Americas First Park Rangers Early in 1851, during the frenzy of the California Gold Rush, an armed group of white men were scouting the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They called themselves the Mariposa Battalion. They were searching for Indians, intent on driving the natives from their homelands and onto reservations when they stumbled upon an area of awe-inspiring beauty, later to be known as Yosemite. It was this discovery of Yosemite that set into motion events that would lead to the U.S. Congress proclaiming it a national park in October 1890, as it had done several weeks earlier for Sequoia and Yellowstone in March 1872. However, it had made no provision for an authority to oversee them. Instead it required the U.S. Army to patrol and protect federal lands making them, in essence, Americas first national park rangers. It was a mammoth task for the army to patrol the millions acres of no-mans land on horseback. While they did their best to stop poachers and vandals, the soldiers had no authority to punish offenders. No laws had been defined and so the wrongdoers were only issued warnings or, in severe cases, expelled from the parks. Nevertheless, the presence of these soldiers as official stewards of park lands brought some sense of law and order to the mountain wilderness. Protecting the park was also dangerous work. In the frigid winter season, cavalrymen on skis patrolled for poachers. Conditions were often treacherous; soldiers died in avalanches and snowstorms, or were killed by poachers. ...
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:56:35 +0000
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