Page:Tioga Road (HAER No. CA-149) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/10

 considerable funds had been expended to maintain the road to the original franchise standards. Tolls were not being collected because the revenues were insufficient to pay the collector. The owners' lawyers maintained that the government could assert no claim to the road except through lawful purchase.46

Early in 1915, Assistant secretary of the Interior Stephen Tyng Mather became interested in acquiring the road for Yosemite National Parka Mather, a native Californian, had a great personal interest in Yosemite, and thought the road should be purchased in order to open up the magnificent high country portion of the park, and to provide for a trans-Sierran highway, there being no passes between the Sonora Pass to the north and the Walker Pass to the south, a distance of 270 miles. As the toll road had fallen into disuse, the owners were willing to sell it for $15,000. Mather wanted to have the road opened in time for the major expositions scheduled for later in the year at San Francisco and San Diego, which would draw several thousand additional tourists to Yosemite. If the Tioga Road could be opened up, people from the eastern side of the Sierra range could visit the park. Mather, however, was informed that, as the road was in private ownership, government funds could not be used for its repair.

Mather was undaunted. .We've simply got to have that road," he told his assistant, Horace Albright. Albright explained that Congress had already finished with the annual appropriation for the national parks, and that the road purchase would have to wait. But Mather refused to wait. "I'll buy the road myself and give it to the government," he told Albright, and set about raising funds for its purchase.47

Mather contacted civic groups, business associates, the leading philanthropists of the day and personal friends in his effort to raise funds for the purchase of the road. Yachtsman Thomas Thorkildsen and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald each pledged $1,000. The Sierra Club and the Modesto Chamber of Commerce came up with another $6,000. Roughly half the required funds were raised, and Mather put up the remainder himself. Once the purchase was made, California automobile clubs agreed to pay the costs of repairing the road.48

As Mather was a public official, he could not himself convey such a gift to the government. He had the title to the road made out to a young attorney, William E. Colby, who had put together the paperwork for the deal and helped with the fund-raising.49 Colby would later serve as president of the Sierra Club, and was a great supporter of park road projects, wanting to make the mountains accessible to more users. When the club attacked the National Park Service for the reconstruction of the central section of the road in the 1950s, Colby would defend the agency for its road programs.

Mather then found that the road could not be donated without authority from Congress for the government to accept the gift. He directed that an enabling act be drawn up for the House appropriations committee, which read "Hereafter, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to accept donations of money, rights of land, and rights of way in our national parks." But the committee chairman, Representative John J. Fitzgerald of New York, viewed the bill with suspicion, and refused to accept the blanket legislation. With support from California's legislative delegation, Mather was able to convince Fitzgerald to support an amendment to the Sundry Civil Bill which would allow for gifts only to Yosemite.50 The special act was passed on 3 March 1915, and on 10 April the road was formally transferred to Yosemite National Park for a consideration of ten dollars. The park then spent another $30,000 on repairs to the road.51