Posted on 07/08/2012 7:46:08 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Perhaps no river crossing in Yosemite Valley has been more photographed than the historic Stoneman Bridge: a single, arching span faced with rough-hewn granite that provides a dramatic foreground to Half Dome, the park's most iconic natural marvel.
Yet the 205-foot bridge is slated for possible removal under proposed plans for restoring the natural flow of the Merced River. As a federally designated "Wild and Scenic River," some say its course should be shaped only by nature as it meanders through the valley — and bridge abutments alter that course.
The future of the roughly 80-year-old Stoneman and two other spandrel arch bridges has pitted environmentalists, who want the river to flow freely, against historic preservationists who say these early examples of the rustic park architectural style are too culturally important to destroy.
"We're talking about nationally significant resources in arguably the best-known national park in the world. What happens in Yosemite has echoes throughout the National Park System," said Anthony Veerkamp of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
It's why last month the trust placed the Stoneman and two other Yosemite Valley stone-arch bridges threatened with removal — the Ahwahnee Bridge and the Sugar Pine Bridge — on its 2012 most endangered historic places list.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
These eviro-whackos remind me of another group of nutjobs. The Muzzies who want or did destroy ancient artifacts and structures in Egypt and other countries. It didn’t “fit” their view of the world.
A pox on all of them.
I’ve been across the GG and the all of the Yosemite bridges many times as a kid, adult, and father with my kids.
I thankfully escaped CA, but I do miss some of the things I was able to do.
I understand it was a horse gate, but eventually claimed by the river due to erosion.
“We could remove this bridge.
It doesnt fit the natural surroundings.
Perhaps remove people and structures from the surrounding area and return it to its original pristine state.”
Saint Andres will do that sooner or later. To allow an enviro/commie to mandate the timing of that would be blasphemous.
Oops - make that ‘San Andres’ instead of ‘Saint Andres. Better change ‘blasphemous’ to ‘delusional’, too.
It’s for horse riders to pass under the bridge.
mega dittos!!!!!
They also have money.
Lots and lots of money.
“How did such a small number of fanatics get to the position of dictating their whims to us?”
I’ll give you the short answer. It’s because millions of conservatives sat on their fat butts and didn’t confront these commies at public meetings. Conservatives didn’t meet these fascists in dark parking lots and read them the riot act. Conservatives were too busy to volunteer their time to sit on planning, building and environmental committees. These commies are outnumbered 50 to 1 in many areas of the country, but they ended up making decisions to control your property because conservatives were busy fishing or installing new cabinets in the kitchen.
If you want liberty, you gotta be involved on every level of government. That fact still hasn’t gotten through to conservatives. The Founders set up committees of safety to deal with the Tories. Conservatives have set up nothing.
Frankly, after nearly 20 years in local government, I’m tired of pointing out the obvious to thick-headed conservatives.
BTW, this isn’t directed at you personally, but generally toward the entire conservative movement.
More crap from our People hating, “dirt-firsters”.
They want to remove man’s footprint from the planet.
This is NOT about “cleaning up” anything.
This is about destroying industry and capitalism.
But, only in the West.
They’re fine with granting exemptions to China and India, who are the world’s worst polluters.
But the water from Hetch Hetchy goes to the libs. in San Fransicko. It must stay.../S
From the stone arch on the l/s, it looks like another door entrance/exit. Maybe there were footpaths along the banks, at one time, before the water level rose, or the shoreline eroded, and those were for hikers/fishermen to get by wo/ going up and over the bridge? Just guessing.
Ironically, Yosemite Valley was acquired by force from tribes who would never have let the process get this far. Since they were expelled, “preservation” and fire-suppression have assured that the meadow is eventually doomed, BUT… is that a bad thing? Well, it depends upon what whoever-is-in-charge wants. Pollen studies show that even the grassy meadow was a result of the change in management. 500 years before the Ahwaneechee were expelled; the Valley had been primarily a conifer forest.
Yosemite had been a remote battleground between Miwuk and Paiute tribes, both of whom evidently preferred more productive ground. It is likely that someone eventually torched the conifer forest in Yosemite Valley so that they could make it more productive by farming. It was not at all uncharacteristic for California Indians to introduce and tend crop plants. For example, black oak only spread as far as an animal will carry acorns; they were most likely planted here.
Once the Indians were gone, cattle were brought in for vegetation management; hence the grass. Grass was what the managers wanted. Today, it’s an unhappy struggle between the Park Service, activists, and customers who bring in most of the cash. Tourists want trees, but not if they get in the way of the “Natural” view. They want wildlife, even if the animals preclude growing the plants that would return the Park to its former state. The Park Service acquires its assets by pitching this wacky idea that “Nature” means “no people,” so a chainsaw is out. As the forest heads toward a decadent monoculture ready to explode, the “managers” hold their breath, doing what they can while taking a paycheck from customers they despise. If it burns, the wildlife will just have to “deal with it,” which effectively means if they survive the fire they will starve to death, just like they did in Yellowstone after the 1989 fire.
Most tourists would find a catastrophic fire a hard sell and they don’t like stumps or smoke either, so thinning is out. Nobody would pay much for such crummy trees as they have in Yosemite, even if there was a saw mill within affordable trucking distance (which there isn’t thanks to the same philosophy, never mind that John Muir himself once worked at a sawmill in the Valley). Of course, few care about overstocked trees because most people believe “Nature” should be “preserved.” The problem with that idea is that it is physically impossible.
So, what if the Valley did burn catastrophically, just as it did 650 years ago? How would they re-establish “native” plants without a very destructive weed battle?
The condition of land ultimately reflects the historic preferences of those in charge. Today, it’s “the public,” that is, until the bureaucrats and activists close the Park off to automobiles per the Yosemite Valley Plan, to “save” it from their customers and keep it to themselves (better employee housing is a top priority of the plan). In reality, this hugely unpopular plan is only the first step. The bureaucrats have grander dreams they don’t really tell anybody about, because they know for a fact that most people won’t like what it might take to get there.
Why? Is it all that bad?
Well, like any bureaucratic plan it is hugely expensive, it will employ lots of scientists and consultants who get pay for play, and the outcome will demand minute control over those “annoying” and clueless customers. Fortunately, the goals haven’t been infested with the likes of the Park Service’s preference for cryptogamic crusts in Zion and Canyonlands. They want to “restore” the Valley to a state similar to the way the Indians had it, but note, that is NOT what was “Natural” 500 years before that. The bureaucrats know, just as any rational person would, that people can make the land more productive and beautiful. They want it that way too; most everybody does.
Considering what we saw in Mesa Verde and the Kaibab Plateau, there is reason to doubt their eventual success. Perhaps that is because there is a serious moral problem here besides misrepresenting a product taken at gunpoint from its original owners and then taking the credit for its beauty while not knowing how to run it.
The reality is that there will NEVER be enough people or money to truly bring the land to express its full potential with packs of ravening lawyers, bureaucrats dominated by procedure, manipulative foundations, scientists fanning their egos from ivory towers, and a distracted public imbued with the power of emotive whimsy… ALL trying to call the shots over “their park” from remote locations. Hopefully you have recognized that this is about covetousness for land on the part of every one of these groups without real accountability for a productive outcome.
Restoring land starts with people who live there, know a little spot intimately, and have serious stake in its productivity from generation to generation, effectively a network of private plots, the way it was with the Ahwaneechee.
Why is that so hard to accept? Well, it’s really quite simple: If the Park was cut up into privately controlled plots, it wouldn’t be “our park” any more.
Now to be honest, I once felt possessive about Yosemite too, but you know, since acquiring the commitment to make one of my own, that collectivist urge just isn’t there.
Since the environmentalists are such naturalists, let them stand in the river day and night and hold up the bridge and carry people across on their shoulders like they did in the good old natural days.
Because the guards at the asylum (Congress) are cowering in fear.
Make Yosemite Valley the most unused place on the face of the Earth...even by environmentalists.
I’ve lived and worked in a half dozen national parks.
Park service believes their ultimate goal is to save the parks by not allowing people into areas they control.
NPS would prefer you get on a bus, ride through the park, then go home and tell your congressman to increase their budget for more patrol cars.
(NPS at the grand canyon has a SWAT team, no lie )
Remember those commercials with that “I’m a dam-buster” guy? I hated him and those moronic commercials.
They have gained the advantage by using the courts. There is no personal downside to the enviro-nazis. Until some of them, perhaps a lot of them, face personal loss for filing lawsuits the lawsuits will continue.
Another problem throughout the "feral gubmint" is the funding by agencies of groups which then "force" those agencies to comply. Elements of the "feral gubmint" have become populated by radicals who have a stake in the game.
Yep, lots of DINKS.
Dual income, no kids.
I would vote for that!
Anything that would destroy San Fransicko would get my approval.
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