem San Joaquin from Fine Gold Creek to Hooker’s Cove. In 1932, anthropologist 

Edward Gifford noted sixty-seven separate “hamlets” in this area, none of which he considered 

large enough to constitute a principal village.13 The North Fork Mono were a highly mobile 

people who took advantage of foodstuffs and other resources available in different locations 

throughout the year. Through their seasonal transhumances, North Fork Mono families were 

typically able to collect enough resources to trade with the Miwok, Yokuts, other Monache 

tribes, and the Mono Basin and Owens Valley Paiute.14 

Early anthropologists cited the linguistic link between the North Fork Mono and Northern 

Paiutes as evidence that they arrived in the region in the relatively recent past. This “recent 

arrival” thesis structured early interpretations of North Fork Mono lifeways, presenting a 

picture of these tribes as impermanent and transient, and providing justification for later 

state and federal Indian-removal campaigns. For Gifford, the tribe’s peripatetic nature seemed 

more like “camping” than permanent habitation. This view was consistent with prominent 

anthropologist Alfred Kroeber’s claim that, unlike settled agricultural societies, hunting and 

gathering societies invariably depleted their resource base, requiring them to frequently move 

to new areas. By assuming that the North Fork Mono hunted, gathered, and burned the 

landscape indiscriminately, Gifford could explain the population dispersal he observed as the 

result of a relatively brief period of adaptation to a new environment. In his efforts to fit his 

observations into the recent arrival thesis, Gifford overlooked North Fork Mono methods of 

land tenure and failed to appreciate the diversity between family groups and their relationships 

to other tribes. The inter- and intratribal relationships existing at the time were probably far 

more complex and fluid than Gifford and others recognized.15 

The North Fork Mono did maintain connections with Eastern Sierra Paiutes, frequently using 

Mammoth Pass by way of the Middle Fork Valley as a trade route over the mountains. In 1932, 

Gifford recorded the names of nine camps used during these trade excursions. Although it is 

difficult to pinpoint precise locations since traders left few traces of their presence, Gifford’s 

descriptions are generally familiar. The fourth camp on the journey was called T ̈unanihoma 

and was located on the upper North Fork San Joaquin where the river “flows between two 

23 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

high mountains.” On the fifth night, traders camped on the plateau between the north and 

middle forks at a place called Haikooˆ wˆe, described as “a meadow with water.” Gifford identified 

the next camp as Dakwaunukwe, “a level place west of Mammoth Mountain, with a creek” 

that may correspond to Reds Meadow or Soda Springs Meadow. Other camps may have been 

located on a granite bench above King Creek and near the mouth of Fish Creek where a small 

number of bedrock mortars have been located. On the last ascent over the Sierra crest, traders 

camped at Anakwumakwˆe, a spring that Gifford described as “on the slope of Mammoth 

Mountain.” Once over the pass, trading parties remained until fall when “the pinenuts ripened 

on the neighboring mountains.” They typically returned west before the onset of winter, 

although Gifford indicated that small groups or individuals would sometimes remain with 

their eastside trade partners for a year or more.16 

Northern Paiutes 

The inhabitants of the region from Mono Lake south to the Owens Valley are typically 

categorized as Northern Paiutes, whose name refers to individual groups linked by common 

language and cultural practices that inhabited the Great Basin from present-day eastern 

California through northern Nevada to western Utah. The Northern Paiute were a seminomadic 

people, whose movements corresponded to the seasonal availability of the plants and animals 

necessary for their survival. The basic group was the nuclear family, sometimes supplemented 

by a few additional relatives, though larger groups also formed and disbanded at times to 

address particular cultural or resource needs.17 

Paiutes inhabiting the Owens Valley are usually considered a subgroup of the Northern Paiute 

distinguished by their larger, more permanent settlements along the Owens River and extensive 

use of irrigation. They nevertheless shared much in common with their northern neighbors: 

family groups were generally autonomous, and while early anthropologists observed that the 

valley may have been divided up into small landowning districts, there is little evidence of 

a strong organizational structure beyond communally agreed-upon hunting and resource 

collection rights.18 More recent studies have suggested that Paiute strategies for adapting to 

environmental and social changes occurred at the level of the individual or family rather than 

the organizational or group level. In the Owens Valley, this method of “self-directed culture 

change,” as anthropologist William H. Michael describes it, continued to characterize Paiute 

responses to change into the twentieth century.19 

Eastern Sierra Paiutes identified one another by the principal resource of their respective 

territories. For example, Mono Basin Paiutes were referred to as Kutzadika’a, or “larvae eaters” 

in reference to the brine flies they collected on the shores of the lake. Paiutes in the Walker 

Lake area were called Agai Ticutta, or “fish [or trout] eaters.” Owens Valley Paiutes reportedly 

referred to themselves as “water ditch coyote children” in reference to their construction of 

irrigation systems. Since most Paiute groups were highly mobile (with the exception of some 

Owens Valley cultivators), they were often identified by the direction of travel in their seasonal 

transhumances. For example, a Mono Basin Paiute traveling to the Owens Valley would be 

regarded as a “northerner.” The same label would be given to a northern Owens Valley resident 

traveling southward. Groups traveling to the Owens Valley or Mono Lake Basin from the east 

would be considered “easterners,” and so on. While dialects and customs differed between 

regions, Owens Valley and Mono Basin Paiutes, as well as their North Fork Mono trade 

partners, shared common language characteristics and could generally converse with each 

other.20 

24 
Northern Paiutes 

Acorn and seed baskets. (Source: Gifford, “The Northfork Mono,” plates 9a and b) 

Most studies of Paiute populations in the Eastern Sierra focus on the Owens Valley and the 

Mono Lake basin. Yet there are indications that the Long Valley adjacent to Mammoth Pass 

was also inhabited year-round, at least at times. In the 1930s, anthropologist Julian Steward 

noted a community residing near Hot Creek southeast of the present Mammoth Junction area. 

Other surveys found that inhabitants of the Long Valley made frequent trips over Mammoth 

Pass to fish along the San Joaquin. Some researchers have considered the Long Valley to be an 

extension of the Owens Valley Paiute territory, while others have noted that Mono Lake groups 

migrated to the area. The Long Valley was clearly important, as it contained valuable trade 

resources such as pinon nuts, Pandora moth larvae, and, especially, obsidian. Archaeologists  ̃

25 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

North Fork Mono woman pulverizing manzanita berries. (Source: Gifford, 

“The Northfork Mono,” plate 4b) 

Owens Valley Paiute Tule House. (Source: Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” 

plate 3c) 

have uncovered a significant concentration of bedrock mortar sites in the Long Valley and 

Casa Diablo areas.21 However, over time, the area’s cold winters and frequent volcanic activity 

probably resulted in significant demographic shifts.22 

Sierra Crossings 

Like other Indian peoples in California and the Great Basin, Eastern Sierra Paiutes depended 

heavily on trade, and their connections with tribes on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada were 

vital for obtaining foodstuffs and other resources. In addition to obsidian and salt, Paiutes also 

sent pinon  ̃ nuts, rabbit-skin blankets, tobacco balls, baskets, buckskins, and the dried larvae 

26 
Sierra Crossings 

of Pandora moths and Mono Lake brine flies westward over the crest of the Sierra. In return, 

they received clamshell beads, baskets, acorns, and the berries of manzanita, elder, and basket 

bush.23 

Trade was fundamental to the social life of these communities. North Fork Mono author 

Gaylen Lee describes these annual trans-Sierra trading excursions as a family affair: 

Grandma remembered traveling to sibiti Nim [Mono Lake Paiutes] to trade; she said it was 

a good time, visiting, feasting, and playing games. Whole families made the trek, walking 

or riding horseback for several days on any of the trails that cross the Sierras and camping 

along the way. Grandma said each woman carried a wono on her back, the large conicalshaped basket used for hauling loads, filled with acorns or salt grass to trade for the pinon  ̃

they would carry home.24 

North Fork Mono trade excursions took place in late summer or fall, “when daytime 

temperatures began to dip and nights were brisk, about when the family was gathering acorns.” 

After a messenger came over the mountains, parties would set out from the east announcing 

that it was time to meet with ancestors and friends among the Paiute. The groups would 

then meet somewhere near Mammoth Pass to socialize and trade. Some western traders would 

remain on the east side of the mountains to collect their own supplies of pinon nuts, which,  ̃

Lee’s grandfather recalled, “lay on sand waiting to be picked up.”25 

Exchange networks not only functioned to move food, tools, and other material resources but 

also served as conduits for ideas and social practices. Ethnographers have found that eastern 

and western tribe members occasionally intermarried. Western traders were often invited to 

fall dances and festivals in Bishop, Big Pine, and other population centers in the Owens Valley. 

Eastern shamans were also invited west to attend certain dances and ceremonies. Through 

these cross-mountain ties, the North Fork Mono introduced the Ghost Dance originated by 

Hawthorne Wodziwob of the Northern Paiute to the western slope of the Sierra in 1871. 

The ritual apparently caught on briefly in some communities but failed to last. Gaylen Lee’s 

grandmother recalled that “somebody came over from Bishop a long time ago. . . . He was 

teaching a new religion, but they [the North Fork Mono] didn’t take it.”26 

However, trans-Sierra connections may not have always been cordial. In his history of Inyo 

County, local journalist and booster William A. Chalfant related a conversation with an Owens 

Valley Paiute who told of an early nineteenth-century confrontation with a band of North 

Fork Mono. According to the account, a group came over the mountains from the west and 

attacked a Paiute hunting camp, “either killing or carrying off all the helpless occupants.” In 

response, Paiute messengers were sent throughout the region to recruit warriors to pursue the 

“marauders” over Mammoth Pass. The war party followed the pass trail to a “big river,” likely 

the Middle Fork San Joaquin, where lookouts located a secure camp. The next morning, the 

Paiutes ambushed the camp, wiping out “the murderous band.” Paiute warriors remained lying 

in wait in the area until the next day and when members of the “offending tribe” returned to 

collect their dead, they were “ambushed and likewise massacred” by the waiting warriors.27 

Chalfant’s account suggests that as a boundary zone, the Middle Fork Valley may have been 

a contested territory at times, which may have precluded more intensive use of the Postpile 

region that in turn may have affected wildlife populations and forest conditions. Chalfant’s 

story may also be an exaggeration, or if accurate, a consequence of the dislocation experienced 

by many east- and west-slope tribes in the postcontact era. Ethnographies of other Sierra 

tribes have shown that many high mountain areas were regarded as common hunting grounds. 

Historical accounts also contain few instances of extreme or long-lasting violence between 

western and eastern tribes in the Devils Postpile vicinity, although minor territorial disputes 

27 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

may have been common. This relatively peaceful relationship is not surprising considering 

the centrality of trans-Sierra trade to the social dynamics and resource base of the region as a 

whole.28 

Whether the valley served as more than a place to pass through is unclear. It was a harsh locale, 

particularly in winter, and far from the centers of habitation for both North Fork Mono and 

Paiutes. In the late 1920s, Julian Steward recorded the autobiography of an Owens Valley 

Paiute who, during a trade excursion over Mammoth Pass, encountered an “old woman who 

lived alone in the mountains, eating pinenuts and seeds.”29 While few would have resided 

there for long periods, people from the west and east frequented the area east of the Sierra crest 

near Mammoth Mountain during certain times of year, particularly in the fall when pinon  ̃

nuts were ripening. Some groups likely also entered the Middle Fork Valley to collect materials 

for basketry; to hunt deer, bighorn sheep, and other game; or to fish for trout. 

The ethnohistorical literature contains few specific descriptions of the Middle Fork Valley and 

even fewer indications of how the people might have regarded the Devils Postpile formation. 

North Fork Mono traders passing through the valley clearly had knowledge of the Postpile. 

Gaylen Lee’s grandfather explained that the vertical columns “used to be lumber, now rock.”30 

In 1922, a Los Angeles Times reporter recorded two stories he attributed to local Paiutes. The 

first suggested that during the time of creation a “big boss devil” imprisoned an evil spirit by 

driving it into the ground with the columns of the Postpile. The numerous hot springs in 

the area are the result of the spirit’s continuing struggle to escape. The second story indicated 

simply that “all mountains . . . rest on posts. Here one slipped off.”31 Although it is difficult 

to determine the authenticity of either story, the Honorable Ron W. Goode, current tribal 

chairman of the North Fork Mono tribe, considers the former story to be consistent with 

other traditional creation stories, and has incorporated it into his explanation of the cultural 

significance of the Devils Postpile area to tribes in the region.32 

Indian Use of Fire and Environmental Change 

North Fork Mono and Paiute groups probably manipulated the environment of the Middle 

Fork Valley to some degree. Whereas traditional ethnographic literature characterized California 

Indians as “diggers” who passively “collected” resources from the landscape, newer studies of 

Sierra ecosystems have shown that Indians often actively maintained environments that 

seemed wild and untouched to Euro-American eyes. Environmental anthropologists Thomas 

C. Blackburn and M. Kat Anderson have argued that so-called hunting and gathering societies 

in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere in California actually “domesticated” many environments, 

creating new ecosystems, such as black oak woodlands and dry montane meadows that 

were dependent on continuous, deliberate human intervention. This intervention came in 

many forms including sowing seeds, transplanting shrubs and small trees, diverting water for 

irrigation, pruning, weeding, erosion control, and collecting firewood.33 

The most common tool Indians employed in the Sierra Nevada was fire. Selective burning 

served a number of purposes. It encouraged the growth of certain desirable plant species, such 

as acorns and pinon nuts, by reducing pests and encouraging the growth of larger trees. Fire  ̃

also stimulated the growth of plants important to basket-making, allowing younger, straighter 

shoots to replace older, woodier, and less flexible plants. Most commonly, however, people 

set fires to control brush and reduce the threat of large, catastrophic fires that could endanger 

human life and devastate staple foodstuffs. Frequent burning by Native Americans may have 

also contributed to the open, park-like areas noted by early Euro-American travelers through 

28 
Indian Use of Fire and Environmental Change 

Owens Valley Paiute Jack Stewart 

demonstrating a fire drill. (Source: 

Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens 

Valley Paiute,” plate 3a) 

the Sierra Nevada. These open areas encouraged the growth of new grasses, which provided 

browse for wildlife and may have increased the water retention capacity of meadows.34 

Hunting parties also set fires to drive out game. Steward described this 

practice among the Owens Valley Paiute, writing that “men, stationed 100 

yards apart, hunted a large region, advancing with sage bark torches, 3 

inches in diameter, 3 feet long, firing brush and closing in to drive deer into 

a great circle, then shooting them down.”35 Paiute groups employed similar 

strategies in hunting bighorn sheep in the Sierra and White Mountains, 

as well as rabbits and grasshoppers in the desert areas east of the Sierra 

escarpment. Western Sierra tribes have also been credited with using fire as 

a tool in hunting. These hunts were conducted in the fall when the forest 

undergrowth and duff were most combustible and the high mountain 

meadows where deer grazed were most accessible.36 

Most studies of Indian burning in the Sierra Nevada have focused on 

the more populated, lower-elevation areas on the range’s western slope, 

though it remains difficult to identify precisely where and to what extent 

other types of landscapes were burned. However, there is evidence that 

intentional fires were set in many areas in the higher mountains as well 

as the inhabited lowlands, and the Devils Postpile region can potentially 

serve as an instructive site for investigating and interpreting the role of 

Native Americans in shaping these less intensively used landscapes. 

Presently, fire history studies of red fir and lodgepole pine forests, such as those in the Postpile 

vicinity, are few. These forests have been described as being among “the least altered from 

[their] ‘natural state”’ in comparison to other forests in the Sierra Nevada due to their relative 

inaccessibility for early Euro-American settlers.37 Yet Native people clearly frequented these 

areas, using them seasonally for a variety of purposes. Considering a precontact population of 

approximately 90,000 to 100,000 in the Sierra Nevada, and the extent in which these people 

burned or otherwise altered other areas, it is difficult to conclude that they left high mountain 

forests alone though, granted, it is also difficult to show conclusively what changes they might 

have made and why.38 

Fire history studies conducted in Devils Postpile after the 1992 Rainbow Fire provide 

a starting point for exploring the possibilities. Studies of similar locations in the Sierra 

Nevada have determined that prior to the 1800s, lodgepole pine forests burned relatively 

infrequently, roughly every 130 to 160 years. Red fir and Jeffrey pine forests burned more 

often, approximately every 30 to 60 years. Dendrochronological samples from both types of 

forests in Devils Postpile show a significantly more frequent pattern of burning for the period 

from the early 1700s to the late 1800s. During this time, fires affected red fir and Jeffrey pine 

forests every 5 to 25 years, and lodgepole pine forests every 15 to 30 years. This frequency— 

particularly in lodgepole pine forests—might be greater than can be accounted for by lightning 

alone, or by volcanic activity and climate change, especially considering the extent of the 

pumice covering the area, which tends to inhibit the growth of understory fuels. Tree-ring 

studies recently conducted further show that the frequency of fires diminished after the 1860s, 

and that no significant fires affected the area between roughly 1887 and 1992. This marked 

stoppage at the end of the nineteenth century was concurrent with the US government’s forced 

removal of Indian peoples, increased grazing, and the implementation of fire-suppression 

29 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

policies by federal land agencies. This century-long fire drought allowed substantial fuel to 

accumulate on the forest floor, which likely contributed the large size and intensity of the 1992 

Rainbow Fire. 39 

Occasional, intentional burning by Native Americans remains a probable explanation for the 

frequency of fires in this area before the late nineteenth century. Evidence of this practice can 

be found in the recollections of Native elders and other longtime residents of the area who 

carried the lessons of selective burning down from previous generations. Their oral histories 

indicate that fires may have been set in the Middle Fork Valley to clear paths for travel and to 

encourage the growth of certain plants and forage for wildlife. In a 1990 interview, North Fork 

rancher Betty Jamison recalled that Sierra trading parties would light fires nearly everywhere 

in the region from Soquel, Jackass, and Clover meadows near the North Fork San Joaquin all 

the way east to Reds Meadow. For Jamison, the benefits of burning were clear: 

Back then you had a forest you could ride through. [North Fork Mono trading parties] 

burned to clear the masses of little trees and duff which increased the grasses for forage for 

deer and other animals. It also cleaned up the area.... They lit the fires every year. No[w] 

there are fewer and fewer gooseberries and wild strawberries. We used to collect them up in 

the high country.40 

Francys Sherman, a North Fork Mono, also identified burning as a common practice for west 

slope trading parties during their return treks: 

The Indians used to burn for clearing the land in September or October. They would 

come from Lone Pine or Bishop, or Mono Lake coming back with pinyon nuts, wild 

rice, and shrimp out of Mono Lake. They would set the fires as they would leave their 

campgrounds.... They would burn from the bottom of the slope. They haven’t done this 

for so long, it’s a mess. You can hardly walk through the brush if you go hunting. Now you’re 

lucky if you see one deer all day long.41 

Sherman also described the potential hazards of resuming annual burning after more than a 

century of federally enforced fire suppression: “[North Fork Mono trading parties] set fires 

every year so it didn’t harm the trees. That way it would burn the grass. A lot of bushes would 

burn. Different areas were burned each year, where the grass is thick and high. If they did it 

now you wouldn’t have any trees. It’s like an eight inch carpet of leafmolds, pine needles and 

whatever.”42 

These recollections hint at the extent of the ecological changes set in motion by Indian 

burning. Even in the Middle Fork Valley, which was used for only brief periods each year, 

anthropogenic fire would have significantly reduced undergrowth and duff, particularly in the 

southern portion of the present-day monument where pumice does not predominate. It would 

have opened up the forest, encouraging the growth of new forage that in turn would have 

attracted deer and other wildlife. It is also possible that people deliberately extended some of 

the meadows in the area by setting fire to young lodgepole pines encroaching on meadows, 

or by harvesting willows along riverbanks. These wider, more open meadows would have 

provided spaces for camping, collecting plants, and hunting.43 

Indian peoples’ use of fire reflected a land ethic that placed humans within rather than outside 

the natural world. This ethic involved two interrelated components: a material component 

consisting of the plants, animals, and other resources necessary for survival; and a spiritual 

component based on the belief that all objects and living things in the material world were 

vested with spirits and contained certain powers demanding respect. Human souls were not 

fundamentally different from souls inhabiting other objects or entities, and indeed, both North 

30 
Notes 

Fork Mono and Paiute stories commonly describe humans transforming into animals and 

back again. Traditional stories also served (and continue to serve) as environmental lessons, 

highlighting the power of water, fire, wind, rocks, plants, and animals to either benefit or 

harm humans. With these stories as a guide, the people usually acted on the environment with 

discretion, engaging in rituals of request when hunting or collecting resources.44 

This worldview shaped the way Sierra tribes understood the potentialities and limitations 

of the environments they depended on. While they also acquired knowledge about the 

environment through direct experience over many generations, it is misleading to suggest 

that they merely “adapted” to the Sierra landscape. This view, as M. Kat Anderson explains, 

reinforces an artificial division between Native societies and the physical worlds they inhabited, 

and supposes a more static environment than that which actually existed. Anthropologists 

have often missed the biological contexts in which Native peoples’ histories unfolded by 

regarding the materials they collected from the environment as purely cultural artifacts.45 At 

the same time, biologists have often underestimated the extent in which Native people shaped 

environmental conditions. Sierra tribes deliberately altered the landscape to suit their needs, 

even as they also adjusted their lifeways to a dynamic, partially human-altered, environment. 

Native people did not simply “adapt” to the environment; rather, in many cases, they were 

instrumental in creating and maintaining the ecological conditions that Euro-American 

explorers and settlers encountered in the Sierra Nevada in the nineteenth century.46 

Notes 

1.	 This story is adapted from Honorable Ron W. Goode, “Making of the World,” attachment to Honorable 

Ron W. Goode to Ms. Magalie R. Salas, Secretary Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, April 22, 2008, 

courtesy Honorable Ron W. Goode. 

2.	 This version of the story is adapted from Jared Dahl Aldern, “Native Sustainment: The North Fork Mono 

Tribe’s Stories, History, and Teaching of Its Land and Water Tenure in 1918 and 2009” (PhD diss., Prescott 

College, 2010), 91–96. 

3.	 Ibid., iv. 

4.	 Ibid., 99. 

5.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 7–8, 46–47; and Robert L. Bettinger, Archaeology East of the 

Range of Light: Aboriginal Ecology of the Inyo-Mono Region, California (Davis: Foundation for the Publication 

of Monographs in California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1982), 54. 

6.	 Linda A. Reynolds, Long Valley Prehistory (Lee Vining, CA: Inyo National Forest, 1993), chap. 4. 

7.	 Eric Shaffer, The Devils Postpile National Monument Archaeological Site Assessment Report (Yosemite National 

Park, 2007), 6. 

8.	 Paul D. Bouey and Mark E. Basgall, “Trans-Sierran Exchange in Prehistoric California: The Concept 

of Economic Articulation,” in Obsidian Studies in the Great Basin, ed. Richard E. Hughes (Berkeley: 

Archaeological Research Facility, 1984), 145, 149; and Bettinger, Archaeology East of the Range of Light, 82–83. 

9.	 A concise review of the debate over the theory of Numic migration can be found in Reynolds, Long Valley 

Prehistory, chap. 4. 

10.	 Emma Lou Davis, “The Desert Culture of the Western Great Basin: A Lifeway of Seasonal Transhumance,” 

American Antiquity 2, no. 2 (October 1963): 202–12. 

11.	 For a good overview, see Peter Jones, Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the 

American West (Boulder: Bauu Institute, 2005). See also Robert L. Bettinger and Jelmer W. Eerkens, “Point 

Typologies, Cultural Transmission, and the Spread of Bow–and–Arrow Technology in the Prehistoric Great 

Basin,” American Antiquity 64 (199): 231–42; and Jelmer W. Eerkens and Carl P. Lipo, “Cultural Transmission 

Theory and the Archaeological Record: Providing Context to Understanding Variation and Temporal Changes 

in Material Culture and the Archaeological Record,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24 (2005): 316–34. 

31 
Chapter Two Sierra Crossings: Native Americans, Trade, and Environmental Change 

12.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 15; and Wallace B. Woolfenden, “Long Valley Pauite,” in 

Reynolds, Long Valley Prehistory, chap. 5. 

13.	 E. W. Gifford, “The Northfork Mono,” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and 

Ethnology 31, no. 2 (1932): 17, 21–23. 

14.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 16; and James T. Davis, “Trade Routes and Economic Exchange 

among the Indians of California” in Aboriginal California: Three Studies in Culture History, ed. Robert F. 

Heizer (Berkeley: University of California Archeological Research Facility, 1963), 13. 

15.	 This paragraph relies on Aldern, “Native Sustainment,” chap. 3. 

16.	 Gifford noted that during these trade excursions, the women would pound acorns “at the stopping places,” 

strongly suggesting that the bedrock mortar locations at King Creek and Fish Creek may have been camping 

sites. Gifford, “Northfork Mono,” 19. The final stop on the journey, which Gifford recorded as Saibatkiwe 

located “in Eastern Mono County,” may correspond to a village on Hot Creek named in a 1935 ethnography 

as “si-pa-qui-wa.” Reynolds, Long Valley Prehistory, chap. 5. 

17.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 18–20. 

18.	 Julian H. Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” in University of California Publications in 

American Archaeology and Ethnography 33, no. 3 (1933): 236. 

19.	 William H. Michael, “At the Plow and in the Harvest Field: Indian Conflict and Accommodation in the 

Owens Valley, 1860–1880” (master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1993), 12. 

20.	 Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” 235–37; and W. A. Chalfant, The Story of Inyo, rev. ed. 

(Bishop: Pinon Book S  ̃ tore, 1933), 42. 

21.	 Jefferson W. Haney, “Acorn Exploitation in the Eastern Sierra Nevada,” Journal of California and Great Basin 

Anthropology 14, no. 1 (1992): 94–109. 

22.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 15; and Woolfenden, “Long Valley Pauite.” 

23.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 18–20; and Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” 

257–58. 

24.	 Lee, Walking Where We Lived , 140. 

25.	 Ibid., 139, 140. 

26.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 16–17; Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” 

320–23; and Lee, Walking Where We Lived , 118. Wodziwob’s Ghost Dance ritual was a precursor to the later 

movement promulgated by Nevada Paiute Jack Wilson, or Wovoka, who preached that clean living and peace 

with whites would allow native people to reunite with loved ones and return to traditional ways of living in 

the next world. In the late 1880s, the Lakota of the northern Great Plains adopted a variation of Wovoka’s 

Ghost Dance after being confined to Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota. However, US Army posts in 

the region misinterpreted the ritual as a war dance. The resulting tensions culminated in the tragic massacre 

at Wounded Knee in 1890. For the origins of the Ghost Dance among the Northern Paiute, Wodziwob’s role, 

and the initial spread of the ghost dance in the 1870s, see Michael Hittman, “The 1870 Ghost Dance at the 

Walker River Reservation: A Reconstruction,” Ethnohistory 20, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 247–78. 

27.	 Chalfant, Story of Inyo, 46–47. 

28.	 Kat Anderson, Indian Fire-Based Management in the Sequoia-mixed Conifer Forests of the Central and Southern 

Sierra Nevada: Final Report Submitted to Yosemite Research Center, Yosemite National Park (Yosemite: Yosemite 

Research Center, 1993), 167; and Steward, “Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute,” 241, 306. Steward 

reported warfare as being uncommon among Owens Valley Paiute generally, “amounting only to rock 

throwing . . . during squabbles over food territory.” Territorial disputes did sometimes spill over to the west 

side of the Sierra crest. Chalfant reported that “one of the wars between Indians east of the Sierras and those 

on the western slope” broke out when a group of Paiutes traveled west in an attempt to gain direct access to 

the “worm orchards” where west slope tribes collected the larvae of the Pandora moth (Story of Inyo, 83). 

29.	 Julian Steward, “Two Paiute Autobiographies,” University of California Publications in American Archaeology 

and Ethnology 33, no. 5 (1934): 431. 

30.	 Lee, Walking Where We Lived , 140. 

31.	 John L. Von Blom, “Paradox of the Mysterious Devil,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1922. 

32 
Notes 

32.	 Goode interview. 

33.	 Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson, “Introduction: Managing the Domesticated Environment,” in 

Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians, ed. Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat 

Anderson (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1993), 17–19. 

34.	 Kat Anderson, “Tending the Wilderness,” Restoration and Management Notes 14, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 160–61. 

35.	 Steward, “Ethnography of Owens Valley Paiute,” 253. 

36.	 For the use of fire for hunting among the Yosemite Miwok see James M. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras 

(Oakland: Pacific Press Publishing House, 1888), 429–30. For other west slope tribes see Anderson, Indian 

Fire-Based Management, 98–99. 

37.	 Robert J. Laacke and John C. Tappeiner, “Red Fir Ecology and Management,” in Sierra Nevada Ecosystem 

Project: Final Report to Congress, vol. 3 (Davis: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland 

Resources, 1996), 2. 

38.	 Kat Anderson and Michael J. Moratto, “Native American Land-Use Practices and Ecological Imprints,” in 

Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, vol. 2 (Davis: University of California, Centers for 

Water and Wildland Resources, 1996), 187–89, 191. 

39.	 E-mail correspondence with Tony Caprio, Thursday, April 1, 2010; Caprio and Webster, National Park Service 

Fire Ecology Report 2006 , 21; and Caprio and Webster, Fire Effects, 1–3. 

40.	 Anderson, Indian Fire-Based Management, 299. 

41.	 Ibid., 295. 

42.	 Ibid. For a similar account, see Lee’s description of burning practices among the North Fork Mono in Walking 

Where We Lived , 144–46. The 1992 Rainbow Fire, which burned deep into the soil, killing many trees 

and preventing the restoration of vegetation over a large area over the southern portion of the monument, 

confirmed the wisdom of Sherman’s observations. 

43.	 Anderson, Indian Fire-Based Management, 97, 100. 

44.	 Beesley, Crow’s Range, 22–24; Robert F. Heizer, “Natural Forces and the Native World View,” in Handbook of 

North American Indians, Vol. 8, California, ed. Robert F. Heizer (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 

1978), 649–53; and Goode,interview. 

45.	 Anderson, Indian Fire-Based Management, xx. 

46.	 Beesley, Crow’s Range, 31. 

33 

Chapter Three 

Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction 

in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

I

nitial Euro-American forays into the Sierra Nevada occurred in the context of three imperial 

transitions. From the late 1700s through the mid-1800s, Spanish colonizers and Mexican 

settlers altered the land-use patterns of Sierra tribes through trade, introduction of foreign 

diseases, and displacement of other Native populations. During the period of imperial rivalry 

beginning in the 1820s, American explorers crossed the Sierra Nevada to secure control of 

the far West and its resources for the expanding nation. In the period of American territorial 

expansion between the 1840s and 1890s, miners, loggers, and sheep and cattle herders pushed 

deeper into the Sierra Nevada in search of extractable resources. These encroachments were 

made possible by the displacement of Native inhabitants—first by local and state militias, then 

by the US Army. The drive to exploit the material wealth of the Sierra region linked these 

transitions, and shaped the early history of the Devils Postpile area. 

The Spanish and Mexican Periods, 1700s–1848 

In 1806, Spanish Lt. Gabriel Moraga and his company of fifteen men made the first documented 

entry by non-Indians into the Sierra Nevada. The expedition was initially undertaken to capture 

and punish Indian horse thieves. In the process, Moraga and his men became the first known 

Europeans to explore the mountain region between the San Joaquin and Merced Rivers. The 

party did not penetrate the mountains beyond the site of present-day Millerton Lake, yet 

came far enough to recognize how formidable a barrier the Sierra posed for future expeditions 

eastward.1 

During the expedition, Moraga’s party encountered a band of North Fork Mono who told 

them that several years before, another group of Spaniards had come from the east side of the 

mountains and killed some members of the tribe. Beginning in the late 1700s, several Spanish 

expeditions had set out from New Mexico to establish trade routes across the Great Basin to 

California. However, there is no evidence that any of these expeditions made it as far as the 

east side of the Sierra before Moraga’s time. Also, though no record exists, an earlier group of 

Spanish explorers may have come upon the camp from the south, only appearing to come from 

over the Sierra crest. In any case, the incident suggests that despite having very little direct 

contact with the Spanish, Sierra tribes were aware of their presence and had already begun 

consider how to respond to the new social dynamics.2 

Sierra tribes were able to escape the worst deprivations experienced by the mission Indians to 

the west, yet they were not protected from the disease outbreaks that spread outward from the 

points of contact. By the early nineteenth century, smallpox, measles, influenza, scarlet fever, 

and other foreign diseases to which Native people had no immunities reduced the indigenous 

population of California by nearly half. Mountain tribes were not as hard hit by the epidemics 

themselves, but the fear of contagion combined with periodic outbreaks of violence between 

Sierra tribes and displaced valley tribes disrupted patterns of migration and resource use 

throughout the range. In the Yosemite region, a band of Ahwahnechee is believed to have fled 

the Valley in advance of an epidemic to take refuge with their Paiute allies to the east. Chief 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Tenaya—probably a mixed Ahwahnechee and Paiute born in the Mono Lake area—later led 

a group of Indians back to the Yosemite Valley where they were joined by displaced members 

of Miwok, Monache, and Central Valley tribes. In the 1840s, Tenaya’s patchwork alliance 

undertook frequent raids from Yosemite against enemy tribes and encroaching settlers in the 

foothills.3 

Disease was only one of many European imports affecting Native populations and land-use 

patterns in the Sierra. Spanish, Mexican, and early American colonists also introduced new 

foods, new trade goods, and new technologies, including guns and metal tools. But the most 

significant of these imports was undoubtedly the horse, which provided not only transportation 

but also trade leverage and, at times, a source of food. With horses and guns, Indians were able 

to push back against valley and foothill settlers, often by sweeping down out of the mountains 

to steal horses and cattle, raid settlements for supplies, or assist refugees from the missions. 

These new practices also influenced Native use of the high mountain areas to the east including 

the Devils Postpile region. Through trading and raiding, the North Fork Mono and other west 

slope tribes may have become less dependent on their seasonal transhumances for hunting 

and resource collection, which may have caused them to alter their traditional patterns of 

travel along the Mammoth Pass trail. Population decline due to disease and warfare also likely 

affected Native uses of the Postpile region, though this does not necessarily mean they used 

the area less frequently. Horses allowed west slope groups to travel farther and faster while 

carrying more goods, and trade excursions may have actually increased in number as a result. 

With the greater mobility afforded by horses, North Fork Mono groups may have also made 

frequent informal treks over the mountains at different times during the year, with remote 

high mountain areas like the Middle Fork Valley also serving as sanctuaries from retaliation by 

settlers or enemy tribes.4 

American Exploration, 1826–1848 

As early as the 1820s, American explorers and fur trappers were looking for ways to penetrate 

the Sierra front into Mexican California. In 1826, famed mountain man Jedediah Smith made 

the first Euro-American crossing of the range near Ebbetts Pass by way of the Stanislaus River. 

In 1833, Joseph Walker and his seventy-man party, searching for a route to the Pacific from 

the Great Salt Lake, crossed the Sierra from east to west through the Yosemite. Members of 

Walker’s party are usually credited with being the first non-Indians to view the Yosemite Valley 

and the Giant Sequoia trees. In the mid-1840s, John C. Fremont  ́ ’s party extended surveys of 

the western and eastern flanks of the Sierra and through his wanderings, Fremont  ́ mapped 

many of the easiest passages through the mountains, preparing the way for future American 

settlement of the region.5 

The Sierra Nevada presented a formidable barrier for these early explorers and most, whether 

guided or not, ended up following preexisting trade routes. This commonly resulted in 

encounters with Indian traders. While hunting along the Mono Trail north of Yosemite Valley, 

members of Walker’s party came across an Indian trader traveling east toward the crest. Faced 

with armed white hunters, the man dropped his basket of acorns and fled. The acorns, as the 

diarist of the expedition Zenas Leonard recorded, “caused no little rejoicing in our camp, not 

only on account of their value as food, but because they gave us the gratifying evidence that 

a country mild and salubrious enough to produce acorns was not far distant.”6 Prior to this, 

Walker and his men had struggled through the maze of granite gorges north of the Tuolumne 

River where they encountered impassable cliffs, deep snowdrifts, and a lack of food that forced 

them to butcher a number of horses. Coming upon the Mono Trail proved to be the key to 

36 
Early American Settlement and Indian Removal, 1848–1864 

John C. Fremont  ́ party crossing the Sierra Nevada in 1843. (Source: Fremont,  ́ Narrative of the Exploring

Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years

1843–44, 235) 

completing the passage over the mountains. Walker learned his lesson from this first crossing, 

and after inquiring among Native people on the western slope, chose to return via a far easier 

trade route to the south. The return trip took only four days over what would later be named 

Walker Pass. John C. Fremont,  ́ during his expeditions, also followed the most commonly used 

Native pathways.7 

Although Walker, Fremont,  ́ and others succeeded in breaching the Sierra escarpment, the 

highest elevations of the Central Sierra and the less commonly used Native trade routes, 

including the Mammoth Pass trail, remained unexplored through the early period of American 

expansion. Eventually, however, the penetration of Americans into the Sierra Nevada had 

reverberations far beyond the ground the first explorers traveled. By the 1850s, Native people 

were being forced out of their traditional homelands and a new land-use pattern based on the 

commercial exploitation of resources was taking hold in the Sierra, with significant implications 

for the entire region, including the little-used Postpile area. 

Early American Settlement and Indian Removal, 1848–1864 

The first American immigrants to California viewed the Sierra front as an obstacle to cross 

en route to the fertile farmlands of the Central Valley beyond. The 1848 discovery of gold at 

Sutter’s Mill changed that, prompting a surge of interest in the Sierra Nevada itself as a source 

of potential riches. During the Mexican era, fear of Indian raids hindered expansion into 

the Sierra Nevada proper. The acquisition of California by the United States after the 1848 

Mexican American War and the increased presence of the US military in that period aided the 

rapid settlement of the region during the Gold Rush. 

Although a few intrepid prospectors may have wandered upriver into the Middle Fork Valley 

during the early Gold Rush, development of the Devils Postpile area for mining and other 

commercial purposes remained slow through the mid-nineteenth century due to its remoteness 

and the fact that Native people continued to occupy most high elevation areas. The forced 

37 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Map of the expeditions of the Mariposa Battalion during 1851. (Source: Eccleston, The Mariposa Indian War,

1850–1851) 

removal of the remaining Indians to make way for settlement and resource development 

unfolded as a multistage process with far-reaching social and ecological consequences. What 

began as a series of engagements between militia groups and raiding bands eventually expanded 

into a coordinated effort on the part of an expansionist federal government to forcibly remove 

Sierra tribes. 

Before the Gold Rush, the few American settlers in the region maintained a tenuous tradebased peace with local Indians. This fragile relationship deteriorated after 1848 as prospectors 

pushed farther into the mountains, threatening Native security and resources. Mining activity 

intensified along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada until 1850 when Indians suspected 

to be from the Yosemite region attacked a trading post at Fresno Crossing owned by James 

Savage, killing his employees. While this attack temporarily halted deeper probes into the 

Sierra, by this time, settlers had the population numbers and military capabilities to respond 

to Indian aggression. In January 1851, Mariposa County sheriff James Burney organized a 

force of seventy-four volunteers for a retaliatory campaign that ended with an inconclusive 

skirmish in Crane Valley (now Bass Lake). Because of additional Indian raids in the area and 

along the Kaweah River, California governor John McDougal authorized the formation of 

a larger armed unit, known as the Mariposa Battalion and in March that year, the battalion 

tracked Indian raiders up the Merced River canyon, becoming the first non-Indians to enter 

the Yosemite Valley.8 

38 
Early American Settlement and Indian Removal, 1848–1864 

During spring 1851, the battalion made three forays into the high mountains beyond the 

valley in an attempt to capture the local Native population and remove them to a reservation. 

The battalion passed through the country to west and southwest of Devils Postpile on two of 

these occasions, and both times, the Indians used their knowledge of the area to elude their 

pursuers, confusing them with signal fires and false trails. The battalion was also ill equipped 

to follow the Indians over the rugged, disorienting terrain. During the first campaign, a patrol 

followed a small band up the North Fork San Joaquin. In his account, Lafayette H. Bunnell 

described spotting an Indian trail ascending the opposite bank, but while attempting to cross 

the swollen river, his mule lost its footing, causing them both to be swept downstream toward 

a waterfall. Bunnell was able to rescue himself and the mule, which according to his account 

he managed to secure “with her hind legs projecting over the falls.” Meanwhile, the Indians 

vanished without a trace, likely by following the Mammoth Pass trail into the Middle Fork 

Valley and perhaps over the Sierra crest to take refuge with their Paiute allies.9 

During the second campaign, the battalion again tracked a band of Indians up the North Fork 

San Joaquin. But rather than crossing the river and turning southwest along the trail toward 

Mammoth Pass where the main group of Indians had probably fled, the patrol continued 

to the north, ending up high on the crest of the precipitous divide at the headwaters of the 

North Fork San Joaquin. The militiamen were bewildered by the landscape they encountered 

en route. Patrolman Robert Eccleston described the scenery along the upper San Joaquin 

as “magnificently wild. Whole mountains of solid rock are not unfrequent [sic] and many 

beautiful pictures of tremendous waterfall’s [sic] on stone by the Oldest Master, enliven the 

stream.” Although at times the men could look up to admire the “loftiest peaks of the Sierra 

Nevada,” for the most part, their attention remained fixed on the rough terrain, the scarcity of 

forage at higher elevations, and the Indians who from time to time appeared on the ridgelines 

to taunt them from just out of rifle range. As in the previous campaign, the battalion quickly 

realized the futility of their chase and retreated downriver without capturing a single Indian.10 

In 1852, the US Army established Camp Barbour and Fort Miller on 

the San Joaquin River to better protect the area’s miners and settlers. 

The more active role taken by federal troops in the subjugation and 

dispossession of Sierra tribes in this period reflected a broader policy 

shift toward removal that began in the 1830s with President Andrew 

Jackson’s forced march of members of the Cherokee and the other 

so-called Five Civilized Tribes from Georgia. In this era of federally 

initiated territorial expansion, US officials no longer sought to protect 

Native land claims from the intrusions of settlers. Instead, federal 

policies usually encouraged the displacement of Native people from 

lands with resource potential. Yet while the federal government acted 

as the catalyst for the settlement of the West in this period, its powers 

remained limited. The policy of removing Sierra tribes to prevent 

conflict with settlers was indicative of the government’s inability to fully 

control the actions of settlers in the far West.11 

California Indians suffered disproportionately from this change. In 

the early Gold Rush, resource depletion coupled with settler violence 

resulted in the deaths of as many as 100,000 Indians—nearly two-thirds 

of the population of the entire state. Over the next two decades, the California government 

sanctioned what amounted to genocide of the remaining indigenous population. In 1850, 

the state passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which permitted 

the enslavement of Indian children. Although the act required parental consent, at the time, 

Robert Eccleston, 1830-1911. (Source: Eccleston, 

The Mariposa Indian War, 1850–1851, 

frontispiece) 

39 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Indians could not testify in court and so had no opportunity to resist. In 1852, the state 

provided over a million dollars to local militia groups to root out and kill Native inhabitants, 

and in 1856, the state government began paying a bounty for Indian scalps. Californians 

were also reluctant to grant any land to Indians and frequently complained that the federal 

government’s Indian reservation system would remove too much productive land. In response, 

Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent Edward Fitzgerald Beale suggested a system of military 

posts for temporarily holding Indians. These reserves were too small to accommodate all the 

displaced people and during the brief time they existed, functioned as de facto concentration 

camps where Indians were forced to bear “discipline and instruction” administered by federal 

troops.12 

The increased presence of the US Army in the Sierra Nevada, coupled with violent competition 

with settlers and militia groups over land and natural resources, sparked some resistance. By 

the early 1860s, Anglo-American settlement in the Owens Valley had depleted much of the 

local Paiute’s resource base. The harsh winter of 1861 and 1862 exacerbated the problem, 

forcing some Paiutes to supplement their diminished food supply with horses and cattle from 

non-Indian area ranches. To punish the tribe for their actions, a volunteer militia formed 

in 1862, and soon after, federal troops were dispatched to the region to protect settlers and 

their land claims. Over the next two years, Indians engaged local militia and Army troops in 

a number of battles, resulting in significant casualties for both sides. Paiute bands frequently 

retreated into the high mountains—including to the Devils Postpile area—to regroup and 

stage assaults on army and militia posts. Although these tactics proved effective, by 1864, US 

troops had captured or killed the leaders of rebel bands and removed most of the local Paiutes 

to the military post at Fort Tejon.13 

By this time, most Indians who survived confrontations with state and local militias and 

American troops had been similarly forced onto temporary reserves where they continued to 

be harassed by land-hungry settlers. Others, as in the case of the few Paiutes remaining in the 

Owens Valley, engaged in wage labor in mining, timber, or agricultural operations. Despite 

the abhorrent loss of land, life, and lifeways Indian people in California suffered during this 

period, those who survived continued to find ways to resist or adapt to their new existence 

alongside and within white American society. As historian Albert Hurtado has shown, many 

did so within traditional frameworks of responding to change, and so managed to retain their 

identities and much of their traditional knowledge base.14 

Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

Frequent Army patrols and diminishing Native resistance in the mid-nineteenth century 

allowed for further explorations of the range. In 1852, Lieutenant Tredwell Moore set out from 

Fort Miller on another expedition against Chief Tenaya and his band of Yosemite Indians. 

Moore’s detachment lost track of their quarry after chasing them over the Sierra crest toward 

Mono Lake; but in taking the opportunity to explore the area, they discovered deposits of 

gold-bearing quartz. This find provided the spark for the settlement of the east side of the 

Sierra and the eventual development of mining operations in the Devils Postpile area.15 

In 1852, after hearing of Moore’s discovery, Leroy Vining and a small group of prospectors 

immediately set out for the Mono Basin, where Vining established a homestead along the creek 

that now bears his name. Gold strikes north of Mono Lake in 1857 and 1859 led some miners 

to found the settlements of Dogtown, Monoville, and Bodie, while other hopefuls explored 

canyons and streams throughout the Eastern Sierra. 

40 
Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

During the first years of the Gold Rush, California’s mild climate, abundant wood and water, 

and rich placer deposits allowed most early arrivals the chance to strike it rich. The initial 

period of easy money, though, was short lived. The most accessible placer deposits were 

stripped clean by the mid-1850s, and the search for gold increasingly required more capitaland technology-intensive methods. In the western foothills, hydraulic mining, which involved 

washing down entire hillsides using high-pressure hoses, came to predominate by the late 

1850s. While profitable, this method required enormous capital investment and led to severe 

environmental impacts.16 In the high mountains and along the Eastern Sierra front where 

hydraulic mining was impractical, miners blasted into the hard rock in search of gold-infused 

quartz veins. 

Even by the late 1850s, the industry’s prospects looked grim, especially for independent miners. 

Journalist Horace Greely, in an account of his 1859 tour of California, contrasted hard-rock 

mining to the comparatively easy placer mining of years prior: 

When the miner is brought face to face with the rough granite, which he must drill, and 

blast, and tunnel for all the gold he gets, the case is bravely altered. He may make money here; 

he sometimes does; but I am sure that, up to this hour, not one quartz-mining enterprize 

in every four has paid its bare expenses; and, though there will be brilliant exceptions, I am 

confident that quartz-mining, as a whole, will not pay for many years to come.... And, 

until it shall be, I must consider quartz-mining, with labor at the present rates, the poorest 

business now prosecuted in California.17 

For Greeley, mining in California had been “reduced to a business, and one, at best, no better, 

in the average, than other business.” “Gold-digging,” he added, was better left “to those who 

understand it.”18 

Dreams of striking it rich persisted in the Eastern Sierra. Miners’ hopes were fueled by stories 

of untapped veins hidden in this still little-explored region that one settler described in 1860 as 

“a strange country where one is impressed with the idea that he has come too soon... [where] 

all nature wears a primitive aspect... [and where] all, except a few valleys and mountain 

meadows, is a wilderness, silent and vacant, over which the mirage dances, and the sandstorm 

sweeps.”19 It is perhaps no surprise that such a mysterious landscape would inspire the legend 

of the Lost Cement Mine, supposedly a vein of pure gold nuggets within a volcanic matrix 

found somewhere along the Sierra crest near the headwaters of the Owens River. Its fame was 

such that Mark Twain made it the subject of an entire chapter in his Western classic, Roughing 

20 It. 

Prospectors rushed to the Eastern Sierra and the Mammoth region in search of the Lost 

Cement Mine during this period, prompting San Francisco journalist James A. Wright to 

record the saga of these “cement hunters” after visiting the area in 1879. According to Wright, 

in 1861 a Dr. Randall of San Francisco set up camp at Pumice Flat where he claimed to have 

found the gold-producing shelf of “reddish cement.” Prospectors swarmed over the area during 

summer 1862, but after finding nothing worth the exercise of developing the isolated valley 

declared Randall the perpetrator of a hoax. Wright also indicated that during this period as 

many as seven miners were killed by rebel Paiutes who were rumored to be using the valley as a 

stronghold, although many of the deaths may have been the result of disputes between miners. 

Despite this, hopeful cement hunters continued to comb the area each summer.21 

Wright’s source for what happened next was a secondhand account of a deathbed confession 

by a San Francisco man who claimed knowledge of a gold-producing shelf of red cement north 

of Mammoth Pass. The man claimed to have been led to the site by a Mr. Kent who had prior 

knowledge of the area. To disguise their intent, the men asked the Indian guide leading them 

41 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

over the trail from North Fork to leave them at the Middle Fork San Joaquin from which they 

would find their own way over Mammoth Pass. After their guide left, the men headed north 

up the valley where they set up base camp at a secluded lake on the slope beneath Mammoth 

Mountain. Over the next several years, the pair extracted some $350,000 to $400,000 in 

gold from a volcanic shelf located above the camp. At one point, in Wright’s telling, Kent 

even brought his entire family to the valley where they spent an idyllic summer floating 

pumice stones down the river and fishing below Rainbow Falls. In 1877, in anticipation of 

being overrun by prospectors drawn to recent finds in the Mammoth Lakes basin, the pair 

abandoned their diggings, destroying all evidence of their presence including the lakeside 

cabin.22 

While much of Wright’s reportage can be discounted as mining lore, stories like these sparked 

the imagination of prospectors throughout the country, leading to a series of new mining 

operations up and down the Middle Fork Valley. The area was not without potential. In 1877, 

a group of prospectors, including Inyo county journalist James Parker, discovered gold- and 

silver-bearing quartz formations farther east in the Mammoth Lakes basin. The miners who 

rushed to the area settled the towns of Mammoth City, Pine City, and Monumental, while 

forming the Mammoth Lakes Mining District and the Mammoth Mining Company in 1879. 

Additional mines were developed high up the headwaters of the Middle Fork San Joaquin in 

the Lake Ediza and Minarets areas. These mines, included in the North Fork Mining District 

in 1878, were supported by a blockhouse at Agnew Meadow that survived until at least 1912. 

Agnew Meadow itself drew its name from Theodore Agnew, a miner who settled there in 1877 

and attempted, without success, to gain a patent for the land.23 

The Mammoth gold rush inspired several groups of investors to propose building toll roads 

to cross the Sierra crest from the Fresno or Madera areas, with one ambitious group even 

proposing a railroad over Mammoth Pass to serve the Minaret Mine located six miles west 

of Devils Postpile. While several groups made proposals, including the Crane Valley and 

Mammoth Wagon Road Company and the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company, only the 

operation headed by John S. French succeeded, in part because wherever possible he pieced 

together segments of existing roads and trails. The route he eventually built roughly followed 

the Mammoth Pass trail that Indian traders had used for millennia. 

The route, referred to as the French Trail, ran from Fresno Flats—now Oakhurst—through 

Soquel Meadow, Cold Spring Summit, Beasore Meadow, Jackass Meadow, Sheeps Crossing, 

King Creek, Reds Meadow, and Mammoth Pass before reaching Mammoth City. Out of a total 

distance of 54 miles, the 30-mile stretch over the foot of the Ritter Range and up to Mammoth 

Pass was a rugged trail suitable for pack trains and livestock drivers rather than wheeled 

transport. The rough, winding route required endurance on the part of paying travelers who 

apparently often arrived saddle sore. On July 30, 1880, the Mammoth City Herald reported 

on the condition of one Charlie Radcliffe who had arrived from San Francisco the day before: 

“Today Mr. Radcliffe is knocking about, but it is manifest that he has a tender regard for the 

seat of his trowsers.”24 

Construction of the French Trail took place during 1879 and 1880, with completion coming 

just one year before most of the Mammoth mines ceased operation. Despite its brief existence, 

the toll route served as an important early link between the Eastern Sierra and the Central 

Valley, remaining in use by Forest Service crews, sheepherders, and the North Fork Mono until 

the 1930s.25 

It was during the construction of the trail that the first known description of the Postpile 

formation appeared in print. The October 1, 1879, edition of the Fresno Weekly Expositor 

42 
Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

Devils Postpile cabin in 1934. (From Yosemite engineer Theodore Cronyn’s boundary survey, Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

noted that “a strange formation was found by the party looking out the line for the road to 

Mammoth City. It is a mountain of stone columns. They are dark-colored, close-grained stone, 

and are in shape three, four, five and six cornered, and some of them are as much as two feet in 

diameter and eighty feet in length. They are regular in shape as if they had been made by the 

hand of man.”26 Perhaps because it held no mineral potential, the formation failed to hold the 

attention of miners in the area, and no other descriptions of the Postpile are known to have 

made it into print during the initial mining boom. 

A few enterprising individuals settled near Devils Postpile in hopes of profiting from the 

infusion of miners in the area. In 1879, an imposing, red-bearded man known as “Red” 

Sotcher began grazing sheep in Potts Meadow southeast of the Postpile. He quickly discovered 

that it was more profitable to use the meadow—soon known as Reds Meadow—as a market 

garden supplying vegetables to the Mammoth Lakes mining district. A 1954 account of Devils 

Postpile’s history written by Ranger Naturalist Richard J. Hartesveldt noted that Sotcher was 

regarded with some trepidation by people in the area, and was rumored to be supplementing 

his farming income with a trans-Sierra horse- and cattle-rustling operation. In addition to the 

meadow, Sotcher gave his name to Sotcher Lake—misspelled “Satcher” in some records and 

maps—as well as Reds Lake and Reds Creek.27 

Some accounts credit Sotcher with building a cabin on the eastern bank of the Middle Fork, 

adjacent to the Postpile talus, while others suggest it could have dated from the first decade of 

the twentieth century. Forest Service ranger Douglas Robinson reported the cabin as appearing 

“quite new” in 1909 when it was occupied by a man named Moore. Moore was conspicuous 

for his high-quality English tweeds, and was apparently supervising men working at his mining 

claim somewhere west of the Postpile. Moore may have also been an employer of Joe Ivanhoe, 

otherwise known as “Postpile Joe”—a one-armed packer and trapper renowned for his casual 

relationship with the truth.28 

43 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Overhead shot of the Postpile cabin. (From a 1936 NPS inspection report, Devils Postpile National Monument 

image collection) 

1939 photo of the Postpile cabin showing its proximity to the Postpile formation. (Photo: Lester Craig. 

Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

Ivanhoe was clearly present in March 1929 when stream gauger Orland Bartholomew sought 

shelter in the cabin during his epic solo ski trek along the backbone of the High Sierra. As 

Bartholomew approached the cabin through an “eerie fog,” he was at first surprised to find 

Ivanhoe and another man living there with several dogs, then dismayed when he discovered 

that they had helped themselves to his food cache. The men, who had come to the cabin to 

44 
Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

Mammoth City resident Tex Cushions’s team of sled dogs across the river from the Postpile in winter. (Devils 

Postpile National Monument image collection) 

set up a marten farm, had not heeded Bartholomew’s note on the cache indicating that his 

life may depend on its contents. They were embarrassed as a result and offered to return to 

Mammoth for replacement provisions. That evening, two dog-sled teams led by Mammoth 

City resident Tex Cushions arrived at the cabin en route to the Minaret Mine. From Cushions 

and Ivanhoe (who returned the next day with a few meager provisions), Bartholomew was able 

to assemble enough supplies to ski the final stretch to Yosemite.29 

In a 1962 letter to William Jones of the Yosemite Natural History Museum, Cushions 

provided additional background into the history of the cabin. He believed that Ivanhoe had 

not arrived until 1928. At that time, with the assistance of Tommy Bilkheimer (probably 

the other man Bartholomew encountered), Ivanhoe had “renovated and repaired the cabin 

into a most comfortable house including a stove built over in front of the fire place to bake 

their bread and roast their meat.” They also installed a sundial on a nearby stump. Cushions 

noted that Ivanhoe “had but one arm and only three fingers on the other hand but was most 

capable and efficient in any type of endeavor.” He also confirmed rumors about Ivanhoe’s 

untrustworthiness. “To quote him as a boisterous liar is a great understatement,” he said. 

Cushions was also disappointed by the dilapidated state of the cabin in 1962. “It does seem 

that an historical building that has harboured so many interesting characters and played so 

important a part in the settlement of the San Joaquin river valley, should at least be restored 

and maintained as a tourist attraction or a patrolman’s station,” he wrote.30 

The Middle Fork Valley saw sporadic mining development between the 1890s and the 1930s. 

In 1892, mineralogist E. B. Preston toured the North Fork Mining District and prepared 

a report on its general character and mineral prospects. At the time, the area was closed to 

mining activity as part of Yosemite National Park. Preston’s principal informant appears to 

have been Theodore Agnew, the self-proclaimed recorder for the district and the sole resident 

45 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Miners on the summit of Iron Mountain west of Devils Postpile. (Source: Watts, 

“Fresno County,” 214) 

Sketch of the Postpile formation from an 1892 State Mineralogist report on the North Fork Mining District. 

(Source: Preston, 220) 

of the area at the time. The tour itself was likely motivated by pressure from Agnew and other 

mining interests to have the area removed from the park, and during his inspection, Preston 

identified “forty-seven bona fide locations” where mining activity had taken place prior to 

1890. The richest prospects were in the vicinities of Iron Mountain, Minaret Creek, and Lake 

Ediza (identified as “Little Shadow Lake”). The primary impediment to mining development 

was the area’s difficult access. “The whole region is well timbered and watered,” he wrote, “but 

sadly deficient in roads.”31 

Preston was also fascinated by the Postpile formation, describing it as “one of the most 

remarkable basaltic columnar formations in the world.” He included a sketch of the formation’s 

general shape and appearance and provided the most detailed description known to have 

appeared in print to date. His account of this “grand work of nature” contrasted with the 

general tone of the report, the purpose of which was to identify the chemical and mineral 

makeup of the region’s various geologic features. Perhaps because the Postpile did not contain 

any mineral resources of note, Preston felt free to add a bit of flourish to his description, noting 

that the central posts were “arranged as regularly as the pipes in a cathedral organ.” He also 

likened the glacial polished tops of the columns to a “parquetted polished floor.”32 

A handful of enterprising miners explored the area following its removal from Yosemite in 

1905. By 1914, “considerable work” had been done “in prospecting for iron and copper,” 

46 
Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

1892 sketch map of the North Fork Mining District showing the soda spring, Reds 

Meadow (labeled “Peck’s Meadow”), and the Yosemite National Park boundary 

north of Agnew Meadow. (Source: Preston, 221) 

according to the state mineralogist’s report, with a number of specimens of other minerals 

including sphalerite, pyrrhotite, magnetite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, bornite, and siderite having 

also been collected. In 1916, John Beck, superintendent of the Minaret and Iron Mountain 

mines, successfully packed two tons of commercial silver and iron ore out of the area, declaring 

it to be worth $400 a ton. Beck’s plan to begin regular shipments by pack train apparently 

spurred “talk of a railroad to the district,” according to a Los Angeles Times report.33 

The peak period of development for the Minaret Mine came in the late 1920s after C. C. 

Randall of Anaheim purchased the claim. In 1928, Randall, in partnership with members of 

the Johnston family who had been prospecting in the area for some time, began operating the 

mine through the winter, relying on regular supply runs from Mammoth City by Cushions and 

his sled dogs. Also that year, Randall financed the construction of the first road into the Middle 

Fork Valley. The narrow dirt track zigzagged steeply from Minaret Summit to Starkweather 

Lake before crossing the Middle Fork San Joaquin and heading up to the mine. By 1929, the 

miners had sunk a shaft more than 300 feet into the bedrock.34 

47 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

1939 photo of John Beck’s cabin near Beck’s Lake west of Devils Postpile. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy 

of Nancy Wirth) 

1916 Madera County map showing Devils Postpile at its extreme eastern terminus. (Source: Walter W. 

Bradley, California State Mining Bureau, California Mineral Production for 1919, Bulletin No. 88 (San 

Francisco: California State Printing Office, 1920), 190) 

The development of the mine led to some conflicts. In December 1931, the Los Angeles Times 

reported on a murder investigation involving J. W. Starkweather, a “typical old sourdough” 

and one of the initial shareholders in the Minaret Mine Company. By this time, Starkweather 

had spent nearly two decades prospecting in the Mammoth region, earning the nickname “the 

human gopher.” He also spent “a great portion of his winters in the courts,” being a “veteran of 

48 
Hard-Rock Mining in the Eastern Sierra, 1852–1930s 

1981 photo of a cabin at the Minaret Mine site. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

1981 photo of a partially collapsed structure at the Minaret Mine site. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

fifty-four court tilts,” most with his rival F. J. Eddy, another miner in the area. Regarding the 

1931 “fracas” at the Minaret Mine, which resulted in the death of L. E. Smith, Starkweather 

testified: “I heard that some property was being removed from the Minarets Mining Company, 

my outfit, so I went up there and found Smith and Charles Heriford. I told Heriford, who is 

also a stockholder in the Minarets, that Smith had no right to take the stuff, whereupon he 

called me liar and started toward me. I pulled my gun and when Smith grabbed for it, it went 

off.”35 

49 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Remnant of the Minaret Mine road bed adjacent to the present Minaret Lake Trail. 

(Photo: Christopher E. Johnson) 

Ultimately, most mining operations in the Postpile region proved fleeting and not very 

productive, despite conflicts over claims and grandiose projections about the value of the 

ore. As in other hard-rock mining districts in the Eastern Sierra, most of the independent 

prospectors who made the initial finds quickly moved on, leaving the development of more 

intensive operations to better-financed interests. Still, even the most capitalized mining 

operations in the region never reached the scale of those in the west slope foothills. Most 

quickly folded due to lack of minerals, financial mismanagement, or the challenges of a harsh 

climate and difficult access. The few individuals who settled in the area for long periods of time 

were typically recluses, most of whom forewent mining for other entrepreneurial activities, 

such as trapping, grazing, and market gardening, or more dubious pursuits, such as horse and 

cattle theft. 

50 
Sheepherding, 1860s–1890s 

The mining booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century nevertheless had lasting 

environmental effects on the Postpile region, primarily from blasting, woodcutting, water 

diversions, hunting, and small-scale farming. Scattered evidence of their presence remain 

even in the highest basins at the headwaters of the Middle Fork San Joaquin in the form 

of abandoned diggings, dynamite scars, overgrown roadbeds, ruined cabins, buried tools, 

blockhouse foundations, and broken-down weirs on some streams. 

Most important, these early miners initiated the long-term 

settlement of the region. Even after the mines were spent, the 

attractive setting of Mammoth City continued to draw a steady 

stream of prospectors, timber entrepreneurs, ranchers, and by 

the early twentieth century, innkeepers, commercial packers, 

artists, sightseers, and recreational fishermen. Over time, these 

newcomers widened trails, improved roads, promoted the 

region’s scenery and recreational attributes, and, in the process, 

exposed the remote Middle Fork Valley to the economic 

transition to tourism occurring in many places throughout the 

W. Starkweather’s mining operations in the West in this period. 

ation unknown. (Devils Postpile National 

 collection) 

Sheepherding, 1860s–1890s 

The isolation that turned away many miners made the Middle Fork Valley a haven for 

itinerant sheepherders seeking open grazing land in the last decades of the nineteenth century. 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California sheep industry boomed alongside mining, timber, 

and agriculture, with the total number of sheep in the state increasing from 18,000 to over 

1,000,000 head in that period. Due to the state’s mild climate, the ability of sheep to withstand 

drought, and the fact that most California land remained public and therefore open to grazing, 

the sheep industry quickly overtook the cattle industry in terms of profits and numbers of 

animals. 

The task of tending the flocks often fell to landless sheepherders originating from the Basque 

country of northwest Spain and southwest France. Many of these Basque herders had migrated 

to California not directly from the Old World but by way of Argentina where they had gained 

experience in large-scale sheep tending. Most Basques contracted with larger ranches to graze 

the flocks during the summer and fall, though a few owned their own ranches. As the Civil 

War created an urgent demand for wool, the industry spread north into the San Joaquin Valley. 

Soon after, drought and competition for grazing land compelled many itinerant herders to 

venture into the High Sierra. Between the 1860s and 1890s, sheepherders—including not 

only Basques but also Portuguese, Irish, and Chinese—pushed their flocks into nearly every 

canyon, valley, and meadow in the Sierra Nevada. It was with one of these sheep outfits that 

John Muir spent his “first summer in the Sierra” in 1869.36 

Historians William A. Douglass and Jon Bilbao have described Basque herders as “a ghostlike 

element within the society of the American West.”37 Their voices are largely absent from 

the historical record, yet their effects on the High Sierra landscape made them targets 

of conservationists in California through the early twentieth century. Muir and other 

preservationists regarded sheepherding as an intrusion into the High Sierra wilderness. 

Overgrazing, they argued, caused dramatic reductions in native grasses in many meadows. The 

sheep’s sharp hooves also trampled vegetation, accelerating erosion by wearing trenches into 

51 

Ruins of one of J. 

area, date and loc

Monument image
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

“Hoofed Locusts.” (Source: Muir, The Mountains of California, frontispiece) 

the loose soil. Muir responded by famously labeling sheep “hoofed locusts” in his calls for the 

protection of the Yosemite region as a national park. More utilitarian-minded conservationists 

decried the fires that itinerant sheepherders set to clear trails and encourage the regrowth of 

forage, believing that these fires would ruin potentially valuable stands of timber.38 

Although sheepherders had very real impacts in certain places and times, their critics may 

have been motivated as much by racism and a latent mistrust of the sheep industry as by the 

actual physical impacts of grazing. In his 1892 annual report, Yosemite acting superintendent 

Captain A. E. Wood attributed the damage caused by sheep grazing to the nationality of 

the herders. Horse and cattle drivers were mostly “of American birth,” he said: “they take a 

pride in these magnificent forests... they take great interest and will voluntarily undergo 

enormous fatigues to save the forests from fires.” In contrast, “the sheep-herders, few of whom 

are American either by birth, citizenship, or sympathy, care for nothing but the prosperity of 

their flocks, and where their herds go a desert follows in their wake.”39 

Yosemite historian James Snyder has argued that the impacts of sheep grazing may have been 

less severe than conservationists made them out to be and that the conflict revolved around 

competing definitions of nature. Merced sheep rancher Harvey Ostrander, Snyder notes, 

argued that national park advocates failed to recognize different ideas about “the beauties of 

nature.” Ostrander claimed that sheepherders had no reason to destroy the landscape upon 

which their livelihoods depended. He also suggested that grazing reduced the threat of large 

fires, and that sheepmen often took part in fighting the most destructive blazes. He further 

argued that if the Yosemite Valley, where men supposedly “fitted to guard the beauties of such a 

spot” had fenced, cleared, plowed, and planted the meadows with hay to “sell . . . to campers 

for $40 a ton,” was any indication of the priorities of federal conservation, permitting sheep 

grazing might be a comparably better means of preserving the landscape.40 

Basques and other itinerant sheepmen had few defenders in their time, the most notable 

being Inyo County author Mary Austin. Best known for The Land of Little Rain, her 1903 

meditation on the inhabitants and harsh environment of the Owens Valley, Austin made 

52 
Sheepherding, 1860s–1890s 

her mark on the literary world telling the stories of Indians, prospectors, women, and other 

underrepresented voices in the American southwest. In The Flock, published in 1906, Austin 

offered a rare sympathetic treatment of the “little dark men” who “fed where feed was, kept to 

their own kind, turned money quickly, and went back to France to spend it.”41 She argued that 

contrary to common portrayals of sheepherders as ignorant exploiters of the land, many had 

acquired a deep knowledge of the Sierra landscape and its cycles through their long, solitary 

summers in the range. Those who returned to the mountains year after year learned to use fire 

to clear brush and encourage new growth, while others diverted streams to water dry meadows 

in order to produce more grass for the following year.42 

Austin, like Ostrander, clearly saw the ways in which distinctions between legitimate and 

illegitimate uses of the environment were deeply rooted in particular cultural, political, 

and economic contexts. Her sympathetic portrayal of sheepherders provided a “bottom-up” 

perspective on the early conservation era that is missing from many histories of the Sierra 

Nevada. Basque sheepherders perceived and used the Sierra environment in ways that were 

at odds with the wilderness impulse motivating Muir and other preservationists who viewed 

resource extraction as out of place in scenic high mountain landscapes; and while Austin 

could envision some common ground between sheepherders and proponents of scientific 

range management, most conservationists proved incapable of comprehending the practices 

and motivations of itinerant sheepmen. Austin attributed this to class divisions and cultural 

differences, remarking that even if sheepherders had taken part in discussions over the creation 

of the first Sierra parks and forest reserves “who of the Powers would have heard him, which 

of the New-Englanders who are now orange growers would have understood his speech?”43 

Austin acknowledged that overgrazing had caused damage to many High Sierra landscapes, 

but suggested that this was not attributable to either sheep as a species or the ingrained habits 

of Basque sheepmen. Instead, she argued that federal grazing policies favoring cattle had forced 

many sheepherders to venture higher into the mountains by necessity. Furthermore, it was 

the large size of the industry, the greed of the owners, and the sheer numbers of sheep in 

the mountains, she suggested, rather than the specific characteristics of the animals or their 

tenders, that led to the very real impacts that Muir and others were witnessing at the time. 

Austin also suggested that the irresponsible practices of a few sheepherders had obscured the 

potential benefits of sheep grazing in promoting forest growth.44 

Meanwhile throughout this period, sheepherders were clearly present in the Devils Postpile 

area. Yosemite tourism promoter James Hutchings, for example, noted the presence of large 

numbers of sheep in the vicinity of Mammoth Pass in 1875. Nor were all herders in the area 

itinerant Basques. Agnew, Sotcher, and a few others also grazed sheep and cattle in the area 

surrounding their respective settlements or mining claims. In 1879, a Mammoth Lakes miner 

reported meeting a Chinese herder with an estimated 2,000 head of sheep camped near the 

mouth of Fish Creek, a few miles south of the present monument boundary.45 

It is difficult to gauge the precise impacts of sheep grazing on the Devils Postpile area. 

Although miners, early tourist parties, and US Army cavalry patrols from Yosemite frequently 

encountered sheep, few noted the environmental effects. When James Wright toured the valley 

in 1879 in pursuit of cement hunters he described a desolate place where “the stillness of death 

reigns . . . for miles around.” After descending from Mammoth Pass, he reported seeing not a 

single “living animal form but ourselves and our horse.” Among the “whitish, sterile” pumice 

he found no flowers or other vegetation save for “a few thinly scattered patches of bunch grass 

which the pony greedily enjoyed.”46 The denuded, lifeless landscape Wright encountered 

might be attributable to the flocks of sheep that moved through the valley by the thousands 

53 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

Sheepherder carving in Devils Postpile showing the initials “E. S.” (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

each summer, though the pumice covering much of this part of the Middle Fork Valley made 

the area a barren place to begin with. Wright also may have been exaggerating the harshness 

and desolation of the area for effect, to play up the mystery and challenge of the search for the 

Lost Cement Mine. 

Although sheepherders produced few records of their experiences in the Devils Postpile area, 

these solitary men nonetheless left a lasting legacy. In an 1894 article for the Sierra Club Bulletin, 

Theodore S. Solomons, who passed through the area in 1892 as part of his exploration of the 

Sierra crest, noted that his passage down the Middle Fork San Joaquin had been eased by “an 

old sheep trail” that left him “free to observe and enjoy the scenery.” He also reported that 

local sheepherders referred to the unusual basalt formation located in the Middle Fork Valley 

as “the Devil’s Woodpile.” This was the first known published indication that the outcrop had 

a name. For Solomons, the name reflected the superstitious nature of the sheepmen. “In every 

scenic freak,” he wrote, “the sheepherder recognizes the handiwork of his Satanic majesty.”47 

Though they left few written records, sheepmen made carvings on some of the trees rimming 

the meadows in which they camped—these “arborglyphs” provide a rare glimpse into the 

day-to-day practices and preoccupations of these lonesome wanderers. In other locations in 

the Sierra Nevada and throughout the Great Basin, anthropologists have recorded elaborate 

tree carvings, particularly on Aspen trees, depicting everything from names and dates to 

self-portraits to images of prostitutes known to cater to Basque shepherds.48 These carvings 

were not done simply to fill idle time; in many cases, they served to mark out territory or 

communicate to other sheepmen when a particular area had last been grazed.49 

A 1993 archaeological survey of Devils Postpile located thirty-seven marked trees on a terrace 

above the Middle Fork San Joaquin. On twelve of these trees were found distinguishable letters, 

numbers, and geometric shapes. The capital letters “A” and “C” occur on two trees each, while 

54 
Notes 

Notch carved in a tree, presumably for supporting a table or sleeping platform. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

the initials or names “JIM H” and “ES” appear on other trees. The partially obscured numbers 

“84,” “868,” and “908” found on other trees may correspond to the years 1884, 1868, and 

1908, respectively. Notches cut into the base of some trees, which may have been used to 

support sleeping platforms or tables, are similar to features found in known sheepherder camps 

in Yosemite. A comparison with nearby “graffiti” from 1931, coupled with the extent of the 

bark overgrowth, indicates that the carvings predate the creation of the monument.50 These 

carvings provide a visual medium by which to reflect on how this little-understood and often 

denigrated group of people viewed and used the Middle Fork Valley in the last decades of the 

nineteenth century as resource extraction was gradually giving way to tourism and conservation 

as the dominant land uses in the region. 

Notes 

1.	 Francis P. Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 17. 

2.	 Ibid., 17–18. 

3.	 Beesley, Crow’s Range, 32–34. 

4.	 Ibid.; Lee, Walking Where We Lived , 17–18, 22, 140; and Edward D. Castillo, “The Impact of Euro–American 

Exploration and Settlement,” in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8, California, ed. Robert F. Heizer 

(Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 99–127. 

5.	 Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 20–21, 25–26, 36–37, 53–61; and Andrew Kirk and Charles 

Palmer, “Yosemite National Park Draft Multiple Property Nomination, National Register of Historic Places,” 

(2005), 10. 

6.	 Quoted in Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 37. 

7.	 Ibid., 53–61. Today, the only road over the Sierra Nevada south of Tioga Pass crosses Walker Pass, which was 

designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. 

55 
Chapter Three Euro-American Exploration and Resource Extraction in the High Sierra, 1700s–1800s 

8.	 Margaret Sanborn, Yosemite: Its Discovery, Its Wonders, and Its People (New York: Random House, 1981), 

chap. 4. 

9.	 Lafayette H. Bunnell, Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to That Event, 3rd ed. 

(New York: F. H. Revell Company, 1892), chap. 7; and C. Gregory Crampton, “Notes,” in Robert Eccleston, 

The Mariposa Indian War, 1850–1851, ed. C. Gregory Crampton (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 

1957), 92–93. 

10.	 Eccleston, Mariposa Indian War, 84–86. 

11.	 Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (Norman: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 57–59, 85–93. 

12.	 Ibid., 91, 93. 

13.	 John Walton, Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California (Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 1992), 11–13, 18–22. 

14.	 Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 

15.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 21. 

16.	 David J. Larson, “Historical Water Use Priorities and Public Use Policies,” in Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: 

Final Report to Congress, Vol. 2 (Davis: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources, 

1996), 164–66. 

17.	 Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York: C. 

M. Saxton, Barker & Co, 1860), 352. 

18.	 Ibid. 

19.	 Maxine Chappell, “Early History of Mono County,” California Historical Society Quarterly 26, no. 3 

(September 1947): 233, 237–38. 

20.	 Mark Twain, Roughing It (Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873), 260–64. 

21.	 James A Wright, The Lost Cement Mine, ed. Genny Smith (Mammoth Lakes, CA: Genny Smith Books, 1984), 

23–26. See also Walter Chalfant, Tales of the Pioneers (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1942). 

22.	 Wright, Lost Cement Mine, 48–57. 

23.	 Ibid., 22; “Chronology of Historical Events of the Mono Basin and Vicinity,” typewritten manuscript produced 

by the Mono Lake District, Inyo National Forest (1965), in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks 

Manuscript Collection; Richard J. Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile,” Yosemite Nature 

Notes 33, no. 1 (January 1954): 3–8; and Peter Browning, Yosemite Place Names: The Historic Background of 

Geographic Names in Yosemite National Park (Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 1988), 1–2. 

24.	 Quoted in Gary Caldwell, Mammoth Gold: The Ghost Towns of Lake District (Mammoth Lakes, CA: Genny 

Smith Books, 1990), 66. 

25.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 22; Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile”; and 

Nicholas Faust, “A National Register of Historic Places Site Evaluation of Cabin 1 of the Reds Meadow Resort 

and Pack Station, Mammoth Lakes Ranger District, Inyo National Forest, California,” draft (Lee Vining, CA: 

Inyo National Forest, 1996), 3. 

26.	 Quoted in Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 23. 

27.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile”; and Browning, Yosemite Place Names, 116–17, 135. 

28.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile.” 

29.	 Gene Rose, High Odyssey: The First Solo Winter Assault of Mount Whitney and the Muir Trail Area, from the 

Diary of Orland Bartholomew and Photographs Taken by Him (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1974), 138–45. 

30.	 Tex Cushions to William R. Jones, Yosemite Natural History Association, October 22, 1962, unaccessioned 

DEPO files, “DEPO Interpretation: Signs and Trails,” Yosemite National Park Archives (hereafter YNPA). 

31.	 E. B. Preston, “North Fork Mining District of Fresno County,” in California State Mining Bureau, Eleventh 

Report of the State Mineralogist (Sacramento: State Office, 1893), 218–23. 

32.	 Ibid., 219–20. 

33.	 “Mining Boom in the High Sierras,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1916, 11. 

56 
Notes 

34.	 “Mine Group in Step to Expansion,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1929, 15; and “Progress at Madera Mine, 

Consulting Engineer of Minaret Company Gives Report on Headway,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1929, 15. 

35.	 “Mining-Claim Shooting Aired in Civil Suit,” Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1931, A3. 

36.	 William A. Douglass and John Bilbao, Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World (Reno: University of Nevada 

Press, 1975), 219–41; and Carol W. Hovey, “Pedro and Bernardo Altube: Basque Brothers of California and 

Nevada,” in Portraits of Basques in the New World , ed. Richard W. Etulain and Jeronima Echeverria (Reno: 

University of Nevada Press, 1999), 64. 

37.	 Douglass and Bilbao, Amerikanauk, 2. 

38.	 David Beesley, “Past Sierra Landscapes,” in Sierra Nevada Ecosystems Project, vol. 2, 7–8. 

39.	 A. E. Wood, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in The Executive Document 

of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Fifty–Second Congress, 1892–93 (Washington, DC: 

GPO, 1893), 663. 

40.	 James B. Snyder, “Putting ‘Hoofed Locusts’ out to Pasture,” Nevada Historical Society 46, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 

140–72. Other researchers have suggested that early conservationists may have misunderstood sheepherders’ 

use of fire in the Sierra. David Beesley notes that while sheepherders clearly set fires at certain times and in 

certain locations, in many cases, it was easier to blame frequent forest fires on the little-understood “tramp 

herders” than on the careless loggers, miners, and cattlemen who often caused the more destructive blazes. 

Many sheepherders appear to have actually continued the burning patterns of Native Americans, and thus 

may have reduced the threat of catastrophic fires. Beesley, “Past Sierra Landscapes,” 8. 

41.	 Mary Austin, The Flock (1906; reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2001), 9. 

42.	 Ibid., 101. 

43.	 Ibid., 102. For a broader treatment of how class divisions structured early conservation laws in America see Karl 

Jacoby, Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation 

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Also see Louis S. Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and 

Conservationists in Twentieth Century America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 

44.	 Austin, The Flock, 197, 208, 210. James Snyder builds on many of these arguments, highlighting the variety 

of ways in which sheepherders regulated their use of grazing sites. See Snyder, “Putting ‘Hoofed Locusts’ out 

to Pasture,” 147–55. 

45.	 Caldwell, Mammoth Gold , 88. 

46.	 Wright, Lost Cement Mine, 63–64. 

47.	 Solomons, “Among the Sources of the San Joaquin,” 71, 73, 74. By the time Solomons passed through the 

region in 1892, the numbers of itinerant herders in the valley had declined significantly, as Reds Meadows 

had become a primary hub for cavalry patrols in the newly created Yosemite National Park. 

48.	 For an excellent account of this practice with photographs, see J. Mallea–Olaetxe, Speaking through the Aspens: 

Basque Tree Carvings in California and Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000). For a depiction of 

the prostitute “Jani” see the photograph adjacent to page 117 in Beesley, Crow’s Range. 

49.	 Snyder, “Putting ‘Hoofed Locusts’ out to Pasture,” 148–52. 

50.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 37–38. 

57 

Chapter Four 

The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of 

Conservation in the Sierra Nevada, 1864–1890 

I

n the late 1800s, the role of the federal government in the Sierra Nevada shifted from a 

facilitator of resource development to the principal guardian of the region’s scenic landscapes 

and natural resources. This change occurred as the Sierra Nevada and other mountain regions 

in the American West were becoming more accessible as tourist destinations, and as Americans 

sought to reign in unregulated resource extraction activities on western lands. The inclusion of 

Devils Postpile in the federal trust—first as part of Yosemite National Park in 1890, then as a 

part of the Sierra National Forest in 1905, and finally as a national monument in 1911—grew 

out of these regional and national shifts in nature appreciation and land policy. 

The American conservation movement took shape at time of sweeping change for the nation. 

Rapid industrialization in the last decades of the nineteenth century generated ambivalence 

among many middle- and upper-class Americans (ironically, those benefiting most from 

industrialization) who worried about diminishing natural resources and the effects of urban life 

on their physical and intellectual well-being. The so-called “closing of the frontier” announced 

by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 exacerbated these anxieties, compelling many 

Americans to seek out, usually as tourists, the last vestiges of the wilderness frontier that 

many believed had been the wellspring of the American character. John Muir, the archetypical 

“preservationist,” took these views further, finding a way in his High Sierra encounters to 

connect spiritually and physically with the landscapes he viewed as the purest expressions 

of God’s handiwork. Others, best represented by Gifford Pinchot, the father of “utilitarian 

conservation,” promoted scientific management of natural resources as necessary to achieve 

“the greatest good for the greatest number.”1 

Although differing in how they valued the natural world, the various interests fitting under the 

conservation rubric in this period shared a common concern that the unregulated exploitation of 

American nature for private gain threatened the nation’s most valuable economic, symbolic, and 

aesthetic resources. The solution for Muir, Pinchot, and others was to remove these resources 

from private hands and place them under public trust—a strategy that both anticipated and 

reflected the nascent Progressive movement. A response to the increasing complexity and social 

turmoil attendant to urban-industrial society, Progressivism was characterized by concern over 

the excesses of private industry, confidence in scientific expertise, and willingness to use federal, 

state, and municipal governments as mechanisms for ordering social and economic life. The 

setting aside of extensive tracts of land in the American West as public parks and forest reserves 

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embodied all these aspects of Progressive 

politics.2 

The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Regional Roots 

of American Conservation 

While conservation had roots in national political and intellectual culture, many of its 

principles took shape first in the Sierra Nevada. As early as the 1850s, proto-conservationists in 

the region—a group including writers, academics, scientists, legal professionals, and irrigation 
Chapter Four The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of Conservation 

Portrait of James M. Hutchings. (Source: 

Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras) 

interests—turned to the state of California for recourse against mining and timber operations 

that they claimed were damaging scenic areas, polluting water supplies, and reducing the water 

storage capacity of the range. Although the state government remained too weak to enforce 

regulations, proposals to transfer surveyed lands to the state and to fine individuals responsible 

for setting destructive fires were floated past the state legislature.3 

The most important early victory for conservation in the Sierra Nevada came in 1864 when 

Congress granted the Yosemite Valley to the state of California to “be held for public use, resort, 

and recreation . . . for all time.” Historians often interpret the Yosemite Grant as an early 

manifestation of an emerging environmental consciousness among East Coast elites or as part 

of an effort to connect the preservation of nature to a shared national heritage in the context 

of the Civil War.4 Closer examination suggests, however, that federal protection of the scenic 

wonders of the Yosemite Valley was only tangentially related to East Coast intellectualism 

and national politics. Historian Lincoln Bramwell argues that the decision to set aside this 

distant place can be attributed more directly to the budding commercial tourism industry, 

which through promotional literature and travel writing “created an atmosphere of public 

interest in tourism, the West, and the Yosemite Valley in particular.”5 Economic stakeholders 

in Western tourism, including guides, stage operators, hoteliers, and railroad companies, 

published descriptions of Yosemite in popular magazines and newspapers, with many also 

issuing pamphlets or guidebooks extolling the scenic beauty of the valley and its environs. As 

stage lines and later railroads reached across the continent and more Americans acquired the 

means to travel, the fast-growing tourism industry emerged as an important mediator, shaping 

how Easterners encountered and interpreted Yosemite and other places in the West.6 

The most influential of these early promoters was James M. Hutchings, 

a failed miner turned publisher who led the first group of tourists to the 

valley in 1855, and soon after, began publishing California Illustrated 

Magazine, in which he tirelessly promoted the scenic qualities of Yosemite. 

Such promotional literature, travel writing, and artists’ renderings of 

Yosemite attracted a number of public figures through the 1850s and 

1860s, including journalist Horace Greeley who, after a brief overnight 

stay in Hutchings’s lodge, bolstered the valley’s reputation by exclaiming: 

“I know no single wonder of nature on earth which can claim superiority 

over the Yosemite.”7 

During this time, the Yosemite Valley became a must-see destination for 

traveling elites from both sides of the Atlantic. Emulating the popular 

British romanticists of the day, tourists penned one gushy superlative after 

another to describe Yosemite’s waterfalls and granite monoliths, usually 

after visiting the vantage points detailed in Hutchings’s magazine or in one 

of the many guidebooks in circulation.8 

Travel writing complemented promotional literature, becoming a form of free advertising 

for Yosemite’s commercial tourism industry. It also prompted some prominent individuals 

to view Yosemite as a valuable scenic resource for the nation as a whole. Famed landscape 

architect Frederick Law Olmstead, California State geologist Josiah Dwight Whitney, San 

Francisco minister Thomas Starr King, and others worried that without government protection, 

commercial interests in the mining and timber industries—as well as unscrupulous tourist 

service providers—could do irreversible harm to the valley and the nearby Mariposa grove of 

Giant Sequoias. 

60 
The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Regional Roots of American Conservation 

Early sketch of Yosemite Valley. (Source: Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras) 

In February 1864, transit company executive Israel Ward Raymond wrote to California 

senator John Conness suggesting that the area’s scenic qualities warranted protection. He also 

argued that the limited value of Yosemite’s granite summits and sparse pine forests for resource 

extraction would ease the passage of such a bill. In a speech in support of the Yosemite Grant, 

Conness echoed Raymond’s sentiments, stating that “this bill proposes to make a grant of 

certain premises located in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the State of California, that are 

for all public purposes worthless, but which constitute, perhaps, some of the greatest wonders 

of the world.”9 Historians have made much of the federal government’s willingness to set 

aside only those lands deemed ostensibly “worthless.” Yet, the area could only be considered 

worthless in terms of certain resource-extraction activities. Most conservationists, politicians, 

and tourism businesses were well aware of the profits to be had by reserving the area for 

tourism.10 

While the precise arguments motivating Congress to approve the Yosemite Grant in May 1864 

remain a mystery, the state of California clearly recognized the significance of tourism as an 

economic activity, as it became a primary consideration for the new park’s administration. To 

administer the grant and oversee its commercial development, the state legislature created the 

Yosemite Commission, appointing to it a group of private citizens including Frederick Law 

Olmsted, Josiah Whitney, Israel Raymond, and several prominent California businessmen. 

Thereafter, the commission faced the daunting task of protecting the scenic resources of 

Yosemite from commercial exploitation while also encouraging visitation—a dual responsibility 

that persisted as the principal management challenge for the National Park Service in later 

years. 

Hutchings and other commercial interests believed they stood to lose from Yosemite’s 

reservation as a public park. Their fears were justified in part. While he appreciated the 

aesthetic qualities of Yosemite, Hutchings viewed scenery as an essentially economic resource, 

which set him apart from those commission members who regarded tourism development 

purely for the sake of private enrichment as anathema to the long-term protection of Yosemite’s 

resources. Olmsted, Whitney, and others in this “preservationist” camp were not opposed to 

61 
Chapter Four The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of Conservation 

economic development via tourism per se. Olmsted, for one, firmly believed tourism would be 

preferable to resource extraction as the economic base for the region. The difference between 

Olmsted and Hutchings lay in the scope of their visions. Whereas Hutchings regarded scenery 

as valuable for the profits he could extract from it, Olmsted valued Yosemite’s attractions as 

essential to the mental and physical well-being of the nation as a whole. In an 1865 report, 

Olmsted argued that in contrast to private parks in Europe, which were accessible only to the 

wealthy, a public park under government management could be “laid open to the use of the 

body of the people.”11 For him, such a park would embody the best principles of American 

democracy. Although such sentiments clearly anticipated the later national parks movement, 

Olmsted failed to impress the commission, and his report was suppressed and largely forgotten 

until it was rediscovered in the Olmsted firm’s private archive in 1952.12 

For the most part, commercial tourism interests were able to bend the Yosemite Commission 

to their will. In 1871, the California Supreme Court attempted to counteract this influence 

by eliminating all private claims in the valley. This meant that all hotels, photography studios, 

laundries, bakeries, saloons, and other commercial operations became tenants subject to the 

regulations of the commission. However, this greater control did not ease the challenge of 

monitoring private commerce. The commission’s dependence on concessionaires for visitor 

services bred stiff competition and charges of favoritism, leading to the dissolution of the 

original board in 1880 and its replacement by a new commission headed by none other than 

James Hutchings.13 

Tourism and the Rediscovery of Devils Postpile 

Hutchings did not limit his enterprising gaze to the Yosemite Valley. In 1875, he visited 

the Devils Postpile region as part of an expedition to photograph and promote other scenic 

locations in the Sierra Nevada. Although he never published the book he intended for these 

photographs, he brought some public attention to the Postpile region and other more remote 

areas in the High Sierra through a series of lecture slide presentations. In his diary entry for 

September 19, 1875, Hutchings included a detailed description of the formation: 

The first thing that we did this morning was to visit the basaltic cliff for the purpose of 

taking a view. The more this formation is examined the more interesting it becomes. In the 

centre the columns are vertical and as regular almost as though carefully cut and placed in 

shape by a stone mason. One had fallen out of place and was leaning forward from the stack 

probably about 15 or 18 feet at top. . . . An immense mass of broken columns formed the 

debris. Climbing to the top we found the ends of the columns smoothed and polished and 

presented the appearance of a mosaic or tessellated floor. This smoothing was done of course 

by glacial action.14 

Though presented as objective scientific study, Hutchings’s careful measurements and 

photographic documentation of the leaning column and the glacial polish can also be 

interpreted as a deliberate reenactment of the scientific explorations of Whitney’s California 

Geologic Survey from the previous decade. Whitney’s team had been charged with mapping 

potential sites for mineral extraction in the Sierra Nevada. However, members of the team— 

William Brewer and Clarence King, in particular—came to view the mountains as a location 

for adventure and scientific research for its own sake rather than a site to be exploited for its 

mining potential. This appreciation for aesthetics is apparent in many of Whitney’s reports 

from the 1860s. Historians have cited these reports as being among the most influential 

calls for protecting the Yosemite Valley and encouraging its development as a scenic tourist 

destination.15 

62 
Tourism and the Rediscovery of Devils Postpile 

Hutchings’s photograph of Devils Postpile in 1875. Note the leaning column and the man standing below 

and to the right of it. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

By the time Hutchings visited Devils Postpile, the explorer-scientists of the Whitney Survey 

had come to represent “a new generation of mountain men,” whose adventures of scientific 

discovery could be safely emulated through organized tourism. In his History of the Sierra 

Nevada, Francis Farquhar identified a series of Yosemite guidebooks containing photographs 

and writings produced during the survey as one of Whitney’s most influential publications.16 

Hutchings’s photographs and description of the Postpile reflected his keen awareness, as an 

entrepreneur, of the appeal of this type of imagery for potential tourists to the Sierra Nevada. 

While Hutchings determined not to develop tourist facilities in the remote Middle Fork Valley, 

a few intrepid tourists began to make their way to the area. In 1878, a party led by George 

B. Bayley (who had earned some notoriety two years earlier for a harrowing first ascent of 

Half Dome in Yosemite) traveled south from Yosemite then east from the North Fork San 

Joaquin into the Middle Fork Valley where they became the first group of tourists known to 

view Rainbow Falls. Bayley made no mention of Devils Postpile but did describe the falls with 

a flourish typical of travel writing during this period. The scene, he wrote, “impresses one 

with a sense of beauty, grandeur, and power quite as deeply as the Vernal Falls of Yosemite.” 

Bayley also overestimated the height of the falls by a factor of three, declaring them to be “three 

hundred feet high, an estimate which is under rather than over the mark.”17 

63 
Chapter Four The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of Conservation 

The Brewer Party of 1864. From left to right: James T. Gardiner, Richard Cotter, William 

H. Brewer, and Clarence King. (Source: Brewer, Up and Down California in 1860–1864, 

frontispiece) 

Also like many nature tourists of that era, Bayley saw the landscape through wilderness-tinted 

glasses. Although he maintained that “there are very few who know anything about the region 

lying eastward of the [Yosemite] Valley,” his account is full of encounters with people. First, he 

hired a guide, Manuel Flores, probably a North Fork Mono or Paiute, who was familiar with 

the area. On the first day, after passing through “virgin forest, untouched by the axe of man,” 

the party came across a log cabin occupied by “a mighty Nimrod” named Jim Duncan who 

boasted of killing “forty or fifty bears within the past six years of his occupancy of the cabin.” 

Arriving at Jackass Meadows the next day, the group encountered “hundreds of horses” and 

a band of sheep. After traveling through “these droves of animals for several miles,” the party 

crossed Granite Creek to make camp in a meadow above the North Fork San Joaquin. The 

64 
Tourism and the Rediscovery of Devils Postpile 

George Bayley’s sketch of Rainbow Falls, 1878. (Source: 

Bayley, “Eight Days in the High Sierra,” 14) 

next morning they stumbled into a hunters’ camp where they met “three of the most villainous 

looking fellows that ever assumed human shape,” the most frightening of whom “was minus 

an eye, and flourished a huge knife in his hand.” After crossing two log bridges built by 

sheepherders and arriving at the Middle Fork San Joaquin, Bayley thanked Flores for bringing 

them through a “trackless wilderness without the shadow of a trail.” From there, the party made 

their way to a ledge with a view of Rainbow Falls. Even though they followed a series of blazes 

to the falls, Bayley declared the party to be “the first to view and appreciate them.” Apparently, 

he believed that the Indians, sheepmen, miners, and hunters who frequented the area lacked 

the capacity for appreciating (or perhaps even noticing) natural aesthetics, preoccupied as they 

were with the day-to-day rigors of earning their livelihoods.18 

65 
Chapter Four The Yosemite Grant, Tourism, and the Origins of Conservation 

Ultimately, the Devils Postpile area remained too remote from centers of population and 

established travel routes to attract many tourists. The operators of the French Trail, which was 

completed one year after Bayley’s visit, ceased collecting tolls in 1881 after only two seasons. 

Even when it was being operated as a toll road, the trail involved a long, rugged ride and was 

hardly suitable for the urban tourists who could barely endure the rough and dusty but much 

easier stage routes into the Yosemite Valley. Bayley’s account of his wilderness adventure is 

nevertheless indicative of a gradual shift in how the Middle Fork Valley would be viewed and 

used as the impulse to preserve rather than simply exploit for profit the mountain regions of 

the American West took hold. 

The Legacy of the Yosemite Grant 

Tourism continued to shape perceptions and uses of the Sierra Nevada. Yet the transfer of the 

Yosemite Valley and the surrounding area to public administration also signaled that private 

economic gain through tourism would not be the only determinant of land policy in the 

region. Although it did little to limit private commerce, the Yosemite Grant represented an 

important bridge between earlier federal policies, such as the 1862 Homestead Act, which 

accelerated the transfer of public land to private ownership, and later policies that placed 

land under direct federal control. Specifically, the grant established a precedent for the use of 

government action to protect areas of outstanding scenic beauty from short-term exploitation 

by private interests. Historians have described the grant as a stepping stone for the creation 

of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, and it clearly presaged the establishment of Yosemite 

National Park in 1890.19 

The question of how to manage and interpret the scenic and material resources of areas in the 

Sierra Nevada placed under federal management in the 1890s confronted a series of federal 

land administrators over the ensuing years. During this time, the Central Sierra Nevada— 

the area bounded by Yosemite National Park to the north and Sequoia National Park (also 

created in 1890) to the south—became a key region in the evolution of federal land policies, 

particularly those involving the question of whether to develop water, timber, and other 

resources for use, to manage them for commercial tourism, or to preserve them for their 

scientific and ecological significance. The campaign to protect Devils Postpile and Rainbow 

Falls as a national monument both grew out of and shaped these early conservation debates in 

the region. 

Notes 

1.	 For the two dominant strains of conservation represented by John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, respectively, 

compare Fox, John Muir and His Legacy; with Samuel P. Hayes, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The 

Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). 

2.	 For the relationship between conservation and Progressivism, see Hal K. Rothman, Saving the Planet: The
 

American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), chap. 1.
 

3.	 Beesley, Crow’s Range, 78–79. 

4.	 For this interpretation, see, especially, Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind , chap. 6. Alfred Runte follows 

Nash’s argument in National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979) 

and Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln: University of Nevada Press, 1990). 

5.	 Andrew Kirk and Lincoln Bramwell et al., The Yosemite Way: An Administrative History of Yosemite National 

Park, draft under review by the National Park Service (2007), 27. 

6.	 For the growth of the tourism industry in the West in the nineteenth century see Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the 

Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957); and Hal K. Rothman, Devil’s 

66 
Notes 

Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 

chaps. 2, 3, and 4. For travel writing, see David Wrobel, “Exceptionalism and Globalism: Travel Writers and 

the Nineteenth-Century American West,” The Historian 68, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 431–60. 

7.	 Quoted in Stanford Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 1855–1985 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 

1991), 10. 

8.	 For the relationship between Yosemite travel writing and the Romantic Movement, as well as some excellent 

examples, see ibid., chaps. 2 and 3. 

9.	 See, especially, Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 

1979), chap. 3. 

10.	 See Richard Grusin’s critique of Runte’s “worthless land” thesis in Culture, Technology, and the Creation of 

America’s National Parks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 17–19. Grusin argues that by labeling 

lands within the proposed Yosemite Grant worthless for resource extraction while recognizing their potential 

commercial value as tourist sites, Congress could justify the area’s protection while maintaining ideological 

consistency with other federal policies of that era. 

11.	 Frederick Law Olmsted, “Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865,” www.yosemite.ca 

.us/library/olmsted/report.html. 

12.	 Kirk and Bramwell et al., The Yosemite Way, 32–33, 55. 

13.	 Ibid., 38–40. 

14.	 Quoted in N. King Huber and James B. Snyder, “James Mason Hutchings and the Devils Postpile,” Yosemite 

62, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 3. Theodore Solomons referenced Hutchings’s slide presentation in his 1894 

description of the Postpile (“Among the Sources of the San Joaquin,” 74). 

15.	 William H. Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the West, rev. 

ed. (New York: History Book Club, 1993), 356, 357, 370. 

16.	 Ibid., 370; and Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 138, 140. 

17.	 George B. Bayley, “Eight Days in the High Sierra,” The Argonaut 3, no. 24 (December 21, 1878): 14. 

18.	 Ibid. Bayley attributed the blazes to a hunter who had become lost in the area. 

19.	 Runte, National Parks, chap. 2. 

67 

National Monument, Regional Politics: 

The Administrative Evolution 

of Devils Postpile, 1890–2011 

This part of the study details the evolution of federal administration in the Devils Postpile area. 

The purpose is to familiarize Park Service officials with the history of the monument and the 

surrounding region and provide a basis for historical interpretation. Three primary themes 

animate the management history of Devils Postpile: (1) conflict and cooperation between the 

Park Service and the Forest Service; (2) the influence of local and regional interests on resource 

management and development policies; and (3) the administrative challenge of balancing 

recreational demands with interpretation and scientific management. 

These themes reflect management challenges common to national monuments generally. 

However, because of its small size, short operating season, difficult access, and minimal staffing 

and funding, Devils Postpile developed as a park with particularly deep connections to the 

surrounding region. Successive park managers made frequent efforts to define a unique role 

for the Park Service in the region by emphasizing the monument’s scientific significance, and 

visitors welcomed interpretive services provided by the agency at Devils Postpile. Yet due 

to regional recreation demands, the strong influence of the Forest Service in the area, and 

the imperatives of the local recreation-based economy, the monument evolved primarily as a 

component part of the regional recreation complex surrounding the resort town of Mammoth 

Lakes. By the mid-twentieth century, the monument became an important draw for tourists to 

the area; but only in recent years, as regional and on-site staff have pushed for greater focus on 

scientific research and whole-ecosystem monitoring, has the Park Service been able to leverage 

its presence at Devils Postpile to more directly affect regional politics and planning. 

Chapter Five 

Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values: From National Park 

to National Forest to National Monument, 1890–1911 

The Devils Postpile area first received federal protection in 1890 when it was included in 

Yosemite National Park, though few park advocates at the time recognized the significance of 

what had been protected. The Postpile formation, Rainbow Falls, and other notable features in 

the Middle Fork San Joaquin Valley were well-known to people living and working in the area. 

Miners and sheepherders, though, had no interest in backing the creation of a park that would 

prohibit the activities sustaining their livelihoods. In addition, while a few park advocates 

had undoubtedly learned about the area through James Hutchings’s earlier slide presentations 

and George Bayley’s account, there is little evidence to suggest that the Postpile formation 

or Rainbow Falls were considered in the decision to enclose the area within the park. The 

initial boundary seems to have been drawn based on unsurveyed townships for the purposes 

of bureaucratic convenience, and perhaps as a result of the influence of the Southern Pacific 

Railroad, which had plans to extend tourist services to as-yet-undeveloped areas in the Sierra 

Nevada. 

The effort to expand the original Yosemite Grant to a national park can be traced back to the 

work of California State engineer William Hammond Hall. After visiting Yosemite Valley in 

1881, Hall prepared a report for the state of California’s Board of Commissioners to Manage 

the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove, advising that effective protection of the 

valley would require control of the surrounding mountain watershed in order to prevent the 

loss of timber and other vegetation. The Commissioners included Hall’s findings in their 

report for 1885–1886, and requested that Congress act to bring the valley watershed within 

an enlarged grant.1 

By 1888, news of this proposal resulted in a lengthy petition to Congress opposing the 

expansion on the grounds that the commissioners had mismanaged the grant and engaged in 

questionable business and political practices—accusations amplified by John Muir and Century 

Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson. Muir and Johnson argued, as had William Hall, 

that the Yosemite Grant should be expanded to incorporate the complete Merced River 

watershed and that it should be saved from the seeming pettiness of state management by 

being elevated to the status of a national park.2 

However, a compromise was achieved two years later through passage of the California Forest 

Reservation Act of 1890, which created a new national park surrounding the original Yosemite 

Grant, while leaving the terms of the earlier reservation intact. Where Muir’s proposed eastern 

boundary for the park ran along the crest of the Ritter Range west of the Postpile, the new 

legislation defined the park entirely on the basis of Public Land Survey System townships. As 

a result, the eastern boundary was set at the terminus of the Mammoth area’s mining districts 

east of the Sierra crest, enclosing all of the unsurveyed Middle Fork San Joaquin River valley. 

The reasons for this larger boundary remain obscure. No congressmen at the time admitted 

responsibility for drafting the final bill and, to this day, no records of the back-room meetings 

that led to its passage have surfaced. In the 1960s, historian Holway Jones speculated that the 

“mysterious origins” of the final Yosemite bill might be attributable to the Southern Pacific 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

Railroad, which exerted considerable influence in Western politics and had much at stake in 

the setting aside of lands within the Sierra Nevada. Opponents of the bill often painted it as a 

profiteering scheme by the railroad, and advertisements from the time clearly demonstrate the 

railroad’s commitment to developing tourist facilities beyond the Yosemite Valley. Whether 

due to the influence of the Southern Pacific, or simply as a bureaucratic concession, the 

national park boundary included a much larger area than advocates of the park had originally 

proposed.3 

The United States Army 

The larger Yosemite region, including the Postpile, was protected on paper, but in 1890, there 

was no legal or administrative system in place to enforce this protection. The Department of 

the Interior, which had jurisdiction over Yosemite, could not rely on the goodwill of the new 

park’s neighbors, many of whom depended on access to resources now protected by the park. 

While many Californians agreed with Muir and Johnson, many others condemned the park; 

in the words of a Mariposa Gazette editorial, it was the product of “men who have no practical 

knowledge of this country or its resources.”4 They resented the loss of grazing land, timber 

and mining opportunities to an as-yet unproven esthetic ideal. 

Considering this situation, Muir and Johnson finally put forward the idea of a military 

administration similar to that at Yellowstone National Park. The call was echoed by both 

the state of California and the Department of the Interior’s general land inspector Thomas 

Newsham, who had investigated conditions in Yosemite after passage of the Forest Reservation 

Act. Accordingly, Secretary of the Interior John Noble consulted with Secretary of War Redfield 

Proctor, and on December 1, 1890, formally requested that President Benjamin Harrison 

authorize US Army cavalry troops “to prevent timber cutting, sheep herding, trespassing or 

spoliation” of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.5 

The first troops arrived in Yosemite in May 1891, and set about establishing a workable 

administrative system. One of the most important aspects of Army administration was its 

establishment of a network of patrol routes running, as nearly as possible, around the perimeter 

of the park to intercept herders or other trespassers. A detailed map of the park prepared in 

1896 shows Reds Meadow as a regular patrol post with a nexus of established trails and pack 

routes radiating out like spokes on a wheel. The map also clearly indicates Devils Postpile and 

Soda Springs, though Rainbow Falls, unnamed, erroneously appears on a tributary creek to 

the Middle Fork.6 The cavalry also carved T-shaped blazes in many trees in the area to mark 

backcountry patrol routes. Some soldiers apparently joked that the T was chosen “so that the 

Irishmen in the army would know that it was a tree!” although the practical purpose of the 

blazes became clear when snow obscured the pathways on the ground.7 

Evicting itinerant sheepherders from the new park became the 

principal task and most vexing challenge for cavalry patrols. The 

park legislation offered little guidance on how to proceed, specifying 

only that the Secretary of the Interior “shall cause all persons 

trespassing upon the [park] . . . to be removed therefrom.”8 The 

legislation included no clear explanation of what trespass entailed 

and no mention of enforcement or legal recourse. The park’s first 

superintendent, Captain Abraham Epperson “Jug” Wood, worked 

around these ambiguities by offering a “square deal” to herders: they 

could enter the new park as long as they limited grazing to areas n Devils Postpile National 

 Christopher E. Johnson) already surveyed and marked off as private claims. This deal proved Cavalry “T” blaze iMonument. (Photo:

72 
The United States Army 

Sheepherder and sheep in a meadow. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

all but impossible to abide by for itinerant sheepmen who had no private claims. The vast 

area of the new park, its rugged topography, and sheepherders’ ability to evade patrols further 

complicated matters. The cavalry found itself engaged in “an endless game of hide-and-seek 

over an enormous tract of almost inaccessible mountain territory with a formidable number 

of unterrified and thoroughly resentful sheepherders who became extremely cautious and even 

more cunning in their transgressions.”9 

Beginning in 1891, cavalry troops adopted the strategy of vacating the herders from one corner 

of the park and their flocks from the opposite corner, making it difficult for captured herders 

to round up their sheep in time to take advantage of the High Sierra’s short grazing season.10 

While this discouraged many sheepmen, others devised creative methods of eluding cavalry 

patrols. In 1906, Mary Austin noted the determination of some herders to continue grazing in 

their favorite locations. A herder she identified as “Jacques” claimed to have bribed the cavalry 

with five gallons of whiskey in order to feed his sheep “in the meadow under the dome, in 

pleasant meadows where my camp is, where I have fed them fifteen years.”11 To avoid detection 

by cavalry patrols or tourists who would often report them, herders removed the bells from 

their sheep and maintained smaller fires. Others boasted that they could take advantage of the 

susceptibility of some patrolmen to bribes.12 

Although located in a remote corner of the park, Reds Meadow served as an important 

post from which to prevent sheepherders from entering via Mammoth Pass, one of the only 

accessible passes along the Central Sierra escarpment. In 1892, Merced sheep rancher Harvey 

Ostrander petitioned the Army to allow herders to use the Mammoth trail to access grazing 

sites located outside the park boundary. Acting Superintendent Wood “uniformally refused 

such permission,” believing that the herders would abuse the privilege and graze their flocks 

all the way from the Middle Fork Valley west to Jackass Meadow. Despite the prohibition, 

sheepmen managed to run two herds past the Reds Meadow post during spring 1892, “but 

their haste was so great that the animals were not permitted to graze,” according to Wood.13 

73 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

Cavalry officer Nathaniel F. McClure’s 1896 map of patrol routes in Yosemite National Park. (Source: Greene, 

Yosemite, 330) 

In 1895, Acting Superintendent Capt. Alexander Rogers reported to the Secretary of the Interior 

that “Mr. [Theodore] Agnew has been of a good deal of service to the Government by acting as 

guide to troops patrolling the park, by giving information as to the whereabouts of trespassers 

on the park, and by preventing sheep-herders from driving sheep through the land occupied 

by him, which they believe belongs to him.”14 In 1896, Acting Superintendent Lt. Col. S. B. 

M. Young reported that a patrol arrested two sheepherders and evicted approximately 7,000 

head of sheep from the southeastern corner of the park. Several other herders were discovered 

just outside the park boundary.15 To better patrol this area, Young recommended that the 

government appropriate $7,000 to improve the old French Trail through Reds Meadow, and 

in 1901, Acting Superintendent L. A. Craig called for the repair of the 38-mile trail from 

Chilnualna Falls near Wawona to Devils Postpile. 

In 1904, Horace M. Albright—a Bishop native who later served as the second director of the 

National Park Service—camped at Reds Meadow while en route to Yosemite with General 

Land Office ranger Robert Bigelow. The group shared the meadow with a cavalry patrol that 

had “just put 75 miles between some shepherds and their sheep.” The men had apparently 

gotten more out of the effort than simply the satisfaction of removing trespassers. Upon 

inquiring about “some objects high in the trees,” Albright was informed “that they were sheep 

that had been ‘dressed out’ in sacks and hoisted high in the trees to keep the meat cool and 

fresh.”16 

74 
The 1905 Exclusion and the Transfer to the Sierra National Forest 

Close up of the same map showing Reds Meadows as a patrol hub. (Source: Greene, Yosemite, 330) 

The 1905 Exclusion and the Transfer to the Sierra National Forest 

As early as 1892, Captain Wood had serious reservations about whether the Middle Fork 

Valley should remain part of the park. Earlier that year, a survey of the southern boundary 

of the park, including the North Fork Mining District, revealed that there were at least 115 

mining claims in the area, which had produced over $2 million in minerals prior to 1890. 

Wood saw little reason to keep this area out of private hands, writing that “there are no natural 

curiosities of a destructible character in any of them. There is nothing in these mining sections 

that would attract the tourist or the wonder seeker. Each of them is at an extreme corner of 

the park, and inaccessible from any point within it except by the most fatiguing climbing.”17 

Perhaps swayed by Agnew and a recent state mineralogist report recommending the removal 

of the area from Yosemite, Wood demonstrated a surprising compassion for the independent 

miner. Hope is the miner’s main stay of life. A sight of his hardened hands, strong but soiled 

75 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

clothing, his dry humor, his clear reasoning from his own standpoint, and his decided and 

positive manner when speaking of his claim deprives the subject of its pathos and half convinces 

the listener. I can think of no plan by which the Government can purchase this man’s claim, 

satisfy him, and still keep the expenditure within the bounds of reason.”18 Wood reserved no 

such sympathy for sheepherders, who he regarded as contemptuous foreigners who “care for 

nothing but the prosperity of their flocks.”19 

Not all army officials shared Wood’s willingness to adjust park boundaries. In 1895, Captain 

Rogers recommended no boundary changes, declaring that “I am unable to concur in the 

recommendations of my predecessors as to cutting down the size of the park.”20 Others 

disagreed with Wood’s negative assessment of the region’s scenic attractions. In 1899, Captain 

Joseph Caine described the Reds Meadow area as a “country that abounds in natural wonders,” 

advising that it and the headwaters of the San Joaquin River should be assured of protection.21 

Caine’s call to protect the Postpile country may have been prompted by renewed pressure 

to readjust the park’s boundaries to accommodate private land claims. Colonel Young had 

already suggested in 1896 that a commission of experts should develop a park-wide boundary 

plan rather than making individual adjustments in response to each claim. A large part of 

the problem was that Congress defined Yosemite on the basis of townships, some of which 

contained preexisting land patents issued to settlers, miners, and timber interests. The Middle 

Fork Valley, which had not yet been included within General Land Office surveys, contained a 

number of unofficial mining claims, and because the extent of such private holdings remained 

unclear in 1890, Congress chose not to address them in the founding legislation. This, then, 

put the burden of resolving the situation on the park’s army administrators who dealt with the 

situation as best they could, relying on their own judgment or deferring decisions in the hope 

that the federal government would develop a formal policy.22 

In 1903, however, the Department of the Interior’s hand was finally forced by the Yosemite 

Lumber Company, which began logging on private forest tracts inside the western boundary 

of the park. The following year, the department formed a commission to study the issue in 

the field and make recommendations to Congress for its resolution. Major Hiram Chittenden 

of the US Army Corps of Engineers, US Geological Survey topographer Robert Marshall, 

and Frank Bond, chief of the drafting division of the General Land Office, concluded that a 

smaller park with fewer inholdings would be easier to manage, particularly given the reluctance 

of Congress to authorize the purchase of private land for parks or recreation. As the most 

immediate problem stemmed from logging, the boundary revision concentrated on eliminating 

the most accessible timber stands from Yosemite, but also considered those lands with the 

potential for significant mineral exploitation. As a result, “An Act to exclude from the Yosemite 

National Park, California, certain lands therein described and to attach and include the said 

lands in the Sierra Forest Reserve” of February 7, 1905, established the new eastern boundary 

of the park along the Foerster Peak-Isberg Peak-Triple Divide Peak crest. This made for a more 

natural boundary based on the Merced River watershed while removing the upper reaches of 

the San Joaquin River watershed, including the Devils Postpile country.23 

The 1905 boundary revision of Yosemite National Park did not take the Postpile region out 

of federal control, but instead transferred it to the nascent US Forest Service as part of the 

newly designated Sierra National Forest. In contrast to the strict preservation ethic conceived 

for national parks, the first forest reserves—soon renamed national forests—were predicated 

on the American Progressive movement’s concept of scientifically managed use. As the Forest 

Service’s first “Use Book” of regulations spelled out, “all land is to be devoted to its most 

productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit 

76 
The Push for Preservation: Creating the Monument 

of individuals or companies. All the resources of the forest reserves are for use, and this use must 

be brought about in a thoroughly prompt and businesslike manner, under such restrictions 

only as will insure the permanence of these resources.”24 Accordingly, the Postpile and its 

surroundings were open for development if a use could be found that would satisfy the Forest 

Service’s utilitarian criteria. 

The American Antiquities Act 

The Progressive concept of “permanent good for the whole people” also gave rise to an effort to 

preserve the nation’s cultural heritage for the benefit of all rather than the profit of a few. This 

spurred action particularly by the nation’s archeologists, who actively responded to damage 

and loss of artifacts from sites such as Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Casa Grande. Their 

pressure contributed to President Benjamin Harrison’s decision to create the Casa Grande 

Ruins Reservation in 1892, but while many in the scientific community believed that such 

individual measures were the appropriate route for preserving archeological sites, others insisted 

that a comprehensive federal approach was needed. 

Archeologist Edgar Lee Hewett became the decisive figure in this debate, crafting the text of 

a proposed act that finally reconciled the competing interests. An Act for the Preservation of 

American Antiquities easily passed through Congress, and was signed into law by President 

Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906.25 The act authorized the president to designate as 

national monuments “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects 

of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the 

Government of the United States.” The inclusion of objects of scientific interest under the 

provisions of the act would be the key to Devils Postpile’s status as a monument in the years to 

come.26

The Antiquities Act embodied Progressive principles in that it granted direct power to the 

president of the United States to allocate public lands for preservation. With the stroke of a pen, 

the president could block commercial exploitation of historically or scientifically significant 

resources on public lands with few qualifications beyond the stipulation that the boundaries 

be drawn to enclose the smallest area necessary for the protection of the resource. While this 

made it easy to create national monuments, the Antiquities Act offered little guidance for their 

administration, specifying only that new monuments were to be managed by the agency with 

prior jurisdiction of the area. Also, because congressional approval was not required for their 

creation, national monuments initially had no appropriations of their own, requiring that 

management expenses be drawn from the coffers of the agency charged with each monument’s 

administration, or paid for by local volunteers.27 These ambiguities became the source of many 

of the administrative challenges at Devils Postpile in the decades following its establishment. 

The Push for Preservation: Creating the Monument 

The creation of Devils Postpile came during the heated battle over the proposal to dam the 

Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park to provide water for the city of San Francisco. 

Historians have long regarded the Hetch Hetchy controversy as a product of an irreconcilable 

split between preservationists, such as John Muir, and utilitarian conservationists, such as 

Gifford Pinchot.28 The history of the establishment of Devils Postpile complicates this 

divide, demonstrating how certain individuals at certain times could embody both aspects of 

conservation.29 

77 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

Although few tourists visited the Devils Postpile area during the time it was included in 

Yosemite, it did receive some attention in popular periodicals. In 1900, Sunset Magazine ran 

an article on the “Giant’s Causeway of Yosemite.” The author described the Postpile area as 

an “enchanting mountain garden, more wonderfully strange and beautiful than anything we 

had ever encountered.”30 In a 1903 article for Country Life, Helen Lukens Jones encouraged 

Yosemite visitors to venture beyond the usual sights: “The Yosemite National Park holds 

within its confines marvelous rock pictures,” she wrote, “but none are more striking or 

more geologically interesting than several groups of columnar basalt which loom with sturdy 

massiveness in the obscure southeast corner of the park.”31 Also during this period, the Postpile 

itself gained some notoriety as a particularly good example of columnar basalt jointing with 

pictures of the formation beginning to appear in geology textbooks as early as 1905.32 

The area continued to see some visits even after its removal from Yosemite. In 1909, Sierra Club 

leader and University of California professor Joseph N. LeConte camped in Reds Meadow 

where he met a number of miners and campers and took time to enjoy the hot spring. He also 

noted the region’s potential as a scenic tourism destination: “The surrounding region is full 

of interest; Mount Ritter and the Minarets to the northwest, the wonderful basaltic mass of 

the Devil’s Post Pile nearby, the Rainbow Fall, the finest in the Sierra outside of Yosemite and 

Hetch-Hetchy, within a mile, and curious and interesting volcanic phenomena all about. Add 

to this the abundant fish in the streams, and what more enjoyable spot can be imagined?”33 

At the time of LeConte’s visit, the area was also being reexplored for its mineral potential. In 

1910, Walter L. Huber, the district engineer for the Forest Service’s California and Southwestern 

Nevada district, received an application for a permit to build a dam on the Middle Fork San 

Joaquin River at Devils Postpile. The intent was to blast the Postpile formation for the raw 

material to create a rock-fill dam that would be employed in a power generation scheme for 

local mining operations. Huber regarded the proposal as “wanton destruction of scenery” and 

brought the matter up with district forester F. E. Olmsted. At Olmsted’s instruction, Huber 

contacted the secretary of the Sierra Club, William Colby, who then enlisted the support of 

Joseph LeConte. Shortly afterward, the four men met to discuss the situation. Olmsted advised 

Colby and LeConte that US Chief Forester Henry Graves would soon be visiting the district 

office in San Francisco and invited them to present the objections to a dam at the Postpile.34 

Following this, LeConte, Muir, William Colby, and Edward T. Parsons signed a letter expressing 

the Sierra Club’s support for the proposed monument. In March, LeConte wrote a letter of his 

own addressed to President William H. Taft regarding the “threatened destruction of a certain 

unique feature of the Sierra Nevada Mountains... commonly known as the ‘Devil’s Post 

Pile.”’ He described the formation as “a remarkable example of basaltic columns, the finest, I 

believe, in America, and ranking with the famous Giants Causeway in England.”35 

Olmsted echoed LeConte in a letter to Graves calling for the protection of the “remarkable 

geologic formation known as Devil’s Post Pile,” as well as Rainbow Falls, which he compared 

to Vernal Falls in Yosemite. The waterfall, he wrote, represented “one of the few of its kind on 

the continent.” Olmsted also noted that he had received recommendations for the creation 

of a national monument in as early as 1908, but no definite action had been taken “outside 

of the withdraw of the general area as a special administrative site.” The scientific interest of 

these features coupled with their increasing popularity with tourists, he argued, warranted 

their reservation as a monument.36 

Soon after, William Colby and LeConte met with Graves who in turn asked Olmsted: “Do 

we want a National Monument on that area?” The original intention had simply been to 

gain support for denying the dam permit, but Olmsted replied with an emphatic “Yes, we 

78 
The Push for Preservation: Creating the Monument 

Walter L. Huber. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

do.”37 Graves then asked Huber to draft a proclamation for a monument, and to prepare an 

accompanying map. Huber was to have the proclamation completed and in Washington, DC, 

by the time Graves returned there, so that he could immediately present it to Secretary of 

Agriculture James Wilson. Graves hoped that Wilson would in turn present the proclamation 

to President Taft with a favorable recommendation. Huber also drafted a memorandum in 

May 1911 evaluating the potential value of a reservoir at the Postpile. He concluded that the 

topography would only support a small reservoir, making the power-generating potential slight 

and the construction costs in such a rugged region prohibitive, and certainly not worth the 

destruction of “an object of such scientific and scenic interest as the Devil’s Post Pile.”38 These 

efforts resulted in the formal proclamation of “Devil Postpile National Monument” on July 6, 

1911.39 

Huber later noted that it was difficult to create a map, as the Postpile was not yet included 

in the public land surveys. “That is why the junction of King Creek and the Middle Fork 

of San Joaquin River was chosen as an initial point on the boundary,” he explained. “There 

were no section corners within miles.” Huber also noted that his “very literal interpretation” 

of the Antiquities Act—which required that national monuments occupy “the smallest area 

compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”—prompted 

79 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

Original Map drawn by Walter Huber and filed with the 1911 proclamation establishing Devils Postpile 

National Monument. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

him to enclose only a limited area within the boundary.40 Because of Graves’s deadline, Huber 

drew the original map of the monument before having an opportunity to visit the site, but 

he subsequently surveyed the boundaries in late July 1911 to ensure that the Postpile and 

Rainbow Falls were actually included.41 

Huber arrived at the monument on July 24 in the company of Sierra National Forest rangers, 

and began his survey the following day. He took as his starting point a lodgepole pine at the 

junction of King Creek and the Middle Fork San Joaquin River. From there he set the two 

northern corners using stadiametric measurements after determining that the ruggedness of the 

terrain would make chaining impractical. He did not survey the southeast corner, presumably 

because he felt it could be easily identified as the point where the perpendicular lines from the 

southwest and northeast corners met. Although he clearly marked the three surveyed corners, 

he did not place markers along any of the boundary lines, nor did he prepare a map based on 

his actual survey points.42 

In his report, Huber reiterated the impracticalities of a dam at Devils Postpile, noting the small 

capacity, remote location, and the limited market for power. He was not, however, opposed 

to development of other locations in the Middle Fork Valley. Although also a member of 

the Sierra Club, Huber, like many of his colleagues in the Forest Service, prioritized use over 

absolute preservation unless a practicable use could not be found. While he clearly recognized 

the aesthetic and scientific qualities of the Postpile, his objections to a dam at that particular 

site were framed primarily in terms of its limited utility. He instead recommended that Shadow 

Lake, located a few miles northwest of the Postpile might offer “greater possibilities” since 

“its capacity would not be less and the dam site is an ideal one with excellent abutments.” 

He also noted that while his brief visit did not permit him a thorough examination, “such an 

examination might show other and even better reservoir sites.”43 

80 
The Push for Preservation: Creating the Monument 

Walter L. Huber surveying the Devils Postpile boundary in 1912. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

Huber filed his survey and accompanying report with the General Land Office, the federal 

bureau charged with segregating public lands at that time. In a response letter, Commissioner 

Fred Dennett approved the survey, but with some reservations. Specifically, Dennett expressed 

concern that Huber may have failed to include the full area of geologic significance. “It is 

apparent in his report that District Engineer Huber believes that only that portion of the 

basaltic pile which was exposed together with the broken columns at its base was worthy of 

reservation within the monument, or that he was unaware that his line divided this formation 

in approximately two equal parts, the exposed part being with the reservation.” Dennett noted 

that while his office “greatly regretted” this omission, the effort that had gone into the survey 

and his belief that it had satisfied the “intent” of the Antiquities Act warranted approval. He 

nevertheless kept the issue open, concluding that “if it should be found desirable at some 

81 
Chapter Five Shifting Boundaries, Shifting Values 

future time to increase the size of the monument this could easily be done by supplemental 

proclamation.”44 Although Dennett’s particular concerns have not been raised since, the 

appropriate size and dimensions of the monument did become a recurring issue in later years 

due to discrepancies between the boundaries depicted in the map included with the 1911 

proclamation and maps based on the actual corners that Huber set in his subsequent survey. 

Notes 

1.	 Both reports summarized in Linda Greene, Yosemite: The Park and Its Resources—A History of the Discovery, 

Management, and Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California (Washington, DC: US 

Department of the Interior/National Park Service, 1987), 259–60. 

2.	 Ibid., 288–99. 

3.	 “An Act to Set Apart Certain Tracts of Land in the State of California as Forest Reservations,” October 1, 1890 

(26 Stat., 650); John Muir, “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park,” Century Magazine (September 

1890). The act also set aside land for General Grant National Park, and a portion of Sequoia National Park; 

and Holway Jones, John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1963), 

45–47. 

4.	 Harvey Meyerson, Nature’s Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 

2001), 62. 

5.	 Ibid., 68, 82. 

6.	 “Map of the Yosemite National Park Prepared for Use of US Troops by N. F. McClure, 1st Lieut., 5th Cavalry, 

March, 1896,” in Greene, Yosemite, 330. 

7.	 Greene, Yosemite, chap. 3. 

8.	 Meyerson, Nature’s Army, 93. 

9.	 Ibid., 93–94; and quotation from Kirk et al., The Yosemite Way, 71. 

10.	 Carl Parcher Russell, One Hundred Years in Yosemite (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 158. 

11.	 Austin, The Flock, 191–92. 

12.	 Ibid., 194–95. 

13.	 A. E. Wood, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” in The Executive 

Document of the House of Representatives for the Second Session of the Fifty-Second Congress, 1892–93 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 1893), 663. 

14.	 Francis Farquhar, Place Names of the High Sierra (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1926). 

15.	 S. B. M. Young, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park,” Yosemite National 

Park, Office of Superintendent, Wawona, August 15, 1896, in Report of the Secretary of the Interior, Vol. 3 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 1896), 735. 

16.	 Horace M. Albright and Marian Albright Schenck, Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years 

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 6. 

17.	 Wood, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 666. 

18.	 Ibid., 666–67; and California State Mining Bureau, Eleventh Report of the State Mineralogist, Two Years Ending 

September 15, 1892 (Sacramento: State Office, 1892), 22. Based on E. B. Preston’s evaluation, the state 

mineralogist recommended that “it would be a commendable act to segregate this part of the park, as it would 

not injuriously affect the headwaters of the San Joaquin. Such segregation would result in the building of 

roads through a rugged but valuable country, thereby connecting Mono County with the San Joaquin Valley.” 

19.	 Ibid., 663. 

20.	 Quoted in Young, “Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park,” 742. 

21.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile.” 

22.	 Meyerson, Nature’s Army, 172. 

23.	 Greene, Yosemite, 395–96. 

82 
Notes 

24.	 Gifford Pinchot et al., The Use of the National Forest Reserves (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 

1905), 10. 

25.	 Raymond Harris Thompson, “Edgar Lee Hewett and the Political Process,” Journal of the Southwest 42, no. 2 

(2000): 271–318. 

26.	 “An Act For the Preservation of American Antiquities,” June 8, 1906 (16 USC 431–33). 

27.	 Hal K. Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts: The American National Monuments (Chicago: University of Illinois 

Press, 1989), 49. 

28.	 The classic treatment of the Muir/Pinchot divide is Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind , chap. 10. Also 

see Fox, John Muir and His Legacy. 

29.	 My argument here builds on Miller, Gifford Pinchot. 

30.	 T. P. Lukens, “Giant’s Causeway of Yosemite,” Sunset 6, no. 1 (November 1900): 145. 

31.	 Helen Lukens Jones, “The Rock Wonders of Yosemite Park,” Country Life (June 1903): 138. 

32.	 Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin and Rollin D. Salisbury, Geology, Vol. 1, Geologic Processes and Their Results 

(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1905), 497. 

33.	 Joseph N. LeConte, “The High Mountain Route between Yosemite and the King’s River Canon,” Sierra Club 

Bulletin 7, no. 1 (January 1909): 6. 

34.	 Walter L. Huber to John C. Preston, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, December 22, 1952, Cultural 

Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument. Huber was himself a member of the Sierra Club, and 

later served as its president. 

35.	 J. N. LeConte to President Wm. H. Taft, March 29, 1911, Walter L. Huber Papers, file 151, Water Resources 

Center Archives, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as WRCA). 

36.	 F. E. Olmsted to Forester, Washington, DC, April 11, 1911, Walter L. Huber Papers, file 151, WRCA. 

37.	 Huber to Preston, December 22, 1952. 

38.	 W. L. Huber, District Engineer, “Memorandum,” File 0 Sierra, Boundaries. (Devil’s Post Pile Rainbow Falls), 

May 31, 1911, Manuscript Collection, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Archives (SKCNPA). 

39.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile.” The name Devil Postpile, instead of Devil’s Postpile, 

seems to have been the result of a clerical error when the final proclamation was prepared. Devil’s Postpile 

appeared on Lt. McClure’s map of 1896, and Huber indicated in his letter to Superintendent Preston that it 

was a name of long standing. 

40.	 Huber to Preston, December 22, 1952. See Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts, xii, 68. 

41.	 Huber to Preston, December 22, 1952. 

42.	 W. L. Huber, “Report of District Engineer on Survey of Devil’s Postpile National Monument,” September 12, 

1911, Devils Postpile Central Files 1915–1953, ACC. 5121, YNPA. Interestingly, Huber also advised against 

relying on compass readings for survey work in the area, noting that “immense quantities of magnetic iron in 

the region and particularly about Iron Mountain cause the compass to act in a very uncertain manner.” 

43.	 W. L. Huber, “Report of District Engineer on Survey of Devil’s Post Pile National Monument,” September 

12, 1911, 5–6, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

44.	 Fred Dennett to Forester, Department of Agriculture, October 28, 1911, Walter L. Huber Papers, file 

151, WRCA. 

83 

Chapter Six 

Defining the Monument: Jurisdiction, Agency Values, 

and the Return to Yosemite, 1912–1934 

As noted in the founding proclamation, the monument and the surrounding country were 

located within the Sierra National Forest, which meant that under the terms of the Antiquities 

Act, administrative responsibility for the new monument fell to the Forest Service. However, 

with no road access, Devils Postpile saw few visitors during the period of Forest Service 

management. 

The Forest Service recognized, however, that despite its remoteness the area had recreational 

potential in addition to the interest people continued to show in its mining potential.1 As 

a consequence, beginning in 1910, the North Fork Ranger Station assigned Ranger Bob 

Beard to establish a summer guard station at Reds Meadow.2 Beard was transferred to the 

Sequoia National Forest at the end of the 1912 season and was replaced the following year by 

veteran ranger Malcolm McLeod who came to know the area well. In 1919, McLeod guided 

members of the Johnston family to a mine site near Clover Meadows, which he believed could 

be profitably developed. He and his wife Emma took up residence in a tent camp in Reds 

Meadow until 1927, when they moved into a log cabin that he and his crew built near the hot 

spring and that still stands today.3 

With company scarce in the remote valley, McLeod developed a familiarity with some of its 

enigmatic residents. On at least one occasion, Joe Ivanhoe sought McLeod’s help in making 

repairs to his cabin near the Postpile, while another source noted that McLeod and Ivanhoe 

built a stone wall around the Reds Meadow hot spring in 1923 after “a party of people caught 

them taking a bath in the rock basin out of reach of their clothes.”4 Although a few local 

fishermen and hunters made the difficult trek into the valley in this period, the McLeods 

encountered few visitors. Until the early 1930s, the valley remained a haven for hermits such 

as Ivanhoe and a mysterious, perhaps mythical “Chinese recluse” who some locals speculated 

may have “fallen into one of the boiling springs and was half drowned half cooked to death.”5 

The early twentieth century also saw renewed mining activity.6 Beginning in 1914, San 

Francisco businessman John Beck made efforts to develop mines in the Minarets, at one point, 

packing out two tons of iron ore he declared to be worth $400 a ton. In 1927, a group of 

investors bought the old Mammoth mine claims and organized the Mammoth Consolidated 

Mining Company. Before ceasing operations in 1934, the group extracted roughly $100,000 

worth of minerals, a respectable amount but probably not enough to cover all their expenses.7 

Around the same time, C. C. Randall, owner of the Minaret Mine, hired members of the 

Johnston family to oversee operations at the mine. In 1928, the family convinced Randall to 

invest “a large sum of money” in a road from Minaret summit to Pumice Flat and up the six 

miles to the mine site located on a tributary to Minaret Creek. To resupply the dozen or so men 

working the mine during the winter months, Tex Cushions of Mammoth City made frequent 

trips into the valley and up to the mine site by dog sled. Ultimately, however, the Minaret 

Mine’s remote location made sustaining a profit nearly impossible. Despite the richness of the 

ore, the effort involved in “tramming [the ore] down from 12,000 feet and again tramming it 

out to 10,000 feet” had begun to take a toll, and in 1934, Randall closed the mine.8 
Chapter Six Defining the Monument: Jurisdiction, Agency Values, and the Return to Yosemite, 1912–1934 

1927 map of Sierra National Forest showing Devils Postpile at the top right. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

The Johnstons remained the area, recognizing that the mining road, even with its steep hairpin 

turns and rutted, dusty surface, could provide automobile access to the Middle Fork Valley for 

the increasing numbers of Southern California tourists gravitating to the Mammoth area each 

summer. Soon after the mine closed, the family extended the road south from Pumice Flat 

to Reds Meadow. They then partnered with Lloyd Summers—whose father Charlie, a cattle 

rancher, had opened one of the first hotels in Mammoth in 1918—to construct the original 

buildings and store for the Reds Meadow Resort and Pack Station. Taylor Johnston also later 

recalled that the family built the original ranger station at the Postpile from lumber salvaged 

from structures at the mine.9 In 1937, Arch Mahan Jr., son of A.G. Mahan, Sr., the principal 

investor in the Mammoth Consolidated Mine, purchased Reds Meadow Pack Station from 

Summers. Although the facility saw few visitors in the early years, its opening marked the 

beginning of the transformation of the Middle Fork Valley into a recreation haven for visitors 

to the Eastern Sierra. 

The National Park Service and Rivalry with the Forest Service 

The transformation of the Mammoth Lakes economy from one based on resource extraction 

to one based on recreation coincided with the increasing popularity and accessibility of nature 

tourism in the nation as a whole. Through the first decades of the twentieth century, higher 

wages, better-made and more affordable automobiles, the construction of highways, and 

the advent of promotional campaigns with slogans such as “See America First” encouraged 

Americans to venture out farther and more often for the purposes of recreation.10 

The popularity of recreation and its potential economic benefits also influenced the continuing 

evolution of the federal agencies charged with managing natural and historic areas set aside 

86 
The National Park Service and Rivalry with the Forest Service 

Reds Meadow guard station built in 1927 by Ranger Malcolm 

McLeod and occupied by he and his wife Emma McLeod. (Devils 

Postpile National Monument image collection) 

for public enjoyment. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed An Act to 

Establish a National Park Service, commonly known as the Organic Act. From the beginning, 

millionaire industrialist Stephen T. Mather was in place as the service’s director. Together 

with his assistant Horace Albright, Mather was determined to link in the public mind the 

relationship between national parks and the American economy. Historian Barry Mackintosh 

notes that “Mather and Albright blurred the distinction between utilitarian conservation 

and preservation by emphasizing the economic potential of parks as tourist meccas.”11 They 

believed it was imperative to fully and efficiently develop parks for the pleasure of the public, 

which would in turn result in increased tourist dollars and the strengthening of their own 

agency. While some preservationists still hoped to find ways to use scenic areas without 

destroying their basic aesthetic values, they generally realized that some concession had to be 

made to provide for the comforts and convenience of tourists in order to get them into the 

parks for longer periods of time, so that they would come to appreciate national parks and 

stand up in their defense.12 

In his endeavors to popularize the national park idea, Mather’s practical business experience 

proved invaluable. He was selling a product to the American public, though scenic beauty 

was a more unconventional commodity than the borax that built his personal fortune. 

Based on the argument that national parks would ultimately stimulate local economies 

if properly managed, Mather’s first steps involved streamlining his organization, handling 

finances in a businesslike manner, installing trained nonpolitical personnel, enhancing the 

visitor experience by improving access and accommodations, and establishing educational 

facilities and opportunities. In addition, Mather sponsored the creation of the National Parks 

Association in 1919 to promote greater public awareness of the parks and to serve as a conduit 

for civic activism on their behalf.13 

Mather’s commitment to the idea of parks as havens for recreation and leisure ensured that 

major parks were developed with thousands of structures, hundreds of miles of roads, and 

extensive recreational facilities that at times threatened to overpower the dramatic landscapes 

they were built to serve. This was a direct outgrowth of Mather’s pragmatic belief that the 

future of the national parks depended on making them appealing to more than the committed 

nature lover. “Scenery is a splendid thing when it is viewed by a man who is in a contented 

87 
Chapter Six Defining the Monument: Jurisdiction, Agency Values, and the Return to Yosemite, 1912–1934 

frame of mind,” he commented in 1915. “Give him a poor breakfast after he has had a bad 

night’s sleep, and he will not care how fine your scenery is. He is not going to enjoy it.”14 

In January 1929, Mather stepped down as director of the Park Service due to ill health. Even 

after his death in January 1930, however, Mather’s ideals and basic policies continued under 

Horace Albright, who, because of his long tenure, can be considered a cofounder of the present 

National Park Service. Having worked with Mather in addition to serving as superintendent 

of Yellowstone for ten years, Albright built on the achievements of the agency’s early years. In 

addition to being knowledgeable about governmental affairs and well-known and respected in 

Washington’s political arena, of perhaps even greater benefit to his work was the fact that the 

park idea had become solidly entrenched in the American consciousness. Albright also enjoyed 

the support of Interior Department officials and the aid of a first-class staff in the Washington 

office and in the field. During his four-year tenure as director, Albright enlarged nine parks and 

acquired three new ones in addition to the national monuments created under the Antiquities 

Act.15 

Albright also brought a new emphasis on history and education to his term as director of 

the Park Service. Previously, Mather’s vision had imposed a “one-dimensional role upon his 

agency” by making the “scenic magnificence of the western parks” such as Yosemite serve as the 

model for parks nationwide. While parks of scenic wonder served as showcases for humanity’s 

interaction with the environment and provided recreation opportunities for many, they failed 

to speak to other aspects of America’s national heritage. Albright leapt at the chance to add 

historic preservation to the Park Service’s mandate, recognizing that the Park Service could 

play a central role in recounting and explaining the development of the United States as urban, 

industrial growth moved the nation further away from its agrarian creation myth. Albright 

realized that while both the Forest Service and the War Department maintained an assortment 

of national monuments, no federal agency had taken on the role of interpreting key sites of 

American history to the public. Doing so would also have the practical effect of promoting the 

continued growth of the National Park Service—an essential factor for ensuring the ongoing 

expansion of its budget. President Franklin Roosevelt gave this new direction permanence in 

June 1933 through Executive Order 6166, which gave Albright’s agency control of all national 

monuments, as well as the War Department’s battlefield parks and historic cemeteries.16 

The order was issued during a time of intense rivalry between the Forest Service and the 

National Park Service. Even before the creation of the Park Service, Forest Service officials 

had opposed the creation of another federal agency responsible for managing public lands. 

Chief Forester Henry Graves feared it would “dismember” the Forest Service by encouraging 

the creation of new parks carved out of national forest lands.17 Interagency conflict continued 

after the creation of the Park Service. To deflect critiques that it was focused exclusively on 

resource extraction, the Forest Service began emphasizing recreation in some of its holdings. 

In 1924, the agency designated a portion of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico a roadless 

“wilderness” area. Other forests initiated recreational plans for automobile tourists in this 

period. Stephen Mather countered that the Park Service was better equipped to develop lands 

for recreation, as the parks, he argued, were “more truly national playgrounds than were the 

forests” due to their exceptional scenic magnificence.18 By the end of the 1920s, the Park 

Service had become firmly established as a legitimate public lands bureau, due in large part 

to Mather’s skillful political maneuvering and his recognition of the growing popularity of 

outdoor recreation.19 

In the Sierra Nevada, the Forest Service continued to seek ways to block national park 

expansions. In the late 1920s, Stuart Show, chief forester of District 5, developed criteria for 

88 
The National Park Service and Rivalry with the Forest Service 

designating areas in the Sierra without resource potential as roadless “primitive areas.” The 

strategy served to diffuse Sierra Club critiques of the Service’s utilitarian agenda while also 

providing buffer zones against Park Service efforts to expand its holdings. In 1931, the Forest 

Service set aside nearly 800,000 acres of the rugged high country south of Yosemite and west 

of Devils Postpile as the High Sierra Primitive Area and the Mount Dana-Minarets Wild 

Area. Also during this period, Forest Service officials in the southern Sierra may have been 

responsible for stirring up local resentment toward the Park Service by claiming that the agency 

would “lock up” lands currently being used for resource extraction.20 

At the national level, the Forest Service did not seem to take any immediate notice of 

Roosevelt’s order transferring the national monuments to Park Service management, despite 

ongoing interagency competition. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace finally presented 

his objections to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in late July 1933, six weeks after Order 

6166 had been issued. He suggested to Ickes that the Forest Service’s monuments should be 

excluded from the transfer on the grounds that they constituted facilities essential to the work 

of the department. Moreover, Wallace argued that administration of the monuments by the 

Park Service would prove costly and inefficient, counter to President Roosevelt’s intention of 

creating greater economy in land management.21 Ickes rejected Wallace’s assertions, pointing 

to the opinion of the Interior Department’s solicitor Nathan Margold, who cited the recent 

transfer of Bandelier National Monument as an example of the practicality and legality of such 

an undertaking.22 The formal transfer of the Forest Service’s monuments finally took place on 

January 18, 1934, but disagreements over jurisdiction lingered on. 

These disagreements were particularly evident at the local level. In spring 1934, Sierra National 

Forest supervisor Maurice A. Benedict wrote to Col. Charles Thomson, superintendent of 

Yosemite, referring to Thomson’s earlier apprehension about the transfer of Devils Postpile. “I 

hope you are sincere in your feeling,” he said, “that the two administrations in there should be 

eliminated because I am sure that it will be only confusing to the public to have two outfits 

covering practically the same area.” Benedict added his hope that Thomson would relay this 

concern to the director of the Park Service so that the Postpile’s monument status could be 

eliminated.23 Benedict reminded Thomson of his views in August, asserting that “the only 

reason this Monument was created was to head off a possible power development there.” 

With the danger past, he suggested that Thomson must “realize, I am sure, the absurdity of 

a dual administration in the Devils Post Pile area, both from the standpoint of the public 

reaction to its duplication and the possible administrative conflicts that will be confusing and 

embarrassing to us both.”24 

Thomson replied to Benedict with the benefit of Yosemite’s first season of managing the 

monument behind him. He acknowledged that the “explanation that monument status 

was originally extended merely to prevent filing for power purposes, is interesting.” But, he 

continued, there were no signs “that those in authority will do a right-about-face in policy” 

and return the national monuments to the Forest Service. Yosemite had a “mighty good man 

on the job,” whose performance had removed any doubts Thomson once harbored about the 

future success of Yosemite’s administration at Devils Postpile.25 

Local recreational business owners were initially hesitant about the Park Service’s presence. 

Their suspicion stemmed from rumors that the whole area might once again be included in 

Yosemite National Park. In 1934, local rancher, packer, and innkeeper Lloyd Summers drafted 

a letter on behalf of the Mammoth Lakes Association to Congress expressing the local business 

community’s concerns about the transfer of Devils Postpile to the Park Service. The letter 

maintained that the Forest Service had been adequately protecting monument resources for 

89 
Chapter Six Defining the Monument: Jurisdiction, Agency Values, and the Return to Yosemite, 1912–1934 

twenty-five years, that administration from the distant headquarters of Yosemite would be 

impractical, and that the Park Service’s particular set of rules and regulations would create 

confusion for the visiting public. The association’s primary concern, though, was for their own 

economic well-being: 

Collectively the members of this association serve a recreational seeking public of more 

than 50,000 people annually in the Mammoth Lakes area, and we are concerned lest this 

uneconomic and foolish administrative setup may be the entering wedge or argument for 

further park extension propaganda, which may easily develop us and lead to our ultimate 

destruction as individual business men and concessionaires in the National Forests, to the 

advantage of the large National Park Concessionaire Company, which has had no part in 

pioneering and developing the important and growing recreational area.26 

It had become clear relatively quickly, however, that the single ranger stationed at Devils 

Postpile each summer could barely keep the monument in working order, let alone pose a 

threat to local businesses. In fact, early rangers depended heavily on local recreation businesses 

to promote the monument and assist with visitor service. Furthermore, the Park Service did 

not seriously pursue expanding the boundaries of Yosemite, likely out of concern for the 

opposition it would face. 

Notes 

1.	 For example, “Rainbow Falls, Middle Fork of the San Joaquin,” Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1921; John 

L. Von Blon, “Paradox of the Mysterious Devil,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1922; Gilbert E. Bailey, 

“The Devil’s Post Pile,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1922; and “Fishing Trips Conducted by Mammoth 

Camp,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1928. 

2.	 California Ranger 17 (1958): 1–3, Manuscript Collection, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Archives. 

3.	 Linda A. Reynolds, Historic Property Treatment Plan for the Rainbow Fire, Inyo National Forest (Bishop, CA: 

Inyo National Forest, 1992), 9; and Emilie Martin and Melissa Totheroh, R–5/PSW Building Survey Form: 

FS#05–04–52–959 Reds Meadow Bath House (1989), Inyo National Forest Heritage Resources Files, Bishop, 

California. 

4.	 Author unknown, “Devils Postpile National Monument History,” 1952, unaccessioned DEPO files, DEPO 

Geology – History, YNPA. 

5.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile,” 7. 

6.	 “Mine Boom in the High Sierras,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1916. 

7.	 Smith et al., Mammoth Lakes Sierra, 42–43. 

8.	 Taylor F. Johnston cited in Arthur Selin to Granville B. Liles, Acting Superintendent Yosemite National Park 

April 23, 1963, unaccessioned DEPO files, DEPO Geology – History, YNPA. 

9.	 Ibid. 

10.	 The phrase “See America First” was first used by the Great Northern Railway in 1906 and later adopted by 

a number of civic organizations and public agencies including the National Park Service. For the role of the 

Park Service in promoting the link between nature tourism and national identity see Marguerite S. Shaffer, See 

America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

2007), chap. 4. 

11.	 Barry Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System (Washington DC: National Park Service, Division 

of Publications, 2000), www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/mackintosh1/sts2a.htm. 

12.	 Greene, Yosemite, 523–24; Don Hummel, Stealing the National Parks: The Destruction of Concessions and Park 

Access (Bellevue, WA: Free Enterprise Press, 1987), 55; and Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 59. 

13.	 John C. Miles, Guardians of the Parks: A History of the National Parks and Conservation Association (Washington, 

DC: Taylor and Francis, 1995), 18–21. 

14.	 Quoted in Albright and Schenck, Creating the National Park Service, 54. 

90 
Notes 

15.	 Greene, Yosemite, 731–32. 

16.	 Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts, 197–202; and Harlan D. Unrau and G. Frank Williss, Administrative 

History: Expansion of the National Park Service in the 1930s (Denver: National Park Service, Denver Service 

Center, 1983), chap. 2C, www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books//unrau–williss/adhi2c.htm. 

17.	 Chief Forester Henry Graves quoted in Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 36. 

18.	 Ibid., 58. 

19.	 Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts, 141. 

20.	 Anthony Godfrey, The Ever-Changing View: A History of the National Forests in California (Vallejo, CA: Pacific 

Southwest Region: USDA Forest Service, 2005), 215. 

21.	 Nathan R. Margold to Harold Ickes, Memorandum, October 24, 1933, Devils Postpile, Central Files 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

22.	 Harold Ickes to Henry Wallace, November 11, 1933, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

23.	 M. A. Benedict to Charles G. Thomson, May 17, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

24.	 Benedict to Thomson, August 27, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

25.	 Ibid. 

26.	 Quoted in John J. Cameron, “History of Devil Postpile National Monument,” draft history commissioned by 

the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, January 1937, 3–5, Superintendent’s Office Files, 

Devils Postpile National Monument. 

91 

Chapter Seven 

Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile 

under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

As Forest Supervisor Benedict had suggested, Thomson was not initially optimistic about 

Yosemite’s reacquisition of the monument, with the lack of any management plan to accompany 

the new responsibility a likely factor. In advising Thomson of the transfer, Park Service director 

Arno Cammerer added, “You might make some tentative inquiries of the District Forester as 

to just what the administration of this Monument involves.”1 The monument was formally 

placed under Yosemite’s supervision on March 24, 1934, at which point Thomson found 

that whatever the administration involved, he was expected to accomplish it with a budget of 

$470.00. The bulk of the sum—$420.00—would pay a temporary ranger for three months. 

The remaining $50.00 was to cover “general expenses and travel.”2 

Thomson hoped to keep a ranger at Devils Postpile from early June through the end of 

September because, he informed Arthur Demaray, who was at that time acting director of the 

Park Service, that the area had become accessible to automobile traffic and that is was “now 

intensively used, so much so that the maintenance of even reasonably good fishing there has 

become a problem for the [state Fish and Game] Commission.” He also thought it likely that 

a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) stub camp could be located at the monument.3 

In order to better grasp what Yosemite had taken on, Thomson dispatched a team led by 

Ranger Duane Jacobs in mid-June to inspect the monument and its boundaries. Thomson was 

particularly interested in “establishing fine relations” with the Forest Service’s district ranger at 

Reds Meadow and “the proper relationship with the large numbers of people who practically 

live in that area throughout the summer.”4 Jacobs arrived at the monument on June 15, and 

established the Park Service headquarters—a tent and a flagpole—a quarter-mile north of 

the Postpile, approximately where the present headquarters building is located. His initial 

assessment of the monument was a terse “good grounds, lovely place; also mosquitoes.” He 

also noted that several campers were already present.5 

In a subsequent report, Jacobs touched on several topics that would play major roles at the 

park in the coming years. He considered cooperation with the Forest Service “invaluable,” and 

noted that the monument was a good fit with the its recreation program in the area. Jacobs 

also approved of plans to build a road from Reds Meadow to within a few hundred yards of 

Rainbow Falls, but thought that a trail to the base of the Postpile, instead of a second road, 

would better preserve the monument’s beauty and would be more appreciated in the long run. 

Suggestions for additional development included an enclosure around the soda spring to keep 

the river from overflowing it, and a permanent headquarters station to replace the tent. Jacobs 

described the Middle Fork as an ideal fishing stream and, in keeping with Park Service practice 

of the day, recommended stocking the river with 50,000 rainbow trout fingerlings. He found 

that fishing was the primary reason visitors—around fifty per day, with five or six overnight 

camps—were in the area. The Postpile and other features were simply interesting diversions 

they had heard about along the way. Jacobs observed that “the ranger stationed here has an 

ideal opportunity to make friends for Yosemite and the entire National Park Service, he has 

the advantage of being able to almost forget the usual run of rules and regulations.”6 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

The original National Park Service ranger station set up at Devils Postpile in 

1934 following the transfer from the Forest Service. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

Superintendent Thomson advised Chief Ranger Forest Townsley to follow up on the suggestion 

for planting trout in the Middle Fork. “Certainly I want to do all that we can,” he explained, 

“in this and every other regard, to improve this monument recreationally, in its protection, 

and sightlines.”7 Thomson found, however, that he would have to do this initial work without 

the aid of the CCC. The US Army District Commander at Fresno, who was responsible for 

administering the program, did not consider it feasible to supply a stub camp from Yosemite 

because of the Postpile’s distance and the surrounding rugged terrain. While there had been 

a Forest Service camp at Mammoth in 1933, it had closed, and the next closest main camp 

was in Nevada, similarly too far away.8 Two years later, a CCC crew from the North Fork 

Ranger CCC camp on the Sierra National Forest agreed to work with National Forest foreman 

Al Rader to construct the public bathhouse at the Reds Meadow hot spring. The bathhouse 

allowed for more formal use of the hot spring and was the only CCC structure built in the 

9 area.

94 
One-Person Management 

Ranger Duane Jacobs inspecting a site at the base of the Postpile talus for the placement of an 

interpretive sign. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

1937 photo of the Reds Meadow Bath House, built by a CCC crew in 1935. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy 

of Nancy Wirth) 

One-Person Management 

After Jacobs, Gage, and Anderson returned to Yosemite, Devils Postpile was left in the hands 

of Temporary Ranger Vernon Lowery. Thomson had doubts about the arrangement, insisting 

to Director Cammerer that he could not “operate Devils Postpile through peak season with 

merely one ranger without transportation.” He also noted that the “seventy five to eighty 

campers present” had led to a “sanitation and garbage disposal problem that must be handled.” 

He regarded the situation as “urgent” as this was the “first crucial period of administration by 

our service”10 Lowery remained obligated to running the monument himself, but funds did 

95 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

The CCC bath house as it appears today. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

become available for Yosemite to assign him a pickup truck. “Now I shall be able to do my 

own work, instead of begging from the Forest Service,” he informed Thomson.11 

Lowery’s duties included overseeing a new boundary survey to give a more definite idea of 

the monument’s extent. The survey focused particularly on the southeast corner, as until that 

time, no effort had been made to finalize Huber’s 1911 survey or to draw a definitive map 

based on the corners he had set. In summer 1934, a party led by Theodore Cronyn from the 

Yosemite Engineer’s Office spent a month setting boundary lines. In walking the northern 

boundary, Cronyn determined that Huber had actually laid out a rhomboid-shaped monument 

of 798.463 acres, rather than a right-angled rectangle of 800 acres. Cronyn then established 

the southeast corner of the monument by drawing the southern boundary line as parallel to 

the northern boundary and of an equal length. This procedure, he explained, conformed to 

the standard practices of the General Land Office in setting missing corners. Because Huber’s 

was the first survey of the area, Cronyn decided to respect Huber’s surveyed corners rather 

than establish new corners that would better correspond with the map included with Taft’s 

proclamation.12 Cronyn’s survey report also described the basic history, geology, and natural 

features of the area, and was first comprehensive overview of the monument produced by the 

National Park Service.13 

Lowery’s duties established the basic pattern of one-person management that would prevail 

at Devils Postpile for the next several years. He took care of all maintenance and sanitation 

needs, acted as the force of law, and represented the Park Service’s Naturalist and Ranger Guide 

program. There was time to occasionally conduct trips to Rainbow Falls or speak to visitors 

near the ranger station as they entered the monument, but much of the contact work came in 

the form of erecting temporary signs. Due to the minimal operating budget for the first season, 

96 
One-Person Management 

Yosemite engineer Theodore Cronyn establishing the Devils Postpile National 

Monument boundary during the 1934 boundary survey. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

Lowery made the signs himself by penciling information on sheets of typing paper and nailing 

them to wooden box ends.14 He also made a number of suggestions for the park’s future, some 

of which were ultimately carried out, including a footbridge across the river, picnic tables in the 

campground area, a “good bulletin board” in front of the ranger station, road signs directing 

visitors to the monument, and a prohibition against disturbing natural resources. Proposals 

for enclosing the soda spring, expanding the campground to the west bank of the river, and 

opening a store for campers remained hypothetical. Lowery’s observation that “the approach 

road is badly in need of improvement” would not be the last comment on the poor state of the 

road.15 

97 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

Cronyn’s 1934 map based on the corners established in 1912 by Walter Huber. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

Lowery was not alone in making up management procedures as he went along. Nearing the 

end of Yosemite’s first season in charge of Devils Postpile, Thomson wrote to the director of 

the National Park Service on two occasions asking if there were any formal set of regulations 

governing national monuments. He briefly explained that “we have been following closely the 

general national park set-up, but find some difficulties and absurdities due to the smallness of 

the area.”16 Associate Director Demaray replied that the Department of Agriculture’s general 

98 
One-Person Management 

Regional map included with Cronyn’s 1934 report. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

regulations remained in effect until the Park Service had the opportunity to take up the matter 

at the next superintendent’s conference.17 

The problem the Park Service faced with managing national monuments was not simply one of 

size. The National Park Service was built on Stephen Mather’s singular vision of the agency as 

the guardian of America’s iconic landscapes. The transfer of monuments and other properties 

outlined under Executive Order 6166 increased the Park Service’s national constituency, but at 

the same time blurred its sense of mission. The grand scenic parks were joined by an assortment 

99 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

Photo of Soda Springs Meadow from Cronyn’s 1934 report. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

of historic sites, battlefields, cemeteries, archeological treasures, and geological oddities that 

challenged administrators to find a new common theme to guide the agency.18 

Scientific Interpretation and Natural Resources 

Near the end of Yosemite’s second season managing Devils Postpile, the park’s naturalists 

conducted an inspection of the monument, focusing on its potential for interpretive activities. 

Naturalist Charles. A. Harwell confessed, “we were peeved the place was so hard to find. We 

met tourists on the road who had gone much out of their way looking for the Monument.” 

Furthermore, “roads are terrible and in a Forest Service way lead everywhere.” Harwell noted 

that, despite its small size, Devils Postpile contained “superlative values. The Postpile is 

outstanding and offers fine place to interpret the geology of the Sierra, especially the volcanic 

features so prominent, between Mono Lake and Owens Valley.” These ideas were likely 

influenced by Sierra geologist Francois  ̧ Matthes’s 1930 essay for the Sierra Club Bulletin in 

which he described Devils Postpile as representative of the geologic forces that shaped the 

surrounding area.19 Harwell further suggested, “that all the elements of beauty and scientific 

interest be played up strongly by National Park Service to contrast sharply with the policies 

and methods generally prevailing in the area.”20 

Hartwell’s suggestion points to one of the strategies the Park Service adopted to distinguish 

it from its partner and rival in the Department of Agriculture. Whereas the Forest Service 

had been founded on a policy of scientific use of resources, the Park Service supplemented its 

focus on recreation by embracing scientific education in the 1920s and 1930s, which gave the 

Park Service a role of obvious utility that remained in harmony with its basic mission of scenic 

100 
Administrative Concerns: Budgets and Boundaries 

preservation. As early as 1916, Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane had expressed that “it 

is the destiny of the national parks, if wisely controlled, to become the public laboratories of 

nature study for the nation.”21 

With this in mind, Director Mather had created the Education Division of the National Park 

Service in 1925, but Congress was reluctant to see the parks in the business of education. As 

a result, the Park Service’s earliest education programs at Yosemite and Yellowstone relied on 

philanthropy and fund-raising associations to accomplish their goals. At the same time, the 

acceptance of education at the field level faced similar reservations. Many of the first park 

naturalists were dedicated academics, who were sometimes found to be lacking the jack-ofall-trades versatility then associated with traditional rangers. Someone in the mold of Vernon 

Lowery was clearly preferred at small parks such as Devils Postpile, where a single individual 

might be called on to simultaneously represent the entire Park Service, convey the mission 

of the monument, serve as naturalist, historian, and interpreter, and perform all manner of 

operations and maintenance tasks.22 

Administrative Concerns: Budgets and Boundaries 

Having successfully passed through the period when the Postpile’s administration “was largely 

on an experimental basis,”23 Superintendent Charles Thomson felt confident that this single 

individual could be a seasonal ranger, rather than a regular member of Yosemite’s staff. The first 

two seasons had also revealed a need for greater funding than the $470 originally provided. 

The Director’s Office increased the monument’s budget to $850 for 1937, an amount that 

Thomson advised should also be issued in 1938. In fact, the monument required extra funds 

during these years to correct the damage caused by flooding on the Middle Fork in 1937.24 

Yosemite’s limited budget for Devils Postpile threatened to become a major issue in 1939, 

following calls by the federal Bureau of the Budget that the Park Service demonstrate progress 

toward becoming a self-sustaining operation. Then Acting Director Demaray explained in a 

confidential memorandum that “it is expected that in the future the consideration for our 

requests for appropriations for individual areas will be more and more closely connected and 

held in balance with the amount of revenues returned by the respective areas.”25 Yosemite 

superintendent Lawrence C. Merriam replied that in the case of Devils Postpile, the idea 

would not prove feasible. He explained that an automobile entrance fee would simply prompt 

most visitors to park outside the monument and walk the extra distance down the access road. 

Similarly, a camping fee would prove unprofitable because of the large, well-developed camps 

nearby on Forest Service land, including the operation at Reds Meadow. Finally, a general 

admission fee would introduce more costs than it would recover because of the difficulty of 

collecting from visitors entering over three different trails. Merriam also worried that charging 

visitors to visit a park surrounded by free Forest Service land would prove unfavorable from a 

public relations standpoint.26 

Another administrative concern during the late 1930s was the nagging question about the 

exact location of the monument’s boundaries. The Cronyn survey of 1934 had established 

that while Walter Huber had drawn a rectangular monument for the 1911 Proclamation, he 

had actually laid out a rhomboid (a parallelogram with unequal adjacent sides and oblique 

angles) during his subsequent visit to the site. However, in July 1937, then Acting Director 

Demaray informed then Acting Superintendent Merriam that he endorsed a proposal by the 

Park Service Assistant Chief Engineer to relocate the Postpile’s boundary lines so that they 

would correspond with the Proclamation.27 

101 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

1937 proposed boundary adjustment to match the rectangular shape of the monument 

as depicted in the map filed with the 1911 proclamation. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument map collection) 

1941 tourist brochure map showing a rectangular boundary. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument map collection) 

Merriam advised Demaray that Yosemite was “not in a position at this time to spare any of our 

engineering force from their other duties or to hire the necessary chainmen assistants.” He also 

pointed to an early act of Congress and years of surveying precedent that the corners located in 

the field for a given plot of land were to be taken as legally correct, regardless of what appeared 

28 on paper.

Even four years later, the topic was still not settled. In 1941, Yosemite’s chief engineering aide 

E. C. Smith prepared a memorandum for inclusion in the Devils Postpile file explaining that 

the tacit acceptance of Huber’s survey from 1911 to 1934 gave it a degree of official recognition. 

He considered the exact bearings and distances to the corners somewhat unimportant as the 

basic intent of defining a monument within government land had been fulfilled. Added to 

102 
Notes 

this was the complication that the monument was the only surveyed land in the area, and any 

new work would have to use Huber’s original survey points as references.29 Despite this, when 

Yosemite prepared a new informational circular on Devils Postpile in 1941 its boundaries were 

depicted as rectangular.30 

Notes 

1.	 Arno B. Cammerer to Charles G. Thomson, November 16, 1933, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, 

Acc. 5121, YNPA. Before circulating the letter to his staff, Thomson penciled a note in the margin to Chief 

Ranger Forest Townsley and Park Naturalist C. A. Harwell: “See me together soon.” 

2.	 Arthur E. Demaray to Charles G. Thomson, March 24, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

3.	 Charles G. Thomson to Director, National Park Service, April 2, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files
 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA.
 

4.	 Thomson to Director, June 26, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

5.	 Duane Jacobs to Superintendent [Thomson], June 15, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

6.	 Jacobs to Thomson, June 23, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. Jacobs was 

concerned that the Monument’s isolation could be difficult for the single ranger assigned to it: “If a man 

enjoys his own company it is alright, because he is going to have to put up with a lot of it, if he doesn’t, not 

so good.” He suggested that, in the future, Yosemite consider sending a married ranger who could live on-site 

with his wife. 

7.	 C. G. Thomson to Chief Ranger Townsley, June 26, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

8.	 Liaison Officer, Headquarters Ninth Corps Area to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, June 25, 1934, 

Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

9.	 Laura Kirn, “Reds Meadow Guard Station, Evaluation of Eligibility for the National Register of Historic 

Places,” draft, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

10.	 Thomson to Director, telegram, July 9, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

11.	 Vernon Lowery to Thomson, July 14, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

12.	 Theodore Cronyn, “Devil Postpile National Monument Boundary Survey, 1934,” 1, 6–8, Devils Postpile, 

Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

13.	 Cronyn, “Devil Postpile National Monument Boundary Survey.” Cronyn noted, as would others, that the 

presidential proclamation of 1911 established the use of “Devil,” rather than the locally accepted “Devil’s” in 

the monument’s name. 

14.	 Lowery to Thomson, “Condition and Activity Report,” September 8, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

15.	 Ibid. 

16.	 Thomson to Director, National Park Service, September 17, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, 

Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

17.	 A. E. Demaray to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, November 7, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

18.	 Hal K. Rothman, America’s National Monuments: The Politics of Preservation (Urbana: University of Illinois 

Press, 1989), chap. 10. 

19.	 Francois  ̧ Matthes, “The Devils Postpile and Its Strange Setting,” reprinted from Sierra Club Bulletin (1930): 

1–8, in Francois  ̧ Matthes, Fran ̧cois Matthes and the Marks of Time: Yosemite and the High Sierra (San Francisco: 

Sierra Club, 1962), www.yosemite.ca.us/library/matthes/devils_postpile.html. 

20.	 C. A. Harwell, “Memorandum for the Superintendent,” October 7, 1935, Devils Postpile, Central Files 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

103 
Chapter Seven Establishing a Presence: Devils Postpile under Yosemite, 1934–1941 

21.	 Quoted in Barry Mackintosh, Interpretation in the National Park Service: A Historical Perspective (Washington, 

DC.: History Division, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 1986), chap. 1, www.cr.nps.gov/ 

history/online_books/mackintosh2/origins_before_nps.htm. 

22.	 Mackintosh, Interpretation, chap. 1. 

23.	 Thomson to Director, National Park Service, March 15, 1936, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

24.	 Thomson by Acting Superintendent to Director, National Park Service, April 7, 1936, Devils Postpile, Central 

Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

25.	 A. E. Demaray, “Memorandum for All Field Offices,” July 6, 1939, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, 

Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

26.	 Lawrence C. Merriam, “Memorandum for the Director,” August 26, 1939, Devils Postpile, Central Files 

1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

27.	 A. E. Demaray to Lawrence C. Merriam, July 29, 1937, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

28.	 Lawrence C. Merriam to Director, August 10, 1937, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

29.	 E. C. Smith, “Memorandum for the File: Re: Devil Postpile Boundaries,” May 14, 1941, Devils Postpile, 

Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

30.	 Lester M. Moe, “Memorandum for the Assistant to the Superintendent,” June 20, 1941, Devils Postpile, 

Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

104 
Chapter Eight 

The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service 

Cooperation, 1941–1951 

The Second World War imposed severe pressures on the National Park Service, in terms of both 

personnel and facilities. The CCC was disbanded to free its young men for military duty, 

where they were joined by large numbers of the Park Service’s permanent and seasonal staff. 

The Service’s budget dropped from $21 million in 1940 to $5 million in 1943, limiting what 

individual parks could accomplish for operations and maintenance. In addition, many park 

facilities were employed for military activities, while the Service’s headquarters temporarily 

relocated to Chicago to free up office space in Washington, DC.1 

The Forest Service Resumes Oversight 

Even though Devils Postpile still operated with a staff of one, by 1943 this proved to be one too 

many for Yosemite to spare from its already-shorthanded ranger force. Superintendent Frank 

Kittredge had previously met with Sierra National Forest supervisor M. A. Benedict to discuss 

the operation of the monument in light of the wartime conditions. At the time, Benedict had 

indicated that the Forest Service would be willing to undertake the basic operation of the park 

if Yosemite could provide funding. Kittredge reminded him of this in July 1943, explaining 

that “this is a difficult year for us, as we know it is for you, on account of curtailment of funds 

and difficulty of obtaining men, and we shall be glad to take advantage of your courtesy in this 

matter.” Assuming Benedict was still agreeable, Kittredge gave his authorization for the Forest 

Service to “go ahead with any road work, trail repair, clean up matters, handling of visitors, 

sanitation work, or any other work such as you would normally do in the surrounding areas.” 

For its part, Yosemite would provide supplies for sanitation and other needs from its Tuolumne 

Meadows ranger station every two weeks.2 Due to the Forest Service’s own need for efficiency, 

the area surrounding the monument had earlier been transferred to the Inyo National Forest, 

and beginning on July 16, 1943, that organization became the face of Devils Postpile. 

The Forest Service’s return to overseeing the monument did not obligate it to deal with 

another round of questions concerning boundaries—that responsibility still remained with 

Yosemite. In March 1944, Assistant Regional Director Herbert Maier relayed an inquiry from 

an employee of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company concerning the location of Rainbow 

Falls, with Maier adding, “it is our understanding that the boundary was originally intended to 

include the falls and it may be that it is not definitely known at present whether the boundary 

as determined at that time was actually so located.”3 Superintendent Kittredge assured Maier 

that “there was no question following the official survey but that the fall is well within the 

boundary.”4 In the fall of the same year, Conrad Wirth, then the National Park Service Chief 

of Lands, contacted the regional director about a memorandum from Yosemite stating that the 

Postpile had an area of 798.46 acres, when the 1911 Proclamation described the area as 800 

acres.5

Some weariness with this line of inquiry is evident in Assistant Superintendent John Wosky’s 

memorandum for the regional director, in which he related the history of the two figures. 

He pointedly referred to the 1934 Cronyn survey, a letter from Superintendent Thomson 
Chapter Eight The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service Cooperation, 1941–1951 

to the director in 1935 restating the correct acreage, and a second letter to the director in 

1937 again explaining the situation in response to a question from Wirth.6 As something of 

a postscript, Superintendent Kittredge reported in a 1945 Service-wide boundary survey that 

the area comprising the monument was satisfactory, but “if the Minarets country should ever 

be added to Yosemite National Park, it would be desirable to have this addition include the 

Devil Postpile, thereby consolidating this area with Yosemite.”7 

The informal agreement between Yosemite and Inyo National Forest remained in place until 

1947, when the Park Service briefly resumed direct management of Devils Postpile. That 

year, the appearance of Seasonal Ranger Clifton Beatty, a high school teacher from Merced, 

California, and his wife signaled a return to the prewar pattern of one-ranger management.8 

Beatty’s assignment was short-lived. The continuing lack of Park Service funds following 

the war prompted a return to the partnership with the Forest Service in 1948 through a 

memorandum of agreement endorsed by the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior. The 

language of the agreement echoed the arguments the Forest Service had made in 1933 against 

the transfer of Devils Postpile, declaring that, because the monument was surrounded by 

National Forest land, “it appears desirable and in the public interest that there be uniformity 

in the protection and administration of the Devil Postpile National Monument and the 

Sierra National Forest.” While the Park Service would retain “basic jurisdiction,” the Forest 

Service would “assume primary responsibility for the administration and protection” of the 

Postpile, and when funding was available, would “undertake the development, construction, 

maintenance, and administration of recreational facilities, roads, and trails of the area” subject 

to the approval of the Park Service.9 

Shortly after the agreement went into effect, Acting Assistant Director Conrad Wirth suggested 

that a water right should be established for the area in and around the monument to provide 

for future water system developments, regardless of the initiating agency.10 Acting Regional 

Director H. L. Crowley advised Yosemite superintendent Carl P. Russell that the region would 

not be acting on Wirth’s proposal, as “routine procedure” called for park superintendents and 

regional foresters to establish water rights only after development plans were finalized and 

implemented.11 

In October 1949, senior staff from Yosemite and the Forest Service Region Four office, led 

by Superintendent Russell, conducted an inspection of Devils Postpile to survey the results of 

the first season of management by Forest Service Recreational Assistant Lee J. Verret, based at 

Reds Meadow. Russell’s primary concern was the campground, which he found clean and in 

good repair thanks to Verret’s efforts. However, he expressed concern in a report to the regional 

director that the only water available for the twenty or so daily campers was drawn from the 

river downstream of three Forest Service campgrounds. Russell also agreed to explore Verret’s 

suggestion for an interpretive display at the base of the Postpile formation, but indicated that 

Yosemite would not be able to supply any printed materials, despite a high level of visitor 

interest. 

The Park Service group also found that a crew supervised by the Inyo National Forest chief of 

roads and trails was in the process of building a new road between Mammoth Lakes and Reds 

Meadow. To avoid the steep sections of the old road that terrified motorists, the new road took 

a wider sweep along the east slope of the canyon, approaching Agnew Meadows before turning 

south toward Devils Postpile and Reds Meadow. Russell observed that it was a tremendous 

improvement over the old road, and would undoubtedly lead to heavier travel into the area. 

Russell concluded the report with a note to Regional Director Owen Tomlinson summarizing 

106 
Recreational Tourism in the Eastern Sierra 

his opinions of Devils Postpile. The note revealed that the monument’s status had become a 

subject for debate in a Park Service of reduced means: 

Were it not for the disagreeable blowing of pumice dust which swirls about with every 

vigorous breeze through the canyon I would say that the Devils Postpile N.M. campground 

is superlative. As to the natural wonder preserved there I think that there can not be a 

question raised as to its unique nature. The original proponents were entirely right in 

bringing about the creation of the Natl. Monument. In this day of NPS poverty, however, 

it seems unlikely that we can get funds immediately with which to care for the area, but I 

think that it would be unwise to bring about a change in its status as a reservation.12 

Shortly after Russell’s inspection, a second group composed of photographer Ralph Anderson 

and park naturalists Robert McIntyre and Harry Parker arrived at the monument to scout 

locations for interpretive signs. Parker noted that the monument’s entrance was clearly marked 

on the new road, but recommended that “a sign giving the main protective regulations should 

be posted there, since it is surrounded by Forest Service land and we have none of our own 

personnel to apprise visitors of the different rules governing National Park Service land.”13 

The group located an “admirable site” for an interpretive sign at the base of the Postpile talus 

slope, and suggested two possible variations for content. Both contained the basic geological 

history as it was understood at the time, together with a record of the monument’s founding 

and administration, but differed on which sections should be emphasized. They recorded the 

partially collapsed cabin near the Postpile and “agreed that a reconstruction of this cabin would 

make an ideal interpretive station since the location is near the chief feature of the monument, 

is easily accessible to the trail yet would not be conducive to congestion on the main trail. 

There is plenty of room for other facilities such a station would necessitate, e.g., quarters and 

restrooms, to be located out of sight.”14 The inspection team identified a site for a second sign 

near Rainbow Falls, at the first “logical spot” for visitors approaching from Reds Meadow. 

Writing on behalf of the group, Parker discussed the potential for the improved access road to 

bring a different kind of visitor to the monument—one less experienced with the mountains 

and their hazards. This was a particular concern for areas around Rainbow Falls, and one that 

Parker speculated could have a significant impact on future development. As early as 1939, 

on-site managers reported on the precarious positions from which visitors sought to catch a 

glimpse of the falls. Seasonal Park Ranger John Spears had pointed out that “the best vantage 

points for seeing the rainbows are positively dangerous, especially for children.”15 Due to lack 

of funding, even ten years later no warning signs, safety railings, or retaining walls had been 

placed in the area. 

Recreational Tourism in the Eastern Sierra 

The challenges of managing Devils Postpile and providing a safe, enjoyable experience for 

visitors were compounded by the transformation of the Mammoth region and the Eastern 

Sierra into a recreational hinterland of the growing city of Los Angeles. When it was completed 

in the 1930s, Highway 395 eased access to the region for residents of the sprawling metropolis. 

Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, Southern California newspapers and 

periodicals carried frequent stories and advertisements depicting the fishing, hiking, camping, 

and skiing paradises accessible from the newly paved highway. In the early 1930s, the city of 

Los Angeles began operating a summer camp near Mammoth Lakes, and after World War II, 

ski resort developer Dave McCoy transformed Mammoth Mountain into a prime destination 

for Southern California skiers. Mammoth’s summertime appeal also increased during this time 

with the area becoming a popular location for summer cabins and a hub in the development 

107 
Chapter Eight The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service Cooperation, 1941–1951 

Campers in the monument campground in 1940. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

A family on the original bridge over the San Joaquin River south of Soda Springs Meadow, 1939. (Photo: 

Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

of the Sierra pack-stock industry. The area was also renowned for its trout fishing and served 

as a convenient access point to the peaks, passes, and alpine basins of the High Sierra via the 

road into the Middle Fork Valley. 

As the numbers of visitors grew from a trickle to a steady stream after World War II, Yosemite 

naturalist Harry Parker expressed his opinion that Devils Postpile offered “a great opportunity 

for the National Park Service to tell an interesting story and to do a good public relations 

108 
Recreational Tourism in the Eastern Sierra 

Backpackers in a meadow near Devils Postpile in the 1940s. 

(Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

job with the Forest Service as well as thousands of people on the ‘East Side.”’16 However, he 

regarded the prewar operating budget of approximately $850 as not enough to accomplish 

anything that would justify Yosemite’s reclaiming full administrative duties. That would have 

to wait until the Park Service was in a position to institute a full program of protection and 

interpretation at the increasingly popular monument.17 

Superintendent Russell took the opportunity of requesting funds for the interpretive signs 

at Devils Postpile to suggest that the regional director consider the monument as a possible 

site for a headquarters overseeing the Park Service’s summer activities on the east side of the 

Sierra.18 Owen Tomlinson replied that such a headquarters had been under consideration for a 

number of years, but indicated that while it required additional study, Thomas Vint’s proposal 

for an office at Lone Pine or Bishop would have the advantage of serving Death Valley as well 

as Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. He explained: “We do not feel it is 

advisable to assume the responsibility of the administration of this area at this time, since our 

ceilings and appropriations are so inadequate. It is our understanding that the Forest Service 

has been doing a very excellent job.”19 

109 
Chapter Eight The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service Cooperation, 1941–1951 

1940 tourist brochure for Devils Postpile. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, and 

Library) 

110 
Recreational Tourism in the Eastern Sierra 

Back cover of a 1941 tourist brochure. (National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno) 

111 
Chapter Eight The War Years: Park Service and Forest Service Cooperation, 1941–1951 

Questioning National Monument Status 

The Forest Service was managing Devils Postpile so well during this period that the Park Service 

was giving serious consideration to releasing the monument from its jurisdiction. In years prior, 

agency officials had even entertained proposals to rescind Devils Postpile’s monument status 

altogether in order to return jurisdiction to the Forest Service. In 1947, the Department of the 

Interior issued a report recommending that the area be reclassified as Devils Postpile Recreation 

Area and placed under Forest Service management. The report minimized the monument’s 

geologic significance, maintaining that while the Postpile constituted a “good example of 

exposed basaltic columns,” it did not measure up “in size and grandeur to Devils Tower in 

Wyoming.” The report also indicated that many visitors who came just to see the Postpile 

left disappointed, “because he has come with the impression that he will see something of 

skyscraper height and mountainous proportions, and because he has had to drive his car over a 

very rough mountain road to get there.” Moreover, most of the visitors to the monument were 

there to fish, and were “not particularly interested in the monument’s features.” Surprisingly, 

the Sierra Club also minimized the scientific significance of the Postpile, even though club 

members had “a particular affection for the monument” due to its position as a jumping-off 

point for mountaineering expeditions into the Ritter Range.20 

The lone voice for keeping Devils Postpile under Park Service jurisdiction and retaining 

monument status in this period was that of Yosemite superintendent Frank Kittredge. 

In October 1947, Kittredge urged that “the Monument now comprises some extremely 

important formations, geologically and scenically.” He insisted that although the monument 

appeared to be “partially neglected” by Yosemite’s administration, this was due to a shortage of 

funds and personnel, not a belief that Devils Postpile was unworthy of protection.21 

By 1951, the question of what to do with the monument continued to hinge on the scientific 

value of the area. Veteran Park Service naturalist and regional chief of interpretation Dorr 

Yeager was asked to inspect Devils Postpile near the end of the 1951 season to provide an 

assessment of its significance.22 In his report, he concluded that the Postpile formation was 

“unique among geologic phenomena of this country” due to the “small-size and clean cut 

cleavage of the columns” and the glacial polish evident on the top of the formation. He also 

determined that Rainbow Falls, though not as spectacular as the falls in the Yosemite Valley, 

was “a beautiful falls and should . . . be retained in the monument.”23 

Changing visitor use patterns in this period also influenced Yeager’s recommendation that the 

Park Service retain jurisdiction. The “great expansion of tourist visitation” following the war 

had filled Mammoth Lakes resorts to capacity. Many of these visitors were also trickling over 

Minaret Summit into the Middle Fork Valley via the improved road to take advantage of the 

area’s rustic campgrounds, hiking and pack-stock trip possibilities, and excellent fishing. The 

presence of a national monument, particularly one with such an intriguing name, also drew 

tourists. Forest Service ranger Lee Verret told Yeager that during his routine cleanups of the 

area, he always found from two to twelve visitors at the Postpile. Most visitors were there for 

recreation but many others had come expressly to see the formation. Verret, Yeager reported, 

was “most emphatic that we should have a man on duty during the tourist season to answer 

questions and to interpret the area.”24 

Notes 

1.	 Barry Mackintosh, “Parks and People: Preserving Our Past for the Future,” in National Park Service: The First 

75 Years, ed. William H. Sontag (Philadelphia: Eastern National Park & Monument Association, 1990), 

Section 5, “Revising the Mission,” www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/sontag/sontag5.htm. 

112 
Notes 

2.	 Frank A. Kittredge to M. A. Benedict, July 6, 1943, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc.
 

5121, YNPA.
 

3.	 Herbert Maier to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, March 6, 1944, RG 79 Records of the National 

Park Service, Western Region, Regional Director, San Francisco CA, Central Decimal Site Files 1932–53, 

Devils Postpile 204 to 732, 9NS–S Acc. 079–89–001, Box 17, National Archives and Records Administration, 

San Bruno CA (hereafter, “National Archives, Box 17”). 

4.	 Frank A. Kittredge to Regional Director, Region Four, March 14, 1944, National Archives, Box 17. 

5.	 Conrad Wirth to Regional Director, Region Four, September 9, 1944, National Archives, Box 17. 

6.	 John B. Wosky to Regional Director, Region 4, September 19, 1944, National Archives, Box 17. 

7.	 F. A. Kittredge, “Boundary Status Report,” March 19, 1945, National Archives, Box 17. 

8.	 Shirley Sargent, Protecting Paradise: Yosemite Rangers 1898–1960 (Yosemite: Ponderosa Press, 1998), 126. 

Edith Beatty related that her husband’s duties occasionally included driving visitors, in their own cars, back to 

Minaret Summit when they proved unwilling to face the precarious access road a second time. 

9.	 “Memorandum of Agreement between the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, and the US 

Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Relating to the Administration of the Devil Postpile National 

Monument,” September 15, 1948, I-6-14 & I-6-15, Compilation of Cooperative Agreements, Manuscript 

Collection, SKCNPA. 

10.	 Conrad Wirth to Regional Director, Region Four, November 2, 1948, National Archives, Box 17. 

11.	 Regional Director to Superintendent, Yosemite, November 12, 1948, National Archives, Box 17. 

12.	 Carl P. Russell to Regional Director, Region Four [Major Tomlinson], October 12, 1949, National Archives, 

Box 17. 

13.	 Associate Park Naturalist [Harry C. Parker] to Superintendent [Carl P. Russell], November 10, 1949, National 

Archives, Box 17. 

14.	 Ibid. 

15.	 John S. Spears, “Special Report on Devil Postpile September 1939,” September 11, 1939, Devils Postpile, 

Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 5121, YNPA. 

16.	 Parker to Russell, November 10, 1949. 

17.	 Ibid. 

18.	 Russell to Regional Director, Region Four, November 15, 1949, National Archives, Box 17. 

19.	 O. A. Tomlinson to Superintendent, Yosemite. February 7, 1950, National Archives, Box 17. 

20.	 “Memorandum for the Regional Director, Region Four,” October 27, 1947, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

21.	 Frank A. Kittredge, “Memorandum for the Regional Director, Region Four,” October 2, 1947, Cultural 

Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

22.	 Herbert Maier to Superintendent, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, August 17, 1951, National Archives, Box 17. 

“Confidential” was written across the top of the memorandum. 

23.	 Dorr Yeager, Regional Naturalist, to Regional Director, re: “Inspection of Devils Postpile National Monument,” 

September 17, 1951, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

24.	 Ibid. 

113 

Chapter Nine 

Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, 

and “Mutual Cooperation” under Yosemite, 1952–1953 

On January 3, 1952, Regional Director Merriam and Director of Lands B. F. Manbey met with 

Forest Service officials Hendee and Barnum to negotiate the terms of Devils Postpile’s return 

to Park Service management. Merriam and Manbey reiterated the Park Service’s position that 

the area’s scientific value warranted its national monument status. They also stressed their 

renewed commitment to the monument, stating that “we now felt we could no longer neglect 

our responsibility over the area, and particularly the interpretive presentation to its visitors, 

amounting to a good many thousand visitors in normal years.” Merriam and Manbey expressed 

gratitude to the Forest Service for its “splendid cooperation and willing assistance” during 

the war years. Yet while they indicated their “duty to relieve the Forest Service of the main 

responsibility,” they also acknowledged that the Park Service would continue to require “partial 

aid from [Forest Service] personnel.” Since it was difficult to anticipate the precise details of a 

“program of mutual cooperation,” officials from both services agreed to make arrangements as 

necessary through a memorandum of understanding at the regional level.1 

While administrators were clearly committed to reestablishing a Park Service presence, it soon 

became evident that Yosemite, as in years prior, could commit only a bare minimum of funds 

and manpower to the monument. Chief Ranger Oscar A. Sedergren’s breakdown of costs 

for the first period of management (from July 16 to the end of the fiscal year on June 30) 

included a $250 salary for a ranger and a ranger naturalist; $550 for a tent frame, mattress, and 

other living essentials for the second man; $200 for twenty garbage cans; $200 for sanitation 

supplies; and $40 for a rental car. The total expenditure of $1,240 included no funds for trail 

maintenance, tools, campground supplies, firefighting, visitor safety, sign construction, law 

enforcement, search and rescue, or unanticipated costs. Those kinds of expenditures would 

have to be requested separately based on specific needs. 

Several needs had been apparent since the 1930s, and Sedergren acknowledged some of these, 

stressing that additional funding would be required to replace the campground’s pit toilets 

and picnic tables. Additional proposals had already been submitted for repairs to the ranger’s 

cabin, which had been built in 1942 from salvage wood, and the development of a new water 

supply for the campground. Sedergren also suggested that road repairs could be handled by the 

Forest Service, which could then bill Yosemite. However, these projects remained hypothetical, 

and were projected for subsequent fiscal years. While the Park Service was committed to 

interpretation and visitor contacts, the more labor- and cost-intensive aspects of administering 

the monument would depend on continued good relations with the Forest Service, which 

maintained a stronger presence in the Mammoth area and the Eastern Sierra at that time.2 

Development and the First Season under Yosemite 

On April 29, 1952, Secretary of the Interior Dale E. Doty formally announced Devils Postpile’s 

return to Yosemite.3 On July 1, Ranger Earl Homuth opened the Devils Postpile station. In 

the first ten days, Homuth dug out the snow remaining on the entrance road, helped Yosemite 

engineers install a large interpretive sign at the Postpile, placed wood planks across a bog on 
Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

the trail to the Postpile, repaired a railing on the bridge across the river, fixed tables in the 

campground, straightened toilets, helped carpenters set up the tent to be used by the ranger 

naturalist, and made arrangements with Forest Service ranger Verret to repair a pipe at the 

Reds Meadow hot spring.4 

On July 11, Ranger Naturalist Richard J. Hartesveldt arrived to assist Homuth with 

preparations. Homuth and Hartesveldt—with help from Assistant Chief Ranger Duane 

Jacobs and District Ranger Walt Gammill—cut firewood, constructed an amphitheater for 

campfire talks, and laid out the trail to the Postpile. Homuth also borrowed trash cans from 

the Forest Service and assisted Verret with repairs to the Reds Meadow bath house and the 

Forest Service entrance road.5 

Development and maintenance became the overriding concerns for managers assigned to 

Devils Postpile during the first seasons, with the need for facilities improvement clear from the 

start. Not all of these improvements were required simply to meet basic visitor needs; many 

were proposed as a way to encourage and accommodate increasing visitation. In his August 8 

summary of recommendations for development, Ranger Homuth echoed the long-standing 

Park Service tenet that development would lead to an “increase in the number of campers 

and visitors,” which would in turn justify the agency’s presence and elevate its capacity for 

protecting and interpreting the resource.6 

Homuth’s specific recommendations became the basis for much of Yosemite’s administrative 

work at Devils Postpile over the ensuing years. While some of his suggestions were implemented 

quickly, others were never carried out due to cost. Homuth pointed out the need for several 

minor needs including proper signs, weather sheeting for the ranger’s quarters, additional 

camp tables and toilets, and the construction of a trail to the top of the Postpile, which would 

allow visitors to view the glacial polish that constituted an important part of the formation’s 

geologic significance. These relatively low-cost improvements could be accomplished with few 

man-hours, and were thus prioritized in funding requests during the subsequent fiscal year. By 

the end of the 1953 season, most of these improvements had been accomplished, although the 

need for a new water supply delayed installation of new toilets for several years.7 

Homuth considered the establishment of a permanent water supply for the campground 

to be among the monument’s most pressing needs. Increased use of the four Forest Service 

campgrounds upstream from the monument had created a “hazard of pollution,” since campers 

tended to discard their dishwater, food waste, and sewage into the San Joaquin River, the 

only source of water for the Devils Postpile campground. Development of a new water source 

would also save rangers and campers the time and effort then required to carry river water 

to the campground in buckets. Homuth suggested that a spring on the west side of the river 

“be investigated with regard to volume and permanence.” Ranger Hartesveldt made a brief 

inspection of the site during the 1952 season. He determined that “the flow was good at 

the time of the visit” but drew no conclusions “as to the best method of handling the water 

situation.” Park Engineer E. C. Smith later recommended against the project, pointing out 

that the spring typically dried up late in the season. As an alternative, he suggested installing a 

gasoline engine to pump river water to the campground. In 1954, Homuth devised a temporary 

solution, recruiting a Boy Scout troop from West Covina to build a 962-foot pipeline from a 

shallow well near the river to the campground and ranger cabin.8 

In his 1952 memorandum, Homuth also emphasized the importance of maintaining roads. 

Within the monument, he suggested oiling the parking area and the “plaza” near the entrance 

station. The forty to more than one hundred cars using these areas daily, he noted, stirred 

up “clouds of the pumice dust creating a very unpleasant condition.”9 He also recommended 

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Interpretation and Natural Resource Management 

grading the rough road running from Reds Meadow to Rainbow Falls, which would require 

additional parking facilities near the falls overlook, more pit toilets, the installation of 

safety railings, and the addition of picnic tables. While supportive of Homuth’s other 

recommendations, Yosemite assistant superintendent Harthon L. Bill believed the road to 

Rainbow Falls “should remain impassable” until safety railings and other “satisfactory provisions 

for public safety and comfort” be installed there.10 

Bill objected to the Rainbow Falls road not because he felt such development projects would 

be inappropriate but because he recognized that they would cost more than Yosemite’s already 

limited budget could cover. In fact, by the time Homuth finished drafting his summary of 

development recommendations, he had already been recalled from Devils Postpile due to 

a shortage of funds, leaving Hartesveldt to handle both ranger and naturalist duties on his 

own. Bill made assurances that many of the minor improvements Homuth discussed could 

be undertaken using “rehabilitation funds” and Yosemite’s road and trail allotment. However, 

most of the work, including the urgently needed water-source project, would have to wait for 

subsequent fiscal years. Bill could not even promise basic management funds for the rest of the 

first season. On August 12, he predicted that funds would “be exhausted” by the end of the 

month. And indeed, Bill was forced to terminate Hartesveldt’s assignment after Labor Day, 

even though visitors continued to stream into the valley for several weeks after.11 

Interpretation and Natural Resource Management 

Early managers at Devils Postpile viewed improvements to roads and trails, campground 

facilities, picnic areas, and safety railings as complementary to the Park Service’s broader 

preservationist agenda. Development, they believed, encouraged accessibility and ensured 

safety, allowing visitors to focus on the resource rather than the discomforts of being in a 

remote place with few modern conveniences. For Richard Hartesveldt, “a routine schedule of 

campfires, trailside contacts, and hikes or other contacts” could only be established “once the 

development plans are complete and the development work has been accomplished.”12 

In the early years, the Park Service saw no conflict in its mandate to both develop the parks 

for tourism and preserve them in a natural state. Preservation, for officials of Mather’s and 

Albright’s generation, typically meant the protection of scenery, not the maintenance of intact 

ecosystems. In large parks where grandiose scenery by itself was a sufficient draw, this way 

of thinking led to superficial and often ecologically harmful resource management policies 

including nonnative fish stocking, predator extermination, and fire suppression.13 

Yet in national monuments like Devils Postpile, which were protected for their scientific 

interest rather than their recreational potential, on-site managers often sought to promote a 

deeper appreciation for the resource. Devils Postpile’s scenery alone was not up to the standards 

required for national park status, but the monument’s namesake formation and other features 

could still be interpreted in ways that lent them a broader intellectual interest. By interpreting 

the geologic, biological, and human stories that lay behind the area’s scenery, the rangers and 

naturalists assigned to the monument in the early 1950s overcame funding shortages and 

affirmed Devils Postpile’s national monument status. In the process, they helped inform a 

more expansive approach to resource management in the Park Service as a whole. 

In his 1952 summary of development recommendation for Devils Postpile, Homuth suggested 

that the Park Service’s primary contribution in the first month had been its ability to keep 

a ranger in attendance at the entrance station to greet visitors and explain the features 

of the monument. He pointed out that Ranger Verret’s extensive district, coupled with 

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Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

Ranger-led walk. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

his responsibilities for four campgrounds and the hot spring bathhouse at Reds Meadow, 

had precluded him from giving “proper attention” to the monument. Visitor contacts and 

interpretive services proved necessary, since, as Homuth discovered, those “who came only to 

see the Postpile outnumber the campers.” He also found that an “adverse reaction results when 

[visitors] find the area in effect abandoned.”14 

Mather and Albright had stressed visitor education from the beginning, even though Congress 

and concessionaires were slow to warm to the idea. Crucial to this focus was the presence of 

knowledgeable “ranger naturalists” who could enrich visitor appreciation of park features by 

explaining their natural significance. In 1925, Harold Bryant of the California Fish and Game 

Commission partnered with the Park Service to organize the Yosemite School of Field Natural 

History, and over the next three decades, the program prepared thousands of naturalists for 

work in parks and summer camps across the country.15 

Devils Postpile benefited from Yosemite’s emphasis on interpretation, as many of the 

monument’s early rangers were products of the larger park’s naturalist program. This included 

Richard Hartesveldt who stayed on as Devils Postpile’s sole ranger after Earl Homuth’s recall 

on August 1, 1952. Although Homuth’s departure meant that interpretive programs had to 

be scaled back, Hartesveldt made the most of every opportunity to engage with visitors. He 

wrote text for several signs to be placed at various points within the monument. While some 

signs explained Park Service rules and regulations, others described the geologic significance 

and history of the area. The signs had a secondary function since many campers, hikers, 

hunters, and fishermen in the valley still did not know they were in a national monument. 

Hartesveldt also began holding two campfire talks each week, one at the newly constructed 

seventy-seat amphitheater in the monument and the other just outside of the Reds Meadow 

store, “a traditional place for campfires.” These programs complemented his trailside contacts, 

generating a “very favorable” reaction among visitors, especially those who had been coming 

to the area for many years. “Having a ranger in the area,” he wrote in his end-of-season report, 

“created a better feeling of civic pride among all visitors.”16 

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Interpretation and Natural Resource Management 

While stationed at Devils Postpile, Hartesveldt drafted a comprehensive account of the area’s 

geologic story. The essay appeared in the October 1952 edition of Yosemite Nature Notes (the 

publication of the Yosemite Natural History Association) and would become an important 

promotional tool for park managers in later years. After a brief synopsis of the monument’s 

history, Hartesveldt gave a detailed assessment of Devils Postpile’s geologic significance, 

emphasizing its qualities as “one of the best examples of columnar basalt exposed on the 

surface of the earth.” He also described the features of the monument as clear examples of the 

successive waves of volcanic and glacial activity that shaped and continued to shape the Sierra 

Nevada 17 

Hartesveldt’s clear explanation of the area’s broader geologic significance inspired a more 

expansive view of the monument’s other resources. Management priorities at Devils Postpile 

gradually began to reflect recognition that the area could be interpreted as a biological as 

well as a geologic boundary zone between the east and west slopes of the Sierra. To gather 

more information on how these connections might be played up in interpretive programs, 

Hartesveldt called on N. Howell of the California Academy of Science “to identify for us any 

plant specimens properly labeled as to locality and date of collecting.” Howell in turn lent 

a copy of the Sierra Club’s base camp flowering plant checklist that covered the general area 

surrounding Devils Postpile.18 

As a side effect of this increased attention to natural resources, rangers began to express 

increased animosity toward the area’s recreational users. In a 1953 report, Earl Homuth noted 

several threats to the Devils Postpile landscape stemming from heavy recreational use. Flower 

picking, grazing pack stock, and the impromptu trails that fishermen carved through the 

meadows along the river damaged vegetation and eroded the soft pumice that constituted one 

of the monument’s distinctive features.19 

However, increased scrutiny of the environmental impacts of recreation did not necessarily 

indicate an embrace of natural resource protection for the sake of sustaining the overall health 

of the ecosystem. As was the case in the Park Service generally in this period, managers at 

Devils Postpile considered ecological integrity to be valuable only insofar as it enhanced visitors’ 

overall experience of the landscape. While rangers hoped visitors would come to appreciate 

the area’s scientific significance, they also continued to cater to recreational demands. This was 

most evident in their continuing program of stocking nonnative rainbow trout in the Middle 

Fork San Joaquin River, which had become one of the most popular fishing destinations for 

visitors to the Eastern Sierra. 

Park Service employees also continued to view fire as a great destroyer of scenery, as well as a 

threat to park structures and visitors. In the late 1940s, fire squads in Yosemite had devised a 

number of new strategies for detection, which actually increased the cost and manpower burden 

of fighting fires. According to historian Hal Rothman, with its new emphasis on technology to 

better detect both human- and lightning-caused fires, “the National Park Service found more 

fires that would have gone out on their own if no one had seen them.”20 Firefighting does not 

appear to have been a major preoccupation with park staff. However, during the 1953 season, 

Hartesveldt recorded nine-and-a-half hours of fire suppression work with the Forest Service. 

He helped extinguish a lightning-sparked blaze south of the monument near Fish Creek and a 

smaller fire along the Minaret Creek trail ignited from a discarded cigarette.21 

Also during the 1952 season, at the urging of the Forest Service, Yosemite hired Forester Emil 

F. Ernst to assess and control a dendroctomus beetle infestation in the area’s lodgepole forests. 

Like forest fires, the Park Service viewed insect infestations as blights on scenery and hazards 

to visitors. Trees killed by insect infestations were not only unsightly but also burned easily 

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Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

and could topple over in a wind gust.22 Although Ernst found “no apparent insect infestations 

of any great consequence,” he strongly recommended removing thirteen potentially dangerous 

infested lodgepole pines near the campground. His reasoning was economic rather than 

ecological. “More than one of these trees are potentially the basis for a Federal Torts Claims 

Act claim,” he warned, “which could entail losses far greater than the estimated cost of $200 

involved in the felling of these hazards.”23 

Despite its limited commitment to ecology, the Park Service’s emphasis on interpretation gave 

rise to a more critical assessment of the types of recreational activities and development projects 

appropriate in a national park setting. This was particularly true in the national monuments. 

As opposed to the great scenic parks where as archaeologist Dave King put it, “appreciation 

is conditioned by vision, and not necessarily knowledge,” cultural and scientific monuments 

required a deeper level of understanding to fully appreciate.24 Rangers assigned to Devils 

Postpile often felt they had to play up its scientific interest to justify its national monument 

status. On-site rangers through the 1950s continued to support fishing, pack-stock trips, and 

camping in and around the monument, primarily since curtailing these activities would create 

animosity with locals, longtime visitors, and the growing Eastern Sierra tourism industry. 

Seeds for later disputes were nevertheless planted in this period. From the perspective of Park 

Service rangers, the growing numbers of recreational users demonstrating little interest in the 

area’s geologic story seemed out of place in a monument protected for more than simply its 

scenery and eager trout. 

Cultural Resources and History 

To add further depth to the park’s interpretation program, Hartesveldt began to collect 

materials on the area’s human history, which to that point had been “in a general state of 

confusion.” Very little documentary evidence existed, and even some of the material held in 

the Yosemite museum was apparently incorrect. During his brief summer at the monument, 

Hartesveldt gathered historical information from local people, especially longtime Forest 

Ranger Doug Robinson, and compiled this information into a historical essay on the Devils 

Postpile area and its colorful early inhabitants. The article appeared in the January 1954 edition 

of Nature Notes, and remains to this day the most thorough account of the area’s early history.25 

During this period, historical interpretation was generally reserved for archeological sites, 

battlefields, and other specifically cultural monuments, and was not typically stressed at 

natural parks. Hartesveldt looked beyond these distinctions, recognizing that Devils Postpile, 

though a natural park, had a rich history “preserved in the memories of men who worked in or 

visited the valley of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River many years ago, and who recall 

some of the history that has been passed down by word of mouth.”26 His effort to preserve and 

interpret these recollections allowed visitors to appreciate the layers of human stories beneath 

the geologic story that had been the original reason for the creation of the monument. 

Mutual Cooperation with the Forest Service 

The commitment to scientific and historical interpretation enabled on-site managers to carve 

out a place for the Park Service within an area primarily under Forest Service administration. 

At the same time, the Park Service continued to lean on Inyo National Forest personnel for 

aid in administrative duties involving maintenance and basic visitor services. On September 

3, 1952, Yosemite’s then acting superintendent Harthon L. Bill, outlined what he saw as 

the appropriate roles of the Park Service and Forest Service in the administration of Devils 

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Mutual Cooperation with the Forest Service 

The partially collapsed Postpile cabin, 1949. (From an NPS inspection report, Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

The cabin after its collapse in 1954. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

Postpile. Bill’s letter was based on the ongoing exchange of correspondence between the two 

agencies, becoming the de facto memorandum of understanding discussed prior to the transfer 

of management duties.27 

First, Bill specified that prior firefighting and search-and-rescue arrangements would continue. 

While each agency would be responsible for the areas within their respective boundaries, they 

would cooperate when needed “irrespective of boundary lines.”28 An incident the week before 

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Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

had confirmed the need for cooperation. On August 27, Harold Bothwell of Palos Verdes, 

California, reported his son missing. That night, Hartesveldt and Verret led search parties 

down the San Joaquin River and up King Creek to no avail. The next day, with aid from the 

US Air Force, a Forest Service search party located the boy’s drowned body one tenth of a mile 

south of the monument boundary. Despite its tragic conclusion, the search set a precedent for 

future search-and-rescue operations, which officials in both agencies recognized would only 

become more frequent as visitation to the area increased.29 

Bill’s letter also covered more mundane duties, indicating that the Park Service would be 

responsible for garbage clean up and sanitation within the monument. The monument staff 

would, however, require access to the existing Forest Service garbage pit, the maintenance of 

which would “be shared proportionally for the time being.” This obligation proved difficult to 

meet through the first several seasons, as the single on-site ranger’s responsibilities for visitor 

contacts left little time for anything other than routine maintenance. 

Time, manpower, and cost concerns led some officials to suggest that the campground be closed 

and the monument be managed for day use only. In October 1952, Acting Regional Director 

Herbert Maier cited the smallness of the area as the reason for curtailing camping, though 

easing the administrative burden of campground maintenance appeared to be his primary 

rationale. Maier reasoned that the Forest Service, which was “taking care of camping in good 

shape,” could accommodate the campers presently staying in the monument.30 Yosemite chief 

ranger Sedergren remained skeptical, noting that closing the campground might anger some 

local people who were already suspicious of Park Service intentions in the area.31 Assistant 

Regional Director Sanford Hall concurred, determining that “no action be taken at this time.” 

Hall nevertheless suggested keeping the recommendation in mind, “as it would seem desirable 

that we view the development within our area and that of the adjoining Forest Service areas as 

an overall picture.” The Park Service could consider closing the campground if at some future 

time “the Forest Service facilities are sufficient to take care of the public needs.”32 

The Park Service also relied on the Forest Service to man the Devils Postpile station when the 

assigned ranger could not be there. Bill described this arrangement as mutual and necessary 

“for emergencies.”33 Yet by the second season of Park Service management, it became clear 

that the Forest Service would bear the greater responsibility. In particular, the Park Service 

would require assistance during the assigned ranger’s mandated two days off per week. Homuth 

suggested that a support ranger could be spared from Tuolumne Meadows, but the expense 

and time required for this trip to be made twice a week made the idea impractical.34 The issue 

remained unresolved, and the monument was left unmanned for most of Homuth’s days off 

during the 1953 season. 

Another issue arose regarding the seasonality of the monument. Yosemite could commit to 

stationing a ranger at the monument from mid-June through the first week of September. 

The problem with this schedule became apparent in April 1953 when District Ranger Sweatt 

wrote to Yosemite superintendent John Preston indicating his plans to open the road to Reds 

Meadow on May 1 to “carry on some insect control work.”35 Preston responded apologetically, 

stating that the opening date was “considerably earlier than we had expected.” Tioga Pass, the 

only reasonable travel route from Yosemite to the Eastern Sierra, was not expected to be snowfree until mid-May and Yosemite had no funds for a ranger at Devils Postpile until at least 

June 15. Ultimately, the problem never materialized, as the amount of snow on the valley floor 

proved deeper than expected, and the road was not opened until June 9. Still, the Park Service 

had no contingency plan for early openings in subsequent years. 

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Mutual Cooperation with the Forest Service 

The Forest Service also typically kept the road open beyond the first week of September 

to accommodate hunters who used the valley in the fall. In 1952, following Hartesveldt’s 

termination after Labor Day due to a shortage of funds, Chief Ranger Oscar Sedergren 

made a verbal agreement with the Inyo National Forest that Verret would “go into the 

monument occasionally and pick up the garbage.”36 The following year, Superintendent 

Preston determined that Yosemite would have to share the cost of caring for the monument 

during the hunting season. Preston promised one period of pay for the ranger stationed at 

Reds Meadow to “spend a part of his time at the monument performing such sanitation and 

protection work as the needs require.”37 

For the most part, Forest Service officials welcomed cooperation with the Park Service, 

expressing willingness to provide aid when needed. The only point of contention involved the 

maintenance of the access road from Minaret Summit. In his September 1952 memorandum of 

understanding, Bill requested Forest Service aid in the repair and maintenance of the Minaret 

Summit access road. Work on the short monument entrance road, he assumed, would “be 

accomplished by the Forest Service . . . on a reimbursable basis” at the same time maintenance 

was being conducted on the rest of the road.38 However, the condition of the entire road, not 

just the portion within the monument, was clearly an issue for the Park Service. According to 

Homuth, the poor state of the road had caused visitation during the 1952 season to remain at 

50 percent of what would be expected.39 Some tourists who had come down the road before it 

was temporarily repaired in mid-August told rangers that “they never would have come if they 

had known what they were in for.”40 Since the continued presence of a Park Service ranger at 

Devils Postpile hinged on a substantial flow of tourists, the agency had much at stake in the 

maintenance of the entire road. 

Responsibility for the Minaret Summit road ultimately fell to Madera County, though the 

only access to the area came from Mammoth Lakes in Mono County to the east. Forest 

Service officials frequently pushed the issue, offering to mediate arrangements between the 

two counties for much needed repairs. However, both counties were reluctant to spare funds 

and equipment for roadwork in this out-of-the-way place. The Park Service’s assumption that 

the Forest Service would maintain the stretch of road within the monument added yet another 

complication. On February 2, 1953, Forest Supervisor Eldon Ball wrote to Preston explaining 

the situation: “We have very little road equipment on the forest and seldom maintain the Red’s 

Meadow road with our own equipment. We sometimes have Mono County run their grader 

over the road and sometimes hire other equipment with supervision by our own men.” Ball 

also noted the difficulties of maintaining the road “to proper standards” due to the soft pumice 

that tended to erode or blow away as dust soon after grading. He expressed a willingness to 

cooperate but suggested that Park Service officials take it upon themselves to “authorize and 

supervise the job when the equipment arrives.”41 

Continued visitor complaints about the condition of the road led Park Service officials to 

consider negotiating with Madera and Mono Counties and the Forest Service for a long-term 

maintenance agreement. In August 1953, Homuth suggested that Madera County apply for 

funding from the state of California under the 1947 Collier-Burns Act, which had raised 

gasoline and car registration taxes in order to expand the state’s road system. An arrangement 

could then be drawn up authorizing Mono County to maintain the road using the state funds 

allocated to Madera County.42 

Despite Forest Service support, Homuth’s proposal remained on hold as communities on both 

sides of the Sierra debated a proposed trans-Sierra highway to connect Mammoth Lakes to 

Fresno by way of the Middle Fork Valley. If built, the road would have solved the problem, 

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Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

but it would also have brought significant long-term economic and environmental changes to 

the Mammoth area and the Middle Fork Valley, including Devils Postpile. In the meantime, 

the narrow, dusty, and rutted access road remained a nagging problem that threatened to 

undermine the otherwise cordial arrangement between the Park Service and the Forest Service 

in the day-to-day administration of the monument. 

Community Relations and Promotional Efforts 

Relations with the local community were as important to Devils Postpile’s management as 

cooperation with the Forest Service. Public relations and promotion had been concerns of the 

Park Service from its inception. In 1918, Secretary of Interior Franklin K. Lane urged the 

fledgling Service to “diligently extend and use the splendid cooperation developed... among 

chambers of commerce, tourist bureaus, and automobile highway associations, for the purpose 

of spreading information about our national parks and facilitating their use and enjoyment.”43 

Park Service director Stephen Mather took this to heart, enthusiastically pushing the parks as 

sources of national pride as well as engines of economic growth through tourism. Mather’s 

promotional skills and ability to link the preservation of the nation’s natural wonders to 

American identity captured the mood of the nation during the early twentieth century and, 

as a result, elevated the status of the Park Service among urban elites and other influential 

segments of the population relatively quickly. 

Gaining the support of local communities, which often relied on access to the resources 

protected within newly created parks for their livelihoods, proved more difficult. Local 

resistance was not just economically motivated. By the 1920s, many rural communities had 

already accepted tourism as an economic strategy to supplement or replace declining resource 

extraction activities. For many residents of rural areas adjacent to new parks, the arrival of the 

Park Service was symptomatic of a disruptive change in their community stemming from this 

dependence on tourism.44 

For rangers at Devils Postpile, community outreach meant visiting tour operators, lodge 

owners, and summer camps in the region in order to bring attention to the monument and 

dispel fears about the agency’s intentions. Some local businesses in Mammoth Lakes were 

initially hesitant about the Park Service’s return to the area. In his end-of-season report for 

1952, Hartesveldt stressed the importance of community relations as a means “to relieve a 

general fear of the National Park Service among residents.” Apparently, the rumor that the 

Park Service was “preparing to ‘take over’ Mammoth Lakes” had been revived. In addition 

to raising general suspicion, the rumor also convinced several resort operators to hold off on 

repairs to their establishments because “they didn’t want to spend the money if the Park Service 

was going to take over.”45 

In late June 1953, Homuth began visiting tourist businesses in the Mammoth Lakes area 

to emphasize the Park Service’s role in providing interpretive services and recreational 

opportunities. On June 29, Homuth spent the entire day in Mammoth Lakes visiting 

eight lodges, one club, one tavern, one studio, and Camp High Sierra run by the Los Angeles 

Recreation and Parks Department. He received a “very enthusiastic welcome” from all but 

one of the contacts, the Crystal Crags Lodge, which he believed to be “the source of the 

rumor that the Park Service is expanding into Mammoth Lakes.” The owners of the other 

establishments assured Homuth that they would advise their guests to include Devils Postpile 

on their itineraries. The visit to Camp High Sierra was particularly successful. After being 

treated to lunch, Homuth arranged with the camp manager to “meet a caravan from this Camp 

at the Station each Wednesday morning and conduct a group to the Postpile and Rainbow 

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Community Relations and Promotional Efforts 

Hikers with ranger at the Devils Postpile flagpole, 1955. (Devils Postpile National Monument 

image collection) 

Falls.” The first group—comprising 30 cars and 120 people—arrived at Devils Postpile two 

days later, and “was accorded this service.” Camp High Sierra continued to shuttle groups to 

Devils Postpile in subsequent years, becoming one of the monument’s most valued interpretive 

contacts.46 

Homuth also visited the Inyo National Forest headquarters and Chamber of Commerce in 

Bishop, an hour’s drive south of Mammoth Lakes to distribute copies of Hartesveldt’s 1952 

Nature Notes article as promotional material to all these contacts. The secretary at the Bishop 

Chamber of Commerce then requested fifty more copies to hand out to tourists and business 

owners in the area. With the success of these initial “trial runs,” Homuth determined to make 

similar visits to lodges and other contacts throughout the region each Monday. Over the 

next several weeks, Homuth canvassed the region from Rock Creek north to June Lake and 

Lee Vining, finding “cooperation with the Park Service... with no exceptions.” The initial 

concerns over the agency’s expansion had apparently been diffused.47 

Dorothy Verret, wife of Forest Service ranger Lee Verret accompanied Homuth on most of these 

visits, and her presence smoothed relations further. This was due in part to her knowledge of 

the area, but she and her husband were also well-known and widely respected in the Mammoth 

region where they had spent the last twenty summers. By the 1950s, the Verrets were among 

the few residents to have witnessed the transformation of the mining and ranching outpost of 

Old Mammoth into the bustling resort town of Mammoth Lakes with its ski lifts and swarms 

of year-round tourists. Area business owners also had a certain comfort with the Forest Service 

due to the agency’s long presence in the region and its laissez faire approach to commercial 

development. Verret’s show of support for the Park Service indicated to Mammoth business 

owners that the Park Service would not significantly intervene in the growth of the region’s 

recreation industry; the relative weakness of the Park Service in the region ensured that this 

would remain the case. 

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Chapter Nine Reclaiming the Monument: Development, Interpretation, and “Mutual Cooperation” 

Notes 

1.	 B. F. Manbey to Files re: “Future Administration of Devil Postpile National Monument,” January 10, 1952, 

Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

2.	 Oscar A. Sedergren to Superintendent re: “Future Administration of Devils Postpile National Monument,” 

March 4, 1952; and Lawrence C. Merriam to Superintendent, Yosemite, February 28, 1952, both in Cultural 

Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. Sedergren also specified that 

firefighting and rescue arrangements previously in affect between the two services would continue. Sedergren 

to Superintendent, March 28, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, 

Superintendent’s Office. 

3.	 Dale E. Doty to Charles F. Brannan, Secretary of Agriculture, April 29, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, 

Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

4.	 Earl U. Homuth to Chief Ranger, Yosemite National Park, “Report of Activities for the Period July 1 to July 10 

1952,” July 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

5.	 E. Homuth to Oscar Sedergren, July 12, 1952; and CPR (Carl P. Russell) to Mr. Sedergren, July 19, 1952, 

both in Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

6.	 Homuth to Chief Park Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary of Suggestion and Recommendations for the development 

of Devils Postpile National Monument,” August 8, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

7.	 Ibid. 

8.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Mon. (Earl Homuth) to District Ranger Walt Gammill, Tuol. Mead. Dist., 

July 18, 1954, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Annual Reports,” YNPA. 

9.	 Homuth to Chief Park Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary of Suggestion and Recommendations for the Development 

of Devils Postpile National Monument,” August 8, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder. Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

10.	 Assistant Superintendent (Harthon L. Bill) to Superintendent, re: “Ranger Assignments, Devils Postpile 

National Monument,” August 12, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, 

Superintendent’s Office. 

11.	 Ibid. 

12.	 Richard Hartesveldt to Chief Ranger, Yosemite National Park, “Recommendation and Comments on Devil 

Postpile National Monument,” September 23, 1952, National Archives, Box 17. 

13.	 See especially Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, chap. 3. 

14.	 Homuth to Chief Park Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary of Suggestion and Recommendations for the development 

of Devils Postpile National Monument,” August 8, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National 

Monument. 

15.	 Mackintosh, Interpretation, chaps. 1, 2. 

16.	 Richard Hartesveldt to Chief Ranger, Yosemite National Park, “Recommendation and Comments on Devil 

Postpile National Monument,” September 23, 1952, National Archives, Box 17. 

17.	 Richard J. Hartesveldt, “The Geologic Story of the Devils Postpile,” Yosemite Nature Notes 31, no. 10 (October 

1952): 136. 

18.	 Hartesveldt to Chief Ranger, “Recommendation and Comments on Devil Postpile National Monument”; and 

“Master Plan for Devils Postpile National Monument, Mission 66 Edition, Volume 1, Master Plan Narrative,” 

July 5, 1962, 5, National Archives, Box 1. 

19.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument (Earl Homuth) to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, September 10, 1953, 

National Archives, Box 8. 

20.	 Hal K. Rothman, Blazing Heritage: A History of Wildland Fire in the National Parks (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2007), 81. 

21.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument, to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary Report of Activities at 

This Station for the Season, 1953,” September 15, 1953, National Archives, Box 8. 

22.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the Natural Parks, 83–84. 

126 
Notes 

23.	 Forester Ernst to Superintendent, Yosemite, August 21, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile 

National Monument. 

24.	 Quoted in Mackintosh, Interpretation, chap. 2. 

25.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile,” 3–8. 

26.	 Hartesveldt, “Historical Events at Devils Postpile,” 3. 

27.	 Harthon L. Bill to Eldon E. Ball, Forest Supervisor, September 3, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

28.	 Ibid. 

29.	 Richard Hartesveldt, Ranger-naturalist, Devils Postpile National Monument to Chief Ranger, Yosemite 

National Park, “Monthly Report for Month of August, 1952,” September 3, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, 

Devils Postpile National Monument. On August 13, Hartesveldt also had to drive a thirteen-year-old boy 

who had driven a large splinter from an arrow shaft into his finger to the hospital in Mammoth Lakes. 

30.	 Acting Regional Director [Herbert Maier] to Superintendent Yosemite National Park, “Recommendations on 

Devils Postpile National Monument,” October 17, 1952, National Archives, Box 17. 

31.	 Acting Superintendent, Yosemite [Harthon L. Bill] to Regional Director Region Four, October 31, 1952, 

National Archives, Box 17. 

32.	 Assistant Regional Director, Region Four [Stanford Hall] to Superintendent, Yosemite NP, November 7, 1952, 

National Archives, Box 17. 

33.	 Bill to Ball, September 3, 1952. 

34.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument [Earl Homuth] to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, September 10, 1953, 

National Archives, Box 17. 

35.	 District Ranger B. S. Sweatt to John Preston, April 23, 1953, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile 

National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

36.	 Chief Park Ranger [Oscar Sedergren] to Superintendent, August 26, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

37.	 John C. Preston, Superintendent, to Mr. Wilfred S. Davis, Supervisor, Inyo National Forest, August 31, 1953, 

Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

38.	 Bill to Ball, September 3, 1952. 

39.	 Homuth to Chief Park Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary of Suggestion and Recommendations for the development 

of Devils Postpile National Monument,” August 8, 1952, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

40.	 Donald Edward McHenry, Park Naturalist, Naturalist Report, 1952, National Archives, Box 8. 

41.	 Eldon E. Ball to Superintendent, Yosemite National Park, February 2, 1953, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

42.	 Earl Homuth to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, August 3, 1953, National Archives, Box 17. 

43.	 Franklin K. Lane to Stephen T. Mather, May 13, 1918, in America’s National Park System: The Critical 

Documents, ed. Larry M. Dilsaver (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994), chap. 1, 

www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anps/anps_1j.htm. 

44.	 Rothman, “A History of US National Parks and Economic Development,” 52, 58–61. 

45.	 Richard Hartesveldt to Chief Ranger, Yosemite National Park, “Recommendation and Comments on Devil 

Postpile National Monument,” September 5, 1952, National Archives, Box 17. 

46.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument [Earl Homuth] to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, July 6, 1953, National 

Archives, Box 8. 

47.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument [Earl Homuth] to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, July 15, 1953, 

National Archives, Box 8. 

127 

Chapter Ten 

A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra 

Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

From the 1950s through the early 1970s, Devils Postpile remained something of a neglected 

stepchild of its parent organization, Yosemite National Park. This neglect was largely the result 

of Service-wide budget shortfalls, Devils Postpile’s 126 road miles from Yosemite’s center of 

administration on the west side of the Sierra, and the challenges of justifying expenditures on 

a small, seasonally operated subsidiary park surrounded by well-staffed Forest Service stations. 

Although on-site managers continued to make determined efforts to protect and interpret 

the monument’s resources up to the standards of the national park system, lack of funding 

and minimal support from Yosemite made it increasingly difficult to respond to regional 

development plans and rapidly changing visitor use patterns. 

Accommodating Visitation: Mission 66, Development, and Interpretation 

The 1950s were a decade of readjustment for the National Park Service. The postwar economic 

recovery spurred a tremendous expansion of the American middle class, with higher wages, 

longer vacations, cheaper automobiles, and better roads allowing more Americans than ever 

to travel to their national parks and other public lands. The availability of lighter, more 

affordable camping gear—much of it available as Army surplus—also expanded opportunities 

for recreation, and made camping a viable vacation option for the growing numbers of young 

suburban families. 

From 1944 to 1945, the year World War II ended, visits to the national park system leapt 

from approximately 5 million to almost 12 million, jumping again to 25.5 million in 1947. 

This trend continued into the 1950s, with visitation approaching 50 million by 1954.1 Roads, 

lodgings, campgrounds, trails, and concessions not upgraded since the New Deal proved 

inadequate to accommodate this surge in tourism. With Congress sluggish in designating 

appropriations to the park system, conditions deteriorated further, prompting author Bernard 

DeVoto to declare that “the priceless heritage which the Service must safeguard for the United 

States is beginning to go to hell.”2 

The dramatic increase in visitation following World War II created a severe budget crisis for the 

entire national park system. The pressures of skyrocketing visitation were especially sharply felt 

in Yosemite—a factor that also affected the management of Devils Postpile. In 1944, Yosemite 

recorded less than 120,000 visits; one year later, the number jumped to more than 250,000, 

then to 641,767 by 1946. Visitation continued to rise over the next decade, exceeding the one 

million mark by 1954.3 

Devils Postpile saw a similar increase. In 1938, the monument received approximately 6,000 

visitors. In 1953, despite the degraded state of the road through much of the season, Hartesveldt 

recorded nearly 32,000 visits, a more than 500 percent increase.4 The monument’s growing 

appeal proved to be a double-edged sword. While increasing visitation elevated the prestige 

of Devils Postpile in the region and secured the Park Service’s administrative authority, it also 

taxed the monument’s aging infrastructure and overwhelmed its chronically shorthanded staff. 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Mother and daughter at the Rainbow Falls viewpoint, 1955. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

In 1956, the Park Service responded to the pressures of increasing visitation with Mission 66, 

a program to revitalize the parks by the agency’s fiftieth anniversary in 1966. In advocating 

the program, Park Service director Wirth echoed the preservation-via-development mindset 

that had characterized the early years of the service. He described Mission 66 as necessary 

to bring the parks “up to a consistently high standard of preservation, staffing and physical 

development.”5 The ten-year program included plans for road and trail construction, modern 

visitor centers, campground facilities, utilities, employee housing, and other infrastructure 

projects. With the parks sufficiently developed, agency officials believed, greater attention 

could be paid to interpretation and resource protection.6 

In 1956, Yosemite undertook a Mission 66 area management study to assess the nagging 

problems at Devils Postpile and provide recommendations for addressing them. The 

resulting report stressed the need for development projects that would aid in the display 

and interpretation of the monument’s “nationally significant resources.” These resources 

included the exposed and glacier-polished basalt columns of the Postpile, Rainbow Falls, the 

Middle Fork San Joaquin, the area’s minor geologic features, and the surrounding forests and 

130 
Accommodating Visitation: Mission 66, Development, and Interpretation 

meadows. The report also revived the earlier proposal to eliminate camping in the monument. 

The authors suggested that “since the major attractions can be seen in a matter of two or three 

hours,” Devils Postpile should be “considered a day-use area only.” Future development would 

revolve around picnicking and interpretation only.7 

Other recommendations included a series of self-guided nature trails marked with “strategically 

located” interpretive signs; a clearly defined trail system that would “prevent damage to the 

area by channeling traffic”; safety railings at the Rainbow Falls overlook; a larger parking lot; 

a new water system; septic tanks for employee quarters and comfort stations; and portable 

electric generators to provide “power and light until commercial power become available”; a 

modern visitor center in the central parking lot; and two “duplex ‘efficiency’ units with service 

buildings” to be used for employee housing and storage. Finally, the authors recognized that 

staffing had been “wholly inadequate,” and recommended hiring a supervisory park ranger to 

be stationed at Devils Postpile for six months of the year and at Yosemite during the off-season. 

A seasonal park ranger, ranger naturalist, and maintenance worker would also be required. The 

larger staff would allow for a greater emphasis on visitor contacts and interpretive services.8 

The report estimated a total cost of $253,950 over a ten-year span for these development 

needs. Ultimately, however, no such lump sum was ever dedicated to Devils Postpile. Mission 

66 provided a much-needed infusion of funds to Yosemite, but very little of this was set aside 

specifically for Devils Postpile. As in years prior, specific needs required specific requests for 

funding—a frustrating and time-consuming process for on-site rangers. As a result, most of the 

suggestions in the Mission 66 report continued to be put off. Yosemite eventually shipped a few 

new picnic tables and pit toilets, as well as a generator for the ranger cabin. Still, trails remained 

poorly signed and eroded, the parking lot continued to be dusty and crowded, especially on 

weekends, and with Madera County’s continuing reluctance to maintain the entrance road, 

the loose pumice surface rapidly deteriorated under the tread of thousands of automobiles, 

forcing rangers to spend considerable time filling potholes and covering exposed roots. The 

plan to eliminate the campground was also never carried out. This was due in part to time and 

cost concerns, but also because the campground was immensely popular. To remove it would 

anger frequent visitors and stress the existing Forest Service facilities north of the monument. 

Through the 1950s, on-site rangers often dedicated unpaid overtime, and sometimes their own 

money, to installing signs, rebuilding trails, stocking firewood, and maintaining the entrance 

road. Despite the recommendations of the Mission 66 report, Yosemite’s administrators 

continued to believe that one ranger could handle all maintenance issues, sanitation, law 

enforcement, search-and-rescue operations, firefighting, and interpretation, even as visitation 

numbers mounted. In 1957, the on-site ranger recorded nearly 40,000 visits for the year. 

This included 230 cars, a “truck load of Y.M.C.A. boys,” and 980 total people on July 4, “the 

highest single day numbers of visitors to the Monument so far recorded.”9 

As visitation increased, accidents became more frequent. On August 17, 1958, the monument 

ranger responded to a report that someone had fallen over a cliff and into the river south of 

lower Rainbow Falls, about a quarter mile outside the park boundary. A storm that caused the 

water level to rise during the night made the search nearly impossible. Despite the efforts of 

the ranger and Arch Mahan from Reds Meadow, the lost boy, an eight-year-old from Whittier 

California, was never found. Also during the 1958 season, the Devils Postpile ranger responded 

to a plane crash near Agnew Meadows and organized the rescue of a twenty-year-old man who 

had suffered a dislocated knee after falling from a cliff south of the Rainbow Falls overlook.10 

Even with mounting safety concerns and persistent infrastructure problems, on-site rangers 

continued to prioritize interpretation, often by relying on the aid of Forest Service officials and 

131 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Reds Meadow employees. On July 6, 1957, monument staff partnered with Mahan and Verret 

to honor Devils Postpile’s “Establishment Day.” The event served to emphasize the monument’s 

national significance and further integrate the Park Service into the regional recreation complex 

that had built up around Mammoth Lakes. Despite a “sharp thunderstorm” that inundated 

the area an hour before program time, eighty-seven campers showed up for a discussion of 

the establishment of the monument, an explanation of the area’s geologic significance, and 

a general history of the national parks and monuments. The monument ranger also echoed 

the Forest Service’s recreational agenda for the area, emphasizing “the need for preserving for 

recreation and related purposes such areas as remain, to meet the ever increasing need.” Verret 

also spoke to the audience about Forest Service policies and the history of the area. Finally, 

the event was “interspersed with group singing” led by Dave Swain, a guitarist and packer 

employed at Reds Meadow.11 

Such moments of cooperation, though, were not enough to prevent the deterioration of the 

monument’s infrastructure under the weight of mounting visitation and heavy recreational use. 

In 1960, Yosemite finally acknowledged the staffing shortage noted in the Mission 66 report. 

On July 25, Yosemite sent Pete Taglio, a maintenance worker, to the Postpile for a month 

of work. His first project was to dig a new privy hole, which he lined with wood salvaged 

from “a broken down privy” he removed from the dump.12 Taglio’s primary assignment was to 

handle the sanitation duties previously taken care of by the ranger. Road maintenance, though, 

occupied nearly all of his time. Ranger Gene Cahoon described the trade-offs involved in 

keeping the road in shape: 

It is necessary for him to fill his truck by hand at the borrow pit and haul it about 2 miles. 

This road was in extremely bad shape when he started and now in spite of the very heavy 

travel—approximately 3,700 cars have been into the Postpile since he started working on 

it—it is in better condition than the county road which was bladed during the week of Aug. 

7 to 13. However, because of the heavy use this road receives it can only be maintained 

by this method of constant work. It has not been possible to do any work on the trail to 

the Postpile yet because of the need for constant work on the road and the need for daily 

garbage pickups and privy servicing due to heavy camp use.13 

Even with the additional pair of hands, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a high 

standard of service. In his report on the 1960 season, Cahoon listed several development needs, 

many of which had been appearing on inspection reports since the 1930s. Of the ten pit toilets 

in the monument, seven had warped doors, five had broken lids, and one had no lid at all. 

The roof of the ranger cabin leaked. Six “very old” picnic tables were in need of replacement. 

He also noted an urgent need for a picnic area with five to ten more tables. Cahoon also 

recommended enlarging the parking area. The existing lot could accommodate some 35 to 

40 cars. On a typical day, however, 75 to 80 cars were present, and as many as 200 or more 

arrived on busy weekend days. He also suggested—as had nearly every manager preceding 

him—that oiling the parking area would help with the dust. Trails and signs were also in poor 

shape. Cahoon suggested placing signs and boundary markers in “cement too heavy to lift” to 

prevent them from being stolen or moved around. Apparently, the sign at the junction of the 

Reds Meadow store trail and the Postpile trail was “constantly being switched from one trail 

to the other,” causing “a number of people to arrive at the wrong destination.”14 

In addition to interpretive duties, Cahoon coordinated bimonthly fish stocking with the 

California Department of Fish and Game. He also handled emergencies, which were becoming 

more frequent each summer. On August 20, he rushed to the Postpile cabin with a shovel 

and bucket to extinguish a fire ignited by a discarded cigarette. Though about three feet of 

132 
Accommodating Visitation: Mission 66, Development, and Interpretation 

the lower plank on the west side of the cabin had burned by the time he arrived, no major 

damage resulted, and the cabin remained in “its normal dilapidated condition.” Cahoon also 

responded to a number of reports of lost or unattended children during the season.15 

Cahoon also noted a trend that would shape the future of Devils Postpile and the entire 

Mammoth Lakes region. He observed that while resort owners and merchants in Mammoth 

Lakes had been complaining about poor business during the 1960 season, Devils Postpile 

and the Middle Fork Valley had seen greater numbers of campers than ever before. Based on 

conversations with several visitors, Cahoon attributed this to the high prices charged at the 

resorts and the growing popularity of “pickup trucks with camper backs or small camping 

trailers.” He also assumed that many of these new campers “might change their mind about 

camping” in subsequent years if the weather turned bad.16 

In fact, this new visitation pattern reflected the rising popularity of camping and other more 

rustic forms of recreation in the nation as a whole. With the expansion of the Interstate 

Highway System, the availability of lighter, more affordable recreational technologies, and 

the rising influence of the wilderness and environmental movements, many Americans began 

to eschew the plush resort vacations preferred by elite travelers in earlier eras, preferring 

instead the rustic experience of camping out. Though of minor interest to Cahoon, this trend 

signified a major shift in the way Americans viewed outdoor recreation and Mission 66-style 

development at national parks and other public lands. 

This trend also underlay the public’s subsequent turn against the kinds of large-scale 

development projects the Park Service had pursued under Mission 66. Agency officials 

had envisioned the program as necessary to increase the interpretive capacity of the agency and 

guard against the degradation of landscapes and facilities caused by overcrowding. Yet the scale 

of many Mission 66 projects and their radically different modernist architecture generated 

intense controversy. The most substantive critiques of Mission 66 grew out of the postwar 

wilderness movement and reflected a widening divide between the Park Service and a new 

generation of conservationists over what national parks should be and who should have access 

to them. The debate over improvements to the Tioga Road through Yosemite’s high country 

typified this growing conflict between development and wilderness in Park Service policy and 

prefaced later conflicts over the proposed trans-Sierra highway at Minaret Summit. 

During the 1930s, the Park Service partnered with the Bureau of Roads to pave, widen, 

and straighten the existing dirt road over Tioga Pass to accommodate increasing numbers 

of automobile tourists. New Deal funds allowed for the completion of the two end sections 

of the road by 1938, but the 21-mile-long middle section was left incomplete due to the 

difficult terrain. The rationale for rebuilding the road meshed neatly with the overall aims of 

park planning in the prewar era: an improved road would make other development schemes 

unnecessary and would channel visitors along a single route, leaving the surrounding wilderness 

untouched. As late as 1947, the Yosemite Advisory Board—through which conservation groups 

like the Sierra Club could weigh in on park policies—supported plans to continue the project.17 

Up to this point, the Sierra Club and the Park Service had shared a common strategy of 

encouraging visitation to Yosemite in order to build a larger constituency for conservation. 

By the late 1940s, some younger Sierra Club members had begun to object to the club’s 

conciliatory stance toward development. Conditioned by two decades of hiking and rock 

climbing in the High Sierra and their encounters with the heavily developed Alps during 

World War II, David Brower, Richard Leonard, and other self-styled “Young Turks” took 

a hard-line stance toward so-called park “improvements,” especially those involving road 

133 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

construction. While older club members asked how the Tioga Road could be improved in an 

appropriate manner, this new contingent argued that the road should not be improved at all.18 

The resulting fracture in one of the Park Service’s oldest constituents turned on the issue of 

access. For club member Harold C. Bradley, the concerns were twofold: not only would the 

Tioga Road project damage some of the most scenic areas in the high country (it would require 

blasting portions of the granite benches along the shore of Tenaya Lake) but it would also 

grant easy access to one of the most treasured wilderness areas in the Sierra for “those who must 

have speed to be happy; those who are not sufficiently interested to invest the time and effort; 

those who require a house on wheels when they rough it; those who are timid, or incompetent 

and realize it.” In Bradley’s view, the presence of so many people unwilling “to pay the price in 

terms of effort and time” would destroy the very qualities that made the Yosemite high country 

wilderness.19 

The Tioga Road project ultimately carried too much momentum to be stopped by these 

objections. Many older Sierra Club members also remained skeptical, expressing a legitimate 

concern that strict opposition to road building would expose the club to charges of elitism. 

Still, by 1951, the Young Turks had exerted enough influence to have the phrase “render 

accessible the mountains regions of the Pacific Coast” removed from the Sierra Club’s mission 

statement and replaced with the stricter but more expansive aim to “preserve the Sierra Nevada 

and other scenic resources of the United States.” By the time the Park Service pledged Mission 

66 funds to complete the expansion of the Tioga Road, the Sierra Club had serious reservations 

about the priorities of its former ally in conservation.20 

These tensions were not immediately apparent in Devils Postpile, but would in later years 

become central to its continued protection. As the Park Service at the national level struggled 

to respond to mounting critiques of Mission 66 and other development programs, smaller 

units of the park system, like Devils Postpile, became battlegrounds for regional interests over 

wilderness, appropriate recreation, and economic development. Between the mid-1950s and 

the early 1970s, however, Devils Postpile’s administrators remained too preoccupied with the 

day-to-day challenges of dealing with staggering increases in visitation to take an active part in 

the conservation battles raging around them. 

National Monument, Regional Politics: The Trans-Sierra Highway Debate 

Today, the Sierra Nevada range remains a significant barrier for eastward travel out of California’s 

Central Valley. No roads bisect the range for 270 miles between Walker Pass in the south and 

Tioga Pass to the north. This is as much a product of historical forces as physical geography. 

Beginning in the 1920s, several plans for highways to cross the central Sierra Nevada were 

proposed to the US Congress and the California state legislature. The fact that none were built 

reflects the rising strength and changing priorities of conservation in this period. From the 

1950s through the early 1970s, Devils Postpile sat directly in the path of one of these proposed 

roads. Only through the efforts of a handful of conservationists and local business owners was 

the monument spared from becoming an exit off a high-speed all-weather highway. 

In the 1930s, the Park Service—aided by the Sierra Club—successfully prevented two proposed 

roads that would have sliced through the scenic Kings River high country.21 Following these 

defeats, road advocates turned their attention to the route of the old French Trail. The 

low elevation of Mammoth Pass had tempted business interests in the Central Valley for 

decades. When the High Sierra and Minarets primitive areas were created in 1931 to the 

west of the Middle Fork Valley, legislators purposefully left a 5-mile “gap” between the two 

134 
National Monument, Regional Politics: The Trans-Sierra Highway Debate 

Map of the proposed Minaret Summit Highway, 1966. (Source: Sherwin, “The Mammoth Pass Road,” 6) 

to allow for a future highway. In 1940, a bill proposed to the US Congress for a trans-Sierra 

Highway over Mammoth Pass failed in committee. In the mid-1950s, the matter resurfaced 

when representatives from Fresno, Madera, and Merced Counties began lobbying for the 

road as necessary for reaching the “rich markets to the east.” In 1957, the Bureau of Public 

Roads partnered with the Forest Service to complete a feasibility study. The resulting report 

concluded that such a road would be possible, and in 1962, plans for Forest Highway 100 

became official.22 

While perhaps possible from an engineering standpoint, construction of the highway would 

be difficult and expensive. The low elevation of Mammoth Pass masked the rugged country 

to the west. According to a 1966 feasibility study by California state highway engineer J. C. 

Womack, several large bridges would be needed to cross steep canyons, and snow-removal costs 

would likely exceed any other highway in the state. Based on this, Womack recommended that 

the neither state nor federal funds be allocated for such a difficult and cost-prohibitive project. 

State legislators, though, had little knowledge of this remote section of the High Sierra and 

continued to be swayed by the powerful Central Valley interests advocating for the road.23 

The Park Service took no clear position on the trans-Sierra Highway issue through this 

period, even though the project would have tremendous impacts on Devils Postpile National 

Monument. In 1959, Director Wirth made no mention of the monument in his comments 

to the Fresno Bee in support of Forest Highway 100. He told reporters that a highway over 

Mammoth Pass or Minaret Summit would relieve some of the traffic pressure on the Tioga 

Road through Yosemite, and would thus fit with the priorities of the Park Service at the 

time. In later years, administrators at Yosemite and the regional office either ignored or were 

unaware of Womack’s report, which specifically noted that highway construction along the 

steep western slope of the valley near Minaret Falls “could have a high possibility of lessening 

the natural scenic value of the area.”24 A later report also warned that “alignment easterly of 

the Devil’s Postpile would, due to terrain, be so near the famous Postpile columns that heavy 

construction (blasting) could possibly cause damage to these columns.”25 

Yosemite officials were clearly aware of the increases in visitation that would result if the 

highway were built. This consideration underlay nearly every development proposal for the 

monument from the mid-1950s through the 1960s. The authors of the 1956 Mission 66 

prospectus for Devils Postpile based their staffing recommendations on “anticipated future 

135 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Development plan, 1963. Note the location of the proposed Mammoth Pass road and the space reserved for 

expansion across the river opposite the campground. (Devils Postpile National Monument map collection) 

Close-up of an alternate development plan, 1963. Note the 

3,000-square-foot visitor center and the expanded parking areas. 

(Devils Postpile National Monument map collection) 

increases which would be further increased by a proposed trans-Sierra highway making the area 

more readily accessible.”26 A 1962 master plan for Devils Postpile suggested that “should the 

proposed trans-Sierra access road be constructed, relocation and reconstruction of the present 

entrance and approach roads will be needed.” The report’s forecast of 100,000 visitors by 1970 

was based in part on an assumption that either the highway would be built or the county road 

to the monument would be significantly improved.27 

136 
National Monument, Regional Politics: The Trans-Sierra Highway Debate 

A revised master plan drafted in 1964 further stressed the anticipated increases in visitation. 

Based on plans being reviewed at the time, Devils Postpile would be connected to the highway 

by a “high standard paved” spur road. To accommodate increased traffic from the more heavily 

populated west side of the Sierra and to meet current needs, the report recommended an 

expanded parking lot large enough for 205 cars (the present lot had room for approximately 

45). The narrow confines of the Middle Fork Valley, the authors noted, made “accessible land 

with topography suitable for development... extremely scarce.” The only available space for 

expansion would be the west bank of the river opposite the existing campground. Both the 

campground and the area across the river would have to be cleared of vegetation and leveled 

to provide more parking spaces. The report also proposed a modern 3,000-square-foot visitor 

center with two attached “comfort stations” served by individual septic tanks and absorption 

trenches to accommodate the influx of day users. Finally, the master plan recommended 

construction of a 25-by-40-foot maintenance building and a four-unit apartment for seasonal 

employee housing.28 

The Park Service remained a bystander in the actual debate over the road. Because the Minaret 

Summit Highway—as it came to be known—would not actually pass within Park Service 

boundaries, agency officials claimed they had no authority to take a position for or against the 

road. In August 1961, Associate Director Eivind T. Scoyen summed up the agency’s position 

in a letter to Mammoth Lakes resident, author, and Sierra Club member Hal Roth: “We are 

well aware of the impressive and significant scenic and wilderness values contained in the 

Mammoth Pass area,” Scoyen wrote. “This area, however, is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. 

Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and since it is under their jurisdiction instead 

of ours, we have no authority with respect to its use or management.”29 

Agency employees were not all neutral on the issue. During summer 1958, newly minted 

Ranger Naturalist Stanley T. Albright, nephew of Park Service founder Horace Albright and 

a resident of Bishop, helped Genny Schumacher, Dorothy Fitzhugh, and other residents of 

the Mammoth area circulate a petition opposing the road. The group gathered hundreds of 

signatures, laying the groundwork for a local movement to oppose the highway project.30 

Albright appears to have been an exception, likely due to his personal connection to the 

region. In July 1965, Assistant Director J. E. N. Jensen described the road project as a way to 

solve the decades-old problem of maintaining the entrance road from Minaret Summit. He 

recommended to the National Parks Advisory Board that the road be reclassified as a “National 

Park approach road” in order to include it “as part of the Federal-Aid-Forest Highway System of 

the State of California.” The advisory board voted to reject Jensen’s proposal, not out of concern 

for the resource, but because most members “did not consider this road in high priority in 

comparison with other National Park Service road needs.”31 Advisory board member Wallace 

Stegner wrote to Dave Brower after the vote, stating that while the board “did not want in any 

way to encourage the building of a trans-Sierra road south of Tioga,” the “ostensible reason 

was that the whole proposal seemed vague and speculative, and we needed more information 

before making up our minds.”32 Afterward, Jensen wrote to Democrat congressman Bernice 

F. Sisk of Fresno, the primary advocate for the Minaret Summit Highway, for advice on how 

to “place the construction of this road in higher priority.”33 

Sisk’s arguments in favor of the road resonated with traditional Park Service values. While 

most of the outspoken congressman’s advocacy turned on matters of economics and national 

security (he imagined the highway as an escape route for residents of the Central Valley in the 

event of nuclear war), he also pushed the road as a way to extend recreational access to the 

Mammoth Lakes Sierra to those of “modest means” who could not afford a pack trip or the 

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Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Bishop local and former Sequoia and Kings Canyon superintendent Stanley Albright with Lou 

Roeser at Mule Days. (Courtesy of Lou and Marye Roeser) 

time and expense then required to reach the area. Like the Park Service in years prior, Sisk 

saw no conflict between roads and wilderness. In fact, he advocated for the expansion of the 

two wilderness areas between which the road would pass. He also argued that the highway 

would disperse recreation, thus relieving pressures on Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

National Parks and popular recreation areas in the Sierra foothills.34 

In his corner, Sisk had a powerful constituency of agricultural interests, newspapers, public 

lands committees, and private citizens. The opposition had nowhere near the same political 

clout. Sisk’s repackaging of the Park Service’s preservation-via-development arguments also 

clashed sharply with the Sierra Club’s increasingly rigid stance against road building in the 

Sierra. Yet, surprisingly, the club remained relatively complacent in the debate, in part due to its 

focus at the time on fighting the proposed Grand Canyon dam. In calling on the club for aid, 

Mammoth resident Hal Roth acknowledged its increasingly national focus, but pointed out 

that “after all the club is the Sierra Club and while it’s important of course to concern ourselves 

with national conservation matters, I think we should be alert for our own mountains.”35 

Brower had previously stated his objection to the highway in 1956 and again in 1959. He also 

assigned Superior Court judge Raymond J. Sherwin, an Eastern Sierra local and a descendant 

of one of the original settlers in the region, to direct the club’s opposition. The organization 

as a whole, though, dedicated few resources to battling Sisk’s pro-road contingent, leaving the 

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National Monument, Regional Politics: The Trans-Sierra Highway Debate 

fight to Sherwin and other local club members who would be most directly affected by the 

highway.36 

A lingering schism in the club regarding Sierra roads may have contributed to this minimal 

commitment. In 1937, the club had supported a highway at Mammoth Pass as a concession to 

removing “for all time any valid demand for any other road crossing the Sierra south of Tioga 

Pass.”37 As late as 1968, renowned photographer and prominent Sierra Club activist Ansel 

Adams continued to hold this position, viewing the club’s recent “all-or-none” approach to 

road building as unrealistic. Adams’s support for the Minaret Summit highway also reflected 

his frustration over his failed effort to prevent the earlier expansion of the Tioga Road. In his 

view, if the Mammoth Pass highway had been built at that time, there would have been no 

need for the Tioga Road project. Furthermore, Adams made the surprising comment that 

“the Minaret Summit is the least important and least interesting pass of the Sierra south of 

Sonora Pass.” A road in that location, he wrote, “would do the least possible damage and, more 

important, would give us ammunition to forestall other roads in far more important wild and 

scenic areas.”38 

Though surprising in retrospect, Adams’s position was consistent with the club’s focus at that 

time on development proposals that actually encroached within national park boundaries. 

This emphasis on the sanctity of national parks stemmed from the loss of Hetch Hetchy in the 

early twentieth century, and formed the basis for the club’s efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to 

block proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon. Though by 

no means an advocate of road building, Adams believed the club had no firm leg to stand on 

in objecting to a road that would not actually pass through a Park Service boundary line.39 

The highway project attracted opponents and supporters on both sides of the Sierra. Especially 

in the early years, many tourism businesses in the Eastern Sierra assumed that any increase in 

accessibility would be good for business. Both Arch Mahan and Bob Tanner at Reds Meadow 

as well as Dave McCoy of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area held this position initially—although 

they would later oppose the project. A few groups on the west slope of the Sierra also objected 

to the road. The North Fork Mono tribe was initially split with many members viewing the 

highway as an economic opportunity. After much discussion, the tribe determined that the 

arguments for maintaining as much of the traditional value of the land as possible outweighed 

those touting the economic benefits of the highway.40 

The most vocal opposition came from the Mammoth area. Many residents of Mammoth 

Lakes and the surrounding communities opposed the road for aesthetic reasons and because 

they feared it would significantly alter the dynamics of the regional economy. In 1966, a group 

of recreational business owners and local residents met to form the Mono County Resources 

Committee, through which they gained the backing of the Eastern and Western High Sierra 

Packers Associations, the Mammoth Chamber of Commerce, and the Mono County Board 

of Supervisors. In spring 1967, members of the makeshift group concocted a plan to travel to 

Sacramento in time for an April 18 hearing on the road proposal.41 

Armed with the 1966 state engineer’s report, Lou Roeser of the Mammoth Lakes Pack Station, 

sporting goods retailer Doug Kittredge, and Chip van Nattan of the Resources Committee 

headed north up the 395 in Nattan’s 1957 Ford station wagon. By the time they reached Reno, 

a late-season storm had dumped six inches of new snow on the ground, and their prospects 

for making it over Donner Pass looked grim. The highway patrol actually closed the road at 

the pass, but after pleading their case to the officer manning the barricade, the group was let 

through. During the drive over the mountains, Nattan plowed through snowdrifts and was 

forced to stop several times so that the others could jump out and wipe snow off the headlights 

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Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

and hood. They finally reached the home of Roeser’s brother-in-law and business partner Lou 

Fitzhugh in Sacramento late that night. After a brief rest in sleeping bags on Fitzhugh’s living 

room floor, the group made their way to the capitol building to meet with members of the 

Highway Committee.42 

The committee members had little knowledge of the actual terrain through which the highway 

was to pass, and so were receptive to the arguments made by the small contingent from Mono 

County. The legislators was also impressed that the group had made it over Donner Pass in a 

blizzard that had completely shut down trucking over the mountains (and in a station wagon 

without four-wheel drive no less). When the bill came to a vote later that afternoon, the 

committee defeated it eleven votes to one. The state of California followed suit, determining 

not to dedicate state funds to the highway. 

Sisk was furious with the state’s decision, and vowed to seek federal dollars for the road’s 

construction. Flush with their victory, the Mono County opposition continued to sharpen 

their attacks in response. Raymond Sherwin and Mammoth Lakes writer and publisher Genny 

Schumacher, whom Mammoth Lakes lodge owner Bob Schotz referred to as “the glue that 

held the opposition together,” were particularly active.43 They organized local opposition and 

mounted a letter-writing campaign, targeting conservation organizations, the Park Service, the 

Forest Service, and state and federal representatives for support in blocking the road. 

Their position was strengthened by the support of Norman “Ike” Livermore Jr., former 

Eastern Sierra packer, Sierra Club board member, and, by then, Governor Ronald Reagan’s 

secretary of resources. Though not well versed in environmental politics, Reagan had an eye for 

natural beauty and, often at the advice of Livermore, took the side of environmental advocates 

in debates over development projects in the state. During his governorship, in addition to 

blocking the Minaret Summit Highway, he also halted a proposal to widen the road to Mineral 

King to accommodate a ski resort, and prevented construction of the Dos Rios Dam, which 

would have inundated the fertile Round Valley in Mendocino County.44 

Reagan’s and Livermore’s environmentalism reflected the broad-based support for environmental issues at the time as well as the fluid liberalism of the 1960s and early 1970s. Prior to 

the emergence of the more ideological conservatism of the late 1970s, many environmental 

fights—including the more than three-decades-long battle for a national wilderness bill—were 

spearheaded by Republicans. These included Forest Service planner Arthur Carhart, Pennsylvania congressman John P. Saylor, and Russell E. Train, the second head of the Environmental 

Protection Agency.45 

As a former pack-station owner in the area, Livermore had a particularly deep attachment 

to the Middle Fork Valley and Mammoth Lakes Sierra. He regarded the construction of a 

highway through the area to be “the greatest tragedy since Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite 

was built.” As the only “wilderness-oriented” member of Reagan’s cabinet, he took it upon 

himself to meet with state and federal transportation officials to convince them of not only the 

threat the highway posed to the region’s wilderness character but also the inordinate costs such 

a road would incur. Even when the Forest Service scaled back the proposal to include only 

improvements to the road to Reds Meadow, Livermore continued to object, telling anyone 

who would listen that “this is a long battle, and this is the worm entering the apple to go all 

the way across.”46 

In December 1970, Department of the Interior official Douglas Hofe Jr. expressed his 

department’s formal opposition to the Forest Highway 100 project, including the scaled-back 

version. He credited Livermore with exposing the lack of a clear need for an improved road 

140 
National Monument, Regional Politics: The Trans-Sierra Highway Debate 

as well as its questionable feasibility and potential impacts on wilderness.47 A March 1971 

environmental impact statement (EIS) echoed Livermore’s arguments, concluding that the 

road would have “substantial adverse impacts.” The retaining walls would “create a visual 

intrusion on the wilderness area.” Resulting increases in visitation and automobile use would 

“cause a deterioration of the fragile soils and vegetation, as well as the fish, wildlife and timber 

supply at the recreation areas.” The road would also further strain the “carrying capacity” for 

recreation along the John Muir Trail and in the surrounding wilderness areas. The report’s 

conclusion that “it is questionable whether more recreation should be encouraged at this 

location,” epitomized the access issues that continued to define wilderness politics in this 

period.48 

Livermore had suggested in years prior that Reagan, a competent horseman, would be swayed 

to protect the region if he were to take a pack trip along the proposed highway route. The plan 

finally came together in summer 1972. On the morning of June 28, local packers Bob Tanner 

and Lou Roeser shipped a truckload of mules and horses to Reds Meadow to accommodate the 

group of one hundred people that included Governor Reagan, his staff, local officials, members 

of the press, and a handful of local packers. Ever the showman, Reagan donned western attire, 

selected his own horse, and led the contingent 6 miles up the King Creek trail to Summit 

Meadow where, in “an unusual mountain press conference,” he stated his objection to the road 

and announced President Richard M. Nixon’s formal opposition. Reagan also declared that 

the area should be protected from future road incursions by closing the gap between the two 

existing wilderness areas to the west. “I am convinced,” he announced, “that by such action 

we can prevent the creation of a high-speed trans-Sierra highway through this area for all time 

Governor Ronald Reagan with former Reds Meadow Pack Station owner Arch Mahan (left) and Rock Creek
 

Pack Station owner Herbert M. London (right), 1972. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection)
 

141 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Governor Reagan beginning the ride to Summit Meadow, 1972. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image collection) 

and preserve the vast primitive beauty of this wilderness for generations of Californians yet to 

come.”49 

In truth, by the time of Reagan’s ride, momentum in the trans-Sierra highway debate had 

already swung to the opposition. In May 1971, Russell Train, chairman of the newly formed 

Council on Environmental Quality, cited the 1971 EIS in a letter urging the Federal Highway 

Administration to “terminate action” on all road proposals at Minaret Summit. On June 13, 

1972, the state of California issued a formal objection to the proposed expansion based on 

the Forest Service’s inadequate assessment of the potential environmental impacts.50 Reagan’s 

ride nevertheless had symbolic value, and set the stage for local activists’ subsequent push to 

expand the wilderness areas west of the Middle Fork Valley. 

The “Armpit of the National Park Service” 

While regional interests fought to protect the Devils Postpile area from a highway that would 

have significantly increased tourism, the Park Service struggled to provide basic services to the 

142 
The “Armpit of the National Park Service” 

visitors who were already there. Even without an improved road, visitation to the monument 

had increased beyond all previous estimates, growing from 35,591 in 1960 to 53,787 two 

years later. The visitor count exceeded the 100,000 mark in 1965, five years earlier than had 

been predicted in 1962. The minimal resources Yosemite dedicated to Devils Postpile in this 

period proved wholly inadequate to handle the rising tide. 

Ranger Gene Cahoon pointed out several ongoing problems in his 1962 annual report. He 

requested 26 new picnic tables to accommodate increasing visitation and to replace the “12 

lightweight tables crushed by snow last year.” He also noted that most of the boundary and 

trail signs had either been tampered with or stolen, further confusing visitors hiking to the 

monument’s features. As a solution, he recommended installing “metal signs, welded to metal 

posts set in concrete too heavy to be lifted by any less than ten boys. If they can get them 

out of the ground—to hell with it!” The more serious problem was overcrowding. Cahoon 

estimated that approximately 24,000 cars passed through the monument during the season, 

including more than 150 cars on each of the heaviest travel days. The problem was exacerbated 

by “the storage of backpackers’ cars.” While there typically only about 6 to 10 such cars, during 

weekends the number frequently exceeded 20.51 

Cahoon also recorded a number of visitor complaints. Most revolved around the condition of 

the entrance road, which remained dusty and full of potholes despite being bladed twice during 

the season. Perhaps inadvertently helping the cause of pro-highway interests in the Central 

Valley, Cahoon determined to “pass the buck to Madera County... when people wonder 

why the government doesn’t do something.” “If people do what they say they are going to do,” 

he continued, “Madera road people much be getting some ego-jolting letters.” On September 

3, a Sierra Club member complained about the amount of trash at the Rainbow Falls overlook. 

Cahoon acknowledged the problem, but felt the complaint was unjustified considering the 

more than 1,200 visitors to the monument the day before. Visitors also complained about the 

lack of a water faucet or drinking fountain. Despite nearly three decades of urgent requests by 

on-site managers for the development of a clean water source, a sufficient system had still not 

been constructed. In addition, some visitors ended up driving 30 miles out of their way on 

Highway 395 because there was still no sign indicating the turnoff to Devils Postpile.52 

Interpretive activities also suffered with the increased time devoted to maintenance, sanitation, 

and visitor protection issues. Cahoon recommended hiring a second naturalist to meet visitor 

requests for nature walks and campground talks, and to give him “more time for strictly ranger 

work, such as keeping people from wading barefoot in the drinking water, washing clothes and 

person in said drinking water, cleaning fish in the drinking water, etc.” He also needed more 

time to repair the seriously degraded trails, and to “catch the chowder heads who are moving 

signs.”53 

Increasing recreational use of the monument and the surrounding area also posed problems for 

Devils Postpile staff. Monument visitors often encountered hunters along the Rainbow Falls 

Trail, which passed into the adjacent Forest Service land at various points. Hunters, who were 

“sighting in their rifles all over the place,” may have been responsible for removing many of 

the boundary signs. Cahoon reported that without clearly marked boundaries, he had no “leg 

to stand on” when trying “to get hunters to shoot outside the monument.”54 

With anywhere from 900 to 1,300 visitors in the monument on any given day, one staff 

member usually had to stay at the contact station to respond to visitor needs “with no chance 

to do anything else.” In his 1964 report, Cahoon listed a dozen “out-of-regular working hours 

things” that occurred that season. These included several searches for lost persons; care for 

a boy who had fallen out of the bed of a truck and dislocated his elbow after his family left 

143 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Mules in the monument parking lot, 1974. (Courtesy of the Yosemite National 

Park Archives, Museum, and Library) 

him there to go fishing; and aid to a troop of Boy Scouts who had arrived to report two of 

their members missing at Tuolumne Meadows, more than 20 miles away. A notable incident 

involved prolific Sierra mountain climber Norman Clyde. On August 30, a woman dropped 

a delirious Clyde off at the contact station “where his car was parked for about 5 weeks.” The 

next day, Clyde woke up, but the rangers “could get little sense out of him.” Doctors later 

diagnosed him with pneumonia.55 

The most persistent issue with recreational interests involved the presence of loose stock from 

Reds Meadow Pack Station. Bob Tanner, who had purchased the station in 1960, at times 

proved a less cooperative owner than his predecessor Arch Mahan. Although Tanner would 

willingly send a man to round up stock at the request of the ranger, he continued to turn the 

animals loose at the beginning and end of the tourist season to acclimate them and “to save on 

feed.” Cahoon was especially concerned about visitor safety. In August 1962, a loose train of 

saddled stock “came through on the trail past the monument while the naturalist was talking 

to groups there.” The animals came through “at a fast pace,” prompting the naturalist to hurry 

the group off the trail “before someone was hurt.” When Cahoon called the Forest Service 

office to see what could be done, “the word was nothing.” Tanner had also announced that he 

“positively plans on starting a western coach run” along the ungraded road to Rainbow Falls. 

Cahoon’s discomfort with the idea was evident in his comment, “I infer he does not intend to 

operate thru the Monument.”56 

Loose stock from Reds Meadow continued to irritate park rangers for the next two decades. 

In 1964, Cahoon reported that “stock spooked by dogs and sometimes campers run full bore 

through the camp and parking lot and down the trail to the postpile.” To remedy the problem, 

he volunteered to drive the stock out via the Clover Meadows trail “and scatter them thru every 

small meadow we could find over in the north fork basin and beyond.” “Kick a businessman 

in the pocketbook,” he remarked, “and you bruise his soul.” Horses and mules also damaged 

Soda Springs Meadow, leading to “many complaints from campers and visitors.”57 Cahoon 

noted another major concern in his 1967 report: “An important side product of loose stock 

are the piles of manure in the campground, the parking area, the meadow, on the bridge, and 

around Soda Springs. Even though the resort will send a wrangler to gather up the stock he 

never carries a broom to gather up the fallout.”58 

144 
The “Armpit of the National Park Service” 

Postpile–Soda Springs Meadow Bridge. Note the cracked piling 

on the left, 1970s. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

On February 4, 1969, Assistant Chief Park Naturalist William R. Jones submitted a scathing 

indictment of Yosemite’s handling of Devils Postpile to his supervisor. He was concerned 

with the frequency in which questions about the Park Service’s competency in managing the 

monument came up. The resource itself was clearly of national significance in his view, and 

it undoubtedly warranted national monument status. Moreover, the management priorities 

within the park, which were focused primarily on interpretation, were significantly different 

from the policies of the surrounding Forest Service land. The monument, Jones argued, 

represented “a high-quality park area within a region otherwise being intensely developed 

for its recreational potential.” The reason the question was raised so often, he suggested, was 

because “Devils Postpile . . . has been tacked on to the management of Yosemite National 

Park for so many years that it has basically been lost in the shuffle.” It was this lack of attention, 

he concluded, that had led some Service officials to regard the monument as “the most poorly 

operated national park area in the country.”59 

Jones acknowledged that many improvements had been made. A water system for the 

campground was finally installed in 1965. Yosemite had provided some Mission 66 funds for 

much-needed campground maintenance, and for graveling and oiling portions of the entrance 

road and parking lot. Electricity, hot showers, and tent cabins had been provided for employees, 

and a contact station had been built. However, the laundry list of problems that Cahoon and 

most of the rangers before him had continually identified in their reports remained largely 

unaddressed, with trails and interpretive services a primary concern. In Jones’s words: “The 

trail system in and about the monument still gets people lost, the trails are eroding badly, there 

are unmarked dangerous points on them at river and waterfall overlooks, trailside features lack 

any effective interpretation, and there is no trail to the only general overlook of the postpile 

on the west side of the river.” 

The monument’s meadows, trails, and campground were also in bad shape, a result of the 

intense recreational use of the area. Further contributing to the problem, loose stock from Reds 

Meadows had overgrazed many of the meadows in the park and brought “danger and filth to 

visitors in the campground.” The crowds of visitors on the Postpile trail often encountered 

large pack trains returning to Reds Meadows, convincing Park and Forest Service personnel 

and some packers that the John Muir Trail would eventually have to be rerouted. 

145 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

Stock trails in Soda Springs Meadow, 1974. (Courtesy of Yosemite National 

Park Archives, Museum, and Library) 

Jones also offered a critique of fishing in the monument. With existing facilities being “used at 

or beyond capacity,” he regarded it as “the height of absurdity to attract more users through an 

intensive fish management program.” In 1967, approximately 17,000 rainbow trout had been 

planted in the river by the California Department of Fish and Game with the approval of the 

Park Service to accommodate a user group that often did not even visit the primary resources 

for which Devils Postpile National Monument was created. Jones’s critique echoed biologists’ 

increased scrutiny of nonnative fish stocking during this period. “Only in Devils Postpile... 

of all the national park areas of the natural area category,” he wrote, “can you hear the question 

‘When will the fish truck get here?’ and get an answer in terms of when instead of that it will 

carry only fingerlings.” For Jones, “elimination of fish planting or confining planting to the 

fingerling size is an essential management step.” The Park Service finally ended stocking in 

1971. 

Dealing with basic visitor service issues had also precluded an effective interpretation program. 

The “basic problem,” Jones reasoned, was that rangers were not reaching enough visitors. 

Although rangers made contact with most monument visitors at the entrance station or on the 

trail, these meetings were typically brief and informal and did not convey much information 

about the resource for which the monument was created. Part of the problem was that Yosemite 

was continuing to close the monument just after Labor Day even though “September is a 

strong use month... perhaps stronger than June.” He suggested that interpretation could be 

improved even with the limited staff by adequate signage and perhaps a self-guided nature trail. 

He also recommended that instead of having the ranger monitor the phone at the entrance 

station for four-and-a-half hours during the busiest time of the day, the person handling sales 

of Yosemite Natural History Association items—who in the past had typically been the ranger’s 

wife—could take over these duties. The ranger could then make additional trailside contacts 

or give daytime talks at the Postpile and Rainbow Falls. 

For Jones, the problem with Devils Postpile was not an inevitable outgrowth of the “cluster 

concept of park management,” but instead “an example of what happens when no one with 

authority and responsibility is in charge of an area.” No single person or office within the 

Yosemite chain of command had taken charge of infrastructure and interpretation needs at the 

monument. Jones harshly described the monument’s staff over the past decade as “inadequately 

146 
Notes 

trained to carry out the obvious responsibilities.” On-site employees, though, were not to 

blame. Instead, he pointed to the lack of oversight and the bureaucratic maze through which 

requests for funding and staffing had to pass. The solution, he proposed, was to have a 

superintendent or district ranger stationed at Devils Postpile who reported to the Yosemite 

superintendent directly. Such an arrangement would centralize operations and force attention 

to Devils Postpile from the highest levels of its parent park’s administration. Jones had little 

confidence such a change would happen overnight. He determined that due to the degraded 

conditions, the monument should be closed for the 1969 season while Yosemite devised a new 

approach for its management. 

Yosemite determined to open the monument during the 1969 season despite Jones’s critique, 

and on-site rangers managed to scrape by over the next two years. Still, by 1971, overburdened 

Yosemite officials were seriously considering handing Devils Postpile over to Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon National Parks. At the start of the 1971 season, Wymond Eckhardt, a former 

backcountry horse patrolman and firefighter in Yosemite, accepted the job as the supervisory 

ranger at Devils Postpile. A year earlier, Eckhardt had declined the offer “because the conditions 

were so bad over there.” When he was offered the position one year later, he took it. Later, he 

explained his decision: “There was only one way this whole operation could go and that was 

well, because it was kind of the armpit of the National Park Service when we took it over.”60 

Notes 

1.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Park, 173. 

2.	 Bernard DeVoto, “Let’s Close the National Parks,” Harper’s Magazine (October 1953): 49–52. 

3.	 Visitation numbers from Demars, The Tourist in Yosemite, 123. 

4.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument to Chief Ranger, Yosemite, “Summary Report of Activities at 

This Station for the Season, 1953,” September 15, 1953, National Archives, Box 8. 

5.	 Ronald A. Foresta, America’s National Parks and their Keepers (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 

1984), 52–57. 

6.	 Sarah Allaback, Mission 66 Visitor Centers: The History of a Building Type (Washington, DC: US Department of 

the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resource Stewardship and Partnerships, Park Historic Structures 

and Cultural Landscapes Program, 2000), 1–35. 

7.	 “Mission 66 Prospectus: Devils Postpile National Monument,” June 1956, 2, Devils Postpile National
 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office.
 

8.	 Ibid., 3–10. 

9.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile Nat’l Mon., to the Chief Ranger, Yosemite Nat’l Park, July 10, 1957, “DEPO Annual 

Reports,” unaccessioned DEPO files, YNPA, 

10.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile Nat’l Mon., to The Chief Ranger, Yosemite, September 28, 1958, “DEPO Annual 

Reports,” unaccessioned DEPO files, YNPA, 

11.	 Ranger, Devils Postpile Nat’l Mon. to The Chief Ranger, Yosemite National Park, July 19, 1957, “DEPO 

Annual Reports,” unaccessioned DEPO files, YNPA, 

12.	 Gene Cahoon, handwritten report for the period August 1 to 23, 1960, “DEPO Annual Reports,” 

unaccessioned DEPO files, YNPA. 

13.	 Ibid. 

14.	 Ibid. 

15.	 Ibid. 

16.	 Ibid. 

17.	 Ethan Carr, Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma (Amherst: University of Massachusetts 

Press, 2001), 257–60. 

147 
Chapter Ten A Neglected Stepchild: Mission 66 and the Trans-Sierra Highway Debate, 1954–1972 

18.	 Ibid., 260–65; and Michael Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 1892–1970 (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 

1988), 134–42. 

19.	 Carr, Mission 66 , 262. 

20.	 Ibid., 264–67. 

21.	 In 1941, the headwaters of the Kings River, through which these highways would have passed, was included as 

part of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Larry M. Dilsaver and William C. Tweed, Challenge of the 

Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural 

History Association, Inc., 1990), 204–12. 

22.	 Jack Fisher, excerpt from a draft history of the Trans-Sierra Highway debate, courtesy of Jack Fisher. 

23.	 J. C. Womack, “Study of Feasibility of Including in the State Highway System and the Interstate System a 

trans-Sierra highway connecting with Interstate Route 5 we of Los Banos to the California-Nevada State Line 

near Benton Station, passing near Califa, North Fork and Minaret Summit,” State of California Department 

of Public Works Division of Highways, March 1966. Also see Raymond J. Sherwin, “The Mammoth Pass 

Road,” Nevada Appeal Graphic, December 4, 1966. 

24.	 Womack, “Study of Feasibility,” 15–16. 

25.	 Cited in Lou Roeser, re: Eastern Sierra Packers Association’s objection to the highway proposal, courtesy of 

Lou Roeser. 

26.	 “Mission 66 Prospectus,” 3. 

27.	 “Master Plan for Devils Postpile National Monument, Mission 66 Edition, Volume I, Master Plan Narrative,” 

July 5, 1962, 5, National Archives, Box 1. 

28.	 John J. Hamernik, “Master Plan, Devils Postpile National Monument,” February 18, 1964, revised November 

1964, National Archives, Box 1. 

29.	 E. T. Scoyen, Associate Dir NPS to Hal Roth, August 21, 1961, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c 

Carton 86, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

30.	 Dorothy Fitzhugh to Deanna Dulen, e-mail, June 4, 2011. 

31.	 Jensen, Assistant Director, to Hon. B. F. Sisk, July 23, 1965, National Archives, Box 9. 

32.	 Wallace Stegner to Dave (Brower), April 16, 1965, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 86, 

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

33.	 Jensen to Sisk, July 23, 1965. 

34.	 Jason Henry Shultz, “To Render Inaccessible: The Sierra Club’s Changing Attitude toward Roadbuilding,” 

(master’s thesis, University of Maryland, 2008), 50–54. 

35.	 Hal Roth to Edgar Wayburn, September 9, 1961, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 86, 

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

36.	 David R. Brower, “Sierra Roads and the Sierra Wilderness, Statement before Joint Meeting of the Fresno 

and Madera County Supervisors,” April 20, 1956, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 86, 

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; and David R. Brower to Mr. C. W. Richard Atkins, 

Fresno County-City Chamber of Commerce, September 26, 1959, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 

71/103c Carton 86, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

37.	 Excerpts from correspondence from Joel Hildebrand, President of the Sierra Club, to Regional Forester Show, 

December 27, 1937, National Archives, Box 9. 

38.	 Ansel Adams to Norman B. Livermore, Jr., Administrator, The Resources Agency of California, February 

18, 1968, Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c Carton 1, Bancroft Library, University of California. 

Adams’s response is ironic since the wilderness area that in 1982 finally closed the gap through which the road 

would have passed was named in his honor. 

39.	 Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 148–49. 

40.	 Ron W. Goode, panel presentation on the North Fork Mono tribe’s opposition to the trans-Sierra Highway for 

the program “Preserving a Valley: Stopping the Trans-Sierra Highway,” held in conjunction with the Devils 

Postpile National Monument Centennial Celebration, Mammoth Lakes, California, July 8, 2011. 

41.	 Information in this and the following two paragraphs comes from Fisher, draft history; and Roeser interview. 

148 
Notes 

42.	 Roeser interview; and Fisher, draft history. 

43.	 Schotz interview. 

44.	 Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 177–78, 303. 

45.	 See Tom Wolf, Arthur Carhart: Wilderness Prophet (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2008); Thomas 

G. Smith, Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preservation of America’s Wilderness (Pittsburgh: University of 

Pittsburgh Press, 2006); and J. Brooks Flippen, Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence 

of American Environmentalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2006). 

46.	 Fisher, draft history; Norman B. Livermore Jr., Man in the Middle: High Sierra Packer, Timberman, 

Conservationist, and California Resources Secretary, an oral history conducted 1981–1982 by Ann Lage and 

Gabrielle Morris, Sierra Club History Series, Regional Oral History series, Bancroft Library, University of 

California, Berkeley, 1983, 85–95. 

47.	 G. Douglas Hofe, Jr., to Honorable Michael J. Cafferty, Acting Assistant Secretary of Transportation, 

December 23, 1970, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 168, Bancroft Library, University 

of California, Berkeley. 

48.	 Assistant Secretary for the Environment and Urban Systems to Federal Highway Administrator, re: “Draft 

Environmental Statement, Project F.H. 100-4(1), Minarets Summit Inyo National Forest, Madera County, 

California,” May 10, 1971, Sierra Club Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 168, Bancroft Library, 

University of California, Berkeley. 

49.	 Fisher, draft history; Interview with Lou and Marye Roeser; Quotes from “The Sierra Road Plan Is Canceled,” 

San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1972. 

50.	 Russell E. Train, “Memorandum for Honorable John A. Volpe,” May 20, 1971, Sierra Club Collection, 

BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 168; and “Official State of California Comments on EIS for Forest Highway 

100-4 (1) Minarets Summit, June 13, 1972, BANC MSS 71/295c Carton 234, both in Bancroft Library, 

University of California, Berkeley. 

51.	 Gene Cahoon, Ranger, Devils Postpile N.M., to District Ranger, Tuolumne District, “Final Report for 1962 

Season,” October 11, 1962, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Annual Reports,” YNPA, 

52.	 Ibid. 

53.	 Ibid. 

54.	 Ibid. 

55.	 Gene Cahoon, Park Ranger, Devils Postpile National Monument to Herb Ewing, District Ranger, Tuolumne 

Meadows, “Final Report for 1964 Season,” November 30, 1964, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Annual 

Reports,” YNPA. 

56.	 Cahoon, “Final Report for 1962 Season.” 

57.	 Cahoon to Ewing, “Final Report for 1964 Season.” 

58.	 Cahoon to Ewing, “Final Report for 1967 Season,” November 1967, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO 

Annual Reports,” YNPA. 

59.	 Information and quotes for this, and for the following five paragraphs, comes from Assistant Chief Naturalist 

(William R. Jones) to Chief Park Naturalist, “Mather District Annual Report for 1968,” February 4, 1969, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Annual Reports,” YNPA. 

60.	 Ferrell, Eckhardt interview. 

149 

Chapter Eleven 

Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency 

Cooperation, and the Origins of the Shuttle, 1972–2000 

Wymond Eckhardt took on the position of supervisory ranger at a crucial time in the monument’s 

history. The death of the trans-Sierra highway proposal not only ensured the protection of the 

rustic character of the Middle Fork Valley but also further secured Devils Postpile’s position as 

a key component of the regional recreation complex surrounding Mammoth Lakes. The defeat 

of the road did not, however, stem the tide of visitation to the monument, which continued 

to rise in conjunction with the growing popularity of the Mammoth area as a hub of both 

summer and winter outdoor recreation for residents of Los Angeles. 

The resulting pressures on Devils Postpile finally convinced Yosemite’s administration to shed 

the burden of managing the distant monument, and in 1972, it was handed over to Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon National Parks. Eckhardt welcomed this change, viewing it as an opportunity to 

free the monument from its long dependence on Yosemite’s bureaucratic chain of command. 

Over time, Eckhardt cultivated close relationships with the superintendents at Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon, who generally allowed him to manage the monument as he saw fit. He also 

cultivated personal arrangements with the Forest Service, other government agencies, and 

community members for aid in maintenance and infrastructure projects. Eckhardt became, 

in effect, the face of the National Park Service in the region. He also adhered strongly to 

the emphasis in Devils Postpile’s establishing legislation on the area’s scientific significance. 

Like Hartesveldt before him, Eckhardt became an authority on the geology, biology, and 

human history of the monument and the surrounding area. He made sure that visitors and 

Forest Service personnel recognized that when they crossed the boundary into Devils Postpile 

National Monument, they were entering a unit of the National Park Service, governed by the 

particular rules and values of that agency. 

Yosemite’s transfer of administrative responsibility was ostensibly done to justify Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon’s desire for a full time ranger to be stationed on the east side of the Sierra.1 

In truth, Yosemite officials welcomed relief from the responsibility of managing the distant 

monument. Officials at Yosemite and the regional office also never took seriously William 

Jones’s suggestion that the supervisory ranger at Devils Postpile be permitted to bypass the 

usual chain of command and report directly to the park superintendent. Stanley T. Albright, 

superintendent at Sequoia and Kings Canyon at the time (and a Bishop local), proved more 

amenable to this arrangement. He allowed Eckhardt “access to any division chief” for advice 

and for pushing through requests for budget and staff increases or infrastructure needs.2 

As it was “destructive to the budget” to travel the nearly 300 miles to the administrative offices 

at Sequoia, Albright gave Eckhardt license to manage the park based on his perception of its 

needs. Eckhardt chose his own staff, contracted for needed equipment with the Mammoth 

Lakes Forest Service office or other local contacts, and made arrangements for handling fire 

issues, search and rescue, and law enforcement—all with minimal oversight from Sequoia or 

the regional office. Devils Postpile became a largely “self-contained” park under Eckhardt, a 

factor that further linked the monument to the Mammoth Lakes region. 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

Wymond Eckhardt, 1983. (Devils Postpile National Monument image collection) 

Eckhardt’s administration represented a partial return to the one-person style of management 

that had prevailed in the early years of National Park Service administration. Throughout 

his nearly thirty-year tenure at Devils Postpile, he maintained a strong commitment to what 

he viewed as the founding principles of the Park Service, considering himself among the last 

of the “Mather men.” He had spent his career at Yosemite working under men like Sam 

Clark and John Bingaman, quintessential jack-of-all-trades rangers who “could do just about 

anything,” from law enforcement to rescue to infrastructure maintenance to visitor contacts to 

interpretation. At Devils Postpile, Eckhardt stressed, no one was permitted to say “that’s not 

my job. . . . Every job here is everybody’s job.” 

These views bucked a general trend toward specialization in the Park Service beginning in the 

1960s. Eckhardt was wary of the increasing numbers of university-trained ranger naturalists 

152 
Regional Cooperation: Planning the Middle Fork Valley 

who, he later remarked, spent “too much time in front of a computer screen” rather than out 

in the field among the visitors. He considered communicating the significance of the resource 

through direct contact with visitors to be the most important focus of ranger work. While 

the new breed of rangers brought a more academic ecological sensibility to park management, 

Eckhardt felt they often had little practical knowledge about how to interact with visitors or 

implement their ideas on the ground. For him, the value of his more traditional approach was 

in giving most visitors the opportunity to talk to a ranger. “We might not have the highest 

waterfalls,” he exclaimed, “but by golly you get to see a ranger!” 

Specialization, Eckhardt believed, had also resulted in a separation between ranger naturalists 

and law enforcement. He regarded the July 4, 1970, riots in Yosemite Valley in which mounted 

park police clashed with a crowd of young people camped illegally in Stoneman Meadows as 

“one of the dark days of the park’s history.” Specialized law-enforcement rangers, he argued, 

brought a “cop” mentality to visitor management, which often clashed with the Park Service’s 

broader mission of resource protection and interpretation. This attitude influenced Eckhardt’s 

approach to visitor management at Devils Postpile where, he admitted, “99 percent of our 

law enforcement can be handled with a fly swatter.” He generally avoided confrontations with 

visitors unless they were endangering themselves, other visitors, or the resource itself. When 

intervention was required, he treated it more as an educational opportunity than a disciplinary 

action. More serious offenses were handled by the Madera County Sheriff’s Office, which 

eventually signed a formal agreement with the Park Service in 1988.3 

Although in some respects Eckhardt’s traditionalist approach caused Devils Postpile to lag 

behind the trend toward ecological management in the Park Service, he brought a personal 

commitment to interpreting the resource and providing a positive visitor experience that 

had been lacking. He collected information on the history of the area and contributed to 

the first inventory of the area’s biological resources. He also pushed for a reassessment of the 

geology of the Postpile formation and the surrounding area, and aided US Geologic Survey 

geologist N. King Huber in preparing a revised geologic story to be made available for visitors. 

Eckhardt’s knowledge of the area, willingness to collaborate with area Forest Service personnel, 

and local connections helped bring the monument’s trails, roads, and visitor facilities to a 

higher standard—all without taxing Sequoia and Kings Canyon’s limited budget for park 

maintenance. Eckhardt’s efforts to revive the monument were made possible in large part by 

the looser management structure put in place by Albright at Sequoia and Kings Canyon after 

the 1972 transfer from Yosemite. This arrangement enabled Eckhardt to make a long-term 

personal commitment to Devils Postpile. “Every man wants to leave his mark,” he said, “and 

my mark is here.” 

Regional Cooperation: Planning the Middle Fork Valley 

While Eckhardt dedicated considerable time and effort to reviving Devils Postpile, he 

also operated within broader regional and national contexts. The rising strength of the 

environmental movement, in combination with the requirements of the Wilderness Act and 

the increasing popularity and greater accessibility of outdoor recreation in the Mammoth area 

and the United States as a whole, put pressure on Park Service and Forest Service officials to 

rethink development and protection measures in the Middle Fork Valley. 

With Devils Postpile becoming a focal point of visitation in the Middle Fork Valley, the Forest 

Service and other interests in Mono and Inyo Counties began looking to the Park Service 

for aid in fitting the monument into the broader recreation plan for the Mammoth area. 

During an “informal meeting” in 1972, representatives of the Inyo National Forest, Sequoia 

153 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

Postpile-Soda Springs Meadow Bridge. (Photo: Christopher E. Johnson) 

and Kings Canyon, and Devils Postpile “agreed that the area should be planned as one unit.” 

Later that year, administrators with the Inyo National Forest issued a recreation management 

plan for the entire Middle Fork Valley. The plan stressed the development of trails, roads, and 

campgrounds in such a way as to accommodate the diverse recreational interests using the 

valley while also maintaining its rustic character.4 The interagency cooperation involved in 

rerouting the John Muir Trail to the west side of the monument in 1976 and initiating the 

mandatory Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow shuttle in 1979 reflected the Park Service’s increased 

role in regional planning. 

The John Muir Trail 

When it was completed in the mid-1930s, the John Muir Trail ran for more than 200 miles 

along the Sierra crest from the summit of Mount Whitney to the Yosemite Valley. The only 

place where the Muir Trail met a road was at Reds Meadows from which—with the exception 

of a brief jog along the Postpile trail—it followed the road before branching off toward Agnew 

Meadows.5 After World War II, Muir Trail traffic was rerouted across the river north of the 

Postpile. Even after the defeat of the trans-Sierra Highway, hikers and packers continued to 

cross the Middle Fork Valley road just north of Reds Meadow. 

Park Service officials had been recommending a second rerouting of the John Muir Trail away 

from the Postpile since the mid-1960s. The trail’s contact with the road, however, was not the 

initial concern. Rather, officials worried about the presence of pack stock in the monument 

and the recreational bottleneck along the heavily traveled Postpile Trail. In 1965, Park Service 

resource specialist George Briggs prepared a proposal for redirecting stock parties away from 

the Postpile, suggesting that a new stock trail leave the current Rainbow Falls–Devils Postpile 

Trail just south of the formation to run outside the monument’s eastern boundary before 

154 
The John Muir Trail 

Publicity for Devils Postpile, 1974. (Courtesy of the Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, and Library) 

crossing the river north of Soda Spring Meadow to join the Minarets–Beck Lakes Trail. Briggs’s 

proposal also included a “round wire fence” to enclose the northern half of the monument 

in order to keep packers and loose stock out. This would prevent “the inter-mixing of foot 

and stock traffic,” which created a potential safety hazard, and conflicted with “the majority’s 

enjoyment of the feature.” He was also concerned with the damage to the south end of Soda 

Springs Meadow resulting from heavy stock use. Stock parties had caused visible erosion where 

they forded the river and had “worn a wide path through the middle of the very small, beautiful 

meadow.”6 

155 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

Mules and cars in the monument parking lot, 1974. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

The matter came up again in 1972, and in February 1973, the Sierra District ranger 

recommended the allocation of $30,000 for the redirect of the trail, pending agreement from 

the supervisor of the Inyo National Forest. Some costs could be deferred if the Park Service 

could recruit Sierra Club volunteers who had aided with the Rock Creek–Siberian Pass Trail 

relocation the previous year. The proposal also “generated much interest” with the Pacific Crest 

Advisory Council, which at that time was advocating for the completion of a foot and stock 

trail to run the entire length of the Pacific Crest from Mexico to Canada.7 

At a March 23 meeting of the advisory council in San Diego, Arch Mahan, former owner 

of Reds Meadow Pack Station, objected to Briggs’s proposal. Mahan, who was “familiar with 

this country,” suggested instead that the trail cross the river north of Reds Meadow and run 

along the west bank of the San Joaquin River, “staying away from the heavy foot traffic area 

of automobile tourists who come to see the Devil’s Post Pile.” The trail would then continue 

north to Thousand Island Lake, avoiding the overcrowded Shadow Lake Trail. The committee 

determined to make a field trip that summer to “travel by horseback” along Mahan’s proposed 

route. They also requested that Sequoia and Kings Canyon superintendent Henry Schmidt 

and a park engineer accompany the party.8 

Mahan’s suggestion became the basis for the proposal submitted to the Park Service regional 

director in 1976. The stated purpose reflected mounting concerns over potential conflicts 

between recreational user groups. The aim was “to separate John Muir Trail traffic (particularly 

equestrian traffic) from the Devils Postpile visitor traffic.” Doing so would prevent “a potential 

safety hazard at the base of the Postpile” while also providing “an alternative for the John Muir 

Trail travelers wishing to avoid the congestion at the Postpile.” The positioning of the trail on 

the west bank of the river, as opposed to outside the eastern boundary, had two added benefits: 

it would allow Muir Trail users an alternative view of the Postpile while also directing them 

away from the increasingly busy Minaret Summit entrance road.9 

156 
The Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow Shuttle 

To comply with the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the proposal also 

required the completion of an environmental impact study. The authors of the study 

determined that although the project would require vegetation removal, some rock blasting, 

and construction of a new bridge across the river, the overall impacts would be less than the 

alternatives, which included taking no action or rerouting the trail to a different location.10 

The project was undertaken with the approval of Sequoia and Kings Canyon and the regional 

office the next summer. 

To save costs, Eckhardt and Maintenance Chief Walt Hoffman worked out an arrangement 

with the Forest Service to provide personnel and equipment for the trail’s construction. Michael 

Morse, a Forest Service trail worker at the time and a former packer, regarded the project as a 

key instance of interagency cooperation in the region. “From that point on,” he remembered, 

“we had a working relationship.” In subsequent years, Morse and Eckhardt often “worked in 

partnership” to maintain trails, particularly the trail from the Postpile to Rainbow Falls, which 

wandered in and out of the monument boundary at various points.11 

These cooperative arrangements led to a deeper understanding between the two agencies. 

Over time, Morse gained an appreciation for the interpretive services that Eckhardt and the 

Park Service provided. During the construction of the Muir Trail, for instance, Eckhardt 

advised diverting the trail around a “shingle factory” near the new route where he believed 

late-nineteenth-century cavalry troops had fabricated roofing for the Postpile cabin and other 

structures along the patrol route in the area. Morse became “intrigued by the fact that there was 

somebody that had such knowledge of the history of the area.” Eckhardt’s overall knowledge 

stood in contrast to the more utilitarian aims of the Forest Service. “I knew the Park Service was 

here, and I knew the Forest Service was there,” Morse recalled, “I knew there was boundaries 

because I saw the white signs on the trees, but Wymond was always good to remind me that 

when I was in the park, I had to be a little different than when I was outside the park.” 

Over time, Morse and other Forest Service personnel came to view the Park Service as a 

complementary presence in the Middle Fork Valley.12 

The Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow Shuttle 

The Muir Trail redirect represented a coordinated effort on the part of the two agencies to 

design a clearer, more integrated network of trails for the Middle Fork Valley as a whole. This 

broader regional vision also included a new approach to solving the long-standing entrance 

road dilemma. “At present,” stated Sequoia and Kings Canyon acting superintendent John 

Rafferty in 1974, “the condition of the access road from Minaret Summit and the pumice dust 

is the greatest deterrent to monument visitation.”13 

Two years prior, a master plan for Devils Postpile had been delayed “pending the release of 

results of the combined Mono-Inyo County Development study of the Mammoth region.”14 

This study, coined the “Monoplan,” had the ambitious objective of coordinating development 

plans and land management policies to increase the region’s “single economic base source— 

demand generated by a specialized segment of the vacationer-tourist market, the outdoor 

recreation visitor.” In September 1972, the project manager invited Sequoia and Kings 

Canyon superintendent John McLaughlin to join a “critique group” of twenty key individuals 

in the region to design objectives, identify the environmental resources of the area, and to 

forecast the economic and environmental impacts of particular development proposals.15 

Douglas B. Cornell, chief of the Department of the Interior’s environmental planning and 

design office for the Western Region, attended the session. The critique group was hesitant 

157 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

to support the Monoplan proposal, citing the lack of specific proposals and the potential 

social and environmental impacts. Cornell agreed, recommending that until a more complete 

“prototype” plan could be assembled, the Department of the Interior should not contribute 

funds. Specifically, Cornell asked for a study that would be “applicable to similar areas where 

the economic base is the recreational-natural preservation values of the lands.”16 

The early Monoplan reflected an increased focus on multiple use within the Forest Service at 

that time, particularly the agency’s increased willingness to see recreation as a viable economic 

use. The plan emphasized constraining timber sales in favor of recreational development. This 

would not only maximize the economic potential of the region but also serve to satisfy mounting 

political pressure to preserve scenic, undeveloped natural areas. Subsequent proposals for the 

Mammoth region and the Middle Fork Valley continued to stress balancing recreation-based 

economic growth with environmental protection.17 

The studies informing the final Monoplan proposal in 1976 were based on projections of a 

massive increase in visitation to the Mammoth region stemming from population growth in 

Southern California, which had historically contributed more than 90 percent of the visitors 

to the area. Forest Service officials had been expressing concern for some time that this increase 

would severely stress the existing facilities in the Middle Fork Valley. Following the defeat of 

the trans-Sierra highway, Inyo officials also recognized that development of recreation facilities 

in the valley would have to adhere to the stricter “environmental awareness” of the day. 

A 1972 recreation plan for the valley suggested a revised and expanded trail system, as well 

as more dispersed and structured camping to meet this aim. As in many recreation areas in 

this period, the issue of appropriate development turned on access, making the road the key 

component of any future valley plan. The authors of the report based their recommendations 

on the following observations: “The road does not deter, but does aggravate and frustrate the 

large numbers of visitors who want to take advantage of the recreational opportunities in the 

planning area or the adjacent Wildernesses. . . . The relatively steep grades, lack of adequate 

drainage structures, and lack of road surfacing result in more soil loss than is desirable and 

do not contribute positively toward the quality of the recreational experience.”18 The report 

concluded that leaving the road as-is, or resurfacing it but keeping it unpaved, would, under the 

anticipated increases in visitation, lead to higher maintenance costs and more environmental 

deterioration than if the road were paved. 

Paving the road might also have consequences. The authors were concerned that Reds Meadow 

“could rather quickly become as congested as a typical metropolitan area freeway during the 

commuter rush.” “The idea of bumper-to-bumper vehicles,” they added, “is not generally 

compatible with the low-key feeling of enclosure and relative isolation that the valley now 

offers.” To prevent overcrowding in the narrow valley, Inyo officials suggested that private 

automobiles be restricted in favor of some form of “public on-the-ground transportation” 

such as a monorail or a system of “mini-buses.”19 This suggestion was included in the revised 

Monoplan in 1976, which recommended allocating Inyo National Forest funds for the paving 

of the Minaret Summit road to Reds Meadow and Devils Postpile, contingent upon the 

initiation of a shuttle bus or other public transit system.20 

The Forest Service began paving of the entrance road from Minaret Summit to Reds Meadow 

in 1977, completing the project before the 1978 season. Visitation numbers actually dropped 

10 percent from 108,876 in 1977 to 97,961 in 1978. This seemed consistent with the Forest 

Service’s prior assumption that the poor state of the unpaved access road did not deter visitors. 

However, the drop-off occurred primarily because heavy snow that winter had delayed the 

opening until June 30, almost a month later than in 1977. Visitation during the months of 

158 
The Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow Shuttle 

July to November actually increased 4.4 percent from the previous year. Park managers also 

experienced the heaviest visitor use day on record on September 3 when 2,708 people visited 

the monument in 732 automobiles.21 These types of days confirmed the need to curtail private 

automobile use in the valley. As Eckhardt put it, “we really love people in here but we don’t 

know what to do with their cars.” When the parking lot filled up, many visitors ended up 

“going out into the forest and creating scars.”22 

When it began in 1979, the Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow shuttle was the first regionally 

coordinated, mandatory public transport system serving a unit of the national park system.23 

The Inyo National Forest and the Park Service each contributed $100,000 dollars toward the 

shuttle during the pilot season. Busses ran every fifteen to thirty minutes from 7 a.m. to 5 

p.m. every day from early July through Labor Day weekend. Day users were required to park 

at the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area and pay $1 per person or $3 per family. Only people 

with camping, lodging, or pack trip reservations were allowed to drive into the valley. In a July 

10, 1979, press release, Sequoia and Kings Canyon officials described the shuttle “as a means 

of allowing use to continue and to expand in a very popular area that has limited parking and 

congested roads.” Early public comments were generally positive, with many visitors finding 

the shuttle to be “worthwhile because it leaves them free to enjoy the scenery and saves them 

wear and tear on vehicles and the cost of gasoline.”24 

When Inyo officials had a chance to reflect on the system at the end of the season, the 

results appeared more mixed. Overall, visitors were pleased with the shuttle, viewing it as 

an appropriate solution to the dust, crowding, and environmental damage of previous years. 

The condition of the buses and the behavior of some of the drivers, though, generated 

some negative feedback. With limited funding, the two agencies had purchased several 

decommissioned school buses. The yellow buses with the words “school bus” painted over 

“looked like junk buses” in one commenter’s opinion. The vehicles were clearly not in the best 

operating condition, particularly for use on such a challenging road. Inyo officials reported a 

troubling total of 191 breakdowns over the season. One driver reported that her speedometer 

had failed, and that later the bus “lost its clutch,” forcing her “to speed shift all day.” Another 

explained that passenger noise made it difficult to listen to the engine, “which reduced my 

confidence in their mechanical integrity.” Several buses lost their brakes, and one rider found 

it troubling that a rock had to be placed behind the rear tire to keep their bus in place. Others 

complained about the noise of the buses, the dirty windows, and the exhaust fumes that 

streamed in through open windows on the uphill sections. Due to frequent breakdowns and 

delays unloading backpackers, drivers often increased their speed to make up time between 

stops. One of the drivers was reported to have “nearly swiped a VW bus.” Another concerned 

rider wished that the “driver wouldn’t get so much air on bumps.” An Inyo employee sensed 

a problem when the bus he was riding passed another bus on the uphill grade. While most 

of the drivers were safe, responsible, and respectful of the passengers, others were less reliable. 

One driver missed the Pumice Flat stop because he was “spaced out” according to his own 

explanation. While passengers seemed to enjoy the radio banter between the drivers, one 

commenter complained about the frequent use of expletives in the presence of children and 

the open criticism the drivers leveled at each another over the radio. And while some drivers 

had extensive knowledge of the area (one was “right on with his wildflower identification” 

according to an Inyo employee), others passed on misinformation or were rude to visitors with 

questions.25 

Despite the varied responses, positive comments far exceeded negative ones, and both agencies 

considered the shuttle an unequivocal success. Sequoia and Kings Canyon administrators 

noted that annual visitation to Devils Postpile had decreased more than 20 percent, probably 

159 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow shuttle brochure. (Courtesy of the 

Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, and Library) 

160 
The Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow Shuttle 

Line for the shuttle bus at the monument ranger station, 1980. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

as a result of the shuttle, to 81,300. On-site managers welcomed the change, as it freed up 

time for interpretive services, enabled rangers to meet incoming buses, and allowed work to be 

completed on retaining walls and log abutments at Rainbow Falls.26 

The second season went smoother than the first, as Inyo officials took greater care to screen 

drivers and ensure proper bus maintenance. The financial cost to both agencies, however, 

emerged as a significant problem. While a total of 44,700 bus riders had paid nearly $39,000 

in fares, this hardly made up for the more than $100,000 put up by each agency to keep 

the shuttle running through the summer. In October 1980, Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

superintendent Boyd Evison expressed support for a fare increase to $2 per individual or $6 

per family. However, he was concerned that such an increase might not be permitted under 

“current Service and Administrative guidelines.”27 

Building anti-tax sentiment at that time, combined with pressure from President Reagan’s 

fiercely conservative Secretary of the Interior James Watt, had led Congress to object to increased 

user fees at national parks and other public recreation areas in this period. In 1981, Congress 

cut the National Park Service budget by 3 percent, forcing officials in the regional offices 

to reprioritize spending. Costs to cover inflation on the transportation systems at Yosemite 

and Grand Canyon ultimately took precedence over the interagency shuttle experiment at 

little-known Devils Postpile National Monument. In response, regional officials decided to 

back out of the agreement with the Inyo National Forest. The Forest Service determined it 

could not fund the shuttle without the Park Service subsidy, and so began accepting bids for 

a nonsubsidized contract shuttle. Only one company, Quicksilver Stage Lines of Mammoth 

Lakes, bid for the contract. With few other options available, the Forest Service accepted the 

offer, and the fare was set at the significantly higher rate of $5 per person.28 

161 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

The increased fare sparked a firestorm of criticism from visitors. The cost to families was 

an especially sore spot. “A family of four will have to spend $20 to see Devils Postpile, a 

national monument. Ridiculous!” complained one visitor.29 A tally of visitor comments 

showed that nearly 50 percent were negative as compared to only 5 percent in 1979. Nearly all 

negative comments involved the increased fare. Obscene remarks were common. “All too often 

attendants were called ‘goddamn fools,’ ‘assholes,’ and [were] frequently told, ‘you ruined my 

vacation,”’ according to entrance station operator Linda Zonni.30 

Ridership dropped markedly in 1981 from more than 

44,000 to just over 18,000. Overall, the number of people 

entering the valley actually increased, but many visitors 

changed their use patterns to avoid paying the higher 

shuttle fee. Devils Postpile maintenance ranger Walt 

Hoffman told a Los Angeles Times reporter, “we’re getting 

crowds in here as early as 7:30 a.m. and after 5 p.m., 

but the place is nearly empty midday.” As a result, fewer 

visitors were attending the ranger walks and interpretive 

activities that typically took place during the day. Bob 

Tanner at Reds Meadows also expressed concern about the 

effects of the rate increase on his business. While he had 

been skeptical of the shuttle plan when it began, the 1979 

season demonstrated that the shuttle “was the obvious 

solution” to the problem of overcrowding, and it did not significantly impact his business. The 

1981 season was different. The Reds Meadow lodge remained at normal capacity, however, 

the number of day-ride pack trips, his most popular offering, declined. “The people just aren’t 

coming in to spend the day,” Tanner said. “Now they rush in after 5 p.m. and go right back out, 

trying to get out before dark.” Families were especially hard hit, which also affected Tanner’s 

bottom line. “If a family has to spend $20 to get down here, they don’t feel like spending more 

here!” Many day users were also purchasing the $3 camping reservation in order to get around 

paying the shuttle fee. Such practices were against the law and carried a $25 fine, but Inyo 

officials had “little way to detect such a circumvention of the park-and-ride rules.”31 

In September 1981, Regional Director Howard Chapman wrote to the director of the Park 

Service, indicating that Devils Postpile staff “believes that it can handle automobile access 

without a shuttle by making some relatively minor modifications for parking.” The plan was 

to move backpacker parking onto the adjacent Forest Service land. Chapman also felt that the 

Inyo National Forest would not be able to continue the bus service, considering the minimal 

profits brought in by the contractor that season. “Before next operating season,” he wrote, “we 

will plan to resolve the matter with the Forest Service in such a way that the visitor to Devils 

Postpile will not be burdened with an exorbitant bus fee just to visit the monument.”32 

Forest Service officials were determined to continue the shuttle even without Park Service 

cooperation. They were also more confident that visitors would come to accept the shuttle as 

necessary to improve the quality of the overall experience with the valley. Zonni suggested that 

the outcry over the increased price in 1981 may have been the result of a lack of information 

about the shuttle system. In the two years prior, the Mammoth ranger station had issued 

brochures describing the service to area businesses. In 1981, a backlog of projects prevented 

this from happening, and as a result, visitors were unprepared for the fee. The 1982 season 

provided some validation of Zonni’s assessment. Ridership increased 56 percent and the visitor 

center received far fewer complaints, most of which involved wait times rather than high cost 

of the fare, which remained the same for individuals but was reduced slightly for families 

162 

One of the blue Quicksilver Stage Line shuttle busses that 

operated from 1981 to 1986. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 
The Devils Postpile–Reds Meadow Shuttle 

and groups. Also, Forest Service efforts to install road signs, provide information about the 

shuttle at the visitor center, and print brochures prepared visitors ahead of time, allowing them 

“sufficient time to consider the alternative methods of visiting Devils Postpile” before they 

reached the entrance station. Following the initial shock of the 1981 season, visitors became 

accustomed to the shuttle, and most were resigned to paying the fee.33 

As ridership increased in the mid-1980s, Inyo National Forest officials began putting pressure 

on the Park Service to resume a more active role in the operation of the shuttle system. 

In a report on the 1986 season, Inyo transportation officer Deborah Nelson urged Devils 

Postpile’s rangers to staff the entrance station “on a more equal basis.” Her request was based on 

visitation statistics showing that the vast majority of day users riding the shuttle were visiting 

the monument. She argued that “using Devil’s Postpile employees as much as 50% of the 

time would not be unreasonable,” especially considering the benefits the shuttle had brought 

to the entire valley. The shuttle not only protected the “fragile, sensitive, and magnificent 

environment” but also provided visitors with a quality rustic experience. “The system has 

generally been accepted by the forest visitors as a necessary pain-in-the-neck to maintain a 

feeling of peace and solitude once in the valley,” Nelson wrote.34 

The issue came to a head in 1992 when Mammoth Mountain Ski Area (which had replaced 

Quicksilver as the contract holder in 1986) reported it was losing money at the rate of one 

dollar for every two collected. Resort managers had apparently heard rumors that the federal 

government would be reinstating a subsidy. While the rumors were unfounded, both agencies 

considered this an urgent matter. Park Service officials recognized that the discontinuation of 

the shuttle would require “major changes . . . in the operation of Devils Postpile.” Because 

of continuing increases in visitation to the Mammoth area, the entire operation of the park 

had become “based largely on public transportation.” Without the shuttle, on-site rangers 

would be forced to turn away large numbers of visitors. “This scenario,” concluded Sequoia 

and Kings Canyon acting superintendent Scott Ruesch, “would be unresponsive to the needs 

of the public and potentially embarrassing to the Service.”35 

Continued pressure from Nelson also forced the agency to take greater responsibility for 

the shuttle. At an interagency meeting before the 1992 season, she pointed out that 75 to 

90 percent of the day-use riders were headed for the monument. Since Devils Postpile had 

become “a major factor in local tourism,” she argued, the Park Service was obligated to relieve 

the Forest Service of the sole responsibility for managing the entrance stations. In response, 

Ruesch suggested that the Park Service increase its current shuttle contribution of $2,000 to 

$13,400. The Service would also staff the lower entrance station at the Mammoth Mountain 

Ski Area parking lot, which the resort was planning to close to cut costs. The regional office 

approved this change, and beginning in 1992, the Park Service assumed a more active role in 

the day-to-day operation of the shuttle.36 

Eckhardt regarded the shuttle as the most important change in the administration of the 

valley during his tenure. It represented a “model for what can be done in other areas” and 

an example of “two federal agencies and a private agency working together.” In addition to 

all but eliminating the dust and parking problems of earlier years, it also brought a different 

kind of visitor to the monument—one less accustomed to “roughing it” in a rustic setting. 

While Eckhardt found it somewhat difficult to relate to this “broader group,” which eventually 

included increasing numbers of foreign visitors, he also felt it expanded the Park Service’s 

opportunities for interpretation. Contact with a Park Service ranger, Eckhardt felt, allowed 

many visitors who otherwise had little knowledge of the Sierra Nevada or the national parks 

163 
Chapter Eleven Reviving the Monument: Transfer to Sequoia, Interagency Cooperation, and the Shuttle 

and monuments to gain something more substantial than simply a scenic view from their brief 

visits to the valley.37 

The shuttle also became a formal link between the monument and the greater Mammoth 

Lakes area. Whereas in previous years, the rough road over Minaret Summit left Devils Postpile 

and the Middle Fork Valley to the most adventurous tourists, the shuttle wove the valley into 

the private-public recreation complex surrounding Mammoth Lakes. The shuttle freed up 

access, bringing Devils Postpile closer to the center of the regional tourist circuit. It also gave 

Mammoth Mountain Ski Area a direct economic stake in visitation to the monument and 

the Middle Fork Valley. This greater integration into the regional recreation economy shaped 

visitation patterns and management issues at Devils Postpile through the late twentieth century 

and into the twenty-first. 

Notes 

1.	 Palmer, Eckhardt interview. 

2.	 Ferrell, Eckhardt interview. Except where otherwise noted, all quotations and information in the following 

paragraphs come from this interview. 

3.	 “Memorandum of Understanding between Madera County Sheriff’s Department and Devils Postpile National 

Monument,” June 8, 1988, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO/ External Agencies: Court Topics,” YNPA. 

4.	 Inyo National Forest, “Recreation Management Plan: Reds Meadow Inyo National Forest,” draft, 1972, 16; 

and Inyo National Forest, “Recreation Management Plan: Reds Meadow Area Inyo National Forest,” final 

draft, approved May 8, 1972, both in Inyo National Forest History Files, Mammoth District Ranger Station. 

5.	 Walter A. Starr, Jr., Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1934), 

3, 45–46. 

6.	 Excerpts of the report attached to Resources Management Specialist (George S. Briggs) to Superintendent, 

May 25, 1972, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Management and Planning,” YNPA. 

7.	 Sierra District Ranger to Superintendent, February 5, 1973, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Management and 

Planning,” YNPA. 

8.	 “Minutes of the Pacific Crest Trail Advisory Council Northern California Section,” March 23, 1973, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “Management and Planning,” YNPA. 

9.	 “Proposed: Re-route a Portion of the John Muir Trail, By-passing the Visitor Trail beyond the Devils Postpile,” 

September 1, 1976, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Geology, History, Brochures, SEKI Archives, Brook Fisher 

Collection,” YNPA. 

10.	 Ibid. A separate study of the potential impacts on cultural resources was also conducted. It determined that 

the reroute would not damage any of the archaeological sites identified by a 1968 study of the area and other 

sites located by Wymond Eckhardt. Archaeologist, Division of Cultural Resource Management, WR to Chief, 

Western Archeological Center, October 8, 1976, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Geology, History, Brochures, 

SEKI Archives, Brook Fisher Collection,” YNPA. 

11.	 Morse interview. 

12.	 Ibid. 

13.	 Acting Superintendent, Sequoia and Kings Canyon (John C. Raferty) to Regional Director, Western Region, 

re: “Management Objectives, Devils Postpile,” January 28, 1974, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Management 

and Planning,” YNPA. 

14.	 Stanley Albright, “Superintendent’s Annual Report 1972,” unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO cultural/natural 

resources,” YNPA. 

15.	 John L. Nordmark, Project Manager Monoplan Associates, to John McLaughlin, Superintendent Sequoia 

Kings National Park, September 18, 1972, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Management and Planning,” YNPA. 

16.	 Douglas B. Cornell, Jr., to Director, Western Region, October 19, 1972, unaccessioned DEPO files, 

“Management and Planning,” YNPA. 

164 
Notes 

17.	 Constance I. Millar, “The Mammoth-June Ecosystem Management Project, Inyo National Forest,” Sierra 

Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol. 2 (Davis: University of California, Water and Wildland 

Resources, 1996), 1281–82. 

18.	 Inyo National Forest, “Recreation Management Plan: Red’s Meadow Area Inyo National Forest,” final draft, 

approved May 8, 1972, 13, Inyo National Forest History Files, Mammoth District Ranger Station. 

19.	 Ibid., 18. 

20.	 Dick Tatman and John Platt, Division of Engineering Region 5 US Forest Service, “A Study Proposal: 

Red’s Meadow Bus Shuttle,” August 10, 1976, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle 

Bus,” YNPA. 

21.	 “Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s 

Annual Report for 1978,” 1978, unaccessioned DEPO files, “Annual Reports,” YNPA. 

22.	 Ferrell, Eckhardt interview. 

23.	 Runte, Embattled Wilderness, chap. 13; and Michael F. Anderson, Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History 

of Grand Canyon National Park (Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon Association, 2000), 77. 

24.	 “Superintendent’s Annual Report for 1979, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks,” 1979. unaccessioned 

DEPO files, “Annual Reports”; and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, “Shuttle Bus Operating 

at Devils Postpile and Reds Meadow,” July 10, 1979, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, 

Shuttle Bus,” YNPA. 

25.	 Richard C. Warren, Visitor Information Specialist, “Reds Meadow-Devils PP Shuttle,” September 7, 1979., 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus”; Linda Zonni, “Visitor Comments: A 

Comparison of the 1979 and 1981 Shuttle Seasons,” September 18, 1981, unaccessioned DEPO files, 

“DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus,” YNPA. 

26.	 “Superintendent’s Annual Report for 1979, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks,” 1979, unaccessioned 

DEPO files, “Annual Reports,” YNPA. 

27.	 Superintendent, Sequoia and Kings Canyon (Boyd Evison), to Regional Director, Western Region, October 

1, 1980, “Superintendent’s Annual Report for 1979, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks,” 1979, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus,” YNPA. 

28.	 Regional Director, Western Region (Howard Chapman), to Director, National Park Service, September 3, 

1981, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus,” YNPA; and Ronald B. Taylor, “Park 

Victim of Bureaucratic Web: US Agencies Blamed for Drop in Devil’s Postpile Visits,” Los Angeles Times 

August 12, 1981, 25. 

29.	 L. Larsen, “Letters to the Editor,” The Review, September 3, 1981. 

30.	 Zonni, “Visitor Comments.” Other comments included: “I think we’ll just forget about the Postpile”; “Can’t 

believe you could screw up something as good as the shuttle”; We’ll just go on to Reno and try and win enough 

money to take the shuttle”; “Ok I guess we just won’t go see OUR National Monument”; “The Forest Service 

is crazy”; and simply, “SHIT!” 

31.	 Taylor, “Park Victim of a Bureaucratic Web,” 25 

32.	 Regional Director to Director, September 3, 1981. 

33.	 Zonni, “Visitor Comments”; Phil Collins, “A Report on the 1982 Reds Meadow–Devils Postpile Shuttle 

System,” February 7, 1983, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus,” YNPA. 

34.	 Deborah Nelson, “1986 Red’s Meadow/Devil’s Postpile Shuttle Bus Report,” October 15, 1986, 3, 5. 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO Transportation, Shuttle Bus,” YNPA. At the start of the 1986 season, the 

bus contract was reevaluated and awarded to the Mammoth Mountain ski resort, which offered a lower rate 

of $3.50 per person, spurring a ridership increase of nearly 10 percent for each of the next two years. 

35.	 Acting Superintendent, Sequoia and Kings Canyon (Scott M. Ruesch), to Regional Director, Western Region, 

May 7, 1992, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO External Agencies,” YNPA. 

36.	 Ibid. 

37.	 Ferrell, Eckhardt interview. 

165 

Chapter Twelve 

Toward a “Quality Monument Experience”: Resource 

Management and Wilderness Politics, 1972–2000 

I

n 1973, Eckhardt prepared a schedule of priorities for the administration of Devils Postpile. A 

central concern was keeping the monument distinct from the recreational development on the 

surrounding Forest Service land. He expressed frustration with “park people” (supervisors from 

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the regional office) who he felt were “trying to 

impose park ways on a monument.” Eckhardt believed that in contrast to large national parks, 

where recreational considerations shaped management, monuments like Devils Postpile should 

be managed for their specific scientific or historical interest. He resented his supervisors’ lack 

of knowledge of the area and minimal commitment to devising policies appropriate to this 

particular unit of the park system. “They’re always going off to someplace else,” he remarked, 

“we usually feel that we are tacked on to another visit, to other business.” As a result, he found 

it difficult to provide visitors with what he regarded as “a quality monument experience” 

centered on interpretation and ranger contact as opposed to simply recreation or sightseeing.1 

Eckhardt’s aim was to manage the monument as a separate unit within the larger Mammoth 

recreation complex. Although connected to the regional tourist infrastructure, the monument 

was to serve a distinct purpose as a site for interpretation and education. This would, he felt, 

ensure the long-term relevance of the Park Service in the region, while also minimizing the 

need for funds, manpower, and resources from the larger park that ultimately had jurisdiction 

over the monument.2 

Later planning documents reflected this call for greater emphasis on scientific interpretation 

and education. In a 1978 management statement, Park Service officials recommended an 

“active research program designed to provide management with decision assistance in all 

aspects of planning, development, and management.” Other objectives included restoring 

meadows damaged by visitor use, encouraging universities and research institutions to “use the 

resource in geologic education, research, and field studies,” and providing “the highest quality 

opportunities for visitor understanding, compatible use, and enjoyment of the monument’s 

resources.” As in previous years, meeting these goals involved maintaining good relations with 

the Inyo National Forest, as well as with Mono County and Madera County officials. The 

report also revived calls to eliminate camping and “manage the Monument as an interpretive 

feature primarily for day use.” All of these measures were envisioned as necessary to defend 

the borders of Devils Postpile against mounting recreational pressures, which threatened to 

distract visitors from the monument’s significant resources and damage the area’s biological 

integrity and natural setting.3 

This defensive posture brought the monument more in line with a prevailing emphasis on 

science and ecological management within the Park Service during this time. However, sparse 

funding, combined with the tight focus on interpretation, tended to draw administrative 

attention away from continuing regional battles over development and wilderness that did not 

seem to directly impact interpretive services. While agency officials took part in trail and road 

projects that extended outside monument boundaries, they backed away from local debates 

over a proposed expansion of the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in the 1970s and took no 
Chapter Twelve Toward a “Quality Monument Experience” 

Ranger Coy sitting in the Postpile talus, 1972. (Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection) 

position on the long battle during the 1980s to enlarge the existing Minarets and John Muir 

wilderness areas. 

Resort Expansion and Wilderness 

Skiing had been a popular recreation activity in the Eastern Sierra since the 1930s when the 

first cable and rope tows were installed on McGee Mountain and the east slope of Mammoth 

Mountain. Over the ensuing years, avid skier Dave McCoy became the central figure in the 

development and popularization of the sport in the region. McCoy had been operating rope 

tows in the area for more than decade when he began to develop the deep-powdered north 

slope of Mammoth Mountain in 1949. During the first years of operation, he used army 

surplus “weasel oversnow vehicles” to shuttle equipment and skiers to the top of the slopes. In 

1952, the Inyo forest office approved McCoy’s application for the installation of a chairlift and 

168 
Resort Expansion and Wilderness 

the development of the north slope of the mountain. In 1955, the Mammoth Mountain Ski 

Area began operation. Between 1955 and 1962, winter visitation to the Mammoth Lakes area 

exploded from 14,000 user days to more than a quarter million.4 

Other than popularizing the area generally, the expansion of skiing at Mammoth Mountain did 

not directly impact the Middle Fork Valley. This changed in 1971 when McCoy revealed plans 

to extend skiing to the “backside” of the mountain east of Devils Postpile. The Inyo National 

Forest included McCoy’s planned expansion in its 1972 recreation management plan. The 

proposal was for “two gondolas, three chair lifts, and one T-bar with a total estimated capacity 

of 4,500 skiers at one time.” Reds Meadow would serve as the base of operations, requiring 

that the road be improved and plowed during the winter. Bob Tanner viewed this as a boon 

for business, feeling that the visual impact of the ski lifts would be worth the financial gain of 

maintaining a winter operation. The expansion would increase the capacity of the Mammoth 

Mountain to approximately 22,500 skiers at one time. At the time, Mammoth already 

accommodated an estimated one-fourth of all skiing use in California. The development of the 

west side, in combination with McCoy’s even more ambitious plan to extend the resort all the 

way along the San Joaquin Ridge to June Mountain, would have made Mammoth Mountain 

one of the largest recreational ski complexes in the world.5 

Park Service officials expressed little concern with this growth in the skiing industry in the 

area. In a 1974 management report, Sequoia and Kings Canyon acting superintendent John 

C. Raftery made no mention of McCoy’s and Tanner’s winter development plans, indicating 

that “skiing in itself has little effect on use and visitation to Devils Postpile.” He did, however, 

note the indirect influence. “Accommodations are... being generated by the ski trade at an 

extremely rapid pace,” he wrote. “These accommodations including overnight and restaurant 

facilities and scenic gondola rides combined with the region’s excellent fishing, outstanding 

natural scenery, pleasant summer temperatures, and the wilderness threshold, all serve as 

inducements to attract greater numbers of summer visitors.”6 A 1978 management statement 

further stressed that “outside activities,” including recreational development on the adjoining 

Forest Service lands, “greatly influence conditions within the Monument.” However, the report 

concluded that the “effects of these influences are not precisely known,” and recommended 

the issue for further study.7 

A grassroots campaign composed of many of the same locals who had fought the transSierra highway stepped up to prevent the expansion of the ski resort. In 1978, author and 

publisher Genny Smith (previously Schumacher) helped organize the San Joaquin Wilderness 

Association. The association had the dual purpose of blocking ski resort development and 

closing the wilderness gap, which the trans-Sierra highway had been slated to pass through. In 

September 1978, Smith wrote to Robert Rice, supervisor of Inyo National Forest, expressing 

the association’s position. She kept her arguments cautious, not wanting to rupture the alliance 

between activists and local business interests that had been so vital to blocking the Minaret 

Summit road. Whereas some viewed ski resort expansion and wilderness as “two issues on a 

collision course,” Smith hoped to dispel “extremist antagonisms” and find a way for skiing and 

wilderness to “exist together, side by side, harmoniously and happily.”8 

Doing so would require compromise. For Smith, the issue came down to ranking the three 

possible locations for ski resort expansion. In her assessment, the San Joaquin Ridge from 

Mammoth Mountain past Minaret Summit to June Mountain would be the least damaging 

location, followed by the Sherwin Bowl on the south slope of the Mammoth Lakes basin. 

Smith was willing to concede these locations if the backside of Mammoth Mountain remained 

undeveloped. She argued that development would impede the “visual quality” of the scenery 

169 
Chapter Twelve Toward a “Quality Monument Experience” 

looking outward from the existing wilderness area enclosing the Ritter Range. “The view 

eastward across the canyon of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin to the huge slopes of dense 

forest below San Joaquin Mountain and Mammoth Mountain and Mammoth Crest,” she 

stated, “adds immeasurably to the feeling of wildness and solitude.”9 

The association’s success stemmed, in part, from its identification of the potential economic 

value of wilderness-oriented summer recreation. Advocates also demonstrated skill in navigating 

the new political channels opened by the 1964 Wilderness Act. When it was passed, the 

Wilderness Act marked a major turning point in American environmental politics. While 

concern over the intrusion of roads, cars, and tourist accommodations into previously difficult 

to access areas remained a priority for many conservationists, wilderness also became a symbol 

of Americans’ growing concern with the consequences of their traditional commitments to 

economic progress and technology.10 Wilderness was not simply space for recreation, others 

argued. It was also a scientific resource as well as a vital part of the nation’s heritage. Invoking 

sentiment for a bygone (albeit mythical) frontier, author Wallace Stegner described wilderness 

as “the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.”11 The Wilderness 

Act inscribed these ideas into law, becoming the first of a new generation of environmental 

legislation that significantly increased the government’s power to protect the nation’s aesthetic, 

scientific, and historic resources. In the decades that followed, the Wilderness Act also became 

a powerful tool that even small groups of advocates could use to protect public lands from 

economic development.12 

One of the most important aspects of the act was its stipulation that the Forest Service evaluate 

its roadless areas for inclusion in the national wilderness system. The first Roadless Area Review 

and Evaluation (RARE I) took place in 1967 and declared some 56 million acres of national 

forest land suitable for wilderness designations. Afterward, the courts ruled that the evaluation 

had not met the requirements of NEPA, prompting a second study by the Forest Service 

between 1977 and 1978. RARE II recommended wilderness designations for 15 million acres 

and identified another 11 million acres for further study. The courts eventually invalidated 

many of these findings as well, but the inventory remained an important reference point for 

grassroots organizations like the San Joaquin Wilderness Association.13 

RARE I had classified the south end of the Middle Fork Valley up to the south and west 

boundaries of Devils Postpile as suitable for inclusion into the wilderness system. However, 

the Forest Service removed the area from consideration in RARE II. A series of letters to 

Congress from Genny Smith and Acting Chairman Hal Thomas emphasizing the area’s value 

for wilderness-oriented summer recreation spurred a reevaluation. In March 1979, Congress 

ordered the Forest Service to place these areas back into its wilderness inventory and extend 

the recommendation to the entire upper Middle Fork Valley with the exception of the road 

corridor and the developed areas around Agnew Meadows, Devils Postpile, and Reds Meadow. 

Smith drew up a series of color-coded maps based on the revised inventory, using them as 

the basis for a proposal for a significantly enlarged wilderness area. At the same time, the 

association continued to stir up local opposition to ski resort expansion.14 

This pressure eventually convinced Mammoth Mountain Ski Area to relent in its push to 

develop the backside of Mammoth Mountain. In March 1980, General Manager Gary R. 

McCoy (Dave McCoy’s son) wrote to the chairman of the congressional subcommittee on 

public lands John Seiberling offering to support a wilderness designation for the Middle Fork 

Valley. McCoy’s concession came with the stipulation that the east side of the San Joaquin Ridge 

be left open for future development as Smith had suggested in her original 1978 proposal.15 

In 1982, Congress approved the closing of the wilderness gap west of the valley, expanding 

170 
Natural Resource Inventory and Management 

the existing Minarets Wilderness to form the new Ansel Adams Wilderness. Two years later, 

Congress passed the California Wilderness Act, extending the Ansel Adams Wilderness to 

the boundary lines agreed to by McCoy in 1980. The larger wilderness covered the southern, 

western, and northern sections of the upper Middle Fork Valley, excluding the road corridor 

and the developed areas but including nearly 85 percent of Devils Postpile. 

As an administrative unit of the National Park Service, Devils Postpile had not been included 

in the Forest Service’s RARE inventories. Smith had also identified it as a separate unit in 

her wilderness proposal maps. Congress, though, did not consider jurisdictional boundaries a 

significant factor in its decision to include portions of the monument in the wilderness. The 

legislation simply included all of the roadless federal lands in the Middle Fork Valley within 

the new wilderness area. Park managers did not initially take notice of this designation. The 

monument’s ease of access from a road and popularity with day tourists, they believed, gave it 

a significantly different character from the surrounding peaks and alpine basins for which the 

wilderness designation seemed more appropriate. 

This view echoed the Park Service’s early resistance to the Wilderness Act. At the national 

level, officials responded to the passage of the act by arguing that the agency already had a 

wilderness policy. Overlaying land-use directives, they felt, might undermine the Service’s longstanding autonomy in policy making. By the late 1970s, however, most officials had embraced 

the national wilderness preservation system and the agency was flooded with proposals for 

wilderness areas in park units. After Devils Postpile’s inclusion in the Ansel Adams Wilderness 

in 1984, Eckhardt continued to hold the earlier stance, maintaining that the Park Service 

already managed the monument as a rustic, minimally developed natural area. For him, the 

wilderness designation did not change any of the policies already in place. The designation 

became important, however, in preventing development of areas outside the park. 

Natural Resource Inventory and Management 

Since the 1960s, the National Park Service had faced pressure to incorporate ecological science 

into its management priorities. In 1963, A. Starker Leopold’s Wildlife Management in the 

National Parks, better known as the Leopold Report, urged the Park Service to manage the 

parks as intact ecosystems, preserving the natural conditions existing at the time of initial EuroAmerican contact. Environmental legislation passed in the 1960s and 1970s put additional 

pressure on the agency to emphasize ecological considerations. In 1980, a study of the “state 

of the parks” found that environmental threats originating from both inside and outside park 

boundaries plagued nearly every unit of the system. Solving these problems would require 

the Park Service to “significantly expand its research and resource management capabilities” 

by increasing funding for scientific research and resource management training. Two reports 

published in 1992—the National Academy of Science’s study of science in the national 

parks, and the Vail Agenda, an internal evaluation of the Park Service’s responsibilities for the 

future—echoed these earlier studies, reiterating the agency’s inadequate attention to ecology 

and scientific research.16 

Although the process unfolded slowly, the Park Service gradually incorporated ecological 

principles, even in small monuments like Devils Postpile. The monument’s small size and 

location in a narrow valley near the headwaters of the San Joaquin actually made its natural 

resources and biological conditions comparatively easy to inventory. Resource inventories 

also complemented the monument’s interpretive programs. In the 1960s and 1970s, park 

staff broadened interpretation the monument to include the history of conservation in the 

Sierra Nevada, the history of the John Muir Trail, and the biology of the monument. This 

171 
Chapter Twelve Toward a “Quality Monument Experience” 

expanded program required a corresponding effort to gather information on the park’s history 

and biological resources. In a 1982 natural resource management statement, park officials 

recommended updating the monument’s species list, live-trapping and inventorying small 

mammals, maintaining a collection of plant and animal specimen samples, establishing liaisons 

with researchers in the area, and assembling a “photographic slide collection of representative 

fauna, flora, geomorphology, geological items and images that illustrate local geophysical 

processes or events.” Plant and wildlife inventories conducted during this period provided 

a knowledge base for the more intensive ecological management and monitoring programs 

initiated in later years.17 

The long-standing relationship between the Park Service and the Inyo National Forest also 

influenced maintenance and resource management proposals, many of which extended 

beyond monument boundaries. Water quality and sewage disposal in the Middle Fork Valley 

had required interagency cooperation since the 1930s. In the 1982 report, monument officials 

recommended a more intensive program of water quality monitoring for the purpose of meeting 

state and federal regulations. Monitoring would also aid in “identifying sources of pollution 

either originating in or entering the monument; and characterizing long-term changes in 

the monument’s water quality.” Such a program would “be done either in conjunction with 

monitoring in the Inyo National Forest, by USGS, or by some other local agency with 

monitoring capabilities.”18 

Fire management also required cooperation with the Forest Service. The two agencies had long 

worked together to suppress fires in the region. By the 1980s, both agencies were beginning 

to incorporate ecologically informed alternatives to outright suppression. The 1982 natural 

resources management plan noted that while the sparse understory in the monument and the 

surrounding area made fires infrequent, the possibility still existed for large catastrophic blazes 

if conditions were right. The report recommended that “small scale prescribed burning” might 

prevent this possibility, but suggested that “the role of fire in this fuel type needs to be better 

understood before such management is implemented.” The authors proposed a study of “the 

natural role of fire in lodgepole pine” forests, stating that “without information on the role of 

fire in the monument, fire could be misused as a management tool.” Although the 1982 plan 

described the monument as “much too small to provide adequate information on the topic,” 

monument officials remained confident that permission to expand the study could be secured 

from the Inyo National Forest.19 

The report also recommended that Devils Postpile be attached to the fire program at Sequoia 

and Kings Canyon, which had in previous years produced many of the baseline studies for 

reintroducing fire regimes to national park landscapes. By 1979, the park had assembled a 

detailed inventory covering fifty-five years of fire history. This exhaustive catalog allowed the 

park to develop a bold plan to let some human-caused fires burn in areas where suppression 

had significantly increased the fuel load. Sequoia and Kings Canyon, however, left Devils 

Postpile out of its fire management program through the 1980s due to its difficult access and 

the lack of historical data on fire regimes in the area and in high elevation lodgepole forests 

generally.20 

The need for a fire program in Devils Postpile became apparent on August 20, 1992, when the 

lightning-caused Rainbow Fire roared up the Middle Fork canyon, burning over 80 percent 

of the monument. Suppression took a cooperative effort involving more than 600 firefighters 

drawn from as far away as Alaska. The combined force managed to save all of the structures at 

Reds Meadow and Devils Postpile; the only casualties being several boundary and trail signs, 

two Forest Service vehicles, and a fifth-wheel trailer that burned when embers dropped on its 

172 
Natural Resource Inventory and Management 

canvas cover. However, the environmental effects were more widespread when the wind-driven 

flames burned into the forest crown and scorched deep into the soil over the southern portion 

of the monument, killing many trees and eliminating understory vegetation. Fish kills were 

also noted in Boundary Creek.21 

The Rainbow Fire drew the attention of Sequoia and Kings Canyon’s 

fire specialists. Their post-fire assessment reflected the prevailing 

ecological view of wildland fire in the Park Service at that time. 

Although the team noted severe vegetation loss, some fish mortality, 

and damage to trails, they also emphasized the fire’s positive effects. 

The team anticipated some wildlife displacement in the burned 

over areas, but noted that the “moderate—low intensity spot fires 

throughout the remainder of the park” had created “new habitat 

and edge . . . which may enhance the wildlife resource.” The team 

also viewed the fire event as an interpretive opportunity. “From an 

ecological standpoint,” wrote resource specialist Jeffrey Manley, “the 

fire remains a neutral and natural process that has altered certain 

aspects of the resource.” While the “discernably ‘moonscaped”’ areas may have negatively 

affected the area’s scenic qualities, park rangers could now encourage visitors “to consider the 

human perspective of natural aesthetics.”22 

How to rehabilitate the area post-fire proved a divisive issue. The 

wilderness designation covering much of the burned area kept 

tensions at bay since it precluded significant alterations to the 

landscape both inside and outside monument boundaries. What 

to do with the nonwilderness area surrounding Reds Meadow, 

however, became a point of contention. At a scoping meeting in 

February 1993, Mammoth Ranger District officials proposed a 

logging salvage operation to reduce fuels on 125 acres of burned 

forest. Forest officials reasoned that the estimated “290 tons of 

dead and down woody material per acre” could provide fuel for a 

future blaze.23 

Eckhardt objected to the plan on several points. First, he pointed out that forest officials’ nods 

to ecological stewardship and fire protection masked the real intent, which was to make a 

profit off the recovered timber.24 The Forest Service made this clear in its scoping statement, 

identifying the “seasonal timing of a timber sale” as an important consideration in carrying 

out the plan.25 Eckhardt also warned that removing downed trees would exacerbate erosion, 

causing silting in the river and threatening its population of wild trout. His “major concern” 

involved the potential damage the anticipated thirty-to-forty logging trucks per day would 

have on the narrow entrance road. The road was already showing wear from shuttle bus and 

RV traffic and logging trucks would only make these problems worse. Eckhardt anticipated 

that when it came time to repair the damage, the Forest Service would invariably ask Devils 

Postpile to contribute funds. His reaction revealed lingering interagency tensions over the 

issue of road maintenance: “The Forest Service needs to understand that the National Park 

Service cannot support the rehabilitation of THEIR road, even though it does lead to OUR 

Monument, because it was damaged by THEIR timber sale.”26 

Larry Bancroft, resource management chief at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, offered a more 

focused ecological critique. The logging operation, he argued, would impair the natural 

appearance of the area and cause “the loss of visitor opportunity to experience the full range of 

The 1992 Rainbow Fire from Reds Meadow Pack 

Station. (Devils Postpile National Monument image 

collection) 

Burnt sign. (Devils Postpile National Monument 

image collection) 

173 
Chapter Twelve Toward a “Quality Monument Experience” 

fire effects.” It would likely aggravate erosion and “deprive the meager soils of much needed 

nutrients over the long term.” The threat of a future fire, Bancroft pointed out, was negligible 

and would not require the drastic measures proposed by the Forest Service. Instead, he 

recommended a program of “jackpot prescribed burns” every twenty to thirty years to reduce 

fuel loads. He also warned against the “artificial regeneration of vegetation on the site,” which 

the Forest Service had also considered. “Genetic integrity,” he wrote, “could be compromised 

through the use of non-local genotypes.” Finally, he suggested that “the natural opening created 

by the fire may provide valuable wildlife habitat including increased browse.” To cut over the 

area and regenerate the vegetation would limit visitors’ opportunities to view wildlife and 

would interrupt the natural fire regime in the area. Bancroft’s arguments persuaded the Forest 

Service to cancel the plan, if only to avoid confrontation with Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

officials.27 

Cultural Resources: Post-Fire Inventory and Interpretation 

Since the 1930s, managers at Devils Postpile had often noted visitor interest in the ruined cabin 

at the base of the Postpile. Hartesveldt’s 1954 Nature Notes article on the history of the area 

provided much of the backstory for interpretation. Visitor responses to stories of Red Sotcher’s 

elicit cattle trade, “Postpile Joe” the one-armed trapper and carpenter, as well as the valley’s 

other colorful inhabitants, prompted nearly every subsequent ranger to suggest rehabilitating 

the cabin and incorporating it into regular interpretive programs. 

Despite this interest, cultural resource management and interpretation remained low on the 

list of management priorities. A 1968 San Francisco State College archeological study of the 

area provided the only significant additions to the anecdotal histories that rangers had been 

repeating over the years. The study located and documented several concentrations of obsidian 

arrow points in the monument, confirming that the area had been used as part of a trade route 

over the Sierra crest. Still, little attention was paid to the area’s cultural resources, and no efforts 

were made to reach out to Native tribes in the area. In 1970, Yosemite ranger Drew Everett 

attributed this lack of attention to what he regarded as the area’s “spectacularly uninteresting” 

history.28 

Eckhardt paid more attention to cultural resources, interpreting and recording obsidian sites, 

US Cavalry T blazes, sheepherder tree carvings, and the “shingle factory” at the King Creek trail 

junction. He also emphasized the establishment of the monument in interpretive programs, 

describing it as a key moment in the history of conservation in the Sierra Nevada. In 1985, he 

coauthored the booklet “The Devils Postpile Story” with N. King Huber. In the early 1990s, 

Eckhardt also contacted the estate of Walter Huber for photographs to use in a display on the 

founding of the monument. 

The 1992 Rainbow Fire prompted a more formal cataloging of the park’s cultural resources. 

Officials feared that the fire may have destroyed many important sites, and so contracted with 

the Dames and Moore firm in Chico, California, to record existing park resources and assess 

the damage. Archaeologists Kathleen L. Hull and Mark R. Hale completed the survey in April 

1993, finding that most cultural sites remained intact (though not mentioned in the study, the 

shingle site was destroyed). Hull and Hale also provided context for the obsidian points found 

at the locations identified in the 1968 study, confirming the dating of the arrowheads and 

recommending a subsurface study of the area. They also evaluated the sheepherder carvings 

and cavalry blazes, noting the similarities between these sites and other documented sites in 

Yosemite.29 

174 
Notes 

The “shingle factory” near the junction of the King Creek Trail, 1977. (Devils Postpile National Monument 

image collection) 

Notes 

1.	 Wymond Eckhardt, management and interpretation notes, 1973, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO
 

operations,” YNPA.
 

2.	 Palmer, Eckhardt interview. 

3.	 “Statement for Management: Devils Postpile National Monument-California,” March 24, 1978, Devils
 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office.
 

4.	 US Forest Service Visitor Information Program, Mammoth Ranger District, Inyo National Forest, “Winter 

History: Mammoth Lake Area,” 1962, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

5.	 Inyo National Forest, “Recreation Management Plan,” 9–10. 

6.	 Raftery, “Management Objectives: Devils Postpile,” 3, 9. 

7.	 “Statement for Management,” 10–12. 

8.	 Genny Smith to Robert L. Rice, Supervisor Inyo National Forest, September 12, 1978, Genny Smith Papers, 

BANC MSS 88/213c Carton 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

9.	 Ibid. 

10.	 Mark Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (Albuquerque: 

University of New Mexico Press, 1994). For a concise overview of postwar wilderness politics, see Hal K. 

Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Fort Worth, TX: 

Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998), chap. 2. 

11.	 Wallace Stegner, “Wilderness Letter,” in Marking the Sparrow’s Fall: Wallace Stegner’s American West, ed. Page 

Stegner (New York: H. Holt, 1998), 114. 

12.	 James Morton Turner, The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964 (Seattle: 

University of Washington Press, 2012), 42. 

13.	 James Morton Turner, “The Politics of Modern Wilderness,” in American Wilderness: A New History, ed. 

Michael L. Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 243–63. 

175 
Chapter Twelve Toward a “Quality Monument Experience” 

14.	 Hal Thomas to the Honorable Philip Burton, March 5, 1979, Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c, 

Carton 1; Genny Smith to Hal Thomas, March 6, 1979, Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c Carton 

1; and Oliver F. A. Sapousek, RARE II Coordinator, Inyo National Forest to Ray Sherwin, March 23, 1979, 

Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c Carton 1, all in Bancroft Library, University of California, 

Berkeley. 

15.	 Gary R. McCoy to Chairman John Seiberling, March 26, 1980, Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c 

Carton 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

16.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 276–80, 283. 

17.	 National Park Service, “Natural Resources Management Statement for Devils Postpile National Monument,” 

March 1982, 15, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

18.	 Ibid., 18. 

19.	 Ibid., 16, 19. 

20.	 Rothman, Blazing Heritage, 133–34; and Larry Bancroft, Thomas Nichols, David Parsons, David Graber, 

Boyd Evison, Jan van Wagtendonk, “Evolution of the Natural Fire Management Program at Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon National Parks,” in Proceedings Symposium and Workshop on Wilderness Fire USDA Forest 

Service General Technical Report INT–182, eds. James E Lotan, Bruce M. Kilgore, William C, Fisher, and 

Robert W. Mutch (Ogden: Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Forest Service, Department 

of Agriculture, 1985), 174–80. 

21.	 Jeffrey Manley, “Wildfire Impact Analysis,” August 28, 1992, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations”; 

“Rainbow Fire Rehabilitation Plan, Devils Postpile National Monument,” September 3, 1992, both in 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations,” YNPA. 

22.	 Manley, “Wildfire Impact Analysis.” 

23.	 Mammoth Ranger District, “Scoping Letter: Rainbow Fire Fuels Reduction Project,” February 1993, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations,” YNPA. 

24.	 Wymond Eckhardt to Mr. Ritter, February 14, 1993, unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations,” YNPA. 

25.	 Mammoth Ranger District, “Scoping Letter: Rainbow Fire Fuels Reduction Project,” February 1993, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations,” YNPA. 

26.	 Eckhardt to Ritter, February 14, 1993. 

27.	 Chief, Natural Resources Management [Larry Bancroft], to Management Assistant, March 18, 1993, 

unaccessioned DEPO files, “DEPO operations,” YNPA. 

28.	 Drew Everett, “Operations and Procedures: Devils Postpile National Monument,” 1970, unaccessioned 

DEPO files, “DEPO Operations,” YNPA. 

29.	 Hull and Hale, Post-Fire Archeological Survey, 1–8, 46–47. 

176 
Chapter Thirteen 

The Making of a Network Park: Ecological Management 

and Regional Politics, 2000–2010 

National park administration changed significantly during the final decades of the twentieth 

century. The Park Service’s traditional emphasis on accommodating scenic tourism became 

increasingly more difficult to reconcile with new ideas about the preservation of ecosystems. 

Pressure from inside and outside the Park Service to incorporate science into resource 

management and planning decisions increasingly shaped administrative priorities. 

The environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s also generated a raft of legislative 

safeguards affecting park management. Although enthusiasm for new environmental reforms 

had waned by the mid-1970s, Americans continued to demand transparency in policy making 

and planning. Under the terms of NEPA, development plans initiated by public agencies 

required environmental impact statements and were subject to public comment and scrutiny. 

As a result, Park Service managers became more subject to both internal and external review. 

Resource management policies and general management plans required public scoping from 

the early stages of development through implementation. By the end of the century, the 

agency had become a more thoroughly political organization, charged with balancing the 

often conflicting interests of a diverse constituency of recreational users, environmentalists, 

scientists, historic preservationists, Indian tribes, and local communities. 

In order to protect valuable resources and establish the regional, interagency connections 

necessary to incorporate ecological principles, park managers developed specialized skills to 

navigate the more complicated political terrain. Superintendents and other officials worked 

toward more extensive intra-agency and external networking, involvement in local and regional 

politics, and computer fluency for the purposes of documenting management objectives, 

regulatory compliance, and especially accounting. The history of Devils Postpile since 2000 

typifies the challenges and opportunities of the era of ecological management, accountability, 

and constituency politics. 

Deanna Dulen, Ecological Management, and the Making of 

a Network Park 

Eckhardt’s traditionalist approach to park management partially insulated Devils Postpile from 

the more complex politics of the environmental age. In 2000, Deanna Dulen, former director 

of the Inyo National Forest Mono Basin Visitor Center, replaced Eckhardt as monument 

superintendent. Dulen’s familiarity with the Eastern Sierra and experience crossing agency 

boundaries made her a good fit at Devils Postpile, but it was her background in ecology and 

her capacity for networking that brought the monument into the twenty-first century. 

If Eckhardt allowed ecological considerations to trickle into natural resource management at 

the monument, Dulen opened the floodgates by presiding over a number of environmental 

inventories and monitoring programs. These programs marked a significant shift in policy 

direction, broadening Devils Postpile’s natural resource agenda beyond interpretation and 

landscape preservation. For Dulen, the monument’s location at the crossroads of geologic, 
Chapter Thirteen The Making of a Network Park 

biological, and climatologic zones made it an ideal site for monitoring the ecological health 

of the entire Sierra Nevada range. Moreover, the professionalization of scientific research 

in the park would provide environmental data for the entire San Joaquin watershed, and 

would increase the presence of the Park Service in the Mammoth region. In the process, 

Dulen transformed Devils Postpile into a test park for ecological management and interagency 

cooperation, as well as a key site for monitoring the effects of climate change in the Sierra 

Nevada. 

In contrast to Eckhardt who sought to break Devils Postpile’s dependence on Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon, Dulen actively sought out aid from the monument’s parent park for facility 

issues, visitor services, and science programs. She also took advantage of contacts and resources 

in other parks, as well as in the Inyo National Forest, the USGS, private research foundations, 

and the local community. In doing so, she reinvented Devils Postpile as a model network park. 

The concept of placing parks into regional networks was a direct result of mounting pressure 

on the Park Service to incorporate ecological considerations into management and planning. In 

1999, in order to meet the recommendations of the 1992 Vail Agenda, the agency created the 

“Natural Resource Challenge.” The congressionally funded action plan called for “substantially 

increasing the role of science in decision-making, revitalizing and expanding natural resource 

programs, gathering baseline data on resource conditions, strengthening partnerships with the 

scientific community, and sharing knowledge with educational institutions and the public.”1 

To facilitate the inventory park resources, parks were divided into “networks” linked by 

geography and common resource characteristics. Devils Postpile was included in the Sierra 

Network of Parks alongside Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.2 

Devils Postpile benefited from this arrangement, as many of the programs allotted to the 

larger parks carried over to the monument. In 2001, botanist Melanie Arnett and plant 

ecologist Sylvia Haultain, both employees of Sequoia and Kings Canyon, conducted a vascular 

plant inventory of Devils Postpile. Because of the monument’s small size, the team was able 

to conduct a more thorough resource survey than was possible in the larger parks. They 

documented a surprising 360 vascular plant types within the monument, an increase of nearly 

200 types from previous inventories. The survey also noted three species of invasive plants. 

This finding opened the door for additional funding to remove nonnative plants from several 

areas in the park beginning in 2002.3 

Resource inventories tended to have a domino effect, generating additional opportunities 

for study. In 2001, a volunteer group from the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society surveyed the 

monument for nesting and migratory birds. Twelve days of birding in the monument and the 

surrounding area revealed 71 species. The group estimated that an extended survey might find 

as many as 141 species. They also reported that “the area was especially good for hard-to-find 

birds such as black swift, pine grosbeak, and black-backed woodpecker, and we really enjoyed 

witnessing the great migratory passage of yellow-rumped warblers.” Dulen considered the bird 

study to be the “tip of the iceberg,” suggesting “DEPO’s vital link in nesting and migratory 

bird needs and habitats.” She projected follow-up studies to “expand knowledge of the vital 

signs that bird populations and nesting successes can provide.” In June 2001, Dulen attended 

a “Partners in Flight Conference” to network and gather additional information on nesting, 

migrations, and habitat. These efforts led to a vital signs monitoring workshop conducted the 

following summer.4 

Dulen sought other sources of funding, earning more than three times her salary in research 

awards during her second year as manager. Sequoia and Kings Canyon also upped the 

monument budget by $77,000 in this period.5 Additional funds enabled the completion 

178 
Deanna Dulen, Ecological Management, and the Making of a Network Park 

of several much-needed projects: $20,000 from a recreation fee demo program paid for the 

restoration of disturbed and eroded meadow lands; a Youth Conservation Corp crew from 

Joshua Tree was brought in to eliminate social trails and rehabilitate the Rainbow Falls Trail 

and overlook; and a crew from Sequoia and Kings Canyon planted over 200 lodgepole and 

red fir seedlings in a previously barren area near the campground. 

Dulen also pushed for an agreement between the Park Service, Inyo National Forest, and 

Mono County Sheriff’s office to enforce a ban on snowmobiles within the monument. In the 

mid-1990s, the Forest Service had opened the Minaret Summit road to winter snowmobile 

use. While the steep descent into the valley and the danger of avalanches prevented heavy use, 

some riders were passing through the monument, disregarding the prohibitory signs at the 

park entrance. Increased enforcement in 2001 resulted in “4 citations and 2 warnings, and 

good press releases on the program.”6 

With the help of contacts at Sequoia, Dulen continued to earn grants and develop partnerships 

for research and restoration work in the monument. In 2002 and 2003, a grant from the 

National Resources Protection Program—a joint program created through an agreement 

between the Park Service and USGS—funded restorative work on Soda Springs Meadow and 

on riverbanks on the Middle Fork San Joaquin. In 2002, a team from the regional office, 

aided by the California Conservation Corp and volunteers from the California Native Plant 

Society, worked to eradicate invasive plant species identified in the previous year’s vascular 

plant inventory. Bird studies were also continued. In 2002, a team from the Point Reyes Bird 

Observatory drew approximately 400 visitors for an informational program on bird banding. 

Dulen also contracted with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station to provide 

technical expertise on riverbank restoration and lodgepole pine coring in order to better 

understand “the history of lodgepole incursion and meadow ecology.” In partnership with the 

California Geographic Alliance, Dulen won a $25,000 grant from the National Geographic 

Society to provide “information and educational opportunities tide to State Curriculum 

standards.” This award resulted in a National Geographic article in 2003, and publication of 

The Post, the park’s newspaper.7 

Even as the monument grew into a hub for Eastern Sierra tourism and environmental research, 

budget woes and staffing shortages continued to hamper management. During his tenure, 

Eckhardt had attempted on several occasions to designate a separate budget for Devils Postpile 

rather than having it “tacked on” to the parent park. Sequoia and Kings Canyon eventually 

agreed to create a separate budget for the monument in 2000 just as Eckhardt retired, but his 

history of frugality had set a precedent that made this a difficult transition.8 

In addition to giving Devils Postpile a separate budget, Sequoia and Kings Canyon officials also 

transferred responsibility for personnel issues, environmental audits, compliance statements, 

and other administrative duties previously handled by the larger park. This transfer was also 

the result of mounting administrative demands at Sequoia and Kings Canyon. The increased 

salary requirement for a full-time park manager, combined with the higher cost of employee 

retirement and health care at that time, further limited Devils Postpile’s discretionary funds, 

which at the time were already among the scarcest in the Pacific West region. These problems 

were compounded by another leap in monument visitation, from roughly 100,000 annual 

visits through the 1990s to around 150,000 a year after 2000.9 

With the increase in visitation, law enforcement and visitor safety became immediate concerns. 

In a 2002 report on the ten most dangerous parks in America, the Fraternal Order of Police gave 

Devils Postpile a “dishonorable mention for safety.” Although serious crimes were infrequent, 

the park was operating on several informal, outdated memorandums of understanding with 

179 
Chapter Thirteen The Making of a Network Park 

local law enforcement. There were no clear policies to govern jurisdiction or crowd control in 

the event of a major incident. On June 28, 2003, a club-sponsored motorcycle event brought 

163 Harley Davidson riders into the monument, creating a major concern for park employees. 

As visitation increased, accidents, lost persons, and medical emergencies were also becoming 

more common. Due to staffing shortages and a lack of formal safety policies, these incidents 

were addressed on a case-by-case basis and most went unrecorded. An emerging extremesport trend generated additional concerns. Monument visitors no longer limited themselves 

to fishing, hiking, and camping. Some were kayaking the Middle Fork, scuba diving below 

Rainbow Falls, and even surfing standing waves in the river.10 Safety concerns led Dulen 

to recommend hiring a full time visitor-protection ranger to oversee law enforcement and 

search-and-rescue The funding was not there, however, and Dulen had to settle for giving the 

maintenance mechanic permanent status instead of hiring a visitor protection ranger.11 

Whereas Eckhardt sought aid from Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yosemite, and the regional 

office only with reluctance, Dulen regarded agency partnerships as vital to overcoming budget 

shortages, improving visitor services, and expanding the science program at Devils Postpile. 

To address safety and law enforcement concerns, Dulen “worked out a mutually beneficial 

arrangement” with Yosemite to provide professional law-enforcement and emergency response 

staff two days per week. In return, Dulen helped develop an interagency agreement for 

Yosemite staff to provide interpretive services at the Inyo National Forest’s Mono Basin Visitor 

Center. Devils Postpile also renewed partnerships with the Youth Conservation Corp for trail 

work. In 2005, Death Valley National Park agreed to sublet an additional pickup truck for use 

in the monument. To bring the park up to date in its recording and compliance capacities, 

Devils Postpile partnered with Manzanar Historic Site to develop the monument’s Facility 

Management Software System (FMSS). Sequoia and Kings Canyon’s fire and natural resources 

team also continued work in Devils Postpile, completing an environmental assessment for a 

mechanical thinning and fuel reduction project in 2005.12 

As more administrative duties were transferred to the monument, Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

approved a base increase of $100,000 in 2005. This funded three additional term employees 

to improve visitor services and handle compliance requirements, reporting, and environmental 

audits. The park was able to initiate a Junior Ranger program reaching more than 1,000 

schoolchildren. Additional funds allowed for the construction and installation of “several welldesigned information and interpretive kiosks, and new wayside exhibits for the first time in 30 

years.” Also in 2005, Dulen was awarded the Pacific West Region’s Superintendent of the Year 

Award for natural resources stewardship and science. The award recognized Dulen’s efforts to 

build a science program in a small park with minimal base funding and no on-site resource 

management staffing. Her success was the product of “partnerships with other parks in the 

Sierra Nevada Network, local U.S. Forest Service staff, academic partners, non-profits, and 

volunteer groups.”13 

Dulen’s efforts made Devils Postpile at once more independent and more integrated into intraagency and external networks. This more complex administrative structure prompted Sequoia 

and Kings Canyon to reexamine its relationship to the monument. In 2003, park officials had 

already revised the management agreement with Devils Postpile to include the monument as 

a “distinct park unit” alongside Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Under the revised agreement, 

Devils Postpile will be treated as if it were a third district of the combined park, not as an 

independent park. The main difference is that DEPO will need relatively more support than 

the other two districts because it has so few employees. In the past, [Sequoia and Kings Canyon] 

SEKI’s attitude has often been: should we include DEPO when we do something. From now 

180 
Deanna Dulen, Ecological Management, and the Making of a Network Park 

on, SEKI managers will routinely include DEPO the same as we include Sequoia and Kings 

Canyon. We now need a reason not to include DEPO.14 

This arrangement gave the monument a more equal share of resources, but it also increased 

the larger organization’s obligations to the smaller, distant unit. 

The agreement also included the somewhat contradictory stipulation that Devils Postpile 

“continue to compete for regional funding and support as a small park.”15 Even though it 

received considerable support for inventory and monitoring programs, fire management, 

facility maintenance, and visitor protection as a component of Sequoia and Kings Canyon, 

the monument would be obligated to seek out additional aid as if it were an independent 

park. Dulen’s arrangements with Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Manzanar, Yosemite, and other 

organizations reflected this semi-independent status. Over time, however, the situation created 

confusion, as it became unclear which park, agency, or department had responsibility for the 

monument’s increasingly diverse operational, interpretive, and research programs. There was 

little communication between Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, and the inventory and 

monitoring team over resource policies in Devils Postpile. Such lapses had led to “unclear 

delegation and perceptions of ‘turf’ issues that clouded relationships” between the various 

organizations.16 

As early as 2000, Sequoia and Kings Canyon officials had been considering transferring Devils 

Postpile to Death Valley or even Manzanar. The monument’s distance from Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon and common operating season had created strains on the larger park. In a 2006 

organization and operation review of Devils Postpile, regional officials weighed several options 

for shifting jurisdiction. The preferred option was to return Devils Postpile to Yosemite. 

As reasons for the transfer the report cited “the historical connection between DEPO and 

YOSE, their geographic proximity . . . , the intertwined external issues (Mammoth and Lee 

Vining as common gateway communities, transportation issues, interaction with the Inyo 

National Forest), similar visitor and use patterns, and the ability of Yosemite to leverage more 

partnerships for Devils Postpile.” Yosemite, however, “was not comfortable supporting this 

alternative,” and so it was dropped from consideration.17 

The proposed alternative was to reclassify Devils Postpile as an independent park under the 

Pacific West Regional Office. This option would involve “increased, sustained involvement 

by Yosemite NP in the areas of law enforcement, interpretation, partnerships and planning, 

and resource management (to be coordinated with SEKI) as well as continuation of support 

relationships with Mojave network parks for maintenance support.” Since the base park budget 

would remain the same, the proposal required “continued support by SEKI in the areas of 

administration, resource management . . . and wildland fire.”18 

Independent status involved a number of proposed changes. First, the review committee 

advised increasing the “visibility of the Devils Postpile Superintendent in Mammoth Lakes in 

the winter season.” This would require a permanent arrangement for office space in Mammoth 

Lakes to be worked out with the Inyo National Forest and the Mammoth Welcome Center. 

Even though the park remained closed in winter, visitors would have the opportunity to acquire 

information year-round. More important, a winter presence would create an opportunity “for 

making the NPS a more prominent leader and facilitator on the east side of the Sierra Nevada.” 

The formalization of the interagency shuttle agreement with the Inyo National Forest—in 

combination with expanded networking with the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation 

System, the Merced Council of Governments, Mono County and Town of Mammoth 

Lakes, and the new Inyo and Mono County Joint Powers Authority—would ensure regional 

recognition of the park as a “valuable, permanent member of the community.”19 

181 
Chapter Thirteen The Making of a Network Park 

Most important, independent status would require that all inter-park and external partnerships 

be formalized and updated annually—a significant move away from the ad hoc arrangements 

and handshake deals prevalent through most of the monument’s history. This change would 

“allow for continuity and sustainability regardless of staff changes in park management.” It 

would also increase transparency and enable the regional office to evaluate accountability and 

the overall effectiveness of monument policies.20 

Dulen welcomed this change. In 2007, the regional office provided guidance and emergency 

support in response to a hazardous material spill. Regional officials also aided in the process 

of preparing site recommendations for construction of an employee facility and maintenance 

shop.21 Independent status also allowed Dulen to develop formal, long-standing partnerships 

with the organizations she had already been working with. This formalization positioned Devils 

Postpile more squarely within internal and external networks, providing even greater access to 

the funds, resources, and expertise to further expand the monument’s science program. 

One notable result of the network park concept has been Devils Postpile recent recognition 

as a key site in the Park Service’s strategic response to climate change. In 2003, Dulen began 

working with resource teams in Sequoia and Kings Canyon and Yosemite to take advantage of 

the monument’s location at the boundary between the Eastern and Western Sierra bioregions 

and its proximity to the headwaters of one of the largest, most heavily developed river systems 

in the state. That year, regional officials installed a groundwater-monitoring device in Soda 

Springs Meadow. In 2005, the monument installed an air-quality and ozone monitoring station 

as part of a joint study between the Forest Service, the Park Service, and several universities. 

Also that year, Devils Postpile and the Sierra Network partnered with the Scripps Institute 

of Oceanography and the California Department of Water Resources Snow Surveys Program 

to install a climate monitoring station at the east end of Soda Springs Meadow. Currently, 

the station transmits near real-time data on temperature, barometric pressure, wind speeds, 

snowpack, and river flows. This data contributes to climate research in the Sierra Nevada 

and helps state officials, power companies, and agricultural interests anticipate water-storage 

capacity for the many reservoirs and power stations downstream on the San Joaquin River.22 

In 2008, Dulen presented the results of climate research at Devils Postpile at climate-change 

workshops held in Yosemite and Bishop. One of her more intriguing suggestions was that 

due to the north-south orientation of the Middle Fork Valley and its heavy winter snowpack, 

the area acted as a cold-air trap, making it a possible “refugium” for native Sierra plants and 

animals as their habitats shift due to a warming climate. Workshop attendees expressed some 

skepticism of this due to the lack of existing knowledge about the threshold of these types 

of areas in mitigating climate change. Dulen’s suggestion nevertheless spurred calls for more 

coordinated research and monitoring at Devils Postpile.23 

By 2009, Park Service teams and contract scientists had conducted extensive research on the 

vulnerabilities of park resources to climate change. Studies found that groundwater pumping 

east of the Sierra might affect the health of the monument’s meadows and streams. Other 

research demonstrated that rising temperatures and decreased precipitation might affect 

wetlands and the various species of amphibians, birds, insects, and mammals that inhabit 

them. Studies of the fire regime in and around the monument revealed that large fires had 

been more prevalent in warmer years, suggesting an increased threat of catastrophic fire with 

global warming. Other studies demonstrated that warming temperatures might encourage the 

spread of pests and diseases such as the Mountain Pine Beetle and Blister Rust. Finally, warmer 

temperatures would likely mean a longer recreational season. Increasing visitor use could put 

further strain on biological resources in Devils Postpile and the surrounding area.24 

182 
Devils Postpile, the Growth of Mammoth Lakes, and Regional Politics 

As a result of this work, in 2009, Dulen was asked to serve on the climate change steering 

committee for the Pacific West Region. Devils Postpile was also added as an important 

component of the Park Service’s Climate Change Response Program, advanced by new Park 

Service director, and former Pacific West Region director, Jonathan Jarvis. Also in 2009, the 

Sierra Nevada Alliance recognized Devils Postpile’s contributions to climate research, resource 

protection, and education in the Sierra Nevada, indicating that the monument was “poised to 

lead the country’s parks service in adapting to climate change.”25 

Devils Postpile, the Growth of Mammoth Lakes, and Regional Politics 

Devils Postpile’s increased emphasis on ecological management and scientific research led 

to more active involvement in local and regional politics. While the monument had long 

been an important component of the Mammoth Lakes recreational complex, the park’s 

expanded science program brought greater attention to the ecological connections between 

the monument and the surrounding area. Dulen and other regional officials began to see 

participation in regional politics as an obligation, not only to protect monument resources but 

also to provide expert guidance for more ecologically appropriate regional planning. 

The town of Mammoth Lakes grew tremendously beginning in the mid-1990s. This growth 

followed the general pattern of other ski towns in the American West. In the 1960s and 1970s, 

corporate interests bought out the original developers of Sun Valley, Aspen, and other resort 

communities, transforming them from seasonal ski towns into year-round meccas for high-class 

leisure. Skiing and recreation services actually became secondary markets for the new corporate 

financiers. Instead, the principal investment opportunity proved to be real estate. In many 

resort towns, cookie-cutter condominium complexes, sprawling golf-course subdivisions, and 

kitschy shopping and entertainment districts filled every developable space, replacing the rustic 

lodges, family-owned shops, and restaurants leftover from earlier ski booms.26 

This transformation occurred later in Mammoth Lakes, owing to the area’s geographic isolation 

and role as a regional destination tied almost exclusively to the Los Angeles and Southern 

California markets. The fight to block the trans-Sierra highway in the 1960s and 1970s perhaps 

delayed Mammoth the fate of other ski resort communities by keeping the region somewhat 

cut off from the heavily populated San Francisco Bay area. Even in the 1990s, Mammoth 

Mountain remained little used by San Francisco skiers who generally patronized the more 

accessible resorts at Lake Tahoe.27 

The growing population of Southern California and the booming real-estate market of the 

1990s increased the appeal of Mammoth Lakes for corporate developers. In 1996, the British 

Columbia–based Intrawest Corporation purchased 33 percent of Dave McCoy’s stock in 

the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area (two years later, Intrawest purchased an additional 27 

percent of the resort). Even more lucrative was the company’s acquisition of the resort’s 

developable real-estate land. Over the next several years, Intrawest raked in hundreds of 

millions of dollars in profits on condominium and townhome developments, shopping and 

entertainment centers, restaurants, and golf courses in the Mammoth Lakes area. In 2005, CEO 

Joe Houssian determined that it was “clearly in Intrawest’s best interest to monetize a portion 

of this value now.” That year, the company sold the majority of its shares in Mammoth to 

another multinational giant, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, the umbrella company 

of Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis, W Hotels, and other luxury brands. Starwood’s CEO Barry 

Sternlicht decided to redevelop the resort and the town around the theme of “wellness,” seeking 

to capitalize on the area’s popularity for skiing, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, and 

other active outdoor pursuits.28 

183 
Chapter Thirteen The Making of a Network Park 

By the early twenty-first century, the potential environmental consequences of the mounting 

land and resource requirements of Mammoth Lakes had become urgent concerns for the Park 

Service at Devils Postpile. The monument’s expanded science program provided important 

data regarding the possible environmental effects of this development. In 2005, the Mammoth 

Visitor Center began receiving numerous letters from the local community asking the Forest 

Service to consider the impact of Intrawest’s and Starwood’s development plans on Devils 

Postpile and the Middle Fork Valley. The Forest Service, in turn, asked the Park Service for its 

assessment of a potential “land swap,” which would privatize tracts of Forest Service land near 

Minaret Summit for the purposes of ski resort expansion.29 

Dulen was concerned that development on the east side of San Joaquin Ridge could affect the 

Middle Fork Valley watershed. Her position was informed by the work of USGS geologist 

Dave Hill, who in 2002 had “explained how springs and groundwater use on the east side of 

the San Joaquin ridge could impact the hydrology on the west side where numerous springs 

occur.” Diminished groundwater could affect “west slope springs that provide lush wetland 

environments and aspen groves where many deer and bird species occur.” These considerations 

led Dulen to argue against the land swap. If it occurred, she recommended that the Forest 

Service retain water rights. Dulen later identified the watershed ramifications of groundwater 

pumping east of the Sierra divide as a priority for research funding at the monument.30 

Proposals to expand the Mammoth-Yosemite Airport located southeast of Mammoth Lakes 

near Hot Creek also sparked debate. Plans to improve the airport and expand service had been 

under consideration since the mid-1980s. In 1992, the town of Mammoth Lakes purchased the 

airport from Mono Country and in 2002, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved 

a $28.6 million grant for the expansion of the airport into a major regional transportation hub 

capable of accommodating larger Boeing 737s and 757s.31 

Prior to this decision, Dulen challenged business interests in Mammoth Lakes by emphasizing 

the potential environmental impacts of expansion. In 2001, she wrote to FAA officials, arguing 

that increased air traffic over the area would interfere with visitors’ enjoyment of “the natural 

sounds of the San Joaquin River, the wind in the trees, the calls of birds, the occasional 

coyote howl, and a mixture of natural quiet and sound.” The noise from low-flying aircraft 

might interfere with “communication between members of a species during critical phases 

or crucial times of breeding, nesting, and/or rearing of the young.” Increased vibrations 

also had the potential to damage the Postpile formation itself. She noted “substantial legal 

precedent authorizing the Park Service to “reach beyond park boundaries to restrict external 

threats to park values and resources.” Furthermore, she argued that NEPA and Department of 

Transportation regulations required the FAA to consider the resource protection requirements 

of the Park Service and other public land agencies.32 

At the same time, a coalition of national and Eastern Sierra environmental organizations filed 

a lawsuit claiming that the existing EIS for airport improvement was inadequate and outdated. 

Their concerns stemmed from the increased air traffic and the additional development needed 

to accommodate more visitors to the region. Local Sierra Club member Owen Maloy expressed 

these views in an interview with the Mammoth Times: “With this project, Mammoth will be 

subjected to urban sprawl in a pristine scenic area close to wilderness and threatened wildlife,” 

he stated. “We already have many visitors who drive in from Los Angeles and the rest of 

California. This project proposes to double the number of visitor-days with tourists arriving 

by plane. People still don’t have enough information about how this will change our area. 

There is risk of destroying the very scenic values that attract visitors.”33 Despite heated protests 

from the Mammoth town council, local business interests, and ski film mogul Warren Miller, 

the courts sided with local environmentalists, mandating a more thorough EIS taking into 

184 
Notes 

consideration attendant development, as well as the air traffic and noise issues that could result 

from the proposed expansion.34 

In response, the town of Mammoth Lakes decided to cancel the runway expansion, which 

had been the primary reason for the 2002 lawsuit. As an alternative, town officials made 

agreements with Horizon Air to increase the number of small aircraft flights from Los Angeles 

while keeping the runway capacity as is. This allowed Mammoth Lakes and the FAA to avoid 

the comprehensive EIS and consider only the operational specifications and potential effects 

of accommodating an increased number of regional flights.35 

The Park Service voiced the only substantial objections to the revised proposal. Dulen had 

already restated her earlier concerns in a 2005 letter to the Mammoth District ranger arguing 

that “the importance of protecting natural soundscapes is integral for providing a quality 

experience to a broad spectrum of campers, anglers, hikers, and day use visitors to these 

areas.”36 In 2008, Dulen helped draft a letter expressing the Pacific West Region’s concern 

over “the cumulative impact of the proposed action combined with existing noise” in each of 

the Sierra Network parks.37 FAA officials responded that while the terms of the Organic Act 

could be extended to protecting parks and wilderness areas from excessive noise, the particular 

plan under review would not change past and present noise levels in any of the Sierra Network 

parks. The FAA also expressed frustration that Park Service officials had not supplied internal 

agency reports indicating excessive jet noise levels near Tioga Pass in Yosemite, despite repeated 

requests.38 

In 2009, the issue was revived when United Airlines sought a contract with the MammothYosemite airport to accommodate flights to and from San Francisco. This time, the projected 

flight paths passed directly over Devils Postpile, the Ansel Adams Wilderness, and portions 

of Yosemite. In June 2010 letter to Mammoth officials, Pacific West Region officials again 

expressed concern over the cumulative effects of the ongoing growth of Mammoth Lakes and 

the nearby airport. Ultimately, though, the Park Service’s objections carried little weight in the 

broader economic discussion, and the agency was not able to mobilize a local environmental 

opposition. In September 2010, United’s plan was approved, and six daily flights were added 

from San Francisco to the Mammoth airport.39 

In some respects, the Park Service’s objections to increased air service represent a renewal of 

the fight in the 1960s and 1970s to prevent the construction of a trans-Sierra highway, but 

the corporatization of Mammoth in recent years makes this an uphill battle. As priorities in 

Mammoth Lakes have changed to reflect the imperatives of the town’s corporate financiers, 

Dulen has become one of the few voices for maintaining Devils Postpile and the high mountain 

wilderness extending north to Yosemite as a regional destination, tied to the Eastern Sierra 

and insulated from more populated areas to the west. Whereas in the past, geography made 

access to Devils Postpile difficult, in more recent decades, maintaining the monument’s rustic 

character has required active engagement in regional politics. It remains to be seen whether 

the Park Service can accomplish the coalition building so vital to earlier environmental battles 

to push back against the growth imperative driving Mammoth’s new corporate leadership. 

Notes 

1.	 “Protecting America’s Natural Heritage: National Park Service Announces New Plan to Strengthen and 

Revitalize Natural Resource Programs in National Parks,” original press release, August 12, 1999, www.nature 

.nps.gov/challenge/pressrelease.cfm. 

2.	 “Charter of the Sierra Nevada Network Inventory and Monitoring Program for the Board of Directors and 

Science Committee,” revised July 2003, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

185 
Chapter Thirteen The Making of a Network Park 

3.	 Deanna Dulen, “Superintendent’s Annual Report for Devils Postpile National Monument, 2001,” Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

4.	 Ibid. 

5.	 William Tweed, “Annual Report of the Superintendent: Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Fiscal Year 2000,” September 2001, 39, Devils Postpile National Monument, 

Superintendent’s Office; and Dulen, “Devils Postpile Annual Report, 2001.” 

6.	 Dulen, “Devils Postpile Annual Report, 2001.” 

7.	 Deanna Dulen, “Devils Postpile National Monument: 2002–2003 Annual and Strategic Report,” 2003, 5–7, 

Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

8.	 Palmer, Eckhardt interview. 

9.	 Dulen, “2002–2003 Annual and Strategic Report,” 9, 11. 

10.	 Ibid., 9, 25, 32–33, 37–40. 

11.	 Ibid., 4; and Deanna Dulen, “Devils Postpile National Monument: 2005 Annual Report,” 2005, 4, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

12.	 Dulen, “2005 Annual Report,” 1–5. 

13.	 Ibid., 5–6. 

14.	 “Relationship of Selected SEKI and DEPO Plans and Programs,” revised March 17, 2003, Devils Postpile 

National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

15.	 Ibid. 

16.	 “Devils Postpile National Monument: Final Report: Organization and Operation Review 2006,” 2006, Devils 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

17.	 Ibid., 21. 

18.	 Ibid., 21–22. 

19.	 Ibid., 23–27. 

20.	 Ibid., 21–22. 

21.	 Deanna Dulen, “Devils Postpile National Monument: 2007 Annual Report,” 2007, 3, Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

22.	 Dulen, “2005 Annual Report,” 14–15; and Dulen, “2007 Annual Report,” 10–11, 18–19. 

23.	 “Summary: Resource Planning Workshop: Adapting to Climate Change at Devils Postpile National Monument 

Convened in Yosemite Valley, October 8, 2008,” draft December 5, 2008, Devils Postpile National Monument, 

Superintendent’s Office. 

24.	 Sierra Nevada Alliance, Case Studies of Climate Change Adaptation: Three Climate Change Resource Management 

Adaptation Case Studies and Their Application to the Sierra Nevada (South Lake Tahoe: Sierra Nevada Alliance, 

2009), 9. 

25.	 Ibid., 11–12. 

26.	 Hal K. Rothman, “Tourism as Colonial Economy: Power and Place in Western Tourism,” in Power and Place 

in the North American West, ed. Richard White and John M. Findlay (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 

1999): 188–98. 

27.	 Kellie Schmitt, “At Mammoth Lakes, Intrawest’s $1 Billion 10-Year-Long ‘Project Sierra’ Taking Shape,” San 

Jose Mercury News, October 9, 2003. 

28.	 Ibid.; Intrawest, “Intrawest Corporation Announces Sale of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area,” news release, 

October 5, 2005, http://media.integratir.com/idr/PressReleases/MMSA%20Closing%20F.pdf; and Howard 

Scheckter, “A Vision of Mammoth: An Interview with Barry,” undated, accessed September 17, 2010, 

www.homesofmammoth.com/vision.php. 

29.	 Deanna Dulen to Mammoth District Ranger, Molly Brown, November 21, 2005, Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

30.	 Ibid. 

186 
Notes 

31.	 Town of Mammoth Lakes, “Mammoth Yosemite Airport Receives Federal Aviation Administration Grant 

Agreement,” press release, October 7, 2002, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

32.	 Deanna Dulen to Elisha Novak, Federal Aviation Administration, May 24, 2001, Devils Postpile National 

Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

33.	 “Lawsuit Filed over Lack of EIS for Mammoth-Yosemite Airport,” Mammoth Times, October 3, 2002. 

34.	 Michelle Jesperson, National Parks Conservation Association, “Conservationists Praise Blockage of Mammoth 

Lakes Airport Expansion,” press release, April 30, 2003, www.npca.org/media_center/press_releases/2003/ 

page27599998.html; and Warren Miller, “Environmental Double Talk,” 2002, www.warrenmiller.net/j/index 

.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49&Itemid=35.Monday, 01 April 2002 

35.	 Federal Aviation Administration, “Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and Hold 

Scoping Meetings for Federal Aviation Administration Approval of Airline Operations Specifications To 

Accommodate Proposed Scheduled Air Service into Mammoth Yosemite Airport, Mammoth Lakes, CA,” 

Federal Register 71, no. 141 (July 24, 2006): 41859–60. 

36.	 Dulen to Mammoth District Ranger, November 21, 2005. 

37.	 Jonathan Jarvis, Regional Director Pacific West Region, to Mr. Chuck Cox, Federal Aviation Administration, 

January 11, 2008, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

38.	 Chuck Cox, Record of Decision: Proposed Horizon Air Operations Specifications Amendment: Service to Mammoth 

Lakes Airport (Renton, WA: Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration Norwest 

Mountain Region, 2008), 17–19. 

39.	 George Turnbull, Acting Regional Director Pacific West Region, to Karen Johnston, Assistant Town Manager, 

June 7, 2010, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office; Ben Mutzabaugh, “United Adds 

Six Flights to California’s Mammoth Airport,” USA Today, September 20, 2010, http://travel.usatoday.com/ 

flights/post/2010/09/united-mammoth-mountain-ski-flights/114905/1. 

187 

Historical Contexts for the Period
 

of Federal Management:
 

The Mammoth Lakes Sierra, Recreation,
 

and Science
 

A major theme in the history of Devils Postpile National Monument has been its ties to the 

surrounding region. Historically, on-site managers have relied on collaboration with the Forest 

Service and the community to provide visitor services at Devils Postpile. Yet, they have also 

sought to distinguish management objectives at the monument from the recreational agenda 

on the adjoining national forest land. 

Over time, on-site managers worked to uphold the intent of Devils Postpile’s establishing 

legislation and the broader mission of the agency by interpreting the scientific significance of 

park resources. Prioritizing the monument’s “scientific interest” proved difficult as recreation 

became the primary use of the Middle Fork Valley and the principal driver of the regional 

economy. Tourists made the difficult drive over Minaret Summit to Devils Postpile to camp 

in a rustic setting, to fish the Middle Fork San Joaquin, and to hike to the features of the 

monument. The Minaret Summit road also provided access to the John Muir Trail, making the 

monument a popular departure point for backpacking, mountain climbing, and, especially, 

horse and mule packing. The efforts of Devils Postpile’s managers to balance the agency 

imperative to protect, interpret, and monitor the scientific resources of the monument with 

the region’s demands for recreation both reflected and influenced the National Park Service’s 

broader management objectives as they evolved over the twentieth century and into the 

twenty-first. 

Chapter Fourteen 

Regional Context: The Mammoth Lakes Sierra
 

The Mammoth Lakes Sierra developed as a region with ties to both the Eastern Sierra and 

Southern California. Mammoth City (now Mammoth Lakes) was founded in the 1870s as 

one of the several hard-rock mining boomtowns that materialized east of the Sierra escarpment 

during this period. In the late nineteenth century, Dogtown, Bodie, Aurora, and many of the 

region’s other rough-and-tumble mining outposts vanished as quickly as they had appeared. 

Mammoth City managed to hang on as part of an Owens Valley–based farming and ranching 

economy, providing resources for continuing mining operations at the Comstock Lode in 

western Nevada. 

In the early twentieth century, the Eastern Sierra became a battleground in the most famous 

water war in the history of the American West. In 1901, Los Angeles Mayor Frederick Eaton 

and William Mulholland, superintendent of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 

(LADWP), began purchasing farms and ranches along the Owens River as part of a scheme 

to secure a water supply to fuel the growth of the city. By the time Owens Valley residents 

recognized the ploy, it was too late. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt validated Los 

Angeles’s claim to Owens Valley water and authorized the construction of the Owens River 

Aqueduct, completed in 1913. In the decades that followed, Eastern Sierra water fed vast 

citrus groves and, later, sprawling subdivisions in the previously barren San Fernando Valley. 

In contrast, by the late 1920s, the desert had reclaimed farms in the Bishop area and along 

the Owens River. Farther south, alkali dust storms blowing off the now dry Owens Lake bed 

scoured what was left of formerly green fields.1 

The city’s water grab sparked vehement protest from Owens Valley residents. As the first Owens 

River water poured into the new reservoirs of the San Fernando Valley, disgruntled Eastern 

Sierra farmers posted an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times declaring: “We, the farmers of 

the Owens Valley, who are about to die, salute you.”2 Resistance mounted over the ensuing 

years, with some groups resorting to violence. In 1924, a group of armed ranchers created 

something of a cause cel ́ ebr ` e when they seized the Alabama Gates spillway and dynamited 

portions of the aqueduct.3 

The symbolism of the Owens Valley rebellion masked the reality that whatever farming utopia 

the Eastern Sierra may have been was likely gone for good. By the early twentieth century, 

the western Nevada silver boom had run its course, all but eliminating the primary market 

for Eastern Sierra agricultural goods. Los Angeles’s water grab may have been the nail in the 

coffin for local farmers, but rapid population growth in the city to the south also spurred a 

new economic regime based on tourism and outdoor recreation. By the 1920s, the area’s snowclad peaks, hot springs, and trout-filled lakes and streams had already made the Eastern Sierra 

a recreational paradise for residents of Los Angeles. The vision of shotgun-toting ranchers 

defending their land and water against grasping urban bureaucrats resonated with Americans 

nostalgic for their rural roots, but failed to speak to the economic realities that would shape 

the region’s future.4 
Chapter Fourteen Regional Context: The Mammoth Lakes Sierra 

Devils Postpile, 1935. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

The Mammoth Tourism Industry 

Los Angeles’s diversion of Owens River water did not directly impact the Mammoth area until 

the 1930s, when the city extended its network of aqueducts and pipelines north into the upper 

Owens River basin. By then, many of the small family farms and ranches that dotted the area 

in the late nineteenth century had already been replaced by rustic resorts, fishing lodges, and 

pack stations catering to Southern California recreation seekers. Improvements to Interstate 

Highway 395 in the mid-1930s increased the flood of tourists north into the region even as 

the LADWP continued to siphon water southward. By the start of World War II, the Eastern 

Sierra had become both a resource hinterland and a backyard playground of Los Angeles. 

The Mammoth area served as the hub of this new regional recreation economy. The first tourist 

lodge was opened sometime around the turn of century by homesteader Charles F. Wildasinn. 

Years later, Mammoth resident Dorothy Cook recalled family vacations at the Wildasinn 

Hotel in the first decade of the twentieth century: “What a wonderful place Mammoth was 

for youngsters as we were. The two-story hotel had a steep narrow stairway to the four guest 

rooms. The lobby was artistically decorated with a frieze of red-brown Manzanita branches 

all around the burlap covered walls.”5 At this time, reaching the Mammoth area required 

navigating the rough dirt track running north from Bishop up Sherwin Grade and along the 

western edge of Long Valley. While some visitors drove themselves, others paid the $7.50 fare 

to ride the Bishop–Mono Lake Auto Stage Line. The area’s difficult access, combined with its 

stunning vistas and plentiful trout, gave it a rustic appeal that drew an increasing number of 

adventurous tourists over the ensuing decades.6 

Summer cabins also began cropping up around Mammoth City and up into the Mammoth 

Lakes basin in this period. Most of the cabin builders hailed from Los Angeles. In 1914, 

two couples, the Barkers and the Carters, decided to vacation “up there.” To them the area 

seemed “a mountain paradise far away across strange country where one would find peace and 

freedom to camp and fish in lake or stream.” In 1917, they bought land from local cattleman 

Charlie Summers and built a cabin from logs hauled in from the surrounding mountains. The 

area offered a glimpse into the Old West for these urban visitors, and Olive Barker recalled 

192 
Hollywood Comes to the Eastern Sierra 

heading down to the ranch to “watch Charlie Summers and his cowboys having a roundup 

and branding.” They would also swim in the Whitmore pool in Long Valley, or stop at the 

Casa Diablo hot spring where North Fork Mono and Paiute groups continued to gather to 

trade and socialize.7 

By 1918, Charlie Summers had recognized that tourism was the future of the region. That 

year, he converted his ranch in the meadow east of the Wildasinn Hotel into a lodge, store, 

and pack station. Summers’s Mammoth Camp became the center of the local tourist economy 

over the next decade and some locals followed his lead. In 1923, Frank Benney of Bishop built 

a cabin at Lake George from which he sold handmade boats for local fishing guides then soon 

after, as increasing numbers of fishermen in the area began demanding a place to eat, Benney 

and his wife opened the popular Mammoth Lakes Bakery and Lunch Room. The Summers 

family also continued to expand their operations. In 1932, Charlie’s son Lloyd opened the 

Reds Meadow Resort and Pack Station at the endpoint of the Middle Fork Valley mining road. 

Soon after, Charlie’s youngest son Charlie Jr. and his wife Altha began running the Agnew 

Meadow Pack Camp a few miles to the north. 

Most of the tourist development in the 1920s and 1930s was initiated by Southern Californians 

who were not originally from the Mammoth Lakes area. In 1915, a group of Los Angeles 

businessmen bought a large tract of land outside Mammoth City. In the early 1920s, the group 

hired local carpenters to build several “handsome log cabins” that they then operated as a full 

service resort and dining room. In 1924, Palm Springs artists Stephen and Beatrice Willard 

chose the Mammoth Lakes basin as the location for a summer studio. From their cabin and 

studio at Twin Lakes, the couple greeted tourists and sold postcards and paintings into the 

1960s. Through the 1920s and 1930s, other urban transplants built lodges, stores, restaurants, 

and guide services from Long Valley up to the Lakes Basin. In the process, these neonatives, to 

use historian Hal Rothman’s term, transformed the region into a romanticized representation 

of the rural Old West and a mountain playground for urban tourists.8 

With improvements made to Highway 395 and other regional roads in the mid-1930s, 

Mammoth became accessible in winter, setting off a commercial skiing boom that further 

transformed the region. In 1941, Dave McCoy built the first rope tow on Mammoth Mountain 

and that year, the Inyo Register reported that over 250 skiers visited McCoy’s Mammoth ski 

park over Thanksgiving weekend. The population explosion in Southern California following 

World War II—together with rising affluence, better roads, and more durable cars—fueled a 

massive increase in winter visitation. In 1955, McCoy built the first double chairlift on the 

north face of the mountain and by the 1970s, was hosting as many as 20,000 skiers per day.9 

Hollywood Comes to the Eastern Sierra 

The link between the Eastern Sierra and Los Angeles was further reflected in the area’s frequent 

use as a filming location for Hollywood studios. Hundreds of B-grade westerns and colonial 

motif movies were shot in the region beginning in the 1920s, most in the Alabama Hills in 

the shadow of Mount Whitney between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence. Filming 

was intermittent, but when the studios showed up, motels filled to capacity and local ranchers 

were paid handsomely to provide cattle and mounts. The big studios “left a lot of money here” 

recalled one local ranch hand who also worked as an extra on a number of films.10 

In 1934, Inyo County Catholic priest Father John Crowley, one of the region’s most ardent 

boosters, described an unusual hunting trip in the Alabama hills. Instead of the usual game, he 

ran across “four hawks, a leopard and an elephant.” These exotic animals were there, Crowley 

193 
Chapter Fourteen Regional Context: The Mammoth Lakes Sierra 

revealed, for the filming of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. “The Paramount Corporation is on 

location in my backyard, and the Sierras have become, for the nonce, the Himalayas and 

Mount Whitney right up the company street, if you please, will probably emerge as Khyber 

Pass.” Local Paiutes were also hired as extras, reflecting their continuing role in the shifting 

labor market of the Eastern Sierra. This “ruined my ethnology,” an exasperated Crowley wrote: 

“I did not know I had a friend in the land of Mahatma Gandhi until half a dozen coppercolored, be-whiskered natives hailed me in good Americanese. They were the town boys, who 

had ridden horses before they learned to walk. Even unshaven Grevy Fitzgerald looked quite 

Sikh, or is it Bengalese?”11 

A few films were also shot farther north in the Mammoth and Reds Meadow areas. In 1934, 

“The Trail Beyond,” starring a youthful John Wayne, featured a dramatic canoe chase down 

the Middle Fork San Joaquin. In the scene, just before a wounded soldier is swept over the 

falls in a canoe, Wayne’s character dives into the river and pulls the man to safety. At the film’s 

climax, Wayne and the principal villain duke it out near the lip of a basalt cliff as pumice dust 

swirls around them. In the end, the villain is shot, and we see his body plummet from the 

cliff.12 

Notes 

1.	 Norris Hundley, The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

2001), 158–62, 171. 

2.	 Quoted in Rothman, Greening of a Nation? 27. 

3.	 Walton, Western Times and Water Wars, 160–82. 

4.	 Ibid., 199; and Hundley, Great Thirst, 165. 

5.	 Quoted in Adele Reed, Old Mammoth (Palo Alto, CA: Genny Smith Books, 1982), 44. 

6.	 Ibid., 51. 

7.	 Ibid., 63–64. 

8.	 Rothman, Devils Bargains. 

9.	 Reed, Old Mammoth, 161–62. 

10.	 Walton, Western Times and Water Wars, 213–14. 

11.	 Father John Crowley, under his pen-name Inyokel, “Thoughts on Movie Production in Lone Pine,” Sage and 

Tumbleweed , October 7, 1934. 

12.	 The Trail Beyond, 1935; and Jean Riggs Tanner, “Part 1: The Challenging 1960s,” The Album: Times & Tales 

Inyo–Mono (1996): 53. 

194 
Chapter Fifteen 

Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation
 

I

n summer 1930, greenhorn packer Norman “Ike” Livermore Jr. set off on a weeklong traverse 

of the John Muir Trail with veteran packer Mon Griggs and four clients. On the fifth night, the 

group camped west of the Minaret divide at the “77 Corral,” a notoriously raucous gathering 

point for sheepherders and cattlemen. During the night, the stock scattered, leading to a late 

start the next morning. Griggs reassured Livermore that though it had been a hard day, that 

night they would end up “in the most beautiful camp in the whole mountains.” When they 

arrived at Pumice Flat north of Devils Postpile, however, Livermore was disappointed to find a 

valley full of automobiles instead of the “great Shangri-la place” he had been expecting. Griggs 

had been unaware of the construction of the Minaret Summit mining road a few years earlier.1 

In later years, Livermore pointed to this experience as pivotal in shaping his subsequent efforts— 

first as a leader of the Sierra Club and later as Governor Reagan’s secretary of resources—to 

fight proposals to extend roads into the High Sierra backcountry. For him, the Middle Fork 

Valley represented an idyllic wilderness camp better left undeveloped and accessible only to 

those willing to pack in by foot or stock. Although the car campers he encountered had a 

more liberal view of access, many of them also regarded the rustic character of the valley and 

its difficult access to be its most valuable qualities. Until the late 1970s, the unpaved access 

road over Minaret Summit remained a narrow, bone- and vehicle-jarring affair that turned 

away many casual visitors. In general, the campers, fishermen, hikers, mountain climbers, and 

packers that frequented the area endured the punishing road year after year, recognizing that 

to improve it or extend it westward beyond the intervening Ritter Range could ruin the rustic 

qualities that made the valley worth visiting. “Those who braved its dust, chuckholes, and six 

sharp zig-zags,” recalled Dorothy Verret who spent nineteen summers at the Reds Meadow 

guard station with her husband Forest Ranger Lee Verret, “felt that they had really earned their 

entrance into one of the loveliest places in all the Grand Sierra Nevada.”2 

These impressions of the Middle Fork Valley as a sanctuary for more rustic forms of recreation 

reflected Americans’ changing views of the relationship between recreation and preservation 

in the twentieth century. As national parks and other public lands became more accessible 

and more popular, conceptions of an appropriate wilderness experience changed to fit the 

times. Beginning in the 1920s, Aldo Leopold, Robert Marshall, and the other founders of the 

Wilderness Society called for the establishment of roadless wilderness areas in national forests 

to guard against their destruction by hordes of automobile tourists.3 By the late 1950s, the 

Sierra Club had all but reversed its earlier stance on recreational development in national parks 

as necessary for building popular support for preservation. Instead, the club began to challenge 

development-oriented Park Service programs like Mission 66, which called for improvements 

to park roads and structures to accommodate rapid increases in visitation.4 

Most critics of road building and other forms of development were not opposed to all forms 

of recreation. Instead, they were concerned with defining the types of recreation that would 

be appropriate in national parks and wilderness settings. By the 1960s, questions about access, 

regional economics, and the ecological and aesthetic impacts of certain recreational behaviors 
Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

Devils Postpile camp, 1935. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

and technologies became as important to the management and public enjoyment of national 

parks and other federal lands as traditional concerns over resource extraction. 

These considerations shaped management priorities and visitor expectations at Devils Postpile 

as the Middle Fork Valley evolved into a key component of the Mammoth Lakes recreational 

complex. During the twentieth century, the Middle Fork San Joaquin and nearby lakes and 

streams became popular among enthusiasts of the emerging sport of fly-fishing. The monument 

also provided access to the John Muir Trail, and served as a popular departure point for hiking 

and mountain climbing in the surrounding High Sierra. The Eastern Sierra pack-stock industry 

also had roots in the Mammoth Lakes Sierra, and Devils Postpile, Rainbow Falls, and other 

features of the Middle Fork Valley became popular destinations for pack trips out of Reds 

Meadow, Agnew Meadows, and the Mammoth Lakes basin. 

Recreation had a profound influence on the monument and the surrounding area. Between the 

1950s and 1980s, local conservationists, recreational users, and recreational businesses fought 

and successfully blocked a proposed trans-Sierra highway and extended the wilderness areas 

west of Devils Postpile. In the process, they ensured that the Middle Fork Valley, including the 

monument, would remain a rustic retreat tied to the Eastern Sierra tourist market. Over time, 

conflicts over the environmental impacts of recreation also developed between pack-station 

operators, hikers, fly fishermen, bait fishers, and other recreational user groups, reflecting the 

contested meanings of wilderness in late twentieth-century American culture. 

The Making of a Wild Trout Water: Fly-Fishing the Middle Fork 

San Joaquin 

During the twentieth century, fly-fishing moved beyond its roots in elite British and 

northeastern American culture to become a popular national pastime centered in the American 

West. In the early century, the intricately tied flies and delicate casting techniques made flyfishing an appealing alternative to bait fishing for West Coast sportsman’s groups concerned 

as much with the aesthetics of the sport as with actually catching fish. In the 1930s, and 

especially after World War II, a new generation of fly-fishing entrepreneurs—many of them 

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The Making of a Wild Trout Water: Fly-Fishing the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

recent migrants from Eastern cities—capitalized on the sport’s emerging popularity in the 

region, crafting products and images that reflected the frontier romanticism at the heart of 

American conceptions of the West.5 

The fact that most rivers in the American West could be accessed via public land also 

contributed to the rising popularity of the sport in the region. Referring to the appeal of 

the work of Norman Maclean, author of the 1976 western classic A River Runs through It, 

historian Paul Schullery observes that while “many readers... seem to admire [Maclean] 

for celebrating the old-timey independence of the western angler, we dare not forget that the 

public domain is the ‘It’ that the river runs through.”6 

Prior to its development for irrigation and hydroelectricity in the late nineteenth century, 

the San Joaquin River was a major thoroughfare for anadromous species including steelhead 

and salmon. These large fish, when they returned from the Pacific Ocean to spawn, were an 

important food resource for Native communities on the west slope of the range. Returning 

fish made it at least as far as the steep canyon upstream from the juncture of the Middle Fork 

and main stem San Joaquin Rivers. Resident rainbow trout may have been present up to the 

base of Rainbow Falls, but the falls blocked the migration of fish farther upstream. 

In the 1870s, the large population of native wild trout in Fish Creek, a tributary of the Middle 

Fork San Joaquin south of Devils Postpile, provided both food and recreation for miners in the 

Mammoth Lakes basin. While miners and local residents began planting trout fingerlings in 

higher elevation lakes and streams in the mid-nineteenth century, introduced trout were slow 

to populate the more remote and lightly used areas. Even as late as the 1890s, trout may not 

have been present in the Middle Fork above Rainbow Falls. When Theodore Solomons passed 

through the area in 1892, he noted that the presence of trout in Fish Creek meant there were 

“no more falls down stream on the San Joaquin,” since the sheepherders who frequented the 

area were not inclined to “waste . . . precious time stocking streams.”7 

As the Middle Fork Valley gained notoriety for its recreational potential through the first 

decades of the twentieth century, local people occasionally planted rainbow, brook, golden, 

and brown trout in the river and in area lakes and streams to satisfy growing demand. The 

California Department of Fish and Game began regularly stocking the Middle Fork San 

Joaquin in the 1930s.8 By the 1950s, fishing demand often overwhelmed the state’s stocking 

program, and fish were being pulled out of the river almost as fast as the stocking truck could 

dump them in. Visitor surveys showed that at least half of all visitors in the Middle Fork Valley 

were there to fish. The geologic features of the monument were, for many, an interesting 

diversion in their broader recreational agenda. By the mid-1960s, the river was being stocked 

with 17,000 to 20,000 fingerling trout each summer.9 

Over time, fishing demand also sparked a conflict over Los Angeles’s efforts to divert water from 

Mono Lake and the Upper Owens River basin. In 1940, the LADWP reached an agreement 

with the Department of Fish and Game and local fishing interests to maintain a hatchery on 

Hot Creek in Long Valley. The hatchery supplied fish stocks for area lakes and streams where 

sufficient water remained. However, as the LADWP tapped nearly all of the feeder streams 

to Mono Lake and the Upper Owens River basin, fishable stream waters disappeared rapidly. 

When in 1952 the LADWP began diverting additional water from the Long Valley Dam for 

hydroelectric power generation, drying up the stretch of Owens River between the Upper and 

Center Gorge power plants, fishing groups in the area protested. In 1953, these groups earned 

a concession from the LADWP that fish habitats in Hot Creek and certain sections of the 

Owens River would be maintained. Meanwhile, the fish hatchery would continue to produce 

stocks for planting in area waters.10 

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Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

Displaying the catch, 1940. Note the fly rods. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

While most recreational fishers depended on the maintenance of fish-stocking programs, 

many fly fishers in the Middle Fork Valley in the early postwar years preferred the experience 

of pursuing wild trout in a remote setting. For Charles Nemoy, a frequent visitor through 

the 1940s and 1950s, the experience began with the drive over Minaret Summit. Nemoy 

eventually learned to remove the brackets and running boards attached to the frame of his car 

to prevent them from grinding over the exposed roots and rocks covering the road. Once at 

the pass, the road narrowed even more. “One would have to put a wheel on the solid ground 

to stay off the soft shoulder...a decision had to be made on which rock side to use. Using 

the low gear and the brakes it was exciting to guess right.” Nemoy considered himself and his 

fishing companions lucky that they “never met anyone on the switchback” where the road 

turned south to parallel the Middle Fork San Joaquin.11 

Upon arriving at Reds Meadow, Nemoy’s group would drain the radiator and engine and let 

the car sit for the duration of the trip. He considered the Middle Fork Valley to be “the best 

of the High Sierras,” with its “good campsites, big trees everywhere, the hot showers [at Reds 

Meadow], Devil’s Postpile, Rainbow Falls, the Gorge, Sotcher and Starkweather Lakes,” and 

most important, “the perfect fly fishing San Joaquin River.” The river’s attraction for Nemoy 

was not its large trout, of which there were few compared to other fishing spots in the Eastern 

Sierra, but its smaller trout that “would come from the deep water like a bullet toward the 

fly.”12 

For Nemoy and other fly fishers of this era, the sport was about more than simply catching 

fish—its appeal came from the aesthetics of technique, the thrill of the strike, and the 

understanding that success at fly-fishing required knowledge of its specialized gear. Nemoy 

wore “polarized glasses” in order to reduce glare on the water so that he could see the fish 

charging toward his fly. The fly itself was a hand-tied, nearly weightless simulation of one of 

the variety of insects that constituted the trout diet. The gear involved a long rod with the 

reel positioned at the back as a counterweight, which because the fly had almost no weight, 

required the fly fisher to use the weight of the line to propel the cast forward in a fluid backand-forth motion that took considerable time and patience to master. Fly fishers also learned 

to read the currents of the river in order to drift their flies over the most likely trout lies. On 

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The Making of a Wild Trout Water: Fly-Fishing the Middle Fork San Joaquin 

A full stringer of trout, 1940. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

the Middle Fork, Nemoy and his fishing companions “learned to fish downstream.” They 

allowed the current to remove the slack from the line and leader while maintaining the fly in a 

natural-looking dead drift.13 

The setting was also important. Fly fishers sought the most secluded trout-filled pools where few 

anglers had been before. Nemoy’s favorite fishing holes were downstream from Rainbow Falls. 

Reaching these spots required a long trek along an unmaintained trail that often disappeared 

into thick brush. Unlike the trout in the pools near the campgrounds upstream that were 

generally hatchery-reared recent plants, many of the fish in the lower section of the river 

were either native fish or wild offspring of planted fish. The area saw limited fishing pressure, 

allowing many fish to survive and reproduce. These wild fish were also more conditioned to 

the natural food supply of the river and were more likely to strike a drifted fly.14 

Fly-fishing was not an entirely solitary experience. Nemoy was part of a small group of locals 

and frequent visitors who over the years discovered the best fishing spots and refined techniques 

for success in the various areas. On one trip, Nemoy accompanied Marie and her husband 

Faye, the owners of Marie’s Diner in Bishop, on a fly-fishing trip to Shadow Lake 6 miles 

northwest of Devils Postpile. On that outing, Marie, “one of the best fly fisherwomen in the 

Bishop area,” taught Nemoy how to catch elusive golden trout on Shadow Creek using a 

“grey hackle peacock fly” cast upstream toward the head of the pool “with the line leading the 

leader.”15 

The rustic fishing and camping experience Nemoy enjoyed in the 1940s and 1950s changed 

as visitation to the area increased during the 1960s. While many of the fishing holes below 

Rainbow Falls remained infrequently visited, greater numbers of campers and recreational 

users in the monument and on the Forest Service land created a need for more stringent 

regulations, which, from the perspective of Nemoy and other longtime visitors, altered the 

overall experience of a fishing trip to the Middle Fork Valley. It was no longer possible to pull 

a car off the road into the forest and set up camp; camping was limited to designated sites in 

increasingly crowded campgrounds, and fish and game officials often showed up to check for 

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Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

licenses. The fishing experience itself also declined. Improvements in spinning reel technology 

in the 1950s made it easy for just about anyone to cast bait or lures for trout, and state fish 

and game officials struggled to keep pace with increased fishing pressure on the Middle Fork 

and area lakes. 

While the Forest Service continued to view trout stocking as an important component of 

recreational management, the Park Service gradually took a more skeptical view. As early as 

1921, the Ecological Society of America began opposing introduction of nonnative species in 

national parks, and in the late 1920s and 1930s, biologists both inside and outside the agency 

noted the threat introduced species posed for native fish. In the 1950s, Yellowstone became the 

first park to end nonnative stocking due to the rapid decline of its native cutthroat populations. 

A few other parks implemented creel limits and bait restrictions to preserve existing fisheries. 

Still, most parks continued hatchery programs and nonnative fish planting well into the 1970s 

despite frequent warnings from biologists.16 

Efforts to eliminate stocking and regulate fishing in the national park system during this time 

were intended to protect native species, but at many parks, they had the effect of creating a 

specifically wild trout fishing experience, making the pursuit of wild trout even more popular 

as the environmental movement took hold. When the Park Service eliminated fish stocking at 

Devils Postpile in 1971, the new policy did not significantly lessen the park’s appeal as a fishing 

destination. In fact, the predominance of wild trout in the Middle Fork San Joaquin eventually 

increased its prestige among the growing numbers of fly fishers in California and the Eastern 

Sierra. Park managers in the 1980s regarded the monument’s “wild fish fauna” as an important 

resource “enjoyed by hundreds of anglers each season.”17 In the 1980s and 1990s, fly-fishing 

magazines and regional guidebooks made special note of the Middle Fork San Joaquin where 

it passed through the monument as one of the few streams where a fly fisher could experience 

a fishing “grand slam”—catching four species of wild trout including rainbow, brown, golden, 

and brook trout. This recognition influenced the California Department of Fish and Game’s 

decision to designate the portion of the river flowing through Devils Postpile a “Wild Trout 

Water” in 1995.18 

The John Muir Trail and Backcountry Recreation 

This increased emphasis on fly-fishing and wild trout at Devils Postpile reflected a broader shift 

in how Americans viewed wilderness recreation. By the late twentieth century, it was no longer 

considered appropriate to engage with wilderness in any way one saw fit. As the popularity 

of outdoor recreation increased, leading to larger crowds and damage to natural resources, 

specific social rules and agency regulations dictated the behaviors and technologies permitted 

for recreation in national parks and wilderness areas. This change is particularly evident in the 

history of backcountry recreation along the John Muir Trail corridor, which included Devils 

Postpile and the Middle Fork San Joaquin valley. 

The construction of the John Muir Trail was closely linked to the emergence of the Sierra Club 

as an important influence in the American conservation movement. The club was organized in 

1892 by John Muir and a group of prominent Bay Area professors and businessmen. The idea 

was to build a political constituency for preservation by bringing people to the mountains for 

invigorating recreation. The organization’s early history as a hiking club significantly influenced 

its transformation into the nation’s leading conservation organization after World War II. Club 

members’ efforts in the prewar years to blaze and map a network of trails through the Sierra 

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The John Muir Trail and Backcountry Recreation 

backcountry and to develop safe, enjoyable means to use those trails informed Americans’ 

shifting attitudes about wilderness recreation in the postwar years. 

The idea of creating a trail to run the length of the High Sierra is usually credited to Theodore 

Solomons who, between 1892 and 1895, mapped a cross-country route from Yosemite to 

Mount Whitney. Although he described the rugged country south of Mount Ritter as “terra 

incognita [sic],” it only appeared unexplored because its recent inclusion in Yosemite National 

Park had made the area off-limits to mining and sheep grazing.19 Solomons was thus not 

mapping a route through pure wilderness but linking a network of preexisting sheep and 

mining paths. In fact, his accounts of his travels through areas not included in the national 

park are peppered with descriptions of encounters with sheepherders who provided him with 

food and directions. Solomons’s significance was in interpreting this landscape through a 

different cultural lens. Rather than viewing the High Sierra as a collection of mining and 

grazing sites, he presented it as a single region to be valued for its scenery and wild terrain 

rather than its minerals, forage, or timber. “As a scenic mountain tour,” Solomons wrote of his 

route, “I doubt if the world affords its like.”20 

Through the early twentieth century, the Sierra Club worked to improve Sierra trails. In 

1914, Fresno County provided funds to complete a trail along the Middle Fork Kings River. 

Afterward, club member Meyer Lissner of Los Angeles suggested that state funds might also be 

secured for building and maintaining High Sierra trails. The following year, the club convinced 

the state legislature to appropriate $10,000 for the construction of a cross-country trail to 

roughly follow Solomons’s route between Mount Whitney and Yosemite. The trail was named 

to honor John Muir who had died two years earlier. The club then consulted with Forest Service 

and State Engineer Wilbur F. McClure who ultimately selected the route. In subsequent years, 

further appropriations were dedicated to the trail. The final section connecting Bubbs Creek 

to the head of the Kern River was completed in 1931.21 

The High Sierra region through which the Muir Trail passed was important to the development 

of the Sierra Club’s views of recreation and preservation. One of the club’s initial aims was 

to “render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast.” This notion reflected Muir’s 

conviction that “if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the 

trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.” In 

1901, club Secretary William Colby convinced the board of directors to initiate an annual 

summer outing to introduce members to the joys of wilderness recreation, and to build a 

stronger constituency for conservation. That summer, Colby led the first Sierra Club “high 

trip” to Tuolumne Meadows. Over the ensuing decades, the high trip became the primary 

means by which the club introduced new members to the Sierra landscape.22 

The character of Sierra Club outings changed over time to reflect shifting ideas about what 

John Muir called the “right manners of the wilderness.”23 In the early years, the high trip 

involved a train of up to one hundred mules carrying supplies for twice as many campers. 

Initially, the club would set up a series of camps from which day hikes and climbing expeditions 

would be mounted. These camps were intensely social affairs, with campers putting on musical 

performances and theater productions (including Ansel Adams’s popular “Trudgin’ Women”). 

Mountain courtships were also common, with club leaders Francis Farquhar and Richard 

Leonard both meeting their future wives during high trips. 

As the club became more experienced with high mountain travel, some members began 

branching off from the larger high trip to pursue more vigorous forms of recreation. During 

the 1931 outing, Robert Underhill of the Appalachian Mountain Club introduced European 

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Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

alpine rope techniques to the club on a climb of Unicorn Peak near Tuolumne Meadows. Over 

the next decade, Sierra Club climbers developed safer belay techniques that allowed for ascents 

of Mounts Ritter and Banner, the east face of Mount Whitney, and the Higher and Lower 

Cathedral Spires in Yosemite Valley.24 

Some younger club members also sought to distance themselves from the social scene of the 

high trip through “knapsacking.” In 1935, in his first article for the Sierra Club Bulletin, 

David Brower described his time spent with minimal belongings far from established trails 

and constant interaction with mules and people. “Who, once having enjoyed it, does not long 

for the deep satisfaction of beholding a panorama from a vantage-point, access to which has 

cost something in effort and training; of knowing that here is a frontier still; of being aloof, 

and yet in close communion; of being awed by the great, but remaining proud of the success 

of the organized effort of the small?”25 In the late 1930s, the club began offering knapsack and 

smaller burro outings to accommodate its more independent, solitude-seeking members. 

Others undertook independent excursions into the mountains for the purposes of blazing new 

paths and ascending unclimbed peaks. Accounts of these trips were published in the Sierra 

Club Bulletin, which became a clearinghouse for information on hiking and climbing along 

the Muir Trail corridor. In 1929, Walter A. Starr Jr. (known as Peter), son of prominent Sierra 

Club member Walter Starr, began compiling a guide to the Muir Trail and the areas through 

which it passed. Over the next four years, Starr ventured over nearly every trail, pass, and peak 

along the Muir Trail corridor, often by himself, recording scenic highlights, route markers, and 

advice for navigating the difficult terrain. 

In August 1933, Starr went missing somewhere in the Minarets west of Devils Postpile. In the 

ensuing weeks, family members coordinated with local law enforcement and the Sierra Club 

to conduct the most extensive search conducted in the Sierra to date. On August 24, a week 

after Peter’s father had called off the search, a persistent Norman Clyde located Starr’s broken 

body on a ledge on Michael Minaret. Later that year, Walter Starr published his son’s notes as 

Starr’s Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region. The book became an essential 

reference for Muir Trail hikers, providing a section-by-section description of the “continuous 

strip of blue lakes running down the map immediately west of the Sierra Crest.”26 

Even as Starr’s guide hit the presses, Brower and others began to sense that the High Sierra, 

which had previously been nearly the exclusive domain of the Sierra Club, was in danger of 

being overrun by increasing numbers of visitors. In 1930, veteran outing organizer Marion 

Randall Parsons wondered whether the club should continue encouraging visitation. “We 

banished the sheep from the national parks,” she wrote, “yet the parking areas and vast 

spreading campgrounds are treading down the mountain meadows no less surely, no less 

devastatingly than the trampling hooves.” In response, she asked members to consider revising 

the club’s aims: “Our problem is no longer how to make the mountains better traveled and 

better known. Rather it would seem, how from the standpoint of the mountain-lover ‘to render 

accessible’ may be more truly compatible with ‘to enjoy.”’27 It was no longer enough to simply 

get people to the mountains. In Parson’s view, the club also had a responsibility to teach them 

how to enjoy the wilderness appropriately. 

Recreational considerations continued to shape wilderness politics in the postwar decades as 

an unprecedented influx of recreation seekers flocked to national parks and national forests. 

Increased affluence stemming from wartime industrialization—in combination with better 

roads, better automobiles, and rapid population growth in western cities and suburbs—allowed 

more Americans than ever to visit the Sierra Nevada and other natural areas. The availability 

of improved outdoor equipment also spurred the growing popularity of recreation. During the 

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The John Muir Trail and Backcountry Recreation 

Hikers on the Beck Lake trail, 1939. (Photo: Lester Craig. Courtesy of Nancy Wirth) 

war, the Army’s elite Tenth Mountain Division—composed of many of the best climbers and 

skiers in the nation including several Sierra Club members—developed and improved on new 

technologies including aluminum-frame backpacks, lightweight butane camp stoves, down 

sleeping bags, waterproof nylon outerwear, nylon climbing ropes, and other tools that eased the 

hardships of extended backcountry travel. Immediately after the war, much of this equipment 

became available at Army surplus stores. Over time, manufacturers improved on wartime 

designs, spurring the growth of a more specialized wilderness-oriented outdoor industry. 

Shifts in American youth culture and politics also fueled the “backpacking revolution” of the 

1960s and 1970s. The explosion of environmental awareness and political action after the 

first Earth Day in 1970 sparked a broad popular interest in wilderness recreation. The youth 

counterculture of that era also valued wilderness as a source of authentic experience, prompting 

a rising numbers of young people to venture into wilderness areas for recreation. By 1973, 

Backpacker Magazine estimated that some six million backpackers were tramping through 

public lands each year, nearly three times the number recorded six years before.28 

The John Muir Trail corridor became one of the most sought after backpacking destinations 

during this period.29 As it was one of the lowest elevation points on the trail and the only 

place along the entire route (with the exception of the end point at Yosemite Valley) where 

visitors could access the trail from their cars, Devils Postpile served as a popular access point. 

From the 1960s onward, park managers struggled to accommodate the increasing numbers 

of backpackers’ cars left in the monument parking lot. The most ambitious hikers—“through 

hikers” attempting the entire 211-mile length of the trail—often placed food caches at the 

monument prior to embarking. The monument also served as a staging area for technical 

rock climbing in the Minarets. In 1979, veteran Sierra climbers Alan Steck and Steve Roper 

included the southeast face of Clyde Minaret, accessible via the Minaret Lakes trail from Devils 

Postpile, in their book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, drawing further attention to the 

30 area.

In addition to bringing more people to the valley, backpacking and climbing also led to 

increased focus on safety within the monument. Devils Postpile became “the bottom of 

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Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

the funnel” where accidents were typically reported. The monument frequently served as 

a “command post” for search-and-rescue operations. Even though most accidents occurred 

outside monument boundaries, Devils Postpile was the nearest staffed ranger station, and 

many people in the area went there first if anything happened.31 

For the government agencies charged with managing 

the Sierra backcountry, increasing wilderness use 

required more stringent regulations. By the late 1960s, 

the growing numbers of wilderness devotees heading to 

the mountains were threatening to “love the wilderness 

to death.” In Yosemite, carrying capacity studies (based 

loosely on techniques borrowed from range science) 

revealed that backpackers were trampling fragile 

meadows, polluting lakes and streams, and disrupting 

each other’s wilderness experiences by their mere 

presence. Beginning in the 1960s, Sequoia and Kings 

Canyon National Parks began requiring backpackers 

to obtain permits before heading into the backcountry. backpackers resting in Soda Springs Meadow, 1970s. 

National Monument image collection) The permit process apparently inspired many campers 

to clean up after themselves. Backcountry ranger Dana 

Abell noted “an amazing improvement in camping manners since names and addresses have 

been required and kept on file.”32 In 1974, the Park Service implemented quotas limiting 

the number of backcountry campers in Yosemite while the Forest Service established quotas 

for use of the popular Mount Whitney trail. In the Mammoth area, Inyo officials considered 

establishing several designated backcountry campgrounds in the Middle Fork Valley along the 

Muir Trail to accommodate increased use, and to prevent backpackers from camping in fragile 

meadows and near lakeshores.33 

Wilderness enthusiasts also took it upon themselves to define standards of behavior for 

appropriate wilderness recreation. The Sierra Club mantras “Going Light,” and later “Walking 

Softly in the Wilderness” reflected this rising emphasis on personal responsibility in the 

backcountry. In the 1970s, many guidebook authors, outdoor equipment retailers, and 

outdoor recreation periodicals called for a “new wilderness ethic” requiring backcountry users 

to travel through the wilderness without changing it.34 Backpackers were to stay on trails, 

pack out their garbage, avoid cutting trees for firewood, and abstain from hunting or building 

shelters. These social rules formed the basis for the “Leave no Trace” ethic that became standard 

criteria for backpackers in the 1990s.35 

The High Sierra Packing Industry and the Recreational Politics 

of Preservation 

Pack mules have a long history in the Sierra Nevada and in the Mammoth region specifically. 

Early Spanish and American explorers relied on pack stock to navigate the steep trails and 

passes of the range. Mules and horses were also vital to the US Army in its efforts to subdue 

Native resistance in the Sierra in the 1850s and 1860s. Through the Gold Rush, prospectors 

used mule teams to pack supplies into the high mountains. In the 1870s, mules allowed for the 

development of mines in the Mammoth Lakes basin and in the Middle Fork Valley. Cattlemen 

in the Mammoth area packed in to the high mountain meadows in Cascade Valley and along 

the Middle Fork San Joaquin to graze their animals. Packers were also hired by government 

John Muir Trail 

(Devils Postpile 

204 
The High Sierra Packing Industry and the Recreational Politics of Preservation 

agencies to repair roads, build fire lookouts, plant trout, and shuttle supplies for backcountry 

geologic surveys.36 

As the Eastern Sierra packing business expanded, local packers were also hired by Hollywood 

studios shooting westerns and other films in the area. Some were hired for stunt work or to 

serve as extras. During his career, Thomas Jefferson, an Indian packer from Lone Pine, worked 

on the sets of various movies including Rawhide, Tarzan, Jungle Raiders, Desert Mysteries, and 

The Great Race, among others. Jefferson also packed a number of celebrities into the High 

Sierra including William Wyler, the director of Ben Hur; actor Robert Middleton; Jack Benny’s 

sidekick Eddie Anderson; as well as photographers Ansel Adams and Cedric Wright. 37 

Recreation provided an increasingly important source of income for Sierra packers during 

this period. In the early twentieth century, wealthy tourists hired packers for tours of the new 

national parks and extended excursions into the backcountry. Packers carried supplies between 

hunting camps and brought fishermen to the most productive lakes and streams. In the early 

years, mules carried everything from mattresses to kitchen ranges to rowboats over the rough 

Sierra backcountry trails for their clients. Mules were also essential for early tourist excursions 

into the Middle Fork Valley. In the Mammoth area, rancher Charlie Summers began packing 

tourists and fishermen over Mammoth Pass in 1918. In 1932, Lloyd and Sybil Summers 

opened the Reds Meadow Pack Station from which they led visitors south into Cascade Valley 

and east along the old French Trail.38 

The Sierra Club depended on Eastern Sierra packers for the annual high trip. Before World 

War II, most high trips were contracted with Charlie Roberts and his son Allie who maintained 

several pack stations along the Eastern Sierra front including one at Lake Mary supported by 

a corral at Pumice Flat. Roberts was one of the few packers with an outfit large enough to 

accommodate the two hundred or more club members who went on the annual outing, with 

Roberts’ pack mules carrying all of the bedding, tools, food, and cooking supplies needed 

for the month-long trip between camps. Safety was a primary consideration, requiring skill 

and experience to manage the upward of 75 to 120 mules and horses, as well as the outing 

participants who in general had little experience with pack animals. Packers were also usually 

responsible for blazing trails and selecting appropriate campsites.39 

Over time, the high trip began to generate some ill will within the Sierra packing fraternity. 

Norman “Ike” Livermore Jr.—who inherited the responsibility for packing the high trip from 

Charlie and Allie Roberts after World War II—credited this animosity to the size of the trip 

and to the Sierra Club’s often proprietary attitude toward the High Sierra. Some packers 

resented that the Sierra Club “would go anywhere in the mountains it wanted to,” Livermore 

recalled. “The informal rule from the packers’ point of view is that a trip should either start or 

end at their pack station, that there’s no such thing as a nomadic packer that can go anywhere 

he wants.” 40 

Packers and so-called hightrippers were also products of different cultural worlds. In a 1977 

essay, Livermore described the mutual bewilderment that developed in the postwar decades 

between packers and Sierra Club outing participants: 

Hightrippers’ opinions of packers seem to range all the way from disdain through indifference 

up to admiration....Packers, on the other hand, have a rather uniform and understandable 

if not quite fair opinion of the Club members...a feeling of good natured sympathy 

which is best expressed by the term “footburner.” Packers, born and raised with stock, never 

have been able to see how people could derive pleasure from hiking... they feel genuinely 

205 
Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

sorry for what they regard as misguided souls burning their feet up. And when it comes to 

rock climbing, of course, a packer definitely loses all sympathy and comprehension. The 

whole subject is completely beyond him, and its devotees are living examples of life’s endless 

mysteries.41 

Such feelings led to some minor conflicts. Brower and Livermore, for instance, often disagreed 

over where to set up camp. While Brower wanted to camp on the rocky benches nearer to the 

high peaks to provide better access to the best climbing routes, Livermore vied for meadow 

camps that were farther from the high peaks and passes but provided ample forage for pack 

animals.42 

More serious concerns about the environmental impacts of packing also emerged during this 

time. The packing industry tended to cater to larger parties that paid more but also had 

a greater impact. As historian Louise A. Jackson explains, “ever larger and more elaborate 

campsites—including toilet areas, fire and garbage pits, and stock compounds, as well as the 

trampled tracks between them—were creating almost irreparable damage.” In response, both 

agencies enacted policies to regulate grazing of pack stock. The Forest Service began issuing 

grazing permits for stock operators in the first decade of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, 

the Park Service also began to more strictly regulate backcountry pack-stock grazing. In 1936, 

Park Service wildlife technician E. Lowell Sumner reported that “hardly a meadow in the Sierra 

remains in its primitive state. Unless active protection measures are taken now, the chance that 

these meadows will recover completely is slight.”43 

In general, packers resisted formal regulations, although most were willing to cooperate with 

federal agencies and the Sierra Club by voluntarily adopting less damaging practices. In 1941, 

the Sierra Club formed a committee on packing practices in the High Sierra. The committee 

recommended relocating fences, publishing instructions and maps for packers, and limiting 

use of certain fragile areas. While many packers accepted these measures, others continued to 

bring large parties to the most scenic spots, leaving behind trash, fire pits, makeshift shelters, 

and trampled vegetation.44 

In his report on the 1947 high trip, Brower asked club members to seriously consider the 

impact of mules on the High Sierra environment and on the overall experience of the outing. 

That year, the trip traveled from Agnew Meadows to Reds Meadow before continuing south 

along the Muir Trail to the Mono Recesses at the headwaters of the South Fork San Joaquin. 

The mules, Brower observed, “determined the itinerary” of the trip: “Could they reach the site 

in an easy day and make a back-tracking round trip next day for the balance of the supplies?” 

he asked. “Was feed for them near enough? Where in the general area were there enough 

bedsites . . . . and was there room enough between sleepers for the mules to run to and fro 

when they tired of eating and sought amusement?” Additional problems were encountered if 

another large party came through with the intention of setting up camp in the same area.45 

More important for Brower was the resulting damage to the fragile High Sierra meadows. 

The club had long been attentive when it came to minimizing impact and cleaning up after 

themselves. However, by the postwar years, increasing recreational use began to take its toll. 

Reflecting on the 1947 outing, Brower suggested that recreational users shared a responsibility 

for the condition of the landscape.46 To limit impacts, Brower called for “some criteria of use 

that will allow men who feel the need for inspiration . . . to take as much of it as they need 

from the wilderness with as little damage as possible to its source.” Packers were willing to work 

with the Sierra Club. In 1948, members of the High Sierra Packers Association (organized 

by Norman “Ike” Livermore Jr. in 1937) drew up a “packer’s code,” promising that members 

would use only the highest quality mules, equipment would be well serviced and up to date, 

206 
The High Sierra Packing Industry and the Recreational Politics of Preservation 

and stations would be kept clean. Packers also determined to limit grazing, maintain clean 

camps, and cooperate in fire prevention and suppression. They agreed to ensure the safety of 

their customers, to keep to existing trails, to close gates on drift fences, and to work with the 

Sierra Club to run a camp clean-up program for heavily used areas.47 

The Sierra packing industry boomed in the 1950s and early 1960s, even as scrutiny of its 

environmental impacts increased. A pack trip was a particularly attractive way to experience the 

high mountains for urban people and families with little experience in wilderness travel. It was 

also not as physically demanding as hiking; and prior to the development of compact, ultralight 

backpacking equipment, packing allowed visitors to cover long distances and experience the 

highest Sierra in relative comfort. By the early 1960s, approximately 1,500 mules were carting 

tourists and their gear along the John Muir Trail corridor each summer, about double the 

number in 1950.48 

The industry also changed in this period. While demand for 

pack trips increased, the numbers of pack stations decreased 

due to high overhead costs and the difficulties of sustaining 

profits in the competitive postwar recreation marketplace. The 

industry consolidated from around one hundred commercial 

outfits in the 1920s to about twenty-five in 1965. Twothirds of these outfits were located in the Eastern Sierra. 

The Summers family continued to operate in the Mammoth 

region, but most outfitters in the postwar years were relative 

newcomers. In 1960, Arizona cowboy Lou Roeser and his 

wife Marye (who had visited the area annually with her family 

from their home in Los Angeles since the 1930s) purchased 

the Mammoth Lakes Pack Station, which they ran until 

the 1990s. Also in 1960, Bob Tanner purchased the Reds 

Meadow Resort and Pack Station from Arch Mahan who 

had purchased it from Lloyd Summers in 1937. Tanner had 

learned the ropes of riding and packing at McGee Creek Pack 

Station where he worked summers while attending college in 

Redlands, California, in the 1950s.49 

Packers, both old timers and newcomers, were a fiercely independent lot and were notoriously 

mistrustful of government agencies and outsiders. When Livermore organized the High Sierra 

Packers Association in 1937, he also found that packers shared a common concern over Sierra 

roads. They hoped to “keep the High Sierra pristine,” both out of their love for the country, and 

to preserve the high-quality wilderness experience their clients desired. While the association 

generally served as a clearinghouse for “cursing the Park and Forest Services” over increasing 

regulations and inadequate trail work, beginning in the 1950s, many members also opposed 

the planned Minaret Summit highway, viewing the project as an example of the excesses of big 

government and big industry, and a threat to the integrity of the local economy.50 

In one sense, packers’ objection to the highway mirrored the Sierra Club’s increasingly hardline stance on wilderness as incompatible with roads. For packers, the appeal of the peaks, 

passes, and alpine basins west of Mammoth Lakes stemmed from the area’s difficult access, 

and the effort necessary to experience its most dramatic scenery. The feeling of solitude of a 

weeklong pack trip was as essential to the area’s wilderness character as the spectacular scenery. 

To allow greater access to the Mammoth Lakes Sierra via an all-weather highway would destroy 

the very qualities that made it wilderness. The road would “cause a great loss to the public 

207 

Lou and Marye Roeser, owners of Mammoth Lakes Pack 

Station, 1960s. (Courtesy of Lou and Marye Roeser) 
Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

of irreplaceable wilderness country...for the future generations who need a little breathing 

space from the problems of the space age,” wrote Lou and Marye Roeser in 1961.51 In 1965, 

Bob Tanner expressed concern that the Middle Fork Valley might suffer the fate of other areas 

in the Sierra if a highway were to pass through. “The southern portion of the Sierras has been 

destroyed by a maze of crossroads, and the wilderness concept is forever gone in that region,” 

he wrote.52 

In contrast to the Sierra Club, the local packers, guides, and recreational equipment 

retailers who fought the road were also motivated by profit considerations and a 

concern for the economic future of the Mammoth region. In 1956, Chamber of 

Commerce members in the Mammoth area met to formulate an official stance 

on the road proposal. “We have been for years an area of high caliber, attracting 

a definitely superior clientele,” they concluded. “It is felt that this clientele come 

to the Mammoth area repeatedly because it retains its natural primitive, peaceful 

condition, undisturbed by commercial development. A through highway would 

immediately impair and eventually totally destroy these qualities so long cherished 

by residents and tourists alike.” The success of the packing business, members 

recognized, hinged on maintaining “an attractive, vast ‘backcountry”’ free of roads 

or other modern facilities.53 Packers also feared that a highway would transform 

Mammoth from a “destination” to a place where people stopped briefly en route 

to somewhere else. Such a change threatened the stability of the industry and the 

familiarity that had developed between packers and their repeat clients over the 

54 years.

Even though packers played a central role in blocking the Minaret Summit highway, their 

economic focus and resistance to regulation placed them outside the dominant trend in 

conservation. Packers viewed the High Sierra wilderness from a different vantage point than 

the increasing numbers of backpackers tramping through the mountains on foot. In contrast 

to those visitors who viewed the mountains as a temporary escape from the drudgery of urban 

life, for packers, the Sierra Nevada was a home and a workplace. The wilderness character of 

the landscape was, for them, a tangible resource upon which their livelihoods depended. 

Guided pack trips were also different from independent backpack adventures. They were 

often cultural experiences as much as encounters with non-human nature. Packers—with their 

worn Levis, spurred boots, wide-brimmed hats, and stoic mannerisms—seemed products of 

an earlier era when the mythical Old West was still wild and the mountains were unexplored. 

While some were taciturn, others regaled their clients with campfire stories about the Indians, 

sheepmen, cavalry patrols, wranglers, and prospectors that had once roamed the High Sierra. 

From the 1940s to the 1960s, the most popular trip out of Reds Meadow Pack Station followed 

the route of the old French Trail to Summit Meadow to Sheep’s Crossing on the North Fork 

San Joaquin and on to the 77 Corral. Packers’ time spent in the mountains also gave them 

a certain historical cachet with their clients. Bud Steele, a veteran packer working the 1947 

Sierra Club high trip, was known to boast that he had “helped the Devil pack in to set up 

Devils Postpile.”55 

By the late 1960s, Americans’ preferences for wilderness recreation began to change. The faux 

frontier experience of packing had less appeal for urban/suburban baby boomers who generally 

held stricter, more idealized views of wilderness as a condition of pure nature. Some packers 

attributed this to a lack of experience with stock animals among many younger wilderness 

devotees.56 A greater attention to ecological considerations within the Forest and Park Services 

also affected the packing industry in this period. Land managers imposed regulations on 

208 

Mules crossing the Middle Fork 

San Joaquin River beneath 

Rainbow Falls. (Devils Postpile 

National Monument image 

collection) 
The High Sierra Packing Industry and the Recreational Politics of Preservation 

packers and other wilderness users in order to preserve water quality, to prevent the spread 

of invasive species, to protect meadows, and to ensure the feeling of solitude sought by other 

visitors. 

Packers had been resistant to formal regulation from the start, but the increasingly complexity 

of land policy in the 1960s and 1970s exacerbated disagreements. In 1965, Mammoth-area 

author Hal Roth suggested that packers were especially resistant to enforcement attempts by 

the young college graduates who often held backcountry ranger positions. He recommended 

that senior rangers should be responsible for negotiating arrangements with packers “rather 

than the 21 or 22-year-old college graduates, ‘the brash worldbeaters’ who are often sent to 

talk to men who have spent 20 or 30 or 40 years in the mountains and—though sometimes 

untutored—know and love every boulder and meadow, though they would rather die than 

admit it.”57 

Some packers were also skeptical of claims by ecologists and conservation biologists about the 

vulnerability of the Sierra ecosystem. Bob Tanner, for example, felt that the new generation of 

land managers failed to appreciate the resiliency of the Sierra landscape. For him, increasing 

visitation did not warrant the increased presence of the Park Service at Devils Postpile: “What 

can we tear down? We can’t move the rock of the Postpile . . . you can’t take the falls away, 

you can’t wear it out by looking at it, you can’t ruin the scenery by your eyeballs.”58 

Others felt that efforts by environmentalists and federal agencies to measure the environmental 

impacts of recreation unfairly implicated pack-stock outfits and failed to consider the long 

history of human use, including grazing, in the High Sierra. Marye Roeser attributed this 

scrutiny to “an unrealistic view” among urban backpackers and environmentalists that the 

Sierra could be maintained as “an untouched land as it might have appeared ten thousand 

years ago.”59 Most packers viewed themselves as responsible stewards of the wilderness. They 

felt their animals belonged in the landscape. Packing constituted a “historic use,” they argued, 

and was thus compatible with the Wilderness Act and the wilderness concept more generally. 

Furthermore, for longtime packers who had witnessed the economic transformation from 

resource extraction to recreation, the Sierra environment appeared in better shape than ever. 

Most packers still cooperated with land managers in keeping the backcountry clean, as the 

condition of the landscape remained important to their livelihoods. Mule teams voluntarily 

packed out garbage collected by wilderness rangers, packers avoided grazing in sensitive areas, 

and most were willing to keep group sizes within the limits Forest Serivce officials suggested. 

According to Lou and Marye Roeser and Inyo National Forest permit officer Michael Morse, 

most problems were caused by a few “rogue packers” whose refusal to abide by voluntary 

industry practices and forest regulations reflected badly on the industry as a whole.60 

By the early 2000s, underlying tensions sparked a legal battle over appropriate use of the 

Mammoth Lakes Sierra backcountry. In 2000, a coalition of hiking and environmental 

groups filed a lawsuit alleging that the Inyo National Forest had violated the National Forest 

Management Act, NEPA, and the Wilderness Act by issuing permits to commercial stock 

operators without evaluating the environmental impact of stock use in accordance with NEPA 

requirements. In June 2001, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The judge ordered 

the Forest Service to undertake an EIS to determine specific environmental impacts, and to 

propose limits on group size, trail suitability for various user groups, and appropriate locations 

for campsites for commercial pack operations.61 

Determining criteria for regulating the industry proved difficult. In part, this was due to the 

heavily value-laden debate between packers and hiking groups over the appropriateness of 

209 
Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

pack stock in wilderness; but it also reflected the difficulties of assessing the actual impacts of 

the various forms of pack-stock use, and evaluating how environmental effects have changed 

relative to historical shifts in the industry. The report noted that since the 1950s, the numbers 

of pack stations in the Sierra had declined and the popularity of pack-stock trips had dropped 

off as people gravitated toward backpacking. Regulations limiting hunting, fishing, and other 

activities also affected the types of trips offered and areas visited. Pack stations began offering 

fewer multiday full-service and dunnage trips (in which a pack outfit dropped off supplies for 

hikers) and more day trips to areas near wilderness boundaries in response to these shifts. All 

of these changes made it difficult to accurately attribute specific impacts.62 

The various parties involved also had different priorities. Managers at Devils Postpile were 

primarily concerned with the approximately 1,500 annual day-use riders visiting Rainbow 

Falls from Reds Meadow Pack Station. As park staff pointed out, the final quarter mile of 

the trail to Rainbow Falls passed into the Ansel Adams Wilderness. In their view, stock use 

along those trails should be regulated in a manner consistent with other wilderness trails: 

“These trails are in wilderness and higher level of trail class has conditions that we feel are 

not appropriate in wilderness.” The final EIS reclassified the Rainbow Falls Trail to reflect the 

wilderness designation, but day-use permit allocations remained the same.63 

As of this writing, the Park Service is working with Reds Meadow 

Pack Station and Inyo officials on a plan to install a corral or hitching 

station at the wilderness boundary, from which day riders can walk 

the additional quarter mile to the falls. This remains a contested issue, 

reflecting broader debates over how or if wilderness areas should be 

“zoned” based on ecological specificities, cultural significance, or 

recreational demand. Devils Postpile has long been considered a 

“wilderness threshold” due to its position as a jumping-off point for 

extended trips into the High Sierra backcountry. Although today 

much of the monument is technically within the boundaries of the 

Ansel Adams Wilderness, it receives far heavier use than portions of 

the wilderness farther from the access road. 

Overall, the challenge for land managers and recreational interests in the Devils Postpile area 

and the Sierra more broadly is to adapt stock use to fit with present recreational interests and 

resource protection requirements. For Michael Morse, a former packer and the Inyo National 

Forest’s current wilderness supervisor at the Mammoth Ranger Station, the traditional skills 

of packing complement current resource management needs, particularly in fire management 

and trail maintenance. In 2009, the Forest Service awarded Morse its Traditional Skills and 

Minimum Tool Leadership Award for his efforts to ensure “the legacy of wilderness attributes 

by sharing his specialized skills and promoting the use of packstock as a primitive tool.” The 

award recognized Morse’s development of a regional program for supporting the special needs 

of fire management projects.64 In Morse’s view, pack mules and packers could perform much 

of the work done by helicopters and chainsaws at a lower cost and with less environmental 

impact. As he told a youth group of the Student Conservation Association, “a mule costs 

one-tenth of what a helicopter costs, a mule is not noisy, mules are smart and strong and hardworking and they are a huge part of the history of wilderness in the Forest Service.” “Part of 

the wilderness experience is the quiet, a place ‘untrammeled by man,”’ he added. “That means 

quiet. And, as a wilderness manager, my job is also to use tools wisely, to use anything that 

makes less of an impact to the ecosystem.”65 

210 

Mules crossing the Middle Fork San Joaquin at 

Soda Springs Meadows. Devils Postpile National 

Monument image collection. 
Notes 

Morse and many commercial packers today worry that the gradual decline of the industry 

and the hostility directed at it from many environmentalists and hiking organizations could 

lead to the loss of packers’ particular skill set. Packers “are an old-style profession in a hightech world,” as Danica Burner of Pine Creek Pack Trains put it.66 They maintain a practical 

knowledge of the High Sierra landscape born from a love of the mountains and generations of 

direct experience with them. Since 1969, packers in the region have sought to raise awareness 

of the historical role of mules and the packing industry in the Eastern Sierra at the annual Mule 

Days festival held over Memorial Day weekend in Bishop. Recently, the staff at Devils Postpile 

has worked to foster better communication between the Park Service and the Eastern Sierra 

packing industry by contributing to events at Mule Days. Park managers are also considering 

initiating horse patrols in the monument and using Forest Service mule teams in trail work and 

fire management. Such policies serve not only to promote regional cooperation and accomplish 

day-to-day management tasks but also to provide visitors opportunities to learn about the 

historical role of mules, horses, and the packing industry in the Sierra Nevada. 

Notes 

1.	 Norman B. Livermore, Jr., “Man in the Middle: High Sierra Packer, Timberman, Conservationist, and 

California Resources Secretary,” oral history, 1981–82, by Ann Lage and Gabrielle Morris, Sierra Club History 

Series and Government History Documentation Program: Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Era, Regional 

History Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1983: 93. 

2.	 Dorothy Verret, “Log of Trip over the Old Road to Red’s Meadow, June 29, 1938,” included in Jean Riggs 

Tanner, “Part 1: The Challenging 1960s,” The Album: Times & Tales of Inyo-Mono (1996): 58. 

3.	 Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement
 

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).
 

4.	 Michael Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 1892–1970 (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 134–42. 

5.	 Ken Owens, “Fishing the Hatch: New West Romanticism and Fly Fishing in the High Country,” Montana: 

The Magazine of Western History 52, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 10–19. 

6.	 Paul Schullery, “Fly Fishing in the New West,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 52, no. 2 (Summer 

2002): 7. 

7.	 Solomons, “Among the Sources of the San Joaquin,” 79. 

8.	 C. G. Thomson to Chief Ranger Townsley, June 26, 1934, Devils Postpile, Central Files 1915–1953, Acc. 

5121, YNPA. 

9.	 “Memorandum for the Regional Director, Region Four,” October 27, 1947, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils 

Postpile National Monument; and Cahoon to Ewing, “Final Report for 1964 Season,” November 30, 1964. 

10.	 Gary D. Libecap, Owens Valley Revisited: A Reassessment of the West’s First Great Water Transfer (Stanford, CA: 

Stanford University Press, 2007), 135–37. 

11.	 Charles Nemoy, “Red’s Meadow,” 4, unaccessioned DEPO files, “YOSE, oral history files,” YNPA. 

12.	 Ibid., 9. 

13.	 Ibid. 

14.	 Ibid., 15–16. 

15.	 Ibid., 17–18. 

16.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 23, 80–82, 163. 

17.	 Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Devils Postpile National Monument, National Park Service, 

Department of the Interior, “Natural Resources Management Statement for Devils Postpile National 

Monument,” March 1982, 6, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

18.	 Bill Sutherland, Fly Fishing the Sierra Nevada (Truckee, CA: Aguabonita Books, 1999), 79; and Bob Madgic, 

Pursuing Wild Trout: A Journey in Wilderness Values (Anderson, CA: River Bend Books, 1998), 115. 

211 
Chapter Fifteen Devils Postpile and Rustic Recreation 

19.	 Solomons, “Among the Sources of the San Joaquin,” 62. 

20. Theodore S. Solomons, “A Search for a High Mountain Route from the Yosemite to the King’s River Canon,”  ̃

Sierra Club Bulletin 1, no. 6 (May 1895): 222. 

21.	 Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 235; and Donald Keith Anderson, “Legacy of the American Frontier: 

A History of the John Muir Trail” (master’s thesis, California State University, Fresno, 1997), 106, 110–15. 

22.	 Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 20. 

23.	 John Muir, “Among the Animals of the Yosemite,” Atlantic Monthly 82 (November 1893): 617. 

24.	 Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 226–31. 

25.	 David Brower, “Far from the Madding Mules: A Knapsacker’s Retrospect,” Sierra Club Bulletin 20, no. 1 

(February 1935): 72. 

26.	 For an excellent account of the search for Peter Starr, see William Alsup, Missing in the Minarets: The Search 

for Walter A. Starr, Jr. (Yosemite National Park, CA: Yosemite Association, 2001). See also Cohen, History 

of the Sierra Club, 37; and Walter A. Starr, Jr., Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region (San 

Francisco: Sierra Club, 1934), 3. 

27.	 Quoted in Cohen, History of the Sierra Club, 65. 

28.	 William Kemsley, untitled note from the editor in Backpacker Magazine 1, no. 1 (December 1973): 1. 

29.	 Hal Roth, Pathway in the Sky: The Story of the John Muir Trail (Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1965), 217. 

30.	 Alan Steck and Steve Roper, Fifty Classic Climbs of North America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1979). 

31.	 Ferrell, Eckhardt interview. 

32.	 Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 175. 

33.	 Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind , 316, 320, 323–24; and Inyo National Forest, “Recreation 

Management Plan: Red’s Meadow Area Inyo National Forest,” final draft, approved May 8, 1972, Inyo 

National Forest History Files, Mammoth District Ranger Station. 

34.	 For example, see Harvey Manning, Backpacking One Step at a Time (Seattle: Recreational Equipment, Inc., 

1972). 

35.	 James Morton Turner, “From Woodcraft to ‘Leave No Trace’: Wilderness, Consumerism, and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America,” Environmental History 7, no. 3 (July 2002): 463. 

36.	 Louise A. Jackson, The Mule Men: A History of Stock Packing in the Sierra Nevada (Missoula, MT: Mountain 

Press, 2004), 96–110. 

37.	 Sara Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson,” accessed November 9, 2010, www.owensvalleyhistory.com/whitney_ 

packers2/page29.html. 

38.	 Jackson, Mule Men, 96–97, 109. 

39.	 Ibid., 87–95. 

40.	 Livermore, Man in the Middle, 16–17. 

41.	 Norman Livermore, “Packing 50 Years Ago,” originally published in The Album: Times & Tales of Inyo-Mono 

(July 1990), www.owensvalleyhistory.com/packing_50yr_ago/page58.html. 

42.	 David Brower, “Introduction,” in Livermore, Man in the Middle, vi. 

43.	 Quoted in Jackson, Mule Men, 120. 

44.	 Ibid., 133. 

45.	 David Brower, “Are Mules Necessary?” Sierra Club Bulletin 33, no. 3 (March 1948): 25. 

46.	 Ibid. 

47.	 Jackson, Mule Men, 134–35. 

48.	 Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 131–32. 

49.	 Ibid.; Jean Riggs Tanner, “Part 1: The Challenging 1960s,” The Album: Times & Tales of Inyo–Mono (1996): 

49; Roeser interview; and Tanner interview. 

50.	 Livermore, Man in the Middle, 18–20: and Jackson, Mule Men, 105. Livermore also mentioned that the 

lynchpin for forming the organization was the cheaper insurance they could secure as a group. Association 

212 
Notes 

members also met to discuss methods of soliciting business, accounting, and rates (although Livermore was 

adamant that they resisted the urge to fix prices). 

51.	 Mr. and Mrs. [Marye] Louis B. Roeser to Bureau of Public Roads, May 11, 1961, Genny Smith Papers, BANC 

MSS 88/213c Carton 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

52.	 Bob Tanner to Judge Raymond J. Sherwin, December 16, 1965, Genny Smith Papers, BANC MSS 88/213c 

Carton 1, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

53.	 Genny Schumacher to Dr. Edgar Wayburn, Conservation Chairman, Sierra Club, 1956, Sierra Club 

Collection, BANC MSS 71/103c Carton 86, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 

54.	 Tanner, interview; and Roeser interview. 

55.	 Brower, “Are Mules Necessary?” 

56.	 Tanner, interview; and Roeser interview. 

57.	 Roth, Pathway in the Sky, 132. 

58.	 Tanner interview 

59.	 Roeser interview. 

60.	 Morse interview; and Roeser interview. 

61.	 Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, “Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement,” 

Federal Register 69, no. 114 (June 15, 2004). 

62.	 Inyo and Sierra National Forests, Trail and Commercial Pack Stock Management in the Ansel Adams and John 

Muir Wildernesses, Final EIS, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, December 2005), 

chap. 3. 

63.	 Ibid., C-30. 

64.	 FS Today, “Agency, Wilderness Stewards Receive Forest Service Awards,” posted October 9, 2009, www.fs.fed 

.us/fstoday/091009/02National_News/wilderness.html. 

65.	 Wendilyn Grasseschi, “Local Forest Service Packer Gets National Award,” Mammoth Times, August 7, 2009. 

66.	 Quoted in Livermore, “Packing 50 Years Ago.” 

213 

Chapter Sixteen 

From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management
 

While recreational considerations shaped much of the history of Devils Postpile, President Taft’s 

stipulation in the original proclamation that the Postpile formation and Rainbow Falls be 

protected for their “scientific interest” became the basic tenet by which the Park Service defined 

its administration of the monument. The manner in which successive managers addressed 

the monument’s scientific significance changed in relation to broader shifts in geologic and 

biological sciences, and in the priorities of the National Park Service. From the 1930s through 

the 1950s, on-site managers regarded Devils Postpile as an important site for interpreting 

the geologic processes shaping the Sierra Nevada. In the 1960s, the rise of the environmental 

movement led the Park Service to more thoroughly incorporate ecological principles into its 

administrative priorities. Managers at Devils Postpile responded by expanding the existing 

science program at the park to include increased emphasis on protecting and interpreting its 

biological resources. By the twenty-first century, Devils Postpile had become a model network 

park, drawing on partnerships with the larger Sierra parks, other government agencies, and the 

local community to develop a regional ecosystem monitoring program. 

Geology and Scientific Interpretation 

American geologic science evolved in the context of the conquest, exploration, and development 

of the West. Geologists were vital to the nation’s expansion through the nineteenth century. In 

addition to contributing to knowledge about geologic processes, they also drew maps, plotted 

roads, and inventoried the region’s natural resources.1 

By the late nineteenth century, geologic surveys in the West led to significant changes in the 

field and Josiah Dwight Whitney’s California State Geologic Survey was an important catalyst 

of these changes. When the state created the survey in 1863, most legislators imagined it would 

pinpoint locations likely to produce gold and other valuable minerals. Whitney and his team, 

though, came to understand their surveys in scientific rather than utilitarian terms. For them, 

the state was “a laboratory rather than a warehouse of salable goods” as one historian writes. 

During their 1864 survey of the High Sierra, Whitney and other members of the team— 

especially William Brewer and Clarence King—came to view the mountains differently from 

the explorers, trappers, and miners of the earlier era. For King, who went on to head the US 

Geologic Survey, the mountains were “at once sublime, scientifically interesting, and a source 

of adventure.”2 

This impressionistic view of the High Sierra reflected the Whitney survey’s relative freedom 

from direct oversight, as well as the nearly impossible task with which they had been charged. 

“The Sierra Nevada [is] a chain of mountains nearly as extensive as the Alps,” Whitney wrote. 

“When we consider that the number of Alpine explorers and of the published volumes of their 

results may be counted by the hundreds, their researches extending over nearly a century, we 

feel that we need not apologize for the imperfections of our work.”3 The survey by necessity 

involved more reconnaissance than intensive study. The surveyors spent much of their time 

navigating rocky trails, trudging over trackless passes, and climbing jagged peaks. The resulting 
Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

reports exhibited an enthusiasm for discovery, physical exertion, and aesthetics, as well as an 

eye for environmental interdependence not found in earlier geologic writing. 

Whitney’s efforts “to grapple with the geological structure of an unknown region of unlimited 

extent” also resulted in one of the most important state surveys produced in the latter half of 

the nineteenth century. The survey identified, mapped, and named the highest peak in the 

nation (Mount Whitney); traced the course of the Kern River; explored and mapped the alpine 

region between the Great Western Divide and the main Sierra crest; located evidence of past 

glaciers at high elevations; and noted the predominance of granite in the range, contributing to 

a debate (which continues today) between metamorphic and intrusive theories of the origins 

of granite.4 

By the 1870s, the geology profession was becoming positioned more squarely in the service 

of economic interests. Whitney’s continued refusal to accommodate the state legislature’s 

utilitarian agenda eventually led to his removal as the head of the survey. Whitney’s replacement 

King soon found most of his time devoted to cataloging mineral resources. The freedom from 

oversight that the California survey had enjoyed in the 1860s was curtailed as the western 

landscape became better known and as geologic surveys became more closely monitored by 

state and federal governments.5 

Geologic study for academic rather than strictly commercial purposes nevertheless continued 

on a smaller scale at California’s up-and-coming universities at Berkeley and Stanford. With 

few resources for modern laboratories such as those at established eastern schools, university 

scientists in California concentrated their work in the field. Some of this work was done in 

conjunction with Sierra Club outings and aided in the advancement of conservation in the 

Sierra Nevada. 

Berkeley geology professor and Sierra Club charter member Joseph N. LeConte Sr. was a key 

figure in this melding of academic and field geology. Trained under Louis Agassiz at Harvard, 

LeConte came to California in 1869 to teach geology at Berkeley. In 1870, he visited Yosemite 

where he met John Muir and became intrigued with then-controversial hypothesis about 

the glacial origins of the Yosemite Valley. In 1872, LeConte undertook an exploration of 

the headwaters of the Tuolumne and Merced Rivers with Muir, and was persuaded to agree 

with the enigmatic Scot’s theory that glaciers had carved out these valleys.6 During the trip, 

LeConte gave a lecture to his traveling companions on the subject in which he concluded that 

California had indeed experienced a geologically recent “glacial epoch” during which time “the 

whole of the high Sierra region was covered with an ice-mantle, from which ran great glacial 

streams far down the slopes on either side.”7 

LeConte’s account of his “ramblings” in the Yosemite high country in 1870 and 1872 

contributed to the reservation of Yosemite National Park in 1890. In his journal entries, 

LeConte interspersed sober assessments of the region’s geology with expressions of awe at its 

spectacular scenery. Perhaps under the sway of Muir, the scientist LeConte could not help but 

view Yosemite as a divine creation. While camped out in the valley, he wrote: “Here, under the 

black arching sky and before the grand cliffs of Yosemite, I lifted my heart in humble worship 

to the great God of Nature.”8 

This blending of empiricism and romanticism also characterized LeConte’s work as a geology 

professor. The Sierra was his classroom, and his students came away from his instruction with 

an appreciation for both objective observation in the field and the aesthetic experience of the 

high mountains. Charles Palache, a student at Berkeley in the 1880s and early 1890s, recalled 

that the “great event of my college career was the horse back trip to the High Sierra” led by 

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Geology and Scientific Interpretation 

LeConte. As LeConte aged and his field excursions became less frequent, other academics 

followed his lead. Beginning in the 1890s, geology professor Andrew C. Lawson kept LeConte’s 

emphasis on fieldwork alive at Berkeley by encouraging his students to complement their book 

research by “going up there and seeing the rocks.”9 

In the twentieth century, the Sierra parks became important venues for the intellectual, fieldbased geology encouraged by LeConte, Lawson, and others at Berkeley, in particular. While 

Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks were better known as locations for 

geologic study, over time, Devils Postpile also gained recognition as a site for interpreting the 

geologic history of the Sierra Nevada. 

When Devils Postpile National Monument was established in 1911, little was known about the 

geologic processes that had shaped the Postpile formation and its surrounding landscape. For 

most observers through the early twentieth century, the Devils Postpile was notable primarily 

for its strange appearance and scenic setting; its geologic significance derived from its similarity 

to other known examples of columnar jointing rather than its specific place within the Sierra. 

In a 1911 letter to President William H. Taft in support of the monument proposal, Joseph N. 

LeConte Jr. described the formation as “a remarkable example of basaltic columns, the finest, 

I believe, in America, and ranking with the famous Giants Causeway in England.” For Forest 

Service district engineer Walter Huber, who had first proposed the monument, Devils Postpile 

constituted a “wonderful natural curiosity” warranting future scientific study.10 

While its volcanic origins were understood, early efforts to describe the actual process by which 

the Postpile formed were well off the mark. One observer assumed that the Postpile lava had 

“flowed in a molten torrent from a nearby crater, plunged over a precipice, split into prisms, 

and hardened in mid-air.”11 

US Geologic Survey topographer Fran ̧cois Matthes produced the first authoritative scientific 

survey of the Postpile and the surrounding area in 1930 as part of his larger project to document 

the geologic history of Yosemite and the High Sierra. Matthes was born in Amsterdam but 

raised in the Swiss Alps where he developed an interest in geology. In 1891, he and his 

family immigrated to America. Four years later, he earned a degree in civil engineering from 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, Matthes, who had retained his 

interest in geology, took a position with USGS as a topographer. His work led him west where 

he prepared maps of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, the Grand Canyon, and in 1907, 

Yosemite Valley. 

Matthes’s work in Yosemite led to a lifetime fascination with the High Sierra. Even though 

he did not have a degree in geology, his reputation as a topographer and his extensive field 

experience led to his promotion to the geologic branch of the USGS in 1913. This change 

allowed him the freedom to pursue his interests in the Sierra. Beginning in the 1920s, Matthes 

embarked on the most extensive geologic survey to date of Yosemite and the surrounding High 

Sierra.12 

In his 1930 publication The Geologic History of the Yosemite Valley, Matthes supported John 

Muir’s basic hypothesis about the role of glaciers in carving the Yosemite Valley. He also observed 

that the range had undergone multiple glaciations, and that the glaciers were never as extensive 

as Muir had supposed. Stream erosion, he argued, also played an important role in shaping the 

valley’s distinctive features, as did uplifts in the recent geologic past. The significance of The 

Geologic History of the Yosemite Valley lay in Matthes’s examination of the valley in the context 

of the broader geologic story of the entire range. Matthes also had the ability to interpret 

this complicated story in a language that the general public could understand. His blending 

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Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

Francois M ̧ atthes in the field. (Source: Matthes, Fran ̧cois Matthes and the Marks of Time) 

of lucid description with scientific analysis made him the most widely read interpreter of 

the geology of the Sierra national parks. However, it also distanced him somewhat from the 

profession as a whole. Editors of professional journals consistently asked him to tone down 

the descriptive language, and he was often regarded as more of a public intellectual than a 

professional geologist. Nevertheless, Matthes’s work had tremendous significance in drawing 

public attention to the forces that shaped the region’s dramatic scenery.13 

Matthes also published a number of short articles for the Sierra Club Bulletin on aspects of 

Sierra geology. His 1930 essay on Devils Postpile and the surrounding region brought attention 

to this little-known area and became the basis for subsequent geologic studies of the Mammoth 

volcanic complex. Unlike most previous observers who viewed the Postpile formation as a 

geologic oddity, Matthes described it as the most visible example of the volcanic and glacial 

processes that shaped the Sierra crest in the Mammoth region. Matthes also conducted the first 

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Geology and Scientific Interpretation 

detailed study of the origins of the Postpile, in which he concluded that the basaltic lava of the 

Postpile had erupted from Mammoth Pass between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, between 

two of the Sierra’s major glacial epochs. Matthes also described the action of the Middle Fork 

San Joaquin Glacier, which had carved away all but the most resistant portions of the basalt 

obstruction.14 

Although appearing as “a mere hummock in landscape dominated by mile-high peaks,” 

Matthes wrote, the Postpile constituted “a feature of unusual interest to the scientist as well 

as to the layman,” adding that “the columns that form its steep west front, facing the river, 

are exceptionally high, straight and cleancut; those at its southern end are remarkable for their 

curvature and their radial arrangement with respect to a center at the top of the pile. Strikingly 

beautiful, also, are the six-sided or five-sided end facets of the columns which in places still 

gleam with the polish that was imparted to them by the overriding glacier.”15 

While Matthes recognized the Postpile as the area’s most unusual and recognizable feature, 

he saw it as only one example of the fascinating geology of the Mammoth region. For him, 

the area’s frequent volcanic activity, the comparatively low elevation of the Sierra divide at 

Mammoth Pass, and the north-south orientation of the Middle Fork Valley complicated the 

simple tilted-block theory of the uplift of the Sierra range. He concluded that the basic theory 

still held, but that the uplift occurred at different times and was influenced by various forces 

including the makeup of the underlying rock and successive waves of volcanic activity, all of 

which were highly visible in the Mammoth region. He noted that although Mammoth Pass 

was the lowest point on the central Sierra crest, it only seemed abnormally so due to the thick 

layer of ash and pumice on the eastern flank of the Sierra and because it was “overshadowed 

by the Ritter Range” to the west. The Ritter Range itself, he explained, was composed of hard 

metamorphic rock that was much older than the predominating granite, demonstrating that 

the Sierra, rather than being a single mass, was in fact made up of numerous ancient mountain 

ranges. “Our Sierra Nevada,” he observed, “is to be regarded as something greater than a simple 

mountain range. It is of the order of a mountain system. Its areal extent equals that of all the 

Swiss, French, and most of the Italian Alps together!”16 

The next significant geologic work at the monument took place following its transfer to 

the National Park Service. In 1934, Yosemite officials sent Theodore Cronyn to survey the 

monument and catalog its resources. During the survey, Cronyn documented several additional 

features of geologic interest including the basalt columns of the “Buttress,” the prominent cliff 

across the river and downstream from the Postpile, as well as several large, egg-shaped glacial 

erratics that the retreating Middle Fork glacier had deposited. Cronyn also noted the “striking 

cascade” where Reds Creek flowed into the Middle Fork San Joaquin, and suggested that it be 

connected to the monument’s trail system.17 

Budget cuts during World War II prompted a debate about whether Devils Postpile deserved 

national monument designation. The question hinged on its significance as a scientific resource. 

After inspecting the area in 1951, veteran Park Service naturalist Dorr Yeager concluded that 

the Postpile formation was “unique among geologic phenomena of this country,” and was 

thus worthy of monument status. Yeager also determined that Rainbow Falls, though not as 

spectacular as the falls in the Yosemite Valley, was “a beautiful falls and should . . . be retained 

in the monument.”18 

In 1952, Ranger Naturalist Richard Hartesveldt synthesized the existing literature on the 

geology of the Postpile and the surrounding area in an article for Nature Notes titled “The 

Geologic Story of the Devils Postpile.” Drawing largely on Matthes’s 1930 article, Hartesveldt 

described the Devils Postpile area as a location where geologic processes originating east of the 

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Sierra divide had bled over to the west slope of the range. He noted that the features in and 

around the monument exhibited geomorphic ties to the zone of active volcanism surrounding 

Mammoth Mountain, providing a clear example of the complex faulting that both contributed 

to and resulted from the characteristic westward tilt of the Sierra range. Hartesveldt also 

described the ongoing processes of geologic change evident in the Middle Fork Valley. The 

older metamorphic rock comprising the Ritter Range, the southward flow of the Middle Fork 

San Joaquin, the polish and striations at the top of the Postpile, Soda Springs, and the soft 

pumice covering much of the area, he explained, illustrated the successive waves of volcanic 

and glacial activity that shaped and continued to shape the Sierra Nevada.19 

In the years that followed, Hartesveldt’s article served as an important promotional tool for 

the National Park Service. In the 1950s, Ranger Earl Homuth distributed copies to lodges 

and chambers of commerce throughout the region. The article also became the basis for 

interpretation at the monument. In 1963, Ranger-naturalists Keith Trexler and William Jones 

revised and updated the article, republishing it as a tourist brochure titled Your Guide to Devils 

Postpile National Monument.

20 

During the 1960s, a number of scientists published studies of the Mammoth region. Some 

of this work was done in conjunction with mineral surveys, while other work was completed 

through university studies. In 1967, USGS scientists N. King Huber and C. Dean Rinehart 

synthesized previous studies in “Cenozoic Volcanic Rocks of the Devils Postpile Quadrangle, 

Eastern Sierra Nevada California.” Their paper was significant for its description of the results 

of a recent radiometric dating of the Postpile basalt and other volcanic rocks in the region.21 

The technique of potassium-argon dating, which involved measuring the decay of potassium40 (K-40) relative to the amount of argon-40 (A-40) within a sample, had been developed 

in the early 1960s. While more accurate than any other previous method of dating ancient 

rock, by 1967, potassium-argon dating was still in its early stages of development. Accuracy 

was subject to a number of variables including the homogeneity of the samples and the age of 

the rock (the method was most accurate for rocks between 100,000 and 4,000,000,000 years 

old). Huber’s and Rinehart’s data was courtesy of University of California, Berkeley, geologist 

G. Brent Dalrymple. Dalrymple had at his disposal arguably the best facility in the world 

for dating volcanic rock. His initial results, which he provided to Huber and Rinehart prior 

to his own publication of the data, revealed the Devils Postpile lava to be between 630,000 

to 940,000 years of age, significantly older than Matthes’s estimate of 100,000 to 200,000 

22 years.

These numbers remained the basis for interpretation at Devils Postpile National Monument 

until the 1980s when Dalrymple’s original data was reevaluated. At that time, it was discovered 

that sometime during the process a decimal point had been misplaced, causing Huber and 

Rinehart to over-report the age of the Postpile lava by a factor of ten. Following this discovery, 

park officials revised the monument’s geologic story yet again, estimating the age of the lava 

at approximately 100,000 years and identifying its source as a collection of vents near the 

present-day Pumice Flat campground. 

In recent years, the Park Service has partnered with the USGS to pursue more in-depth studies 

of the Postpile lava and the other volcanic features of the monument and the surrounding 

area. In 2010, senior USGS scientist Wes Hildreth evaluated samples of the Postpile lava using 

the newer process of argon-40/argon-39 dating. The results established a more precise age 

of approximately 82,000 years. He also suspected that the vents at Pumice Flat may in fact 

overlay the actual source. Hildreth is continuing his research in collaboration with the Park 

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Geology and Scientific Interpretation 

Cover of Your Guide to Devils Postpile, 1963. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Archives, Museum, and 

Library) 

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Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

Service. The team is also working on a revised geologic map of the Middle Fork Valley and 

Devils Postpile. 

Geologic research remains an important aspect of the management and visitor experience of 

Devils Postpile National Monument. This work has not only changed the way the Park Service 

understands and interprets the natural scene but also sheds light on the region’s human history. 

During a recent research project, Forest Service paleoecologist Constance Millar successfully 

dated the volcanic blast that covered much of the Postpile region in pumice to 1350 AD Millar 

was able to arrive at such a precise time frame by matching ring sequences on trees blown down 

by the eruption with corresponding ring sequences on presently living trees. This remarkable 

finding provides an opportunity to reevaluate the sequence and character of early human use 

of the area, and further explore the linkages between environmental and social changes in the 

region. 

Ecological Management 

The Park Service approach to natural resource management has historically reflected its 

core mandate to preserve natural conditions “unimpaired” while also providing for the 

enjoyment of future generations. How the Park Service has interpreted its mission has changed 

over time in response to broad changes in culture, politics, and science. For most of the 

twentieth century, Park Service polices trended toward what historian Richard Sellars has 

termed “facade  ̧ management.” Early officials were concerned more with barring extractive 

uses and accommodating scenic tourism than maintaining functioning ecosystems. Especially 

at the flagship national parks where dramatic scenery required little scientific explanation 

to appreciate, efforts to satisfy tourist desires led to superficial and often ecologically 

harmful management practices. In addition to building roads and providing extensive tourist 

accommodations, the Park Service introduced nonnative species, exterminated predators, 

managed wild ungulates as if they were domesticated cattle, allowed bears to feed on garbage 

pits for visitor entertainment, and suppressed natural fires.23 

Pressure to more fully incorporate science into national park management came initially from 

the nascent field of ecology. In 1925, biologist Charles Adams charged that the Park Service 

had “not adhered” to its “theoretical” mandate to protect natural integrity. He argued that 

naturalists employed by the Park Service were not “devoted to technical research, but in the 

main to elementary educational work with the park visitors.” The agency’s manipulation of 

park flora and fauna to serve these ends had led to a severe loss of biological integrity in his 

view.24 

Such critiques initially had little effect on park management. Then, in 1928, independently 

wealthy biologist George M. Wright offered to fund a systematic survey of wildlife in the 

parks. Horace Albright endorsed Wright’s proposal, viewing it as a good fit with his and 

Stephen Mather’s aim of partnering with private interests to promote scientific research and 

education. Released in 1933, Wright’s Fauna of the National Parks was sharply critical of the 

Park Service’s wildlife policies. Wright argued that the agency had been deficient in its singular 

purpose to preserve “characteristic portions of our country as it was seen by Boone and La 

Salle, by Coronado, and by Lewis and Clark.” He suggested that park wildlife would be best 

served by restoring park landscapes as nearly as possible to the condition that existed upon the 

arrival of Euro-Americans. Fulfilling this aim would require extensive scientific and historical 

research. The effort would also have to be reconciled with the agency’s traditional emphasis 

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Ecological Management 

on accommodating large numbers of tourists, which, Wright observed, had contributed to a 

“very wide range of maladjustments” by park wildlife.25 

Wright’s work brought attention to two considerations that influenced the development of the 

Park Service’s science program in later years: the importance of habitat (both inside and outside 

park boundaries) to the maintenance of healthy wildlife populations, and the recognition that 

nature was always in flux, that there “is no one wildlife picture which can be called the original 

one.” The latter point required clarification since Wright was also advocating for a historical 

point of reference—the period just before the arrival of Europeans—as the benchmark for 

wildlife management. Wright reasoned that prior Native American impacts on the North 

American landscape had been slight in comparison to the rapid changes brought by the “the 

introduction of European culture.” The Park Service, he believed, had a responsibility to 

reverse the disruptive effects of Euro-American settlement and restore more natural processes 

of succession to the parks.26 

Park Service leaders were initially responsive to Wright’s arguments, and appointed him the 

first head of the agency’s Wildlife Division. However, Wright’s proposal to radically revise the 

criteria by which the agency evaluated, managed, and interpreted park resources frequently ran 

up against an agency culture predicated on loyalty to leadership and tradition. The agency’s 

nods to biological research during this time clashed with its use of New Deal funds to expand 

the system and make parks more accessible to the public. This limited commitment to science 

became apparent following Wright’s untimely death in an automobile accident in 1936. 

Wright, it turned out, had been the glue that held the Wildlife Division together. “Although 

not fully apparent at the time,” Sellars writes, “the loss of Wright’s impressive leadership skills 

marked the beginning of the decline of National Park Service science programs.”27 

Drastic cutbacks in national park funding and staffing during World War II prevented 

revival of the agency’s science programs. The inattention to ecology continued after the 

war, as rapid increases in visitation created severe strains on outdated park infrastructures. 

In 1956, the agency responded with Mission 66, a ten-year plan to develop the parks to 

meet the needs of the greatly expanded traveling public of the postwar years. During this 

period, ecological concerns took a backseat to plans to widen roads, design and build new 

visitor centers, expand campgrounds, and repair degraded facilities. Although the growing 

strength of the postwar wilderness movement created some backlash against Mission 66–style 

development, recreational considerations continued to outweigh scientific considerations in 

park management into the 1960s. 

In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson brought ecosystem thinking into the mainstream with 

her bestseller Silent Spring. By describing in vivid prose the manner by which new synthetic 

pesticides had penetrated every facet of the environment including human bodies, Carson recast 

conservation through the lens of ecology. Silent Spring had an immediate effect, commingling 

with a general increase in environmental awareness and political action at the time to produce 

a groundswell of public interest in ecosystem science. 

The rising political influence of ecology in this period motivated the Department of the Interior 

to take action. In 1962, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall convened a special Advisory 

Board on Wildlife Management, chaired by A. Starker Leopold (son of noted wildlife biologist 

Aldo Leopold), to examine wildlife management policies in the national parks. Leopold went 

further, directing his team to evaluate not only the Park Service’s wildlife policies but also 

its entire approach to natural resource management. The resulting report, Report on Wildlife 

Management in the National Parks, better known as the Leopold Report, echoed Wright’s 

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earlier call for greater attention to habitat. The report stressed restoration and protection not 

of individual species, but of the “biotic associations” that sustained them.28 

The Leopold Report emphasized the complexity and dynamism of ecological communities 

and recommended a diverse set of management strategies including nonnative species removal, 

reintroduction of native species (including predators), the end to outright fire suppression, 

and the reduction of some ungulate herds. While some of these procedures involved a handsoff approach, others were explicitly interventionist, requiring parks to actively re-create natural 

processes. Also, like Wright and his team, Leopold’s commission adhered closely to frontier 

mythology, identifying the restoration of the ecological conditions existing at the time “when 

the area was first visited by the white man” as the goal of resource management. The Leopold 

Report’s statement that “a national park should represent a vignette of primitive America” 

became the mantra of natural resource management in subsequent years.29 

The Leopold Report set a significantly higher standard for the use of ecology as a basis for 

resource management. Gradually, parks phased out nonnative fish stocking, hired biologists to 

study wildlife and plant populations, worked to eradicate invasive species, regulated recreational 

activities, and made efforts to reintroduce natural fire regimes. Cataloging, protecting, and 

restoring not only scenery but also the underlying ecological processes brought the agency 

more in line with developments in the natural sciences and environmental politics.30 

Problems nevertheless emerged. Administrators and scientists often disagreed about when to 

intervene in natural processes through wildlife tagging, controlled use of fire, species culling, 

or other means in order to restore ecological function. These debates stemmed from a general 

confusion over what it meant to manage parks as “reasonable illusion[s] of primitive America.” 

In his review of the report, naturalist Adolph Murie expressed concern that park administrators 

might miss Leopold’s intended emphasis on biological processes, and would interpret the 

report literally as a mandate to “freeze the environment at a certain primitive stage.” Such a 

policy might satisfy tourist expectations, but it would also impede the restoration of natural 

succession. Additionally, the Park Service had limited funds for hiring professional scientists or 

conducting formal scientific research. As a consequence, recreational considerations continued 

to trump ecological management in many instances.31 

In 1980, in response to criticism that the agency had failed to meet the requirements of the 

Leopold Report, Congress requested a full review of natural resource policies in the parks. The 

final “State of the Parks” report recommended a “comprehensive inventory” of park resources 

with the purpose of developing a “sound resources information base.” The report called for 

revised natural resource management statements for individual parks, and the creation of a 

natural resource training program to educate superintendents and other management staff in 

the principles of ecological management.32 The Park Service also initiated a science training 

program and stepped up its efforts to monitor air and water pollution. However, disagreements 

within the agency, coupled with severe budget cutbacks during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, 

continued to impede progress. By the end of the 1980s, despite strong support for ecological 

management from environmentalists and many agency officials, the Park Service still lacked 

adequate leadership, funding, and staffing to take significant action. 

While this tension between ecological management and scenic tourism affected all units of 

the national park system, many national monuments experienced this history differently. Due 

to limited funding and staffing, monuments typically had even less capacity for conducting 

scientific research than national parks. However, whereas most national parks were established 

as locations for scenic tourism and the appreciation of natural aesthetics, monuments were 

created specifically for the scientific or historical values of particular resources. The Antiquities 

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Act, Sellars has argued, “made it clear that . . . the primary value of such special places lay... 

in their contribution to education and knowledge for the general public good through research 

conducted and information disseminated by scientific and educational institutions.”33 Many 

monuments were designated as “representative areas,” and so fit well with the Mather’s and 

Albright’s attempts to emphasize scientific education in the 1920s and 1930s.34 National 

monuments also tended to be smaller than national parks, and most lacked the caliber and 

diversity of scenic attractions found in their better-known cousins. As a result, on-site managers 

frequently emphasized their scientific or historical interest rather than their scenic qualities 

alone. 

After assuming jurisdiction for Devils Postpile in 1934, Yosemite officials prioritized the 

“scientific interest” of the Postpile formation and Rainbow Falls in order to satisfy the 

requirements of the monument’s founding legislation and distinguish the Park Service’s 

management priorities from the Forest Service policies prevailing in the area. From early on, 

Park Service officials consulted geologists with the University of California and USGS to draft 

accurate interpretive signs. Onsite staff also worked with Forest Service rangers and nearby 

Reds Meadow Pack Station to erect signs and conduct visitor education programs. 

Beginning in the 1950s, park managers also became concerned with the biological impacts 

of increasing recreational use. Rangers Homuth and Cahoon both identified fishing trails as 

detrimental to the integrity of monument meadows. Cahoon was particularly concerned about 

the impacts of increased horse and mule grazing. By the 1960s, Reds Meadow Pack Station 

had grown into one of the most popular outfits in the Sierra. Owner Bob Tanner frequently 

allowed stock to graze freely in Reds Meadow during the tourist season, and the animals often 

wandered into the monument where they frightened tourists, left behind piles of manure, and 

trampled riverbank vegetation. Through this period, a number of Park Service officials also 

recommended closing the monument campground and managing Devils Postpile as a day-use 

area only. They believed this would divert recreational users to the Forest Service campgrounds 

in the area, and allow the shorthanded monument staff to focus on interpretation rather than 

recreation and campground maintenance. 

The Park Service’s greater emphasis on ecology and research at the national level began to 

more directly influence Devils Postpile’s management in the late 1970s. A 1978 management 

report recommended an “active research program designed to provide management with 

decision assistance in all aspects of planning, development, and management.” The report 

also suggested restoring meadows damaged by past visitor use and encouraging universities 

and other research institutions to “use the resource in geologic education, research, and field 

studies.”35 

Following the release of the 1980 “State of the Parks” report, Sequoia and Kings Canyon 

National Parks drafted revised natural resource management statements for each of its 

constituent parks. The statement for Devils Postpile included the most thorough inventory 

of the park’s geologic and biological resources to date. It also described recent “restoration” 

projects including the closure of a meadow trail to allow “natural revegetation to occur.” This 

project and others designed “to steer crowds of people and horses in appropriate directions 

to avoid negative environmental impacts” were intended to fulfill the objective of managing 

Devils Postpile as “a natural area . . . as unchanged as possible by man for the enjoyment of 

future generations.” In addition to revising interpretive signs, leading science walks, giving 

campfire talks, and collecting information on the monument’s biological resources, rangers 

worked to “invite” visitors away from the parking lot and other developed areas “to seek out 

and enjoy the natural aspect of the Monument, where human influence is negligible.”36 

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Although steps had been made locally to respond to and implement new environmental 

management theories at the monument, lack of funding and staffing meant that interpretation 

would continue to outweigh academic research and ecological restoration. This problem also 

reflected the partial commitment to science and ecological management in the national park 

system as a whole during this time. through the 1980s and 1990s, critics from both inside and 

outside the Park Service continued to express frustration at the lack of substantial progress in 

these areas. By the 1990s, this pressure spurred the agency to once again reevaluate its approach 

to resource management. 

In 1991, Park Service officials met in Vail, Colorado, to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of 

the agency and develop plans for its future. The primary goal was to increase the “environmental 

leadership” of the Park Service by developing its natural resource management program. Doing 

so required confronting persistent shortcomings in research, funding, and staffing. While 

the resulting Vail Agenda expressed a clear commitment to prioritizing science, obstacles to 

implementation remained deeply rooted in agency culture and politics. Richard Sellars’s 1997 

critical history of natural resource management in the parks identified many of these obstacles, 

and called for a more serious push for a substantive resource inventory and monitoring 

program. Partly in response to Sellars’s book, in 1999, Congress approved the Natural 

Resource Challenge, setting in motion the most significant changes in national park resource 

management policy since the release of the Leopold Report. The legislation set aside funds 

for research and created an action plan for evaluating and improving the health of park 

ecosystems.37 

One of the requirements of the Natural Resource Challenge was to group individual park 

units into networks with other parks with similar ecologic and geographic characteristics. 

The inclusion of Devils Postpile in the Sierra Network along with Yosemite and Sequoia and 

Kings Canyon National Parks allowed for significantly increased attention to the monument’s 

previously understudied biological resources. Because Devils Postpile was attached to Sequoia 

and Kings Canyon, inventory and monitoring programs designated for the larger parks carried 

over to the monument. Devils Postpile has since benefited from increased attention to scientific 

research and ecological management in the Sierra Network and in the Park Service as a whole. 

Historically, the administrative philosophy at Devils Postpile has also been strongly shaped 

by the individual managers charged with its day-to-day management. This has continued 

to be the case into the twenty-first century. In 2000, former director of the Inyo National 

Forest Mono Basin Visitor Center Deanna Dulen replaced Wymond Eckhardt as monument 

superintendent, bringing with her a different take on natural resource management. Whereas 

Eckhardt leaned toward a more traditional approach to park management, focusing on visitor 

contact and interpretation, Dulen actively promoted Devils Postpile as a site for rigorous 

academic research into the ecological and geologic process characteristic of the Central Sierra 

Nevada and the Mammoth region. Dulen fully embraced the network concept at the heart 

of the Natural Resources Challenge, cultivating relationships not only with Yosemite and 

Sequoia and Kings Canyon but also with other nearby Park Service units, public and private 

scientific research institutions, Inyo National Forest, USGS, and other government agencies 

in the region. 

The result has been a dramatic increase in scientific understanding of Devils Postpile’s natural 

resources. Studies of bird nesting, bats, fire history, wetlands, meadow formation, air pollution, 

and climate change have also brought attention to the ecological connections between the 

monument and the larger area in which it is situated, spurring the Park Service to take a more 

active role in regional planning. Cooperation with the Forest Service and the local community 

226 
Ecological Management 

has been a central theme throughout the history of the monument, but the recent attention to 

ecological management has required an even deeper commitment to collaboration. 

While the new science program at Devils Postpile represents a significant development, current 

and future park managers can benefit from attention to environmental history and the role 

of Native Americans in shaping park ecologies. Past efforts to restore ecological conditions 

existing at the time of initial Euro-American exploration were predicated on an assumption 

that Native peoples had no significant impacts on ecological processes. In recent decades, 

scholars in a variety of fields have demonstrated that indigenous people altered the North 

American landscape far more substantially than had previously been assumed. The extent 

to which Native societies transformed ecologies through intentional burning, hunting, and 

plant gathering, among other practices, suggests a need to reevaluate what it means to manage 

parks as “vignette[s] of primitive America,” and whether this remains an appropriate or even 

achievable benchmark.38 

North Fork Mono and Paiutes continue to hold deep concerns for what happens in their tribal 

homeland. The Devils Postpile area is not only significant as a site of traditional trade and 

resource collection activities but also features prominently in tribal creation stories. As a result, 

Native people approach the issue of ecological management both in scientific terms and as a 

matter of cultural and spiritual survival. 

At a discussion of recent scientific research programs held during the monument’s centennial 

celebration in July 2011, North Fork Mono tribal chair Ron Goode stressed the importance of 

collaboration with Native communities in developing appropriate stewardship policies for the 

Middle Fork Valley. Goode argued for the replacement of the term restoration, which suggests 

a return to a previously unaltered state of nature, with the concept of regeneration, which 

acknowledges the past, present, and future role of humans in maintaining the ecological health 

of the area. In contrast to scientists who often attempted to separate human from non-human 

aspects of a landscape to understand how it would look without human influence, for Goode, 

the appropriate question to ask is: “If our people were living here, what would it look like?” 

The heavy growth of willows along the riverbank in Soda Springs Meadow, Goode explained, 

would probably not be there if Native people maintained traditional uses of the area. North 

Fork Mono groups would have been “constantly thinning the willow” either with fire or by 

harvesting young shoots for baskets. Willow thinning would also have made the area safer for 

children, he said, because “a bear can hide in there and you probably wouldn’t even know 

he was there.” Goode also pointed out that many of the lodgepole pine stands rimming the 

meadow have become crowded with young trees. He observed that while allowing willows 

and lodgepoles to encroach on the meadow may satisfy the Park Service’s aim to keep the area 

“wild,” Indian people would not have left it that way.39 

From Goode’s perspective, a purely hands-off approach to natural resource management may 

have undesirable ecological and social impacts. For more than a century, the North Fork Mono 

tribe has suffered from the loss of spiritual sites and the degradation of forests, meadows, fish 

populations, and other water-dependent cultural resources due to the intensive development 

of the San Joaquin River for irrigation and hydroelectric power generation. Such problems 

are likely to be exacerbated in the future by anthropogenic climate change. One of the ways 

to forestall calls for more dams along the river, Goode argues, is to improve the watershed’s 

retention and release capacity. Medium- and high-elevation meadows such as those in Devils 

Postpile play an important role in regulating the flow of the river. Native meadow grasses, 

Goode explained, act like “sponges,” holding water and releasing it gradually into watercourses. 

Willows, in contrast, retain water in their stalks and leaves, reducing cumulative annual flow. In 

227 
Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

recent years, Goode has had some success working with the Sierra National Forest to regenerate 

some of the meadows on the main stem San Joaquin River near the community of North Fork 

using traditional practices. Such projects have implications for not only the North Fork Mono 

but also agricultural water users in the Central Valley and ecological restoration projects in the 

San Joaquin Delta farther downstream, especially in light of climate change.40 

Incorporating indigenous knowledge into the resource management program at Devils Postpile 

requires recognition of its natural features as “natural resources that have been used culturally” 

for centuries. Goode’s argument also exemplifies how Native understandings of environmental 

change and ecology have evolved over time in the context of the broader social, political, 

environmental, technological, and scientific transformations affecting their lives since initial 

contact with Europeans. Incorporating both historical and contemporary Native perspectives 

into natural resource management policies in Devils Postpile and throughout the national 

park system requires bridging the divide between natural and cultural resources that has long 

been a part of national park management. It also requires recognizing Indian efforts to adapt 

contemporary perspectives on ecology and environmental change within traditional cultural 

frameworks. 

A number of historians and anthropologists have also discussed how substantive collaboration 

with tribes can in fact complement the Park Service’s broad aim of natural and cultural heritage 

preservation. Environmental historian William Cronon has advocated “restorying” wilderness 

landscapes in order to highlight the ways in which these places reflect not the absence of 

history but the complex intersections between history and nature.41 Park Service historian 

David Louter has similarly suggested that the agency “can benefit from looking at parks 

through the lens of a preservation principle that does not limit us to thinking of them as places 

where nature is constantly in decline, as shadows of the past.” This new principle “would 

consider preservation as a dynamic process, one that accepts the human and natural elements 

of the parks as part of the same mental and physical landscape.”42 In order to more fully 

include Native people in ecological management, ethnobiologist M. Kat Anderson and plant 

ecologist Michael Barbour have proposed applying a “Simulated Indigenous Management 

Model” to natural resource policy. This would involve designating some park areas as “ecocultural landscapes” to serve as “a middle ground between areas designated as ‘wilderness’ and 

other areas that are managed as living museums or ‘cultural landscapes.”’43 

Today, tribal participation in natural resource management in the national park system remains 

inconsistent despite these calls. In part, this is due to the Park Service’s continued commitment 

to maintaining parks in their “natural condition,” which the 2006 management policies 

statement defines as “the condition... that would occur in the absence of human dominance 

over the landscape.”44 In Devils Postpile, the inclusion of much of the park within the Ansel 

Adams Wilderness may also complicate efforts to incorporate Indian land-use practices. 

Finally, many tribes remain mistrustful of government agencies including the Park Service, 

and continue to resist entering into formal agreements. 

At Devils Postpile, the Park Service had limited contact with tribes in the region until 2009 

when monument staff collaborated with Donna Vasquez of the Bishop Paiute Tribe to begin a 

native plant education program for tribal children. The program represented an important step 

forward, providing a way for the tribe to maintain living heritage by reestablishing connections 

to cultural landscapes. Vasquez has also requested permission to gather native plants in the 

monument for traditional purposes, though this remains a hot-button issue for Indian tribes 

and the Park Service systemwide. Since the 1990s, the agency has permitted Indian gathering 

for personal consumption, or when it is determined to be consistent with an individual park’s 

228 
Ecological Management 

management priorities. Overall, however, the Park Service has been less willing than “multipleuse”-oriented agencies to permit plant harvesting. While some parks have arrangements with 

tribes, a lack of consistency in the interpretation of agency policy remains. Whether plant 

gathering will be permitted in Devils Postpile remains a topic of discussion.45 

Last, greater attention to environmental history and Native American perspectives in recent 

years has intersected with changes in ecosystem science. Through most of the twentieth 

century, ecologists adhered to the theory that although ecological communities were dynamic, 

they tended toward a relatively stable “climax” state if left unaffected by human activity. By 

the 1970s, some ecologists were questioning this presumption of eventual equilibrium. In 

place of what they regarded as “an overemphasis upon constancy, balance, and gradual change 

in traditional ecosystem ecology,” these critics advanced “a new ecology that emphasizes 

indeterminism, instability, and constant change.”46 This view of ecosystems as perpetually 

imbalanced grew out of new research into the different spatial and temporal scales of ecological 

change, an increasing recognition of the frequency and magnitude of past environmental 

changes, as well as a revision of ecological thinking in the context of anthropogenic climate 

change. 

Critics point out that advocates of nonequilibrium ecology tend to oversimplify traditional 

ecologists’ understanding of stability and change in ecosystems.47 Others worry that by moving 

beyond a tight focus on non-human nature, ecologists have become more accommodating of 

resource extraction and development schemes.48 The greater attention to imbalance, however, 

has permitted more flexibility in determining what constitutes a healthy ecosystem. Ecologists’ 

emphasis on biodiversity, resilience, and sustainability in recent decades demonstrates a less 

exclusive commitment to reproducing a mythic non-human wilderness, and suggests a need 

to consider alternative benchmarks for ecological management in the National Park Service. 

In their introduction to a recent compilation, geographer David N. Cole and conservation social 

scientist Laurie Yung encourage scientists and land managers to “think beyond naturalness, to 

articulate park purposes in terms that are both more specific and more diverse then naturalness 

and to adopt a wider array of management approaches.”49 In particular, Cole, Yung, and 

other contributors stress the profound effects of more recent anthropogenic changes including 

pollution, land fragmentation, invasive species, and especially global climate change on the 

biosphere. Put simply, these changes have created new ecological baselines that in many 

cases either prevent the restoration of previous landscape conditions or render attempts to 

do so potentially detrimental to biodiversity and resilience. In response, the authors propose 

a “toolbox” of management strategies adaptable to the specific preservation requirements of 

individual parks.50 

Determining appropriate resource policies thus involves acknowledgment that management 

decisions are always value-laden and historically contingent. Such a perspective encourages a 

different appreciation for the national parks, not as remnants of a bygone wilderness, but as 

barometers of American environmental history, places where we can learn about and reflect on 

the many ways in which people have perceived, engaged with, and altered nature over time. 

Devils Postpile’s current emphasis on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and communication can benefit from this more responsive approach to ecological management. One of the 

more intriguing suggestions to come out of recent research in the park is that because of its 

north to south orientation, the Middle Fork Valley may remain somewhat insulated from the 

warming that will affect other areas of the Sierra Nevada. The monument could potentially 

serve as a “refugium” for threatened Sierra species, and a location for studying how ecosystems 

respond to a changing environment at different scales. The goal, however, should not be to 

229 
Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

wall off Devils Postpile from human-induced climate change—to try to maintain it as an island 

of pure nature unaffected by history—but to better understand how it fits into the broader 

environmental history of the Sierra Nevada, so that the region can continue to be recognized 

as an important part of American natural and cultural heritage even in the face of dramatic 

change. 

Notes 

1.	 Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, xiii. 

2.	 Quotations from White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” 129. See also Farquhar, History of the 

Sierra Nevada. 

3.	 Quoted in James G. Moore, Exploring the Highest Sierra (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 65. 

4.	 Whitney quoted in Michael L. Smith, Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915 

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 33. For the survey’s contributions to science, see Moore, 

Exploring the Highest Sierra, 65–66. 

5.	 White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” 129–35. 

6.	 For the controversy over Muir’s theory of glaciers, see Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 155–56; Dennis 

R. Dean, “John Muir and the Origin of the Yosemite Valley,” Annals of Science 48 (1991): 453–85; and Donald 

Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 192–202. 

7.	 Joseph LeConte, A Journal of Ramblings through the High Sierras by the “University Excursion Party” (San 

Francisco: Francis & Valentine, 1875). www.yosemite.ca.us/library/leconte/ramblings3.html; and Worster, A 

Passion for Nature, 196. 

8.	 Le Conte, A Journal of Ramblings through the High Sierra. 

9.	 Smith, Pacific Visions, 46, 126. 

10.	 J. N. LeConte [Jr.] to President Wm. H. Taft, March 29, 1911, Walter L. Huber Papers, WRCA. 

11.	 Quoted in N. King Huber and Wymond Eckhardt, Devils Postpile Story, rev. ed. (Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia 

Natural History Association, 1995), 23. 

12.	 Fritiof Fryxell, “Francois  ̧ Emille Matthes,” in Matthes, Fran ̧cois Matthes and the Marks of Time, www.yosemite 

.ca.us/library/matthes/francois_matthes.html. 

13.	 Ibid. 

14.	 Matthes, “The Devils Postpile and Its Strange Setting.” 

15.	 Ibid. 

16.	 Ibid. 

17.	 Theodore Cronyn, “Devil Postpile National Monument Boundary Survey, 1934,” 3–4, Devils Postpile Central 

Files, 1915–1953, ACC. 5121, YNPA. 

18.	 Dorr Yeager, Regional Naturalist, to Regional Director, re: “Inspection of Devils Postpile National Monument,” 

September 17, 1951, Cultural Resources Folder, Devils Postpile National Monument. 

19.	 Richard Hartesveldt, “The Geologic Story of the Devils Postpile,” Yosemite Nature Notes 31, no. 10 (October 

1952): 140–48. 

20.	 Keith Trexler and William Jones, Your Guide to Devils Postpile National Monument, rev. ed. (Yosemite: Yosemite 

Natural History Association, 1963). 

21.	 N. King Huber and C. Dean Rinehart, Geologic Survey Professional Paper 554-D: Cenozoic Volcanic Rocks of 

the Devils Postpile Quadrangle, Eastern Sierra Nevada (Washington, DC: GPO, 1967). 

22.	 Ibid., D-1-D-2, D-13-D-14. 

23.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 4–5, 59. 

24.	 Ibid., 85. 

230 
Notes 

25.	 George M. Wright et al., Fauna of the National Parks of the United States: A Preliminary Survey of Faunal 

Relations in National Parks (Washington, DC: United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 

1933), www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/fauna1/fauna.htm. 

26.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 97. 

27.	 Ibid., 91–148. 

28.	 A. S. Leopold (chairman) et al., Wildlife Management in the National Parks: The Leopold Report, www.cr.nps 

.gov/history/online_books/leopold/leopold.htm. 

29.	 Ibid. 

30.	 Sellars, Preserving Nature in the National Parks, 244. 

31.	 Quotes from Kiki Leigh Rydell, “A Public Face for Science: A. Starker Leopold and the Leopold Report,” 

George Wright Forum 15, no. 4 (1998): 58. 

32.	 Office of Science and Technology, National Park Service, “State of the Parks, May 1980: A Report to the 

Congress,” in Dilsaver, America’s National Park System, www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anps/ 

anps_7g.htm. 

33.	 Richard West Sellars, “A Very Large Array: Early Federal Historic Preservation—The Antiquities Act, Mesa 

Verde, and the National Park Service Act,” George Wright Forum 25, no. 1 (2008): 81–82. 

34.	 Rothman, Preserving Different Pasts, 171. 

35.	 National Park Service, “Statement for Management: Devils Postpile National Monument-California,” March 

24, 1978, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

36.	 National Park Service, “Natural Resources Management Statement for Devils Postpile National Monument,” 

March 1982, 10–13, Devils Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

37.	 Jonathan B. Jarvis, “The Natural Resources Challenge: A Retrospective and View to the Future.” Proceedings 

of the 2007 George Wright Society Conference (2008): 84–88. 

38.	 William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,” Annals of the Association 

of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (September 1992): 369–85; and William Cronon, “The Trouble with 

Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. 

William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), 69–90. For a sampling of the heated debate 

spawned by Cronon’s essay, see J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, eds., The Great New Wilderness 

Debate (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998). 

39.	 Goode interview. 

40.	 Ibid. 

41.	 William Cronon, “The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How Do You Manage a Wilderness Full of Human 

Stories?” Orion (May/June 2003). 

42.	 David Louter, “Nature as We See It: National Parks and the Wilderness Ideal,” Ecological Restoration 21, no. 4 

(December 2003): 253. 

43.	 M. Kat Anderson and Michael G. Barbour, “Simulated Indigenous Management: A New Model for Ecological 

Restoration in National Parks,” Ecological Restoration 21, no. 4 (December 2003): 270. 

44.	 National Park Service, Management Policies 2006 (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2006), 35. 

45.	 An ethnographic overview can aid in this process by providing a more in-depth analysis of past and present 

indigenous associations with the monument’s natural resources. For a good example of this type of study from 

the region, see Douglas Deur, Yosemite National Park Traditional Use Study: Traditional Plant Use, Yosemite 

Valley and El Portal , United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service Pacific West Region 

Series in Social Science, Publication Number 2007-01 (2007). See also Douglas Deur, Homelands of the 

Siskiyou Divide: An Ethnohistory of American Indian Communities’ Traditional Ties to Oregon Caves National 

Monument and Vicinity, US Department of the Interior, National Park Service Pacific West Region Series in 

Social Science, Publication Number 2008-02 (2008). For a general overview of Indian plant gathering and the 

Park Service, see David Ruppert, “Building Partnerships between American Indian Tribes and the National 

Park Service,” Ecological Management 21, no. 4 (December 2003): 261–63. 

231 
Chapter Sixteen From Geologic Interpretation to Ecosystem Management 

46.	 Joel Bartholemew Hagen, An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers 

University Press, 1992), 194–95; and Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 17. 

47.	 Hagen, An Entangled Bank, 195. 

48.	 Donald Worster, “The Shaky Ground of Sustainable Development,” in The Wealth of Nature: Environmental 

History and the Ecological Imagination, ed. Donald Worster (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 

142–55. 

49.	 David N. Cole and Laurie Yung, “Park and Wilderness Stewardship: The Dilemma of Management 

Intervention,” in Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Stewardship in an era of Rapid Change, 

ed. David N. Cole and Laurie Yung (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010), 2. 

50.	 See, especially, David N. Cole, Constance I. Millar, and Nathan L. Stephenson, “Responding to Climate 

Change: A Toolbox of Management Strategies,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 179–96; and F. Stuart 

Chaplin III, Erika S. Zavaleta, Leigh A. Welling, Paul Deprey, and Laurie Young, “Planning in the Context 

of Uncertainty: Flexibility for Adapting to Change,” in Cole and Yung, Beyond Naturalness, 216–33. 

232 
Conclusion: Regional Cooperation and the 

Future of Devils Postpile 

Recognition of the human dimensions of ecological change at Devils Postpile underscores the 

vital importance of maintaining and building on the interagency and regional cooperation 

that has been a basic part of Devils Postpile’s management over the past century. Although the 

potential for regional conflict exists, the National Park Service has for the most part maintained 

cooperative relationships with the local community and the Inyo National Forest. These good 

relations are, in part, a product of Devils Postpile’s significance as a draw for visitors to the 

Eastern Sierra. The long history of collaboration between the Park Service and the Forest 

Service has also been an important basis for mutual support. In the Mammoth region, the two 

agencies have learned to live together, to share resources, and to respect each other’s particular 

administrative mandates and agency cultures. While the Forest Service’s utilitarian agenda has 

at times clashed with the Park Service’s emphasis on protecting and interpreting the scientific 

resources at Devils Postpile, Inyo officials have also provided support in development, facility 

maintenance, and regional planning. The Park Service has historically complemented the 

Forest Service’s recreational agenda in the area by offering more in-depth interpretive services. 

In recent years, the monument’s increased emphasis on ecological management and scientific 

research has provided an important knowledge base for managing the entire San Joaquin 

watershed as an integrated ecosystem. This whole-ecosystem approach offers an opportunity 

for even greater coordination not only between the Forest Service and the Park Service but also 

among local governments, recreational interests, Indian tribes, and others with something at 

stake in the environmental health of the Sierra Nevada. 

Regional cooperation continues to be an important theme in the management of Devils 

Postpile. Beginning in 2005, the Park Service and the Inyo National Forest began considering 

the possibility of incorporating the mandatory shuttle system into the regional public transit 

system. Doing so would help mitigate increasing fares, which have in the past correlated 

with decreased use of the shuttle. In 2006, monument staff negotiated an arrangement with 

the Inyo National Forest and Mammoth Lakes to share space at the new Mammoth Visitor 

Center. In return for staffing the information desk part-time, the Park Service received records 

management assistance from the Inyo National Forest and additional office space at the visitor 

center. This arrangement has increased the visibility of the Park Service in the region and 

provided a physical space for day-to-day interactions among agency employees.1 

In 2008, Devils Postpile staff and the Pacific West Regional office began preparing the first 

general management plan (GMP) for the monument. By establishing formal management 

objectives for the next fifteen to twenty years, the GMP represents a significant step in the 

maturation of Devils Postpile as an independent park. The priorities of the GMP also reflect the 

monument’s deep historical and ecological ties to the Middle Fork Valley and the Mammoth 

region. The guiding principle is to encourage “seamless management of the monument 

and the surrounding national forest” in order to provide “a quality visitor experience and 

enhanced resource protection.”2 This objective meshes neatly with the more than seventyfive-year history of interagency cooperation between the Park Service and the Forest Service 

at Devils Postpile. It also reflects the area’s historical appeal as a retreat from the crowded 
Conclusion: Regional Cooperation and the Future of Devils Postpile 

resorts of Mammoth Lakes and the sprawl of Southern California, where most visitors have 

hailed. The wilderness designation shared by the monument and surrounding national forest 

provides another important basis for interagency cooperation in maintaining the valley’s rustic, 

minimally developed feel. 

For current managers at Devils Postpile, regional cooperation is also essential for protecting 

the broader Sierra ecosystem upon which the health of the monument’s natural resource base 

depends. Devils Postpile is a “postage stamp-sized unit” within a much larger complex of public 

land, making it highly susceptible to environmental threats originating outside its boundaries. 

In the past, jurisdictional issues and shortages of funding and manpower have often prevented 

extensive Park Service engagement with these threats. Today, however, the park’s independent 

status and inter-park and external networks have increased its capacity for addressing regional 

ecological concerns. 

GMP discussions also reflect concern over the future growth of Mammoth Lakes. A 2007 

general plan for the town called for an increase in hotel bed capacity from 35,000 to 55,000 

and recent additions of direct flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco make this expansion 

likely. In the 1990s, skyrocketing home values related to increased tourism priced out many 

longtime residents, including some Park Service employees, and resulted in new threats to 

resources on surrounding public lands. Despite the recent collapse in home values in the 

Mammoth area, similar challenges may emerge in the coming years. 

A primary aim of the GMP is to take advantage of Devils Postpile’s interagency and regional 

partnerships, its science program, and its location at the crossroads of the Western and Eastern 

Sierra bioregions to guide more ecologically sustainable regional planning.3 The monument’s 

more assertive stance in regional politics has required significant community outreach. In 

May 2009, Dulen presented the monument’s GMP proposal to the Mono County Board 

of Supervisors, emphasizing the importance of collaboration with the Inyo National Forest 

in ecosystem protection and transportation planning. The superintendent also informed the 

board of the upcoming public scoping process for the GMP. She called on local “stakeholders,” 

including “anyone who owns a business in the area,” to comment on GMP planning. She 

established a mailing list, handed out postcards, urged public comment through the park’s 

website, and outlined a schedule for a series of public scoping open houses.4 

Park Service officials have also taken steps to fulfill the agency’s legal obligation to establish 

government-to-government relations with federally recognized Indian tribes associated with 

the Devils Postpile area. In 2009, monument officials began actively seeking input from Paiute 

and North Fork Mono groups regarding the cultural significance of the Devils Postpile area. A 

complete ethnohistorical study would provide important baseline information for developing 

collaborative relationships with these communities in both cultural and natural resource 

management. 

The Postpile’s local and regional outreach efforts encapsulate the challenges and opportunities 

of national park management in the twenty-first century. They also represent components of a 

general strategy for increasing the involvement of small parks with minimal base funding and 

staffing in regional politics and planning. 

Despite recent successes, Devils Postpile faces an uphill climb. The development of a regionally 

integrated ecosystem management plan has and will continue to clash with the growth 

imperative driving the Mammoth Lakes tourism and recreation industry, which means that 

the Park Service will likely face a choice in the near future: managers can either take a hard-line 

stance that ecological protection invariably conflicts with economic imperatives or seek some 

234 
Notes 

middle ground between the two. Those who prefer compromise would benefit from revisiting 

the argument made by opponents of the trans-Sierra highway in the 1960s and 1970s that the 

environmental health of the region is vital to its appeal as a recreational destination. This option 

would also be more in line with the Park Service’s foundational mission to balance resource 

protection with visitor enjoyment. The choice itself exhibits the significance of regional politics 

in shaping how individual parks fulfill this national mandate. 

Notes 

1.	 Dulen, “2005 Annual Report for Devils Postpile National Monument,” 7–8. 

2.	 “DRAFT: Devils Postpile National Monument Foundation Statement Summary,” February 2009, Devils
 

Postpile National Monument, Superintendent’s Office.
 

3.	 Deanna Dulen, “2007 Annual Report, for Devils Postpile National Monument,” 2007, 7–8, Devils Postpile 

National Monument, Superintendent’s Office. 

4.	 “Meeting Minutes: Board of Supervisors, County of Mono, State of California,” May 19, 2009, 5, Mono
 

County Courthouse, Bridgeport, California.
 

235 

Appendix A 

Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 

Aprimary function of a Historic Resource Study is to provide historic contexts for interpreting 

cultural resources and evaluating their eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic 

Places. For the purpose of evaluating the significance of specific resources, a statement of 

historic context must include reference to associated historical themes or subjects (including 

groups of people), the history of the relevant geographical area or areas, and the particular 

historical time period.1 The historic contexts covered in this Appendix provide a foundation 

for identifying and evaluating resources in Devils Postpile and the surrounding area. 

Devils Postpile National Monument contains few of the types of structures and artifacts 

typically covered in a historic resource study. Frequent volcanism, animal activity, erosion, and 

heavy winter snows have combined to erase many remnants of the region’s human past. Present, 

however, are a number of subtle clues in the form of physical artifacts and environmental 

alterations exhibiting how different groups of people viewed and engaged with the Middle 

Fork San Joaquin Valley prior to and after its inclusion in the federal trust. These cultural 

resources are valuable for what they reveal about the diverse groups of people that have shaped 

the history of the Sierra Nevada from prehistory to the present. They are also suggestive of the 

effects of broad historical and environmental transformations on remote mountain landscapes 

in the American West. 

Native Americans: Trans-Sierra Trade and Environmental Change 

For thousands of years, Native inhabitants of both the west and east slopes of the Sierra 

Nevada passed through the Devils Postpile area for trade. These trans-Sierra trade relationships 

were vital to the social and economic life of indigenous societies in the region. Scattered 

archaeological sites containing obsidian points, basalt chips, and granite bedrock mortars 

remain as tangible evidence of the antiquity of the human presence in the Postpile region. 

The trail passing from the North Fork San Joaquin River through the Middle Fork Valley 

and over Mammoth Pass was used frequently by North Fork Mono and Paiute communities 

into the modern era. As a result of both geography and efforts by those who used the route 

to protect it, the trail remained relatively unknown and untraveled by Euro-American settlers 

in California until late in the period of American expansion, despite the fact that Mammoth 

Pass is the lowest point along the 250-mile Sierra escarpment. Although few obvious signs of 

Indians’ passage remain, their general route can still be traveled by following the present trail 

system over Mammoth Pass, to Reds Meadows, through the north end of the monument, over 

the King Creek Trail, and on to Sheep’s Crossing on the North Fork San Joaquin. 

The Devils Postpile area can also serve as a location for examining how tribes used and altered 

remote ecosystems in the High Sierra. Recent fire studies of the monument and oral histories 

collected from tribal elders and longtime residents of the area suggest that Indians may have 

intentionally burned the region to open trails, encourage the growth of certain plants, and 

facilitate hunting. It is difficult to determine precisely how Native people influenced the 
Appendix A Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 

ecology of the Middle Fork Valley. However, the extent of these kinds of modifications in other 

parts of the Sierra has led a number of anthropologists, geographers, and biologists to suggest 

that the removal of Native Americans from the Sierra created an ecological “disequilibrium” 

that must be taken into consideration when drafting current and future natural and cultural 

resource management plans.2 As one Southern Sierra Miwok put it, “The white man sure 

ruined this country. It’s turned back to wilderness.”3 

This change to wilderness did not occur overnight. Many Native practices were continued by 

ranchers, sheepherders, and other commercial users of the region through the late nineteenth 

century. North Fork rancher Betty Jamison indicated that her father, John O’Neal, had “learned 

some of the burning techniques from the Indians” who he often hired to herd sheep during 

the summer months. While ranchers and sheepherders borrowed some burning practices from 

local Indians, by the time they did so, extensive brush and litter had already accumulated in 

many areas. As a result, their fires tended to cover larger areas and were more prone to burning 

out of control.4 

Native people were not just historical agents in absentia. They continued to play a role 

in the settlement and use of the area. Many actively resisted settler intrusions. During the 

Owens Valley War of the early 1860s, the supposed leader of the Paiute resistance, known as 

“Joaquin Jim,” became a fixture in miners’ stories about the hazards of prospecting on the 

extreme western edge of the Sierra crest. 5 James Wright reported that local Indians knew the 

whereabouts of the mythic Lost Cement Mine but, in defense of their stronghold, “drove out 

nearly every party so long as Joaquin Jim lived.” Even though Joaquin Jim was reportedly 

captured and killed by US troops in December 1864, Indians in the area remained “saucy” 

long after, boasting “that they whipped the white man in their war.” Wright also noted the 

difficulty of securing Indian guides willing to lead miners to gold deposits. Native guides 

perceived correctly that it was gold that had brought white men to the area. Such methods of 

resistance probably limited the development of the Middle Fork Valley for mining, and may 

have prevented some of the environmental changes that would have followed.6 

Through the early twentieth century, many Indians in the region found employment as guides 

and, in the process, gained a measure of control over which areas US Army patrols, surveyors, 

miners, sheepherders, and early tourists passed through. In the Mammoth region, some Paiutes 

earned a living procuring resources for area mining camps. An 1879 article in the Mammoth 

City Herald indicated that local Indians supplied trout caught in Fish Creek south of Devils 

Postpile for “50 cents a dozen.”7 One miner reported accompanying a Paiute known as “Indian 

Jim” on a fishing trip to Fish Creek.8 North Fork Mono groups also continued to use the 

Mammoth Pass trail long after French’s toll road had shut down. Through the 1930s, west 

slope groups traveling over the pass commonly used the sweathouses at Casa Diablo or visited 

with Navajo Johnson who ran an Indian trading post near the hot spring.9 

Acknowledging indigenous peoples’ present and historical relationship to this place involves 

acknowledging that seemingly natural resources such as montane meadows, riparian vegetation, 

fish and wildlife populations, and charcoal scars indicating past fire regimes also qualify as 

cultural resources. By taking into account the role of Native people in shaping the ecology of 

the Middle Fork Valley, and by recognizing the area’s importance to the spiritual and cultural 

survival of the tribes in the future, managers at Devils Postpile can begin to construct a richer 

basis for interpretation, as well as more historically informed methods for environmental 

monitoring and management. 

238 
Mining, 1848–1930s 

Mining, 1848–1930s 

Mining played a significant role in the development of the Sierra Nevada in the nineteenth and 

early twentieth centuries. The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 provided the impetus 

for American expansion and settlement of the area through the late nineteenth century. The 

penetration of miners into the more remote corners of the Sierra range was made possible by 

the actions of volunteer and state militias and, eventually, federal troops to clear the region of 

its prior inhabitants. This process took longer to reach Devils Postpile than in the west slope 

foothills, but was no less significant in bringing about environmental changes and hastening 

the area’s incorporation into the larger economy of the American West. 

Few obvious traces of mining remain in the monument today, though a recent archaeological 

survey located some buried tools and cookware probably left by prospectors in the late 1800s or 

early 1900s.10 In the decades following World War II, the Forest Service removed many of the 

dilapidated structures still standing in the region. Today, the largest number of intact artifacts 

in the region can be found at the Minaret Mine site located 6 miles west of the monument. 

Established initially in 1878, the Minaret Mine did not see significant development until the 

late 1920s when its owner C. C. Randall financed the construction of a road from Minaret 

Pass across the Middle Fork San Joaquin to the mine site. Portions of the original roadbed 

from the monument to the mine are still visible along the popular hiking trail to Minaret Lake. 

Mineral rights for the area changed hands several times after the mine closed in the 1930s. In 

the early 1970s, the claim was held by Reverend Ralph York of Los Gatos, California, who 

reportedly made improvements to existing structures in order to use them as a summer camp 

for his church. In 2008, media crews flocked to the area after the wreckage of a single-engine 

airplane piloted by millionaire aviator Steve Fossett was found on a steep slope above the mine 

site.11 

Although a few prospectors tried their luck in this remote locale, the Postpile area served 

primarily as a place to pass through for those headed east to the mines in the Mammoth 

Lakes basin. During the summer months between 1879 and 1881, the French Trail, a 54-mile 

toll route from present-day Oakhurst to the Mammoth Lakes basin, brought hopeful miners 

past the Postpile formation. The stretch from the North Fork San Joaquin to Mammoth Pass 

proved too rugged for wagons and so remained a foot and horse trail. While no clear evidence 

of the toll route exists today in the monument, the general route can still be traced as current 

trails trace the general course of the original trail. 

It was common during this period for private contractors to construct toll roads over the Sierra 

crest to provide access to mining, timber, and grazing sites. The French Trail followed the 

pattern of several trans-Sierra toll routes completed in the 1860s and 1870s. These predecessors 

included the Sonora Pass Trail to the north as well as the Denning and Hockett Trails, which 

both bisected the southern portion of present day Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.12 

Although the French Trail toll route remained in operation only for a short time, it provided 

an important early connection with the more populated areas to the west and facilitated the 

initial settlement of the Mammoth Lakes area. At various times since its closure, the trail has 

been identified as a possible location for a trans-Sierra highway. Due to local protests and 

difficulties posed by the area’s geography, these plans have never been carried out. 

The collapsed cabin near the base of the Postpile is the monument’s most visible remnant of 

the area’s mining past. There are conflicting reports about the origins of the cabin. Edwin 

Gudde, in California Place Names, indicated that Red Sotcher built it in 1878, although later 

reports suggested that the cabin “looked new” in 1909 when it was occupied by a man named 

Moore. It is possible that the cabin was built in conjunction with the mining boom of the late 

239 
Appendix A Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 

nineteenth century and that Moore and other inhabitants rehabilitated it in later years. The 

cabin remained in use by various individuals into the 1930s, but began to deteriorate after 

that time. In 1954, heavy snow caused the cabin to collapse. The Park Service removed most 

of the ruins soon after despite frequent calls from local people and some agency employees to 

restore the cabin as a tourist site or ranger station. Today, only the foundation and the large 

stone hearth remain visible. 

When it was standing, the cabin exhibited unique architectural qualities not found in other 

cabins in the Sierra Nevada. According to Yosemite ranger Robert F. Uhte, larger logs were 

used to form the base, and progressively smaller pieces of lumber were linked together to form 

the walls, giving the cabin a “sturdy appearance.” Other unique features include the deep 

recessed windows and the “shake and wedge-shaped chinking” used for the roof. The cabin 

may have been constructed in this manner to ensure that it would stand up to the particularly 

heavy accumulations of snow in this area.13 

Sheepherding, 1860s–1900s 

Sheepherders, including those originating from the Basque country of Western Europe, were 

pivotal to the history of resource use and the early history of conservation in the Sierra Nevada. 

Yet their voices are largely missing from most histories of the region. This is due to the paucity 

of traditional historical sources left behind by these little understood “gypsy herders” and the 

conservation perspective that has usually shaped historical interpretations of the Sierra. Devils 

Postpile National Monument can serve as a location for better understanding and interpreting 

their stories and their perceptions of the region. 

While it is difficult to determine their precise impacts, sheepherders likely affected the 

environment of the Postpile region—primarily through grazing, but also by setting fires and 

blazing trails into the remote canyons adjacent to the present-day monument. Sheepherders 

were also responsible for naming the Postpile formation and for establishing the trails that 

facilitated later explorations of the area. The real and perceived environmental effects of 

grazing also provided the impetus for many early conservation efforts in the Sierra Nevada, 

particularly the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890s. Early conservationists 

viewed sheepherders and their flocks as a pestilence, and in the 1890s, called for their eviction 

from the newly created national parks and forest reserves. Early maps indicate that through the 

1890s the Devils Postpile and Reds Meadow area served as a hub of operations for US Cavalry 

patrols charged with removing sheepherders from the newly created Yosemite National Park. 

Sheepherders often marked their passage through the Sierra Nevada with tree carvings. 

Arborglyphs are more prevalent in other areas in the Sierra and the Great Basin, yet some 

remain visible today in Devils Postpile. These carvings are among the few remaining cultural 

artifacts of a group of people who viewed the Devils Postpile landscape through a significantly 

different lens than the explorers, surveyors, tourists, and conservationists whose perspectives 

generally inform historical interpretations of the Sierra Nevada. During their long, lonely 

summers in the range, sheepherders acquired a detailed knowledge of the topography and the 

potentialities of the landscape. They knew the area not primarily through recreation, scientific 

observation, or the contemplation of aesthetics but through the day-to-day challenges of 

surviving and making a living off the resources available in this remote, rugged place. The 

tree carvings they left behind, though fragmentary, offer a way to reflect on how these “lonely 

sentinels of the West” perceived and engaged with the environment of the Middle Fork Valley 

at a time when many Americans were beginning to call for federal laws limiting grazing and 

other resource extraction activities in the Sierra Nevada.14 

240 
Federal Management and Interagency Cooperation 

Early Conservation and Tourism 

Few tourists visited the Devils Postpile prior to (and even after) its inclusion in Yosemite 

National Park in 1890. Those sightseers who did make their way to this remote corner of the 

High Sierra during this period encountered not the empty wilderness landscape they expected 

but an area that had been used extensively for a variety of resource extraction activities. Even 

though most conservationists had little knowledge of the area, it was well-known by Indians, 

miners, sheepherders, and hunters. These groups generally did not share the particular view 

of nature-as-scenery held by the middle- and upper-class tourists converging on the Yosemite 

Valley and other more accessible areas in the Sierra Nevada at this time. 

The accounts of James Hutchings who viewed the Postpile in 1875, George Bayley who 

visited Rainbow Falls in 1878, and Theodore Solomons who passed through in 1892, reflect 

the romantic appeal of natural aesthetics and geologic discovery common to the middleand upper-class travel writing of that era. These accounts also illustrate the cultural divide 

separating tourists and conservationists from local people who knew and valued the area 

primarily through their work. The incongruences in these authors’ writings between their 

regard for the pristine, untouched qualities of the landscape and their frequent encounters 

with signs of human use highlight the fact that wilderness, before it could be preserved, first 

had to be created—a process that involved an overhaul of federal laws governing land use. 

Much of the subsequent history of federal management in the area revolved around questions 

of what was to be preserved, how it should look, and who should have access to it. 

Federal Management and Interagency Cooperation 

The administrative evolution of Devils Postpile National Monument has reflected deep-rooted 

tensions in the history of the national monuments and in the broader history of American 

conservation. These include tensions between utilitarian and preservationist philosophies of 

conservation; between recreational and scientific considerations in resource management, 

visitation policies, and infrastructure development; and between local interests and federal 

land agencies. However, such divisions have also not always been clear-cut at Devils Postpile. 

The 1911 campaign to establish the monument involved a collaborative effort between 

Forest Service officials and prominent members the Sierra Club. With the start of National 

Park Service oversight in 1934, monument staff overcame budget and staffing constraints 

by working in cooperation with other federal agencies, most notably the Forest Service, and 

with local recreational businesses to maintain park infrastructure, provide visitor services, and 

ensure a quality visitor experience including both recreational and educational opportunities. 

Several resources in and around the monument reflect this history of interagency and regional 

cooperation. The Reds Meadow guard station, built in 1927, served as the Forest Service 

ranger station for all of the Middle Fork Valley, including the monument prior to its transfer 

to the Park Service in 1934 and during the period of shared management during World War 

II. The bathhouse located down the hill from the Reds Meadow cabin was built through a 

cooperative effort between the Forest Service and the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) in 

1935. This is the only CCC structure in the area. 

The first permanent ranger station in Devils Postpile was built in the early 1940s. A 1963 letter 

from Taylor Johnston, whose family managed the Minaret Mine during the 1920s, indicates 

anecdotally that the original ranger station had been built from salvage wood from the Minaret 

Mine (although this may be a reference to the Reds Meadow guard station). According to 

former superintendent Wymond Eckhart, the front room of the current ranger station is the 

241 
Appendix A Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 

original structure from the 1940s. The back room was added during renovations in the late 

1970s. Additional research and evaluation will be necessary to establish the historical integrity 

and authenticity of the structure. 

In addition, the John Muir Trail reroute, which runs north along the west bank of the river 

and includes the bridge over the Middle Fork San Joaquin south of the Postpile formation, 

was built through a cooperative arrangement between the Park Service and the Forest Service 

in 1976. The purpose was to redirect pack-stock and backpacker traffic away from the Postpile 

Trail, which at that time was experiencing increasingly heavy day use from hikers, sightseers, 

and campers driving in from Mammoth Lakes. 

Finally, the Reds Meadow–Devils Postpile shuttle bus system, established in 1979, became 

the first mandatory shuttle bus operated by a partnership between the Park Service, the Forest 

Service, and private interests to serve a unit of the national park system. Since its inauguration, 

the shuttle has mitigated the environmental damage attendant to heavy private automobile use 

in the Middle Fork Valley and in the monument in particular. It has also played a vital role in 

protecting the rustic, minimally developed feel of the area, and represents an important link 

between the Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Mammoth Lakes recreational economy. 

Recreation and Preservation in the Twentieth Century 

During the twentieth century, the Middle Fork San Joaquin River Valley including Devils 

Postpile became an important hub of recreational tourism for visitors to the Eastern Sierra and 

the Mammoth Lakes area. While a few intrepid tourists made their way to the valley either 

via the trail over Mammoth Pass or from Yosemite to the north in the early twentieth century, 

the construction of the Minaret Mine road in 1928 made the area more accessible to the 

increasingly mobile residents of the growing city of Los Angeles to the south. In short time, 

the area became a recreational “mecca for Angelenos” according to one newspaper report.15 

The history of recreation in the area reflects the evolution of a broader cultural debate about 

the meaning and value of rustic or wilderness-oriented recreation from the late nineteenth 

century to the present. During this period, visitors to Devils Postpile and the Middle Fork 

Valley generally favored the solitude and physical experience of camping, fly-fishing, hiking, 

climbing, and packing in a difficult to access rustic setting with few visitor services. While 

at times different philosophical conceptions of what constitutes an appropriate wilderness 

experience have led to conflicts between different user groups and government agencies, local 

residents and frequent visitors have also shared an underlying set of values prizing the area’s 

rustic character and wilderness qualities. Such values were reflected in the development of 

the packing industry in the Mammoth Lakes Sierra, in the fight to block the construction of 

the trans-Sierra Highway, in popular and interagency support for the Reds Meadow–Devils 

Postpile shuttle, and in efforts to prevent the expansion of skiing to the west slope of Mammoth 

Mountain and to secure a wilderness designation for the undeveloped areas of the Middle Fork 

Valley including most of Devils Postpile National Monument. 

Science and Regional Planning 

Early twentieth century observers recognized the Devils Postpile formation as an excellent 

example of columnar jointing, comparable to better-known sites including Devils Tower in 

Wyoming and Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The formation’s geologic interest became the 

primary rationale for it inclusion in a national monument in 1911. In later years, others 

including prominent Sierra geologists Fran ̧cois Matthes and N. King Huber recognized the 

242 
Notes 

Postpile and the surrounding area as important locations for understanding the volcanic and 

glacial processes that shaped the Sierra Nevada generally. The monument and the Mammoth 

region have remained important venues for geologic research, serving as testing grounds for 

new dating techniques and new approaches to evaluating the complex forces that produced 

and are still producing the dramatic landscapes adjacent to the Sierra crest. 

In recent years, Park Service priorities at Devils Postpile have broadened beyond geologic 

research and interpretation to include study of the ecological connections linking the 

monument to the surrounding region. This change reflects the combined influence of 

developments in the science of ecology, increasing ecological awareness in American culture, 

the Park Service’s increased attention to scientific management since the 1960s, and the 

preferences of individual Park Service staff. Recent studies of plant and wildlife populations, 

climate and air quality monitoring, and measurements of river flow in Devils Postpile suggest 

the area’s significance as an indicator for the overall health of the Sierra Nevada range including 

areas to the east and the entire San Joaquin River watershed to the west. 

The increased scientific capabilities of Devils Postpile’s staff and the data they have compiled 

have allowed this particular Park Service unit to become a potentially vital source of information 

for ecologically sustainable regional planning, especially in light of climate change. Devils 

Postpile has long served as a cornerstone for the recreation and tourism based economy 

of the Mammoth Lakes Sierra. Through more recent cooperative efforts with the Forest 

Service, science organizations, Mammoth Lakes, and nearby Indian tribes, Devils Postpile is 

positioned to become a more active contributor to local, regional, state, and national discussions 

over environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and economic development in the 

Mammoth region and the Sierra Nevada more broadly. 

In conclusion, while the history of Devils Postpile and the Mammoth Lakes region can be 

interpreted as the story of a landscape shaped by indigenous people giving way to one shaped 

by extractive industries, tourism, and conservation, these different land-use regimes have also 

overlapped. The effects of Indian land-use practices and trans-Sierra trade, American territorial 

expansion, Indian removal, extractive industries, tourism, and federal land management 

remain manifest, though not also obvious or self-evident, in the physical environment. It is 

important to recognize that the boundaries of Devils Postpile National Monument protect 

not a static slice of unaltered nature, but a storied landscape that reflects the interconnected 

historical and ecological transformations affecting the entire Sierra Nevada. 

Notes 

1.	 Barbara Wyatt, “The Components of a Historic Context: A National Register White Paper,” April 9, 2009. 

www.cr.nps.gov/nr/publications/policy.htm. 

2.	 Beesley, Crow’s Range, 31. 

3.	 Quoted in M. Kat Anderson and Michael J. Moratto, “Native American Land-Use Practices and Ecological 

Imprints,” in Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol. 2 (Davis: University of California, 

Centers for Water and Wildland Resources, 1996), 197. 

4.	 M. Kat Anderson, Indian Fire-Based Management in the Sequoia-Mixed Conifer Forests of the Central and 

Southern Sierra Nevada: Final Report Submitted to Yosemite Research Center, Yosemite National Park (Yosemite: 

Yosemite Research Center, 1993), 278. 

5.	 Ella M. Cain, The Story of Early Mono County: Its Settlers, Gold Rushes, Indians, and Ghost Towns (San Francisco: 

Fearon Publishers, 1961), 27, 88–90; and Fred S. Cook, Legends of Inyo County (Pahrump, CA: The Printery, 

1978), 3–9. 

6.	 Wright, Lost Cement Mine, 32–33. 

243 
Appendix A Summary of Historic Contexts and Associated Resources 

7. Quoted in Caldwell, Mammoth Gold , 82. 

8. Ibid., 69. 

9. Quoted in Adele Reed, Old Mammoth (Palo Alto, CA: Genny Smith Books, 1982), 105–6, 108–9. 

10.	 Dulen, “Devils Postpile National Monument: 2007 Annual Report,” 6. 

11.	 “Mine Plans for Winter Operations Anaheim Group to Push Work on Madera County Mining Property,” Los 

Angeles Times, October 15, 1928, 16; and “National Wilderness Areas—They Exist in Name Only,” Los Angeles 

Times, August 15, 1971. For a trip report and some personal reporting on the mine, see www.ripleysghosttowns 

.com/minaretmine.html. For the Fossett story, start with AFP, “Wreck of Steve Fossett’s Plane Discovered: 

Police,” October 2, 2008, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i7Crpovyy44wqBeKBnjcjdmeSfpg. 

12.	 Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada, 102–3; and Dilsaver and Tweed, Challenge of the Big Trees, 38. 

13.	 Robert F. Uhte, “Yosemite’s Pioneer Cabins,” Sierra Club Bulletin 36, no. 5 (May 1951): 70. 

14.	 Mallea-Olaetxe, Speaking through the Aspens, 8. 

15.	 Lynn J. Rogers, “Southland Vacationists Flock to the High Sierra,” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1941, E4. 

244 
Appendix B 

National Register Recommendations 

National Register Criteria for Evaluation1 

Criterion Significance 

A Associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the 

broad patterns of our history 

B Associated with the lives of persons significant in our past 

C Embodying the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, method of 

construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high 

artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity 

whose components may lack individual distinction 

D Having yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in 

prehistory or history 

. The Mammoth Pass Trail from North Fork through Devils Postpile to the Mammoth 

Lakes basin may qualify for inclusion on the National Register under Criterion A and/or 

Criterion D as a historic site. While evidence of the original trail may be difficult to locate, 

existing trails follow the general corridor used by Indian traders both before and after 

Euro-American settlement; by miners and sheepherders in the late nineteenth century; by 

US Cavalry Patrols during the early history of Yosemite National Park; and by Indians, 

Forest Service crews, hikers, and pack-stock outfits through the twentieth century. Between 

the 1950s and 1970s, the area also became the focus of a citizen movement led by local 

conservationists, packers, and tourism business owners to prevent a trans-Sierra highway, 

which, if built, would have followed the general route of the historic trail. 

. Historic structures in the area including the Reds Meadow Guard Station, the Reds 

Meadow Bath House, the Devils Postpile Ranger Station, the ruined cabin at the base 

of the Postpile, and the existing structures at the Minaret Mine site can be evaluated for 

inclusion under Criteria A, C, and/or D. The structures are significant representations 

of the economic development of the area and of the history of interagency and regional 

cooperation during the period of federal government administration. 

. The grounds and some structures at the Reds Meadow Resort and Pack Station can be 

evaluated for inclusion under Criteria A, B, C, and/or D. The only structure at the pack 

station meeting the 50-year age requirement for National Register consideration is Cabin 

One at the resort. However, the pack station itself was significant to the development 

of the recreational economy of the Mammoth Lakes region and the Eastern Sierra more 

broadly. It stands as a living testament to the legacy and heritage of mule and horse packing 

in the Sierra Nevada. 

. Natural features including the Postpile formation, Reds Meadows, Soda Springs Meadow, 

and the Middle Fork San Joaquin River can be evaluated for inclusion as cultural landscapes 

under Criteria A, B, and/or D. These natural resources have cultural significance to Indian 

tribes in the area; as sites in the development of geologic interpretations of the Sierra 
Appendix B National Register Recommendations 

Nevada; and as locations linked to the history of conservation, tourism, and recreation in 

the Mammoth Lakes region and the Sierra Nevada as a whole. 

Notes 

1.	 For further reference see National Register Bulletin 15, “How to Apply the National Register Criteria for
 

Evaluation,” rev. 1995, US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resources.
 

246 
Selected Bibliography
 

Archives, Libraries, and Repositories 

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley 

Devils Postpile National Monument 

Inyo National Forest Supervisor’s Office 

Mammoth District Ranger Station 

Mammoth Lakes Public Library 

National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno 

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park Archives 

Water Resources Center Archives, University of California, Berkeley 

Yosemite National Park Archives 

Newspapers and Magazines 

Backpacker Magazine 

Century Magazine 

Country Life 

Fresno Bee 

Los Angeles Times 

Mammoth Times 

Nevada Appeal Graphic 

Sage and Tumbleweed 

San Francisco Chronicle 

San Jose Mercury News 

Sunset 

The Album: Times & Tales Inyo-Mono 

USA Today 

Oral Interviews 

Eckhart, Wymond. Interview by Paul Ferrell. September 3, 1997. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National 

Park Oral History Collection. unaccessioned DEPO files, “Oral Histories,” Yosemite National Park 

Archive. 

Eckhart, Wymond. Telephone interview by Charles Palmer, April 12, 2006. 

Goode, Ron W. Telephone interview by Christopher E. Johnson. July 19, 2011. 
Selected Bibliography 

Morse, Michael. Interview by Christopher E. Johnson. Mammoth Lakes. July 10, 2010.
 

Roeser, Lou and Marye. Interview by Christopher E. Johnson. Mammoth Lakes. July 12, 2010.
 

Schotz, Bob. Telephone interview by Christopher E. Johnson. May 12, 2011.
 

Tanner, Bob. Interview by Christopher E. Johnson. Reds Meadow. July 11, 2010.
 

Books, Reports, Articles, Dissertations, and Theses 

Albright, Horace M., and Marian Albright Schenck. Creating the National Park Service: The Missing 

Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. 

Aldern, Jared Dahl. “Native Sustainment: The North Fork Mono Tribe’s Stories, History, and Teaching 

of Its Land and Water Tenure in 1918 and 2009.” PhD diss., Prescott College, 2010. 

Allaback, Sarah. Mission 66 Visitor Centers: The History of a Building Type. Washington, DC: US 

Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resource Stewardship and Partnerships, 

Park Historic Structures and Cultural Landscapes Program, 2000. 

Alsup, William. Missing in the Minarets: The Search for Walter A. Starr, Jr. Yosemite National Park: 

Yosemite Association, 2001. 

Anderson, Donald Keith. “Legacy of the American Frontier: A History of the John Muir Trail.” Master’s 

thesis, California State University, Fresno, 1997. 

Anderson, M. Kat. Indian Fire-Based Management in the Sequoia-mixed Conifer Forests of the Central and 

Southern Sierra Nevada: Final Report Submitted to Yosemite Research Center, Yosemite National Park. 

Yosemite: Yosemite Research Center, 1993. 

———. “Tending the Wilderness,” Restoration and Management Notes 14, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 160–61. 

———, and Michael J. Moratto. “Native American Land-Use Practices and Ecological Imprints.” In 

Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol. 2. Davis: University of California, 

Centers for Water and Wildland Resources, 1996. 

———, and Michael G. Barbour. “Simulated Indigenous Management: A New Model for Ecological 

Restoration in National Parks.” Ecological Restoration 21, no. 4 (December 2003): 269–77. 

Anderson, Michael F. Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park. 

Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon Association, 2000. 

Arnett, Melanie, and S. Haultain. Vascular Plants of Devils Postpile National Monument, Final Report to 

Sierra Nevada Inventory and Monitoring Network. Three Rivers, CA: National Park Service, 2005. 

Austin, Mary. The Flock. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906. Reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 

2001. 

Bancroft, Larry, et al. “Evolution of the Natural Fire Management Program at Sequoia and Kings 

Canyon National Parks.” Proceedings Symposium and Workshop on Wilderness Fire. USDA Forest 

Service General Technical Report INT-182, 1985. 

Bayley, George B. “Eight Days in the High Sierra.” The Argonaut 3, no. 24 (December 21, 1878): 

13–15. 

Beesley, David. Crow’s Range: An Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada. Reno: University of Nevada 

Press, 2004. 

Bettinger, Robert L. Archaeology East of the Range of Light: Aboriginal Ecology of the Inyo-Mono Region, 

California. Davis: Foundation for the Publication of Monographs in California and Great Basin 

Anthropology, 1982. 

Bettinger, Robert L., and Jelmer W. Eerkens. “Point Typologies, Cultural Transmission, and the Spread 

of Bow-and-Arrow Technology in the Prehistoric Great Basin.” American Antiquity 64 (199): 

231–42. 

248 
Books, Reports, Articles, Dissertations, and Theses 

Blackburn, Thomas C., and M. Kat Anderson. “Introduction: Managing the Domesticated 

Environment.” In Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. 

Edited by Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson, 1–14. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1993. 

Bouey, Paul D., and Mark E Basgall. “Trans-Sierran Exchange in Prehistoric California: The Concept 

of Economic Articulation.” In Obsidian Studies in the Great Basin. Edited by Richard E. Hughes, 

135–72. Berkeley: Archaeological Research Facility, 1984. 

Bradley, Walter W. California Mineral Production for 1919. Bulletin No. 88. San Francisco: California 

State Printing Office, 1920. 

Brewer, William H. Up and Down California in 1860–1864: The Journal of William H. Brewer. Edited 

by Francis P. Farquhar. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930. 

Brower, David. “Far From the Madding Mules: A Knapsacker’s Retrospect.” Sierra Club Bulletin 20, no. 

1 (February 1935): 68–77. 

———. “Are Mules Necessary?” Sierra Club Bulletin 33, no. 3 (March 1948): 19–30. 

Browning, Peter. Yosemite Place Names: The Historic Background of Geographic Names in Yosemite National 

Park. Lafayette: Great West Books, 1988. 

Bunnell, Lafayette H. Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851, which led to that Event, 3rd 

ed. New York: F. H. Revell Company, 1892. 

Cain, Ella M. The Story of Early Mono County: Its Settlers, Gold Rushes, Indians, and Ghost Towns. San 

Francisco: Fearon Publishers, 1961. 

Caldwell, Gary. Mammoth Gold: The Ghost Towns of Lake District. Mammoth Lakes, CA: Genny Smith 

Books, 1990. 

Callicott, J. Baird, and Michael P. Nelson, eds. The Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: University of 

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———. Fire Effects Monitoring of the 1992 Rainbow Fire, Devils Postpile National Monument: Vegetation 

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———. Tales of the Pioneers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1942. 

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———. Homelands of the Siskiyou Divide: An Ethnohistory of American Indian Communities’ Traditional 

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Dill, William A., and Almo J. Cordone. History and Status of Introduced Fishes in California, 1871– 

1996 . Sacramento: State of California, The Resources Agency, Department of Fish and Game, 

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& Littlefield Publishers, 1994. 

———, and William C. Tweed. Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings 

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Douglass William A., and John Bilbao. Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World . Reno: University of 

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Eccleston, Robert. The Mariposa Indian War, 1850–1851. Edited by C. Gregory Crampton. Salt Lake 

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Edwards, L.M. and K.T. Redmond. “Climate Assessment for the Sierra Nevada Network Parks,” Natural 

Resource Report NPS/2011/NRR – 2011/482. Fort Collins, National Park Service, 2011. 

250 
Books, Reports, Articles, Dissertations, and Theses 

Eerkens, Jelmer W., and Carl P. Lipo. “Cultural Transmission Theory and the Archaeological Record: 

Providing Context to Understanding Variation and Temporal Changes in Material Culture and the 

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———. History of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965. 

Faust, Nicholas. “A National Register of Historic Places Site Evaluation of Cabin 1 of the Reds Meadow 

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Specifications To Accommodate Proposed Scheduled Air Service Into Mammoth Yosemite Airport, 

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Flippen, J. Brooks. Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American 

Environmentalism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2006. 

Foresta, Ronald A. America’s National Parks and Their Keepers. Washington, DC: Resources for the 

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Fox, Stephen R. John Muir and his Legacy: The American Conservation Movement. Boston: Little Brown, 

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Fremont, John C.  ́ Narrative of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and 

to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44. Washington, DC: Blair and Rives, Printers, 

1845. 

Gifford, E. W. “The Northfork Mono.” In University of California Publications in American Archaeology 

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Goetzmann, William H. Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the 

West, rev. ed. New York: History Book Club, 1993. 

Greeley, Horace. An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859. New York: 

C. M. Saxton, Barker & Co, 1860. 

Greene, Linda. Yosemite: The Park and its Resources—A History of the Discovery, Management, and 

Physical Development of Yosemite National Park, California. Denver: United States Department of 

the Interior/National Park Service, 1987. 

Grusin, Richard. Culture, Technology, and the Creation of America’s National Parks. New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2004. 

Hagen, Joel Bartholemew. An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology. New Brunswick, NJ: 

Rutgers University Press, 1992. 

Haney, Jefferson W. “Acorn Exploitation in the Eastern Sierra Nevada,” Journal of California and Great 

Basin Anthropology 14, no. 1 (1992): 94–109. 

Hartesveldt, Richard J. “Historical Events at the Devils Postpile.” Yosemite Nature Notes 33, no. 1 

(January 1954): 3–8. 

———. “The Geologic Story of the Devils Postpile.” Yosemite Nature Notes 31, no. 10 (October 1952): 

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Harvey, Mark. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement. Albuquerque: 

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251 
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Hayes, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 

1890–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. 

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Hittman, Michael. “The 1870 Ghost Dance at the Walker River Reservation: A Reconstruction.” 

Ethnohistory 20, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 247–78. 

Hovey, Carol W. “Pedro and Bernardo Altube: Basque Brothers of California and Nevada.” In Portraits 

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Huber, N. King, and C. Dean Rinehart. Geologic Survey Professional Paper 554-D: Cenozoic Volcanic 

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———, and James B. Snyder. “James Mason Hutchings and the Devils Postpile.” 

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———, and Wymond W. Eckhardt. Devils Postpile Story. Three Rivers, CA: The Sequoia Natural 

History Association, 1985. 

———. Devils Postpile Story, rev. ed. Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural History Association, 1995. 

Hull, Kathleen L., and Mark R. Hale. Post-Fire Archeological Survey of Devils Postpile National Monument, 

Madera County, California. Chico: Dames and Moore, 1993. 

Hummel, Dan. Stealing the National Parks: The Destruction of Concessions and Park Access. Bellevue, 

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Hundley, Norris. The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California 

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Hurtado, Albert L. Indian Survival on the California Frontier. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 

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Hutchings, James M. In the Heart of the Sierras. Oakland, CA: Pacific Press Publishing House, 1888, 

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draft, approved 8 May 1972. Inyo National Forest History Files, Mammoth District Ranger Station. 

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Jones, Peter. Respect for the Ancestors: American Indian Cultural Affiliation in the American West. Boulder: 

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Kilgore, Bruce. “The Ecological Role of Fire in Sierran Conifer Forests and its Application to National 

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seki/fire/f_conif.htm. 

252 
Books, Reports, Articles, Dissertations, and Theses 

Kirk, Andrew, and Charles Palmer. “Yosemite National Park Draft Multiple Property Nomination, 

National Register of Historic Places.” Seattle: Pacific West Regional Office, National Park Service, 

2005. 

———, and Lincoln Bramwell, et al. The Yosemite Way: An Administrative History of Yosemite National 

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Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol. 3. Davis: University of California, Centers for Water 

and Wildland Resources, 1996. 

Larson, David J. “Historical Water Use Priorities and Public Use Policies.” In Sierra Nevada Ecosystem 

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LeConte, Joseph. A Journal of Ramblings through the High Sierras by the “University Excursion Party.” San 

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———. “The High Mountain Route between Yosemite and the King’s River Canon.” Sierra Club 

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———. “The Devil’s Postpile.” Sierra Club Bulletin 8, no. 3 (1912): 170–73. 

Lee, Gaylen. Walking Where We Lived: Memoirs of a Mono Indian Family. Norman: University of 

Oklahoma Press, 1998. 

Leopold, A. S., S. A. Cain, C. M. Cottam, I. N. Gabrielson, and T. L. Kimball. Wildlife Management 

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Martin, Emilie, and Melissa Totheroh. “R-5/PSW Building Survey Form: FS#05-04-52-959 Reds 

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Matthes, Fran ̧cois. Fran ̧cois Matthes and the Marks of Time: Yosemite and the High Sierra. San Francisco: 

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Meyerson, Harvey. Nature’s Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite (Lawrence: University Press of 

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Miles, John C. Guardians of the Parks: A History of the National Parks and Conservation Association. 

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Millar, Constance I. “The Mammoth-June Ecosystem Management Project, Inyo National Forest,” 

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———. The Mountains of California. New York: The Century Co., 1894. 

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———. “Master Plan for Devils Postpile National Monument, Mission 66 Edition, Volume I, Master 

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———. “Statement for Management: Devils Postpile National Monument-California.” March 24, 

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———. “Natural Resources Management Statement for Devils Postpile National Monument.” March 

1982. Devils Postpile History Files, Superintendent’s Office. 

———. “National Register Bulletin 15, How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.” 

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———. “Protecting America’s Natural Heritage: National Park Service Announces New Plan to 

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———. “Devils Postpile National Monument: Final Report: Organization and Operation Review 

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———. “Summary: Resource Planning Workshop: Adapting to Climate Change at Devils Postpile 

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Preston, E. B. “North Fork Mining District of Fresno County.” In Eleventh Report of the State Mineralogist, 

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———. Long Valley Prehistory. Lee Vining, CA: Inyo National Forest, 1993. 

Rose, Gene. High Odyssey: The First Solo Winter Assault of Mount Whitney and the Muir Trail Area, from 

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———. America’s National Monuments: The Politics of Preservation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 

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———. Preserving Different Pasts: The American National Monuments. Urbana: University of Illinois 

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———. Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West. Lawrence: University Press 

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———. “Tourism as Colonial Economy: Power and Place in Western Tourism.” In Power and Place in 

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———. Saving the Planet: The American Response to the Environment in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: 

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———. Blazing Heritage: A History of Wildland Fire in the National Parks. New York: Oxford University 

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———. Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Lincoln: University of Nevada Press, 1990. 

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Sargent, Shirley. Protecting Paradise: Yosemite Rangers 1898–1960. Yosemite: Ponderosa Press, 1998. 

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Sellars, Richard West. Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University 

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———. “A Very Large Array: Early Federal Historic Preservation—The Antiquities Act, Mesa Verde, 

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255 
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———. “A Search for a High Mountain Route from the Yosemite to the King’s River Canon.”  ̃ Sierra 

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256 
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Unrau, Frank, and G. Frank Williss. Administrative History: Expansion of the National Park Service in 

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Walton, John. Western Times and Water Wars: State, Culture, and Rebellion in California. Berkeley: 

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West.” The Historian 68, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 431–60. 

Wyatt, Barbara. “The Components of a Historic Context: A National Register White Paper.” April 9, 

2009, www.cr.nps.gov/nr/publications/policy.htm. 

Young, S. B. M. “Report of the Acting Superintendent of the Yosemite National Park, Yosemite National 

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257 

Index
 

acorns, 20, 36 

Act to Establish a National Park Service, 1916. See 

Organic Act 

Adams, Ansel, 139 

Adams, Charles, 222 

administrative history, 4 

Agnew Meadows, 13, 42, 106, 131, 206 

Agnew Meadows Pack Camp, 193 

Agnew, Theodore, 42, 53, 74, 75 

Ahwahnechee, 35 

Alabama Gates, 191 

Albright, Horace M., 74, 88, 222 

Albright, Stanley T., 137, 151 

American Antiquities Act, 1906, 2, 3, 77, 79, 81, 

85, 224–225 

Ansel Adams Wilderness, 171, 185, 228 

Austin, Mary, 52–53, 73 

backpacking, 203–204 

Ball, Eldon, 123 

Bartholomew, Orlan, 44 

bath house (Reds Meadow), 94 

Bayley, George B., 63–65, 71 

Beard, Bob, 85 

Beck, John, 47, 85 

Bill, Harthon L., 120–121 

Bilkheimer, Tommy, 45 

Bishop, California, 125, 192 

Bishop Paiute Tribe, 228 

Bradley, Harold C., 134 

Brewer, William, 62, 215 

brine flies (Mono Lake), 27 

Brower, David, 133, 137, 202, 206 

Buttress, the, 12, 219 

cabin (near the Postpile), 7, 43–45, 107, 132–133 

Cahoon, Gene, 132–133, 143–145 

California Department of Fish and Game, 132, 197 

California Forest Reservation Act, 1890, 71 

California State Geologic Survey, 62–63, 215–216 

Camp High Sierra, 125 

carrying capacity, 204 

Carson, Rachel, 223 

Casa Diablo, 13, 20–21, 26 

Cascade Valley, 205 

Chalfant, William A., 27 

Chapman, Howard, 162 

Civil War, 51 

Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), 93, 94 

climate change, 14, 182–183, 227–228, 229–230 

Clyde, Norman, 144, 202 

Colby, William, 2, 78, 201 

Collier-Burns Act, 1947, 123 

conservation: aesthetic and utilitarian, 2, 77, 

80; California roots of, 59–60; ; and class, 

53; national roots of, 59; post-World War II 

movements, 134; principals of, 53, 59;and 

tourism, 60–66 

Cornell, Douglas B., 157–158 

Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), 142 

Cronyn, Theodore, 96, 101, 219 

Crowley, Father John, 193–194 

Crowley, H.L., 106 

cultural resources, 4, 7, 174–175 

Cushions, Tex, 45, 85 

Dalrymple, G. Brent, 220 

Death Valley National Monument, 109 

Death Valley National Park, 180, 181 

Demaray, Arthur, 93, 98–99, 101 

Dennett, Fred, 81–82 

Department of Interior (DOI), 72, 76, 112, 158, 

223 

Desert Culture Complex, 22 

Devils Postpile formation, 1, 9, 10, 11, 28, 42–43, 

46, 54, 62, 66, 71, 78, 80, 130, 135, 156, 217, 

220; exclusion from Yosemite National Park, 

76; inclusion in Sierra National Forest, 76–77; 

inclusion in Yosemite National Park, 71 

Devils Postpile National Monument, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 

59, 69, 217; boundary surveys, 79–81, 96, 101, 

105; campground, 116, 122, 131; community 

relations, 124–125, 132, 144, 167, 183, 189, 

210, 234–235; entrance road, 116, 122, 123– 

124, 137, 156, 158, 173; establishment of, 

77–82; fish stocking, 132, 145, 197, 199; 

Forest Service administration of, 85, 105–107, 

109, 112; importance to the Mammoth region, 

108–109, 112, 153–154, 163–164, 183, 196, 

233–234; interagency cooperation, 120–124, 
Index 

Devils Postpile National Monument (continued) 

131–132, 157, 163, 172, 189, 211, 226–227, 

233–234; National Monument status, 112; 

National Park Service administration of, 89– 

90, 101, 117, 147, 152; parking lot, 132; trails, 

132, 145, 154–155; visitation numbers, 129, 

131, 136, 143, 158–159, 161; water source, 

116 

Devils Postpile/Reds Meadow Shuttle, 4, 157–164, 

233 

DeVoto, Bernard, 129 

Dulen, Deanna, 177–185, 226–227 

earthquakes, 12 

Eastern Sierra, 3, 86, 109, 138, 177, 191, 200 

Eckhardt, Wymond, 147, 151–153, 157, 163–164, 

167, 171, 174, 178, 179 

ecology: of the Devils Postpile region, 13–16, 229; 

history of, 223, 229; in the management of 

Devils Postpile National Monument, 171–172, 

177–185, 189, 215, 225, 226–227, 229; in 

National Park Service management, 1, 4, 120, 

153, 167–168, 171, 177, 208, 222–229 

Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), 141, 157, 

184–185 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 140 

Executive Order 6166, 88, 99 

Facility Management Software System (FMSS), 180 

Farquhar, Francis, 63 

Fauna of the National Parks, 222 

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 184, 185 

Fish Creek, 53 

fishing, 25 

fire: in Devils Postpile National Monument 132– 

133, 172–173; federal policies regarding 119; 

in forest ecology 16; Indian use of 16, 28–30, 

227; and sheepherders 30, 52, 53 

Fitzhugh, Dorothy, 137 

Fitzhugh, Lou, 140 

fly fishing, 196–200 

Flores, Manuel, 64, 65 

Forest Highway 100. See Trans-Sierra Highway 

Fremont, John C., 36  ́

French Trail, the, 42, 66, 74, 134, 205 

Fresno County, 135 

General Land Office (GLO), 74, 76, 81 

geology: of Devils Postpile National Monument, 

10–13, 119, 218–219, 222; of the Mammoth/ 

Long Valley region, 9–13, 218–219; of the 

Sierra Nevada, 1, 5, 9, 14–15, 215; in United 

States westward expansion, 215 

General Management Plan (GMP), 233–234 

Giant’s Causeway, 78, 217 

Gifford, Edward, 19 

Ghost Dance, 27 

glaciers, 1, 13, 216 

Goode, Ron W., 28, 227–228 

Grand Canyon Dam, 138 

Graves, Henry, 78–79, 88 

Great Basin, 13, 21, 22, 35 

Greeley, Horace, 41 

Hall, William Hammond, 71 

Harrison, Benjamin, 72, 77 

Hartesveldt, Richard J., 116, 118, 129, 219–220 

Hetch Hetchy Dam, 2, 77, 140 

High Sierra Packers Association, 139, 206–207 

High Sierra Primitive Area 89, 134 

Hildreth, Wes, 220 

historic resource study, 4 

historic preservation, 77, 88 

Hoffman, Walt, 157 

Hollywood films, 193–194, 205 

Homestead Act, 1862 66 

Homuth, Earl, 115–117, 118, 122, 123, 125, 220 

Huber, Walter L., 2, 78–82, 101, 217 

Huber, N. King, 174, 220 

hunting, 29 

Hutchings, James M. 53, 60, 62–63, 71 

hydrology, 182, 184 

Ickes, Harold L., 89 

interpretation, 100–101, 109, 118, 119, 120, 153, 

167, 189, 215, 222, 225 

Intrawest, 183–184 

Inyo National Forest, 105, 156, 158, 204; as 

defendant in packing lawsuit, 209–210; 

Mammoth Ranger Station, 210, 233; Mono 

Basin Visitor Center, 177, 180 

Iron Mountain, 46 

Ivanhoe, Joe, 43–45, 85, 174 

Jensen, J.E.N., 137 

John Muir Trail, 154–155, 195, 200–204, 207 

John Muir Wilderness, 168 

Johnson, Robert Underwood, 71, 72 

Johnston family, 85, 86 

Jones, William R., 145–147 

King, Clarence, 62, 215, 216 

King Creek, 13, 79 

Kittredge, Doug, 139 

Kittredge, Frank, 105, 112 

knapsacking, 202 

Lake Ediza, 19, 42, 46 

law enforcement, 153, 179–180 

Lee, Galen, 27, 28 

260 
Index 

LeConte, Joseph N. Sr., 216 

LeConte, Joseph N. Jr., 1, 2, 78, 217 

Leonard, Richard, 133 

Leonard, Zenas, 36 

Leopold, A. Starker, 171, 223 

Leopold Report, 171, 223–224 

Livermore, Norman “Ike” Jr., 140, 141, 195, 

205–206 

Long Valley, 12, 13, 22, 24, 25–26 

Long Valley Caldera, 13 

Los Angeles, California, 1, 183, 191–193, 234 

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 

(LADWP), 191, 197 

Lost Cement Mine, the, 41–42, 54 

Lowery, Vernon, 95–99 

Madera County, 123, 135, 143 

Mahan, A.G., 86 

Mahan, Arch Jr., 86, 131, 132, 139, 141, 156 

Mammoth City, California, 51, 192 

Mammoth Consolidated Mining Company, 85, 86 

Mammoth Mountain, 1, 9, 11, 168, 170 

Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, 139, 159, 163, 

169–170, 183 

Mammoth Lakes, Town of, California, 3, 69, 86, 

106, 123, 124, 183–185, 208 

Mammoth Lakes Association, 89–90 

Mammoth Lakes Pack Station, 139, 207 

Mammoth Lakes Sierra, 4, 5, 137, 207, 209 

Mammoth Pacific LP, 13 

Mammoth Pass, 1, 22, 23–24, 27, 28, 53, 134, 

205;Trail from North Fork, 26–28, 37, 39, 42 

Mammoth Pass Road. See Trans-Sierra Highway 

Mammoth-Yosemite Airport, 184–185 

Manzanar Historic Site, 180, 181 

Mather, Stephen T., 87, 101, 222 

Matthes, Fra ̧cois, 100, 217–219 

McCoy, Dave, 139, 168–169, 183 

McCoy, Gary R., 170 

McLaughlin, John, 157 

McLeod, Malcolm, 85 

Merced County, 135 

Merriam, Lawrence C., 101, 115 

Middle Fork San Joaquin River, 5, 9, 27, 79, 119, 

130, 179, 194, 197, 227–228 

Middle Fork San Joaquin River Valley, 1, 7, 9, 14, 

51, 71, 86, 229 

Millar, Constance, 222 

Miller, Warren, 184 

Millerton Lake, 35 

Minaret Falls, 135 

Minaret Mine, 47, 48, 49, 85 

Minaret Summit, 1, 9; road over 47, 123, 195 

Minaret Summit Highway. See Trans-Sierra 

Highway 

Minarets, 9, 42, 202, 203 

Minarets Wilderness, 168, 171 

mining: in the Devils Postpile area, 37, 41–51; 

in the Eastern Sierra 37–41; during the Gold 

Rush, 37; hydraulic, 41; in the Mammoth Basin 

42, 71, 85 

Mission 66, 130–131, 133, 134, 135 

Moore, Lt. Treadwell, 40 

Mono County, 123 

Mono County Board of Supervisors, 139 

Mono County Resources Committee, 139–140 

Mono Lake, 2, 25, 40 

Monoplan, 157–158 

Moraga, Gabriel, 35 

Morse, Michael, 157, 210 

Mount Dana-Minarets Wild Area, 89, 134 

Muir, John, 2, 51, 52, 53, 59, 71, 72, 77, 200, 201, 

216 

Mule Days, 138, 211 

mules, 144, 154–156, 204–205 

Mulholland, William, 191 

National Environmental Policy Act, 1969 (NEPA), 

157, 184–185, 209 

National Monuments: establishment of, 3, 77; 

funding and management, 3, 79; and scientific 

education 117, 225 

National Parks Association, 87 

National Park Service, 3, 5, 69; creation of 87– 

88; and local economic development, 124; 

mission of, 99–100, 134, 177, 208, 222, 235; 

relationship with the Forest Service, 120; visitor 

management, 105, 129, 161, 177 

National Register of Historic Places, 5 

Native Americans: the California government 

and, 39–40; federal removal of 39; introduced 

diseases and, 36; trans-Sierra trade 1, 2, 26–28, 

36 

Nattan, Chip van, 139–140 

Natural Resources Challenge, 178, 226 

Nemoy, Charles, 198–199 

Nelson, Deborah, 163 

network parks, 178, 215, 227 

New Deal, 129 

Nixon, Richard M., 141 

Noble, John, 72 

non-native plants, 13–14 

North Fork Mining District, 42, 45–47, 75 

North Fork Mono: interactions with Europeans and 

Americans, 35, 39, 64; involvement with the 

National Park Service, 227–229; lifeways, 28, 

30, 35; stories, 19–20, 28, 30–31 

North Fork San Joaquin River, 30, 39, 63, 64 

Northern Paiute: interactions with Europeans 

and Americans, 40, 64; involvement with the 

261 
Index 

Northern Paiute (continued) 

National Park Service, 227–229; lifeways, 22, 

23, 24–26, 35; stories, 28, 30–31 

Numic, 21 

obsidian, 20, 25 

Olmsted, F.E., 78–79 

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 60, 61–62 

Organic Act, 87, 185 

Ostrander, Harvey, 52, 73 

Owens River, 191, 197 

Owens Valley 191: 

Owens Valley Paiute, 22, 28, 40, 194, 227 

Pacific Crest Trail, 156 

Pacific West Region (National Park Service), 180, 

181, 185 

packing, 137, 204–211 

Parker, Harry, 108 

Parker, James, 42 

Parsons, Edward T., 78 

Parsons, Marion Randall, 202 

Pinchot, Gifford, 59, 77 

pinon nuts, 26, 28  ̃

Postpile Joe. See Joe Ivanhoe 

Preston, E.B., 45–46 

Preston, John, 122, 123 

progressivism, 77 

pumice, 14, 29, 53 

Pumice Flat, 10, 85, 195, 205, 220 

Quicksilver Stage Lines, 161, 163 

Rainbow Falls, 1, 11, 63, 65–66, 71, 72, 78, 80, 

105, 112, 117, 130, 131, 193, 197, 210 

Rainbow Fire, 16, 29–30, 172–173 

Randall, C.C., 85 

Raymond, Israel Ward, 61 

Reagan, Ronald, 3, 140, 141–142, 161 

recreation. See tourism 

Reds Meadow, 3, 30, 72, 73, 74, 85, 93, 106, 132, 

158, 206, 225 

Reds Meadow Resort and Pack Station, 86, 132, 

139, 144, 162, 193, 210, 225 

Rineheart, C. Dean, 220 

Ritter Range, 1, 2, 9, 13, 71, 219 

Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE), 170 

Roberts, Charlie, 205 

Roeser, Lou, 139, 141, 207 

Roeser, Marye, 207 

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 3, 88 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 191 

Roth, Hal, 137, 138, 209 

Roughing It, 41 

Russell, Carl P., 106 

San Francisco, 183, 234 

San Joaquin River (mainstem), 13, 35, 39, 197, 227 

San Joaquin Valley, 14, 134, 137 

San Joaquin Wilderness Association, 169–170 

Schotz, Bob, 140 

scientific range management, 53 

Schumacher, Genny, 137, 140, 169, 170 

search and rescue, 121–122, 131, 180, 202 

Sedergren, Oscar A., 115, 123 

Sequoia National Park, 66 

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, 3, 4, 

109, 138, 178, 204; administration of Devils 

Postpile National Monument 147, 151, 163, 

172–173, 179–181, 225 

Shadow Lake, 80 

sheepherding: arborglyphs associated with, 54–55, 

174; and Basques, 51–52; in California, 51; 

environmental effects of, 51; exclusion from 

Yosemite National Park, 72–74 

Sherwin, Raymond J., 138 

shingle factory, 174, 175 

Sierra Club, 78, 80, 133–134, 138–139, 156, 

184, 200–204; High Trip, 201–202, 205; 

relationship with packers, 205–206 

Sierra Crest, 4, 20 

Sierra National Forest, 59, 85, 105 

Sierra Network of Parks, 178, 226 

Silent Spring, 223 

Sisk, Bernice F., 137–139, 140 

skiing, 168–169, 183 

Smith, Genny. See Schumacher, Genny 

snowmobiles, 179 

Soda Springs Meadow, 12–13, 14, 72, 144, 155, 

179, 182 

Solomons, Theodore S., 54, 197 

Sotcher, “Red,” 43, 53, 174 

Southern California, 158, 183, 191, 233–234 

Smith, Jedediah, 36 

Southern Pacific Railroad, 71–72 

Stanford University, 216 

Starkweather Lake, 47 

Starkweather, J.W., 48–49 

Starr, Walter A. Jr. (Peter), 202 

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, 183–184 

State of the Parks report, 1980, 224 

Stegner, Wallace, 137 

Steward, Julian, 28 

Summers, Charlie, 193 

Summers, Lloyd, 86, 89, 193 

“T” blazes (U.S. Cavalry), 72, 174 

Taft, William H., 1, 2, 78, 79, 215, 217 

262 
Index 

Taglio, Pete, 132 

Tanner, Bob, 139, 141, 144, 162, 169, 207, 225 

Tenaya, Chief, 35–36, 40 

The Trail Beyond , 194 

Thompson, Col. Charles, 89, 93, 94, 98, 101 

Tioga Pass road, 133–134, 139 

Tourism: in the Mammoth region, 86, 107–108, 

112, 124–125, 133, 153, 189, 192–193, 196; 

travel writing and, 60–61, in the West 60, 86, 

112, 15, 203 

Train, Russell, 140, 142 

trans-Sierra Highway, 3, 4, 123–124, 134–142, 

185, 207–208 

trout, 16, 94, 119, 132, 146, 197 

Twain, Mark, 41 

Udall, Stewart, 223 

United States Army: Cavalry administration of 

Yosemite National Park 72–74; and Indian 

removal, 39; in the Owens ; Valley War, 40 

United States Forest Service, 2, 69; administration 

of Devils Postpile National Monument, 85, 

105–107, 109, 11; role in the establishment of 

Devils Postpile National Monument, 77–79, 

80; in the Mammoth region, 115, 125; mission 

of, 76–77, 88–89, 100, 158, 208 

United States Geologic Survey (USGS), 217, 220 

University of California, Berkeley, 216–217, 220 

Upper Soda Springs Campground, 10 

Vail Agenda, 171, 226 

Vasquez, Donna, 228 

Verret, Dorothy, 125, 195 

Verret, Lee Jr., 106, 112, 123, 125, 195 

Vining, Leroy, 40 

Walker, Joseph, 36 

Watt, James, 161 

Wayne, John, 194 

Whitney, Josiah, 62–63, 215–216 

Wild Trout Water, 200 

wilderness, 51, 63, 88, 141–142, 158, 170, 173, 

195, 208, 210, 228 

Wilderness Act, 1964, 140, 153, 170, 171, 209 

Wilderness Society, 195 

Wildlife Management in the National Parks. See 

Leopold Report 

Wilson, Woodrow, 87 

Wirth, Conrad, 105, 130, 135 

Wodziob, Hawthorne, 27 

Womack, J.C., 135 

Wood, Capt. Abraham Eperson, 52, 72–73, 75–76 

World War II, 105, 108, 129 

Wright, George M., 222–223, 224 

Wright, James A., 41–42, 53–54 

Yeager, Dorr, 112 

Yellowstone National Park, 66, 72, 200 

Yosemite Commission, 61–62 

Yosemite Grant, 1864, 60, 66, 71 

Yosemite National Park, 2, 3, 5, 52, 59, 66, 88, 

109, 138, 178; administration of, 72, 129, 

225; administration of Devils Postpile National 

Monument, 109, 115, 117, 122, 129, 145–147; 

boundary changes, 75–76, 89; establishment of, 

71–72 

Yosemite Valley, 35, 36, 52, 62, 216 

Young, Col. S.B., 74 

Young Turks, 133–134 

Youth Conservation Corp, 179, 180 

Zonni, Linda, 162 

263 
National Park Service

Devils Postpile National Monument

P.O. Box 3999

Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546

U.S. Department of the Interior

EXPERIENCE YOUR AMERIC A

Known primarily for its remarkable natural features and scenic surroundings, 

Devils Postpile National Monument also preserves a valuable record of the 

intertwined natural and human histories of the Middle Fork San Joaquin River 

Valley, the Mammoth region, and the Sierra Nevada as a whole. For millennia, 

Native inhabitants to the east and west crossed the Sierra crest near Devils 

Postpile to trade. In the wake of the brutal Indian removal campaigns of the late 

1800s, miners and sheepherders entered the area in search of economically 

valuable natural resources. During the twentieth century, geologists and 

conservationists surveyed the region and proclaimed the signicance of its most 

scenic and scientically interesting features. The establishment of the monument 

in 1911 contributed to a transition from resource extraction to tourism and 

recreation as the principal uses of the area. Since assuming jurisdiction for Devils 

Postpile in 1934, the National Park Service has worked closely with the Forest 

Service and the local community to provide for public enjoyment while protecting 

and interpreting the scientic resources for which the monument was created.

Christopher E. Johnson is a project historian with the National Park Service in the 

Pacic West Regional ofce in Seattle, Washington.