Beyond John Muir - How Chinese immigrants helped build Yosemite
10th Annual ‘Yosemite-sing Peak Pilgrimage’ celebrates an oft-hidden park history
Ed note: This is Part 1 in a two-part series. Part 2 will run next week.
Highway 120, or the Tioga Road, shapes many human lives today as it connects the Eastern Sierra to Yosemite National Park. The scenic road is a critical route and a point of passage that provides economic livelihood to many of the small tourist towns in the region we call home.
But the history of this road itself also points to another human story -- in 1882, this road was constructed by a group of workers who were predominantly Chinese. Around 250 Chinese and 90 Caucasian workers, as well as 100 Chinese blasters, completed this 56-mile road in 130 days – just one small piece of the rich and complex history of Chinese immigrants in the Yosemite area.
What can tracing their story, which rangers, historical societies and others have begun to more thoroughly document, teach us about the modern day?
At the end of July, park rangers, members of historical societies, educators, activists, and others gathered in Lee Vining, Tuolumne Meadows, and Yosemite Valley for the tenth annual Yosemite-sing Peak Pilgrimage, an event founded in 2013 to honor and share the impacts of Chineseamerican history in the Yosemite area.
The six-day Pilgrimage is put together by the Park Service, the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, the National Parks Conservation Association, and other Chinese historical societies from across California, and consists of ranger-led walks around the park, interpretive education about Chinese history in key sites, a potluck, and a three-day backpacking trip to climb one of the park’s granite summits, Sing Peak, among other activities.
“A lot of people come here because the National Parks are incredibly beautiful. There’s something special about this landscape, protecting wildlife and important species and ecosystems,” said Yenyen Chan, a Yosemite National Park Interpretive Ranger who has extensively researched and documented Chinese history in Yosemite and helped found and organize the pilgrimage. “But our mission is dual. It’s also
protecting the cultural history and cultural resources… From our National Parks, we actually learn a lot about our country’s history, and have this opportunity to really shed some light on the stories that might not have gotten told.”
Jack Shu, a retired California state park superintendent and ranger who also founded the event and continues to help organize it, spoke on the impact that telling the story of Chinese immigrants in Yosemite “better, and more times” can have. “I think now, the story that… Chinese Americans, Asian Americans, and many other people, have been involved with the building of Yosemite for a long time, that is going to be a notion that is going to start sticking more — that it took more than John Muir,” he said.
Ed note: the following is compiled based on a number of public sources written by Chan: Chinese immigrants first began to arrive in large numbers in California around 1848, when gold was first discovered in the foothills. Shortly after in 1850, the Foreign Miners Tax, which placed a tax of $20 per month on all miners from outside the United States, was passed, and even after being fought against and eventually repealed, later tax laws still took target specifically at Chinese and Mexican miners. State taxes thus led to a shift in labor patterns; Chinese Americans began to look for other types of work.
Some of these new types of work included the labor that Yosemite National Park was looking for at that moment in time, including the construction of two main Yosemite roads, the Wawona Road and the Tioga Road, as well as other infrastructure
Ranger Chan shows archival photos and documents which illustrate the influence of Chinese immigrants in historical Yosemite Valley.
The Pilgrimage group at May Lake during this year’s celebration, held in late July.