Epilogue

As the nineteenth century ended, it was natural that society simultaneously reminisced about days gone by and dreamed of the future. For students of Yosemite, there was much that had changed in the previous decades but just as much that was enduring. In the previous hundred years, the extraordinary granite gorge had seen a whirling kaleidoscope of pestilence, war, deceit, conceit, hullabaloo, bitching, heroism, romanticism, intolerance, ignorance, incompetence, reverence, and escapism. Turn-of-the century observers fretted over what was yet to come, what would be lost, and what could be gained. But dwarfing these earthly anxieties was the seemingly eternal valley