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Picture a summer night in Yosemite Valley, about a hundred years ago.

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It's nine o'clock.

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Hundreds of people are standing in the dark at Camp Curry, on the valley floor,

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looking straight up at a cliff more than three thousand feet high.

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Up on top, at a place called Glacier Point, a bonfire has been burning since late

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afternoon.

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It's down to a big pile of glowing red coals.

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Then a voice calls up from the valley.

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"Hello, Glacier Point!

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Is the fire ready?"

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And from the top of the cliff, faint and far away, comes the answer.

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"The fire is ready!" And the man in the valley shouts the line everybody came to

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hear.

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"Let the fire fall!" Up on the edge, workers take long rakes and push those coals

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over the cliff.

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A ribbon of fire pours down the face of the rock, glowing in the dark, like a

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waterfall made of embers.

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They called it the Firefall.

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It may have started as early as 1872, with a hotel owner named James McCauley

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pushing his campfire over the edge.

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The Curry family, who ran Camp Curry, turned it into a nightly show every summer.

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For decades, it was the most famous thing you could see in Yosemite.

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And then the park stopped it.

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The crowds had gotten huge.

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Cars jammed the valley, people trampled the meadows, and the crews had stripped the

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bark off nearly every dead red fir they could reach to feed the fire.

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The head of the National Park Service, George Hartzog, said it was about as fitting

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for Yosemite as horns on a rabbit.

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The last Firefall came down on January twenty-fifth, 1968, in front of about fifty

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people.

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But here's the thing.

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Nature had been putting on its own version the whole time.

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We'll get to that.

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Welcome back to Talk Travel with Glen.

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I'm Glen, and this is Season Three, where we're traveling through America's national

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parks one park at a time, looking for the stories under the scenery.

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Last time, we stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

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This time, we're in a valley that helped invent the whole idea of a national park.

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Yosemite.

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Start with what you see when you drive in and come out of the tunnel.

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On the left, El Capitan, a wall of bare granite rising three thousand feet straight

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up from the valley floor.

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On the right, Bridalveil Fall.

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And far back, Half Dome, its summit close to five thousand feet above the valley.

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Almost all of that is granite.

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It started as molten rock deep underground, and it cooled and hardened slowly,

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anywhere from eighty-five to a hundred five million years ago.

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Over a very long time, the rock on top wore away, and the granite came up into the

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light.

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But granite alone doesn't make Yosemite.

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Ice does.

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During the ice ages, glaciers flowed down through this valley.

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Before them, the Merced River had cut a narrow canyon, shaped like a V.

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The glaciers ground that V into a broad U, with steep walls and a flat floor.

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And that's why Yosemite is a valley of waterfalls.

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The side streams that used to run down into the old river canyon were left hanging

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high above the new valley floor.

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Now they just pour off the edge.

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Yosemite Falls is the tallest in the park.

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From top to bottom, it drops two thousand four hundred twenty-five feet, in three

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parts.

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The upper fall alone drops fourteen hundred thirty feet.

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All of it runs on melting snow.

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It roars from April through June, usually peaks in May, and by August it can be down

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to a trickle, or dry.

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Now, you'd think the glacier story was obvious.

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It was not.

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In the 1860s, the most powerful geologist in California was Josiah Whitney, head of

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the state's Geological Survey.

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He was sure glaciers had nothing to do with it.

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His explanation was that the bottom of the valley had simply sunk, dropped straight

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down, leaving the walls standing.

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Then along came a young man from Wisconsin by way of Scotland, working odd jobs in

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the valley, herding sheep, running a sawmill.

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His name was John Muir.

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He walked the high country for years, and he came back saying the opposite.

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Ice did this.

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He even found small living glaciers still hiding up in the high Sierra.

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Whitney's answer was to call Muir a mere sheepherder.

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An ignoramus.

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It took decades to settle.

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In the end, a geologist with the U.S.

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Geological Survey named François Matthes studied the valley in detail and settled

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it.

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Glaciers carved Yosemite Valley.

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The sheepherder was right.

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Long before Whitney or Muir, this valley already had a name.

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People have lived in this region for at least eight thousand years.

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The people of this valley called it Ahwahnee.

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A linguist who studied the word translated it as the place of the big mouth.

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Stand on the valley floor, with those walls on both sides, and you can see why.

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And the people who lived here called themselves the Ahwahneechee.

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So where does the name Yosemite come from?

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In the spring of 1851, California was in the middle of the Gold Rush, and miners

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were pushing into the Sierra foothills.

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Fighting broke out with the Native people whose land it was.

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The state backed a volunteer militia called the Mariposa Battalion, and its job was

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to force the tribes out of the mountains and onto a reservation.

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On March twenty-fifth, 1851, that battalion rode into the valley.

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They were the first outsiders known to have entered it.

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One of them, a doctor named Lafayette Bunnell, was so struck by the place that he

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wanted to give it a name, and the men settled on Yosemite.

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They believed it was what the Native people called themselves.

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It was not.

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It was what neighboring Miwok people called the people of this valley.

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A linguistic study published in Yosemite's own nature journal traced it to a word

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that means, roughly, they are killers.

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The neighbors had a reputation to pass along.

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So one of the most beloved names in America comes from a word for the people who

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lived here, given by outsiders, and recorded by the men who came to remove them.

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The Ahwahneechee leader at that time was a man named Tenaya.

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A lake in the high country still carries his name.

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Tenaya died in 1853.

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But the story did not end there.

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Seven tribes today trace their roots to the first people of Yosemite.

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And in the valley, on the site of what was once the largest village, a reconstructed

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Indian village is still used by the local Native community for ceremonies and

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gatherings.

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Within a few years of that battalion, the tourists started coming.

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The first party of sightseers came in 1855.

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Forty-two people visited that year.

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Word got out fast.

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And people with money started to look at the valley the way people with money do.

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Claims.

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Fences.

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Hotels.

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Toll roads.

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So in 1864, something happened that had never happened anywhere.

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The country was in the middle of the Civil War.

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And yet on June thirtieth of that year, President Abraham Lincoln signed a law

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handing Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias to the State of

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California, on one condition.

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They were to be held for public use, resort and recreation, forever.

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It was one of the first times any government anywhere set aside a natural place like

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this so that everybody could enjoy it.

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Yellowstone gets called the first national park, and it is, from 1872.

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But the idea was tested here first, eight years earlier, in wartime.

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Then, in 1890, after a long push by John Muir and others, Congress made the high

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country around the valley a national park.

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Two years later, Muir and a group of friends founded the Sierra Club.

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In May of 1903, Muir got the chance of a lifetime.

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President Theodore Roosevelt came to Yosemite and asked for Muir as his guide.

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And Roosevelt did not want hotels or banquets.

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He wanted to camp.

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The first night, they slept under the Grizzly Giant in the Mariposa Grove, a sequoia

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about three thousand years old.

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Roosevelt called the grove a temple greater than any human architect could ever

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build.

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The second night, they camped up near Glacier Point, and it snowed on them.

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Roosevelt woke up under a blanket of fresh snow and said, "This is bullier yet!" The

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third night, they camped in a meadow across from Bridalveil Fall.

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Three nights around a campfire with John Muir.

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Muir said later he'd stuffed the President pretty well with what he had to say.

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And three years after that, in 1906, the valley and the Mariposa Grove were handed

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back from the state to the federal government and joined to the national park.

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One Yosemite.

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But Muir's last big fight, he lost.

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North of the valley was another one, almost as beautiful, called Hetch Hetchy.

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After the great earthquake and fire of 1906, San Francisco wanted a reliable supply

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of water, and it wanted to dam Hetch Hetchy to get it.

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Muir fought it for years.

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He called the valley one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples.

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In December of 1913, Congress passed the Raker Act and approved the dam.

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Muir died a year later.

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Hetch Hetchy Valley sits under about three hundred feet of water today.

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Still, that loss left a mark.

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The public outcry helped push Congress, three years later, to create the National

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Park Service, with a mission to protect these places unimpaired for the people who

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come after us.

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People who fight for parks today still say it.

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Remember Hetch Hetchy.

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Look back at El Capitan for a minute, because to climbers, it's the center of the

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world.

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For a long time, people said nobody could climb it.

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Three thousand feet of nearly blank granite.

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Then in 1957, climbers made it up the face of Half Dome, and the era of big wall

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climbing began.

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The next year, a crew led by a climber named Warren Harding went after the most

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obvious line on El Capitan, the sharp prow right down the middle, called the Nose.

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They did not do it in one push.

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They worked up the wall a section at a time, fixing ropes so they could go up and

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come back down.

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It took them forty-seven days of climbing, spread out over seventeen months, and a

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hundred twenty-five bolts drilled by hand into the rock.

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In November of 1958, they stood on top.

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Today, most teams climb the Nose in about four to five days, sleeping on natural

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ledges on the wall.

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And if you're in the valley, look up at El Capitan with binoculars.

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You'll often spot climbers hanging up there, tiny as flecks of paint.

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But the walls are not finished changing.

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The park calls rockfall the most powerful geologic force at work in Yosemite today.

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More than a thousand rockfalls have been recorded here in the past hundred and fifty

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years.

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The most startling one came on July tenth, 1996, near Happy Isles, at the east end

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of the valley.

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Two huge slabs of rock broke loose from a cliff more than two thousand feet high,

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just below Glacier Point.

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They hit the slope below so hard that they pushed out a blast of air.

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That wind moved faster than two hundred forty miles an hour, and it snapped or

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knocked down about a thousand trees.

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One person was killed and several more were badly hurt.

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So the same valley that the glaciers carved is still being shaped, one slab at a

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time.

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One last story before we get practical.

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Yosemite has anywhere from three hundred to five hundred black bears.

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And here's the surprise.

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Most of them aren't black.

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They're brown, reddish brown, even blond.

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An average adult male weighs about two hundred fifty pounds, a female about a

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hundred fifty.

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The biggest one ever caught in Yosemite weighed six hundred ninety.

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They live mostly on grasses and berries, along with ants and insect larvae.

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In the fall, they go after acorns.

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There used to be grizzlies in California, too.

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The grizzly is still on the state flag.

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But the last known grizzly from this region was shot in the early 1920s.

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Today the black bear is the only bear in Yosemite.

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And these bears are smart.

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They have learned exactly what a car can hold.

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A bear in Yosemite will break a window or bend a car door frame to get to food it

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can smell inside.

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That's why every bit of food goes in a bear-proof locker, never in your car, and why

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bear canisters are required everywhere in the backcountry.

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Okay.

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If this has you thinking about a trip, here's what's worth knowing.

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First, think about the water.

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If you want the waterfalls at full power, go in spring, from April through June,

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with May usually the peak.

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If you go in late summer, Yosemite Falls may be dry.

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Fall brings gold oaks and thinner crowds.

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Second, check the rules for your dates before you go.

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In recent years, the park has used reservation systems at peak times, and the

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details change from year to year.

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The park's website, nps.gov slash yose, has the current rules.

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Third, know that the high roads close for winter.

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Tioga Road, which takes you up to Tuolumne Meadows, and the road out to Glacier

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Point usually close once the snow comes and open again in late spring or early

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summer.

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Check road conditions before you count on either one.

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Fourth, if you want to hike Half Dome, plan months ahead.

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It's a fourteen to sixteen mile round trip, and most people take ten to twelve

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hours.

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You need a permit to go up the cables, and most of them go out in a lottery that

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runs in March.

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And the park's most important safety rule is a simple one: never go up the cables

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when the rock or the cables are wet.

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And last, remember the Firefall.

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Because nature still puts on its own.

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For about two weeks in mid to late February, if the sky is clear and there's enough

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water flowing, a small waterfall called Horsetail Fall, on the east edge of El

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Capitan, catches the setting sun and glows orange for a few minutes.

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People call it the natural Firefall.

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It draws big crowds, and the park sets up special parking and closures for it, so

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check the park's Horsetail Fall page before you go.

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Lodging inside the valley fills up early.

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I'll put links to places to stay and tours worth your time on the episode page at

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travelwithglen.com, along with every source for the facts in this episode.

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So think back to where we started.

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A crowd in the dark, a voice calling up a three-thousand-foot cliff, and a river of

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fire coming down.

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The park was right to stop it.

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Yosemite never needed the help.

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Granite cooled underground, ice carved the valley, and the water still falls on its

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own.

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And every February, for a few minutes, the light still does the rest.

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If you'd like to see it, the full episode with footage from the park is on the

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Travel With Glen channel on Roku.

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Search for Travel With Glen, or add it with the code T Q G K V J X.

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It's free to watch.

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And if this episode was worth your time, follow the show wherever you're listening,

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so Season Three keeps coming to you.

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Next time, we're going to the hottest, driest, lowest place in North America.

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Death Valley.

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I'm Glen.

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Thanks for traveling with me.