Yosemite: Olmsted Point (Sr.)

(Continued from Yosemite: The Roads Less Traveled)

Featured Photo: “Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon, Olmsted Point”  Yosemite National Park, California—2023

Like the Yosemite Valley, which we had visited the day before, our journey on Sunday to the eastern gate at Tioga Pass featured a number of diverse and beautiful sights to enjoy. Unlike Yosemite Valley, however—where so much is found in a small, concentrated area—the sights along Tioga Road stretch out for 40 or 50 miles, making it more difficult to see everything in one day. But that is what my sister and I intended to do, even going far enough to exit the park at Tioga Pass, where the Rangers said we could view more natural splendor beyond the gate.

We had ascended from the floor of Yosemite Valley on Big Oak Flat Road, eventually reaching an intersection where we continued onto Tioga Road. Just after the junction, we pulled into a service station—one of only three that are open year-round in the entire 1,200 square miles of Yosemite Park—to fill up with gas. I felt uneasy watching the display on the gas pump spin rapidly as the total cost of filling our tank soared higher and higher. The fuel price was around $5.00 or $6.00 a gallon—double what I was used to back home. To reduce my anxiety, I turned my gaze away and noticed a park sign not far from the station, indicating the distance and direction to the Tuolumne Grove of Giant Sequoias, containing about two dozen mature trees. This stand of Giant Sequoias, however, is only visible after a strenuous one-mile hike, including a 500-foot elevation change. Having already visited Mariposa Grove, boasting 20 times as many of the remarkable giant trees, and uninterested in the difficult hike, we decided to skip this stop, and left the station with a full tank of gas to continue along Tioga Road.

It was a full hour after we had passed through Arch Rock, the western entrance to Yosemite, when I stopped for my first photos of the vistas…

…quickly recognizing that for our journey that day, Tioga Road itself was an integral part of the scenery, which prompted me to capture the route as part of the picture—something I typically try not to do.

At times, the rows of trees appeared to be suspended between the faraway, beautiful granite peaks and the nearby, functional asphalt roads.

Sometimes, the best picture was just over the roadway, where trees seemed to be growing on the tops of ledges, backlit by the sun…

…and sometimes, the trees looked as if they had sprung right out of the granite itself.

After another half-hour on the road, we reached our first destination for the day: Olmsted Point. Pulling into the parking lot, I wondered—not for the first time—whether the location had been named for Frederick Law Olmsted, about whom I knew a few things. I was also curious what the connection between Olmsted and Yosemite might be, to merit this recognition and honor.

I was aware that Olmsted—known as the founder of landscape architecture in the United States—was responsible for designing many of America’s best-known public parks, including New York City’s Central Park and Washington DC’s US Capitol Grounds. I was also aware of another of Olmsted’s grand achievements: the landscape design for Biltmore Estate—the iconic, castle-like home of George W. Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina—since I had visited Biltmore previously, during family vacations in nearby Montreat.

And Olmsted was featured in a riveting book I read a few years ago, The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson…

…about the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in the New World (even though the Exposition ran behind schedule, opening a year after the actual anniversary). Olmsted had been chosen by Daniel Burnham, the Exposition’s Director of Works—and one of the main characters in Larson’s book—to landscape the public spaces. Through his design—which included the conversion of a swamp into a Venetian-inspired system of lagoons and canals, complete with a glorious, wooded island—Olmsted hoped to enhance the visitor’s experience and connect city residents with the rejuvenating and healthful benefits of nature.

Larson’s book about the Columbian Exposition also relates the story of the first appearance of the Ferris Wheel, designed by George W. Gale Ferris Jr.—a structural engineer from Pittsburgh—to rival the Eiffel Tower, which debuted a few years earlier at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Oh—and lest we forget—the other central character in the book was H. H. Holmes, a brutal serial killer who exploited the Exposition in Chicago to find his victims, going about his “work” in a hotel he had elaborately and maliciously constructed near the fair grounds. And this stuff is not made up! Larson weaves together this mesmerizing story in an extensively researched, nonfiction novel—well-worth a read, if you haven’t already.

But, getting back to my mesmerizing story, and to remind you where we were, my sister and I had just arrived at Olmsted Point along Tioga Road. Across from the parking area, we observed more of the hearty trees set in granite…

…before we walked to the low retaining wall and began exploring the views across Tenaya Canyon, and back toward Half Dome, Glacier Point, and Yosemite Valley. Next to the observation area, I noticed a few steps leading to a trail that ran right along the rock formations. I took the steps down and walked away from the path, treading cautiously onto the top of the rocks to capture this image…

…then I zoomed in for a closer shot of Half Dome (today’s Featured Photo), which is seen in the distance beyond the trees; but the view of Half Dome is “backward” compared to what we had observed earlier from Glacier Point. Then I took a few more steps along the rocks and snapped another photo…

…which captured some of the unique geological features of Olmsted Point—reminders that Yosemite would not appear as it does without the imprint of glaciers. Although the distant Half Dome is again my main subject for the picture, the foreground displays a couple of small to medium-sized, individual boulders sitting haphazardly on top of the relatively smooth—but fractured—granite rock surfaces.

What led to the smooth surface, the joints, and the boulders at Olmsted Point? The National Park Service Website explains it this way: As glaciers scraped over the bedrock in Yosemite, sediment embedded in the ice polished the granite and produced linear scratches, called glacial striations. The solitary boulders, called “erratics”, were carried along by the glaciers—likely over a long distance—and were then left behind as the ice melted. The joints or fractures in the park’s granitic bedrock significantly influenced glacial erosion patterns in this otherwise homogeneous, erosion-resistant landscape. And of course, it was also glaciers that carved the broad U-shaped valleys—like Yosemite Valley—with its steep walls and relatively flat floor, due to the erosional power of the moving ice that extended far up the valley walls.

Earlier during our trip, I was drawn to the view of Half Dome, framed in various ways at Cook’s Meadow and Glacier Point. Likewise at Olmsted Point, my gaze turned repeatedly toward Half Dome as I walked along the smooth surface of the glacially polished granite and continued to take photos.

After our trip, while writing this post back at home, my mind returned to the questions I had pondered when we first arrived at Olmsted Point: whether it had been named for Frederick Law Olmsted and how Olmsted was connected with Yosemite. Armed with the internet and a book, I did a little digging and found the answers. But the answers—along with the additional pictures I took that day at Olmsted Point—will have to wait until my next post.

(To be continued…)