"Walk right in, sit right down
And baby, let your mind roll on
Hey, walk right in, stay a little while
But daddy, you can't stay too long."
Cannons Jug Stompers (1929) / The Rooftops Singers (1963)
I am standing near Happy Isle Loop Road, which bisects Stoneman Meadow in eastern Yosemite Valley. This busy two-lane road delivers many of the cars and shuttle buses to Curry Village. As I look to the southern portion of the Meadow, the last rays of the evening sun rest atop the ponderosa pines and black oak trees that ring the Meadow. I take note of the prevailing quietness as the last of the day visitors leave this portion of the Valley. Stoneman Meadow’s palette of grassy green glows softly from the retreating light of the afternoon.
Not far from where I stand, a 150-room, hotel-like structure called Stoneman House once served visitors in this Meadow in the late 19th century. Named after the former California Governor, George Stoneman (served from 1883-1887), the hotel offered a finer level of accommodations than what existed in the Valley at the time.
Reportedly, the $40,000 hotel (see photo above) came to be “beset by plumbing and construction defects,” and it burned to the ground in 1896. Stoneman Meadow retains the name of the hotel that once rested upon its soil. -- Image Credit: C.R. Savage (Photo taken: 1887-1896), Holding Institution: San Joaquin Valley Library System/For Educational Purposes.
Gazing across Happy Isle Loop Road, which had been constructed at a time when meadow ecology evidently ranked low in priority, I see another line of demarcation in Stoneman Meadow. A wooden boardwalk, lifted on pillars a few feet above the Meadow floor, stretches to the North where three Valley campgrounds can be accessed. The boardwalk gets a fair amount of use as it acts as a shortcut to Curry Village proper. Like the Road, its presence comes as a compromise between meadow preservation efforts and visitor convenience. It serves to remind me to not walk into the Meadow grounds.
A time existed, however, when walking right into Stoneman Meadow did not always cause alarm. Not only did campers once park their cars and set up camp here in the 1920s (see photo to right), but visitors also used the wide-open space of Stoneman Meadow as a place to gather. -- Image Credit: Creator Unknown (Photo taken: May 1927), Holding Institution: San Joaquin Valley Library System/For Educational Purposes.
This was particularly true in the late 1960s. Laura Avedisian (1996) wrote in her Master’s thesis that youth, largely from the San Francisco Bay area, seeking a place to socialize and enjoy nature, traveled to Yosemite and congregated in Stoneman Meadow among other places. This was generally tolerated by the Park staff and, at times, some staff would join in in Frisbee tossing and singing and playing guitars.
By 1970, the number of meadow groupies grew exponentially as Yosemite became more popular. Not a few associated themselves with the drug and counterculture movement, which had been gaining strength among the younger generation. Additionally, discontent about the war in Vietnam heightened in the United States. Concerns about the presence of so many “hippie” types in Yosemite, many who disregarded Park rules, troubled Yosemite’s officials. Stoneman Meadow itself had become a hot spot where hundreds gathered, especially on holidays, to meet new people, socialize, and “hang out.” As quoted by Avedisian, the Berkeley Tribe called it a place to “smoke dope and sing together in the clear mountain air.”
Then, on May 4, 1970, the demarcation between the younger generation and those viewed to be in authority widened palpably. The Ohio National Guard, called to Kent State University to manage a large peace protest against the US Government’s incursion into Cambodia as part of the Vietnam war, shot and killed four students when orders to disperse were believed to be ignored. Nine others were wounded from bullets shot by the National Guardsmen. Those killed, according to Wikipedia, were students in good standing on a break from classes. Additionally, the average distance from the Guardsmen of the four unarmed students who died “was 345 feet” and the victim “furthest from the Guard was 750 feet away.”
The incident stirred outrage across the nation and deepened the mistrust of the younger generation of any in authority. Wikipedia adds, “The shootings led to protests on college campuses throughout the United States and a student strike, causing more than 450 campuses across the country to close with both violent and non-violent demonstrations.”
Within ten days of the shooting, the song “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had been written, produced, and released nationwide. The song became an anthem for the counterculture and solidified feelings among the youth in general of being “on our own" against “tin soldiers” and President Nixon “gunning us down.”
Three weeks later on the Memorial Day weekend, the situation in Stoneman Meadow intensified as the crowds swelled. Estimates of people taking up space in the Meadow and nearby campgrounds ranged from 300 to 1,500. On Friday, May 29th, Park personnel imposed a curfew between 7 pm and 6 am to manage the growing and restless crowds. According to Avedisian, complaints about the situation focused on “noise, drug use, fights, profanity, nudity and sex.”
Park Rangers began issuing citations for illegally parked motor vehicles along Happy Isle Loop Road after warning those in Stoneman Meadow to move them or have them towed away. Eventually, about 25-27 Park Rangers and staff, taking a “soft approach,” dispersed the crowd back to the campsites, which they now patrolled.
On Saturday, May 30th, Rangers addressed similar problems, but being outnumbered, they left Stoneman Meadow and retreated. Resentment increased among those remaining, but by Memorial Day, the crowds lessened and the congested Park gained a reprieve from the exiting visitors. Stoneman Meadow, trampled and littered, would need time to recover before the next big holiday, the July 4th weekend in 1970.
I walk across Happy Isle Loop Road and step onto the Meadow’s boardwalk. I take my time as I head toward the campgrounds. Gazing at the beauty of Stoneman Meadow, I still get an inclination to walk right in and sit right down in the lush grasses spread out before me, just to be a part of it. But when I think back to what happened on the subsequent July 4th holiday weekend in the summer of 1970, I decide to stay on the boardwalk that divides the Meadow. It’s a convenience I value.
Join me next month as I share how rising tensions between the youth and Park leaders led to violent and chaotic confrontations in Stoneman Meadow on the July 4th weekend in 1970 that forever changed the way the Park manages conflict with its visitors.
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