Yosemite National Park would be something quite different were it not for UC Berkeley.
That’s the blue-and-gold current flowing through Yosemite: A Storied Landscape, a just-published e-book that brings to vivid life the California national park that inspires long strings of superlatives — most photographed, most climbed, most lived-in, most historic, most accessible, most inspiring — in celebration of its 150th birthday.
The book also shows off the promise of digital books: Essays easily share space with slideshows (climbers, artworks, the terrain), videos (time-lapse video of the Rim Fire, rioting hippies), animations, information snippets (Ansel Adams wore the jester’s costume in the annual Christmas play), and side trips (what women should wear, and not, on the trail in the early 1900s).
Yosemite is the work of Kerry Tremain, the former California Magazine editor, current digital publisher, Berkeley resident and self-described fan of UC Berkeley. The book was published by Tremain’s company, 36 Views, in cooperation with the California Historical Society. Currently on display at the historical society’s San Francisco gallery is an exhibit of Yosemite art and artifacts that are included in the book — including the skin of one of the park’s last grizzlies and the confession of its killer, both tied to Berkeley.
“I think Berkeley invented the park, in its current form,” says Tremain. (Article continues below the slideshow.)
The university sprang into being not long after a Civil War-era land grant signed by Abraham Lincoln set aside the spectacular Sierra terrain for a park, 150 years ago this year. Ideas born of the young campus’s Western idealism and scientific, environmental bent quickly took hold in the park that many at Berkeley considered their own. The development and ongoing management of the park bear UC Berkeley’s clear imprint to this day.
Berkeley alumni galvanized by Borax millionaire Stephen Mather (class of 1887) drove the founding of the National Park Service in 1916, applying new progressive concepts to everything from stewardship of the land to lodging for park visitors to the handling of park animals.
Mather, along with fellow alum and conservationist Horace Albright, gathered scientists and other influential people at Berkeley for a conference on the importance of Yosemite during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition across the bay. And he led 15 prominent people on a 12-day trip into the Sierra, taking along renowned chef Tie Sing, who served feasts on white linen — and mourned the loss of his sourdough starter when two pack mules tumbled off a cliff early in the trip.