Kings River Canyon in 1868
E. C. Winchell
A Trip to the Palisades
Frank Dusy
A Trip to Tehipite Valley
Frank Dusy
A Night on Mt. Whitney
W. B. Wallace
King’s River and Mt. Whitney Trails
Joseph N. LeConte
Among the Sources of the San Joaquin
Theodore S. Solomons
A Search for a High Mountain Route
Theodore S. Solomons
Mt. Goddard and its Vicinity
Theodore S. Solomons
The Grand Caņon of the Tuolumne
R. M. Price
The Descent of Tenaya Caņon
George Gibbs
Explorations North of the Tuolumne River
Lieut. N. F. McClure
Three Days with Mt. King
Bolton Coit Brown
Headwaters of the King’s River
Bolton Coit Brown
Between Mt. King and Mt. Williamson
Bolton Coit Brown
The East Creek Amphitheater
Cornelius Beach Bradley
South Fork of the San Joaquin River
Joseph N. LeConte
Another Paradise
Bolton Coit Brown
Ascent of the North Palisades
Joseph N. Leconte
Colby Pass and the Black Kaweah
James E. Hutchinson
Introduction
The travels and explorations of William H. Brewer,
Clarence King, John Muir,
the California State Geological Survey, and the Wheeler Survey have been recounted
many times and in great detail. For that reason they are not included in this volume.
Most of the less well known early explorers of the Sierra Nevada were private individuals,
rather than government expeditions or cartographers. The more literate ones had accounts
of their achievements, adventures, and mishaps published in newspapers and journals,
often accompanying them with photographs, drawings, and hand-drawn maps. Most of these
wilderness travelers have been immortalized by having their names placed on mountains,
lakes,
and streams: Frank Dusy; Wales, Wallace, and Wright; Theodore S. Solomons; Bolton C. and
Lucy Brown; Joseph N. and Marion LeConte; Lt. Nathaniel Fish McClure; Cornelius Beach
Bradley;
James E. Hutchinson. These are foremost among the few who pioneered the routes that are
followed
by so many at the present day.
Frank Dusy (1836–1898), born in Canada; educated in Maine; came to
California in 1858.
He was initially a miner, then turned to sheep-raising and ranching; took his stock to the
mountains in the region of the North and Middle forks of the Kings River; discovered
Tehipite Valley in 1869; explored the Middle Fork of the Kings River as far as the
Palisades in 1878.
According to Lilbourne A. Winchell, himself an early explorer, Dusy was the only stockman
of his time who seemed to take an interest in the mountain region for reasons other than
stock feed.
He was a man of intelligence and wide experience. He took the first photographs of
Tehipite, 1879,
carrying a bulky portrait camera, with studio tripod, wet plates, and chemicals. L. A.
Winchell,
in 1879, gave Dusy’s name to the branch of the Middle Fork of the Kings River north
of the Palisades:
Dusy Branch, flowing out of Dusy Basin. Dusy Meadows and Dusy Creek, north of the
Courtright
Reservoir, are also named for him.
Frederick Henry Wales (1845–1925), born in Massachusetts; served in
the Civil War;
graduated from Dartmouth, 1872; Hartford Theological Seminary, 1875; came to California
and resided in Tulare County for many years as minister, editor of Alliance Messenger,
and
a farmer. The namesake of Wales Lake. William B. Wallace
(1849–1926), born in Missouri;
his family came to California the year of his birth, and settled in Placerville. He
attended school
in Sacramento County; graduated State Normal School; taught school in Sacramento, El
Dorado,
and Amador counties; came to Tulare County, 1876, and settled in Visalia in 1891. He was
an
inveterate explorer and mountaineer in the southern Sierra for twenty years. Namesake of
Wallace Lake
and Wallace Creek. James William Albert Wright (1834–1894), born in
Mississippi; served
in the Confederate Army in the Civil War; came to California in 1868. For some twenty
years
he was a correspondent for various newspapers and journals on agricultural and mining
matters,
and on travels in the Sierra. The namesake of Wright Lakes and Wright Creek.
Joseph Nisbet LeConte (1870–1950) was the son of Professor Joseph
LeConte, the University
of California geology professor who had confirmed John Muir’s glacial theory of the
origin of
Yosemite Valley. Both LeContes were charter members of the Sierra Club. “Little
Joe” LeConte
served the Club for fifty years—as a director from 1898 to 1940, and as the
Club’s second president,
1915–1917, after John Muir and before William E. Colby. He made many mountaineering
trips in the
Sierra from 1887 to 1928, wrote extensively about them, and was an expert photographer and
map-maker.
In his professional life he was a professor of engineering at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Le Conte Point overlooking Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is named for him. All other Le Conte
features are named
for his father. Marion Lake and Marion Peak were named for his wife, Helen Marion
Gompertz LeConte (1865–1924).
Theodore Seixas Solomons (1870–1947) was the pioneer of the northern
half of the John Muir Trail.
In three memorable trips in the 1890s, with three different companions, he explored,
mapped, and
established a route from Yosemite to Kings Canyon. On every trip he carried a glass-plate
camera,
and created an invaluable photographic record of his travels. The plates from the second
of these
journeys of discovery were lost, but the others survived and are now in the Bancroft
Library.
Theodore joined in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, then went to Alaska for nearly a
decade. He
returned to the United States in 1908, and in 1911 homesteaded west of Yosemite
overlooking the
canyon of the Merced River. Many years later this homestead, called Flying Spur, was owned
and
occupied by Shirley Sargent, the noted Yosemite writer. Shirley’s superb biography of
Theodore,
Solomons of the Sierra (1989), gave Theodore the recognition he deserved. In
1968, a peak just
southwest of Muir Pass was named Mount Solomons.
Robert Martin Price (1867–1940), a charter member of the Sierra
Club, and at various times its
secretary, a director, president, and honorary vice-president. Obituary by William E.
Colby in the
Sierra Club Bulletin, v. 25, 1940.
Nathaniel Fish McClure (1865–1942) graduated from West Point in
1887. He was a first lieutenant
in the Fifth Cavalry when he was stationed in Yosemite National Park in 1894 and 1895. He
patrolled
the remote areas of the park, preventing poaching and rousting sheepherders, and also
scouted out
new routes—particularly in the northern part of the park—and created maps in
1895 and 1896.
McClure Lake, just south of Isberg Peak, is named for him. In fact, he probably named it
for himself,
since the name first appears on his 1896 map. The lake was within the park’s
boundaries from 1890 to
1905, but is now in the Sierra National Forest.
Bolton Coit Brown (1864–1936) founded the art program at Stanford
University in 1891, and was its
director from then until 1902. There he gained fame as a teacher and national recognition
as a skilled
mountaineer. He left California in 1902 and traveled to New York to explore the Catskill
Mountains,
and soon became affiliated with the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony. Brown went to
England in 1915,
where he learned lithography. He returned to America the following year and devoted the
next ten years
of his life exclusively to lithography. His expertise as a printmaker led to
collaborations with some of the
important artists of his time, among them George Bellows, Arthur B. Davies, John Taylor
Arms, and Rockwell Kent.
Mount Bolton Brown on the Sierra crest northeast of Mather Pass was named for him in 1922
by the two men
who made the first ascent. Lucys Foot Pass over the Kings-Kern Divide is named for his
wife, Lucy Fletcher Brown.
Cornelius Beach Bradley (1843–1936) was born in Bangkok, Siam. His
father, the Reverend Daniel Beach
Bradley, was descended from a family which had been resident in Connecticut since 1644. He
attended Oberlin
College, where he obtained the bachelor’s degree in 1868. He remained at Oberlin as
tutor for two years,
pursuing at the same time the course in Theology. This he continued in the Divinity School
at Yale University,
1870 to 1871. From 1871 until 1874 he was a missionary to the Siamese. He returned to
America at the end
of that period and in 1875 was appointed teacher of English and Vice-Principal of the High
School in Oakland,
California. In 1882 he was appointed Instructor in English at the University of
California, where he
continued as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of English Language and
Literature, then as
Professor of Rhetoric, until his retirement in 1911. He was honored by Oberlin College
with the M.A.
degree in 1886, and by the University of California with that of LL.D. in 1926.
Bradley was a charter member of the Sierra Club, and from 1895 to 1898
editor of the Sierra Club Bulletin.
Mount Bradley, overlooking Center Basin, was named for him on July 5, 1898, the same day
that he made the
first ascent of Center Peak, on the opposite side of Center Basin.
James Sather Hutchinson (1867–1959) was a charter member of the
Sierra Club, a director of the club
from 1903 to 1907, and twice the editor of the Sierra Club Bulletin. He, Joe
LeConte, and James K. Moffitt
made the first ascent of the North Palisade, in 1903. James was an attorney in San
Francisco for sixty years.
He and a brother, Edward C. Hutchinson, made the first ascent of Mount
Humphreys, in 1904. Hutchinson
Meadow, at the juncture of French Canyon and Piute Canyon, was named for the Hutchinson
brothers in 1922.
I know nothing about George Gibbs. His description of the descent of
Tenaya Canyon is the finest article
about a one-day, death-defying jaunt that I’ve ever seen. If you can survive that,
perhaps you can live as long
as the Splendid Mountains shall stand.