One Hundred Years in Yosemite: The Story of a Great Park and Its Friends

The book opens with a vivid picture of Yosemite’s birth as America’s first protected wildland, tracing how a handful of visionaries‑from early explorers to Lincoln‑signed legislators‑set aside the valley to safeguard its soaring cliffs, ancient sequoias, and delicate ecosystems. It walks listeners through the early days of the park’s administration, showing how the fledgling National Park Service experimented with policies that balanced preservation with public enjoyment. Readers get a sense of the awe that the landscape inspired and how that reverence sparked a new national idea of land stewardship.

Drawing on painstaking research from diaries, photographs, and oral histories, the author—a longtime chief naturalist—offers intimate portraits of the men and women who shaped Yosemite’s destiny. Their stories reveal the practical challenges of protecting a wilderness that was simultaneously a tourist magnet and a frontier for scientific inquiry. By the end of the first act, listeners understand how a simple act of protection evolved into a lasting model for parks across the nation.