Yosemite Nature Guides 



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happiness of fellowship with chipmunk and with woodpecker, were 

 made, as in similar work in blue-eyed Europe, a means of such edu- 

 cation through play, of recalling race-old memories in the cramped 

 city, of building for cleaner citizenship in child, adolescent, adult. 



The first nature-guide experiments came in 191 8 at Catalina and 

 at Yosemite, under Dr. Harold Bryant, of the University of Cali- 

 fornia and of the State Fish and Game Commission. Crude as these 

 were, the possibilities of thus transplanting this Nordic institution 

 to California soil were apparent. For the wider work of 19 19 the 

 string of resorts bordering Lake Tahoe in the Tahoe National Forest 

 was selected. Resort managers there were quick to see the commer- 

 cial values of the nature-guide movement. They therefore co-oper- 

 ated splendidly. From Tahoe Tavern to Fallen Leaf Lake were 

 given nature-guide hikes, camp fire talks, lantern-slide lectures on 

 Sierran fauna and flora, moving pictures of California wild life. 

 Nature-study libraries were opened at each co-operating Tahoe 

 resort. Children were directed in nature-play along unique lines, 

 including such blindfold games as the bark-feeling plays and the 

 herb-smelling frolics. Director of National Parks Stephen T. 

 Mather quietly studied the Tahoe experiment. He decided the re- 

 sults merited its extension into Yosemite National Park. At his 

 19 19 Christmas party in Yosemite Village he authorized the Cali- 

 fornia Nature Study League to open negotiations with the California 

 Fish and Game Commission, which developed into the unexpectedly 

 wide success of the 1920 Yosemite summer. 



One month's season at Tahoe in 19 19 was expanded at Yosemite 

 to three months — June to August, 1920. Dr. Bryant and Dr. Loye 

 H. Miller again were in charge. The program was developed to 

 include occasional sleeping-bag trips into Yosemite's "Back of 

 Beyond," those High Sierras whose treasures have become world 

 property through the pioneering of John Muir and his associates of 

 the early Sierra Club. A wild-flower show was continuously con- 

 ducted in Yosemite Village. The nature guides assisted in enter- 

 taining practically all delegations visiting Yosemite in 1920, from 

 the Congressional Appropriations Committee to the Board of British 

 Drapers. Some 27,047 citizens thus made use of the 1920 Yosemite 

 National Park Nature Guide Service. 



This nature-guide movement should be solidified into a perma- 

 nent institution, not only in Yosemite, but in all national, all state 



