The Treasures of Yosemite

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The year 1849 has been memorialized as the year of the gold rush, but it is also when another treasure was discovered by the region’s newcomers. Even today, it’s not hard to imagine the awe those explorers felt when they first glimpsed the Yosemite Valley, surrounded by El Capitan, Glacier Point and Half Dome.

Situated at the southeast corner of Gold Country, Yosemite National Park is an easy side trip. Rustic accommodations abound, but spending a night at the Ahwahnee Hotel belongs on your list of life experiences, as does eating in the grand dining room, with its soaring ceilings and windows. From the hotel it’s a short walk, drive or bike ride to Mirror Lake or the Yosemite Falls trailhead.

Anyone who has seen images of Yosemite is acquainted with one of the park’s most famous residents, Ansel Adams. At the eponymous gallery housed in his former studio, you can arrange a private session with curator Glenn Crosby, who offers a compelling account of the photographer’s history as he displays work printed by the artist himself. I was particularly moved by Adams’s images of the high country, a place he knew better than anyone else.

The park is also home to the Wawona Golf Course, the first course built in the Sierras—in 1918, as part of a summer resort—and one of only two courses in a national park (the other is in Death Valley). Wawona is a nine-hole jaunt through meadows and forests of incense cedar and ponderosa pine. Superintendent Kim Porter, who has been there for more than twenty years, does an impressive job with the greens, using only wastewater to irrigate. Some don’t think golf belongs in a national park, but the course existed before the Wawona Valley was added to Yosemite in 1932 and deserves its historic-landmark designation. Frequented by Charlie Chaplin and his contemporaries, the Wawona also hosted the Sierra Championship during the 1920s. Among a collection of old scorecards in the shop is one that warns, “High heels are not permitted on the course.”

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