The 1st CAR in YOSEMITE - Yosemite's Yesterdays (Hank Johnston)

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The 1st CAR in YOSEMITE.
Quotes and photos from the book Yosemite's Yesterdays (Hank Johnston).
Follow me through the pages of time as we travel back to explore Yosemite Yesterdays.
THE AUTOMOBILE COMES TO YOSEMITE
Yosemite national Park was established on October 1, 1890.
The first motor vehicle to enter Yosemite Valley, however, didn’t arrive until June 23, 1900.
The car was a brand new Locomobile. A two cylinder, 10 hp steam engine running at 150 pounds of pressure powered the vehicle. Top speed was 40 mph.
The vehicle owner was Oliver Lippincott, operator of Art photo company in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by Edward Russell, a machine shop owner who squeezed into the narrow seat beside the 300 pound Lippincott.
They covered the first leg of the journey, from Raymond to Wawona, in only 5 hours and 18 minutes of actual running time. Whereas the stage took all day to cover the same 44 mile stretch.
“When we stopped at the Grub Gulch to renew our water for steam,“ Lippincott wrote, “a woman called to her husband to come quick and see something that looks like two bicycles with a seat in the middle. Another woman said that the world was surely coming to an end when they began to make things like that.”
The only unpleasantness occurred on a steep grade about 8 miles above Raymond when a freighter whose four-horse team had become unsettled at the site of the
Locomobile on the road, yelled at its occupants, “What the hell do you bring such a nuisance up into this country? You city people, with your contrivances, are always making trouble!”
At Wawona, the hotel porch was crowded with people awaiting site of the little machine, for word of the adventure had preceded the travelers. Upon arrival, Russell demonstrated the new means of transportation by taking some of the inquisitive guests for rides around the circular Drive in front of the hotel.
The 30 mile run from Wawona to Yosemite Valley was accomplished in exactly 3 hours.
Lippincott and Russell spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley staying at the Sentinel hotel. They treated many a visitor to the excitement of the motorized vehicle, most of whom had never seen such a contraption before.
Henry Washburn, superintendent of the Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Company and the most influential man in the area, was especially interested in the Locomobile. He took an 8 mile tour of the valley with Lippincott declaring afterward that he “hardly knew where he had been”.
Later, Washburn persuaded Russell to drive him all the way up to glacier point. Due to the steep grade, the Locomobile’s engine overheated several times. Eventually, After five hours they reached the mountain house hotel, at the summit, after dark.
On July 26, 1900, only 33 days after Lippincott’s arrival, Frank and Arthur Holmes chugged into Yosemite Valley at 7:30 PM from Wawona in a modified Stanley Steamer, the second motor car to conquer the Sierra grades.
“Had our rubber tires come from the east on time,” Arthur Holmes declared, “we would have beaten Oliver Lippincott into the valley.”
In August of 1900, Foley’s Yosemite Tourist reported, “The two auto trips have fully demonstrated the fact that there is very little danger of frightening the stages or other horses,” “The animals pay little attention to it. In time an auto Road book will be published showing where water can be had. Also, gasoline will be kept at convenient points. The auto will soon become a prominent factor in Yosemite travel.”
Despite the Yosemite Tourist’s optimistic prediction, the impact of the motor car on Yosemite visits was slow in coming.
Over the following years, only a handful of motorists dared travel into an out of the valley.
In June 1907, all motor vehicles were banned from entering the park as the roads were deemed to be too steep and narrow to permit the combined operation of Stage teams and automobiles.
This ban on automobiles lasted until April 30, 1913 when the new secretary of interior Franklin K. Lane announced that he was resending the six year-old order barring automobiles from Yosemite.
“To continue to close the park against automobiles,” Lane said, “would be as absurd as the fight for many years made my old naval men against the adoption of steam in the Navy. I want to make our park as accessible as possible to the great mass of people.”
In the following years new routes were formed and roads were paved, making the automobile journey easy and accessible to all.
Today around a million motor vehicles enter the park every year.
Turns out Oliver Lippincott and his “little box on wheels” were really onto something.