“Yo-Semite Valley” Was Made A California State Park On This Day

Above, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum depiction of President Lincoln
reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Today in history, in 1864 to be exact, the first step in making Yosemite National Park a national park took place. It began with a stroke of a pen by President Abraham Lincoln.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine:

On June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln put his signature on the Yosemite Grant Act. This represented an important precursor to the national parks system, because it was the first time the American government had taken the lead on preserving a wilderness area in a way that would become typical of the national parks.

The Act granted the “Yo-Semite Valley” and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the state of California. But there were a few important provisions: “...that the said State shall accept this grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time,” the Act reads. In plain English, what was happening was that Lincoln was charging California with taking care of Yosemite–already a burgeoning tourist destination–as well as developing it by putting in things like roads, so more people could come to view its dramatic vistas and towering sequoias.

This moment has been heralded as an important precedent for the national park system. But creating Yosemite was also an act of erasure. “Native Americans were the main residents of the Yosemite Valley… until the 1849 gold rush brought thousands of non-Indian miners and settlers to the region,” writes History.com. “The crown jewels of the U.S. national parks system, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Grand Canyon, are all customary indigenous territories,” writes Stan Stevens in Indigenous Peoples, National Parks, and Protected Areas: A New Paradigm.

Above, Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To read more, go here. 

Mount Fuji, Japan's Enduring Powerful Force

Above, a view of Mount Fuji from a shinkansen. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Mount Fuji is a near-perfect volcanic cone that last erupted in the 1700s, the mountain means a lot more to the Japanese than just a volcano.

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article on what Mount Fuji means to the Japanese.

They begin it with:

It’s dawn on the first day of January and a crowd in the hundreds has gathered at the base of Mount Fuji to watch the rising light of hatsuhinode—the maiden sunrise—usher in the new year. The Ainu, mainland Japan’s ancient indigenous people, believed that the sun was among hundreds of gods, and one of the most important. To witness a hatsuhinode is considered a sacred act. 

Against a brilliant blue sky, the sun crests near the peak of the country’s tallest volcano and shimmers like a gem. When it aligns perfectly with the summit, the rare sight is called Diamond Fuji. On a hillside redoubt in nearby Fujinomiya-shi, a tour guide named Keisuke Tanaka marvels as the snowy peak, sharp against the horizon, grows indigo, then plum before retreating behind a curtain of cloud. “On clear days you can see Fuji-san from Tokyo, 60 miles northeast,” he says. 

On dim days—which is to say most days—it’s less a mountain than an allegation, obscured by fog and industrial haze even 60 feet away from the summit. Many cultures hold mountains to be sacred—the ancient Greeks had Olympus; the Aztecs, Popocatépetl; the Lakota, Inyan Kara—but nothing equals the timeless Japanese reverence for this notoriously elusive volcano. Parting earth and sky with remarkable symmetry, Fuji is venerated as a stairway to heaven, a holy ground for pilgrimage, a site for receiving revelations, a dwelling place for deities and ancestors, and a portal to an ascetic otherworld.

Known as "the shy mountain", Mount Fuji is usually obscured by cloud cover. I have been to Japan eight times and it was only during my 2015 trip to Japan that I was able to see it clearly during the day from a distance. That took place during a shinkansen trip to Osaka.

To read more, go here.