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 Public transit to Yosemite
3-point seatbelts first in the nation for YARTS by Dick Whittington
Let’s go back to about 1900. You are getting ready to travel to Yosemite National Park from Merced. You climb up on the coach. The seating is a little tight with three abreast, shoulders touching. The four horses stamp their feet impatiently waiting for the start of the journey. |
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Cousin Jack’s Scholarship
by Dave Witta-Hamlett
The Cousin Jack’s Scholarship program was started by the Franklin family, his wife, Alinda (who passed away last December), his son, Glenn, and his son’s wife, Lona. They wanted to share a positive memory for “Cousin” Jack Franklin, as well as something positive for the community. The scholarship started in 2003 at $500 for a deserving Mariposa High School senior. In 2006 the scholarship was raised to $1000.
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 Evergreen Lodge
A blend of rustic charm and modern comfort by Marv Dealy
Evergreen Lodge is located seven miles northwest up Evergreen Road, which takes off Highway 120 one half mile before the Big Oak Flat entrance to Yosemite Park. It was established in 1921 to facilitate building O’Shaughnessy Dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Oral history has it that Evergreen was founded by a man who worked for the Hetch Hetchy Railroad, built principally to haul people and materials to and from the Hetch Hetchy dam construction site. Evergreen originally boasted a post office, general store and restaurant, and tales are told of moonshine being brewed in the basement and a brothel run out of two of the cabins.
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 Cousin Jack
by Dave Witta-Hamlett
“Cousin Jack” is an icon in Mariposa because of his love of music and his support for the youth in the community. He gave of his time, gave instruments to the kids, and shared his vast music knowledge. He taught the kids for free—as long as they showed improvement and desire. If they didn’t put forth the effort they had to pay to learn to play.
He would put jams together called “Pickin’ and Popcorn Jams.” He encouraged people of all talent levels to participate and take a solo, wanting everyone to participate. One word of wisdom he shared was that music is a conversation—you can talk, but you need to listen as well. |
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 A lasting legacy of friendship, Manzanita carvings and music
by Denise Henderson
“The McCready Boys,” John and Spencer (“Pen”) McCready, enjoyed a rousing reputation in Big Oak Flat during the early 1900s as skilled wood carvers and music makers.
The family moved to the Yosemite area in 1856 as part of the gold rush. The boys’ father, William McCready, died in 1921, and his oldest son William Jr. fades from the family story, but the other two brothers lived the rest of their lives in their log cabin on Harper Road near Big Oak Flat, mining for gold as a primary source of income. Many people who spent their childhoods in Big Oak Flat in the 1930s have fond memories of the brothers. |
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 Seasoned restaurateurs add taste and style to Columbia Park
by Yosemite Gazette staff
Jeff and Jackie Briggs are launching a busy summer as brand new concessionaires of Columbia State Historic Park’s largest set of businesses: the Fallon Hotel, Fallon Ice Cream Parlor, Bart’s Black Skillet, Angelo’s Hall, Columbia Cottages and City Hotel and Restaurant in Columbia State Historic Park.
The kitchen is humming, the rooms and cottages are filling, and ice cream cones are getting dished up at a refreshing pace. The Briggs are bringing more than two decades of experience as restaurateurs in a variety of food-and-beverage ventures. They took over Columbia Park’s City Hotel/Fallon complex in May.
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 Half Dome hike fate is up to you
by Rick Deutsch
Because of overcrowding on Yosemite’s Half Dome cables, the park superintendent issued an interim directive in January, 2010. The directive announces a permit process for doing the hike up the cables on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays in 2010 and 2011. The idea is to reduce the huge lines that occur on weekends when upwards of a thousand people queue up to ascend the cables that were installed in 1919. |
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 The best way to see Yosemite is… in a classic T-Bird
by Rick Deutsch
Nothing can compare to the feeling of cruising Yosemite’s Southside Drive with the top down in a 1955 Ford Thunderbird.
The T-Bird was introduced in 1955 as a “Personal luxury car” and not a true sports car. It had power everything: seats, windows, steering and brakes. The 1956 model added the trademark porthole windows and the continental kit familiar to American Graffiti fans.
In 1957 the car got more refined and even sported an optional super charger and dual 4-barrel carburetor. The first three years of the T-Bird were the only years when the cars were produced as two-seaters; they are highly collectible. Hearing the throaty exhaust of this fifty-plus years-old car while gazing up at the Cathedral Spires, El Capitan and Half Dome cannot be matched.
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 Harry Cobden
Cobden’s 650-pound trained bruin shot down in broad daylight; Big Oak Flat residents consider a lynching by Marc Fossum
Harry Cobden was a lawyer, engineer, politician, adventurer, inventor, rancher, pioneer aviator, mountain climber, rodeo cowboy, counter-espionage agent, a Golden Gloves boxer and a California State Senator.
Born in 1904 in Garrotte, now known as Groveland, California, rather than the name that meant “death by hanging or strangulation,” Harry died in 1999 in Anchorage Alaska following injuries he suffered in a fall.
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 by Bill Meissner
Time-travel to a living, 1850s, gold rush town by visiting Columbia State Historic Parks and wait until you leave this historic park to travel back to the future when leaving this park.
This unique State Park inspired two popular California Governors to declare it the honorary State Capitol. First was Governor Earl Warren, when he signed a bill establishing this Historic Park in 1945. Ronald Reagan renewed the declaration when he was Governor.
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