Page:Tioga Road (HAER No. CA-149) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/18

 preservation of the landscape in the area was "highly important." The possibility of building a second, parallel lane was studied but rejected because the additional lane would cause much additional scarring.100 By 1950, traffic over the road had increased 30 percent over pre-war levels, and the Park Service soon decided to reconstruct the central section.101

By the late 1940s, some leaders of the Sierra Club were reconsidering their earlier support for reconstruction of the remaining link of the Tioga Road. Harold C. Bradley, later a club director and president, was an early opponent to the road project. In August 1947, he offered a proposal to the club's board of directors, recommending that the central section of the road should only be slightly improved, and that the 25 mph speed limit over the stretch be maintained. He argued that the unreconstructed section's accident rate was among the lowest in the park, due to the low speeds required for travel over the route. If the road was widened to highway standards, he warned that it would attract "the mere restless driver and speed addict." Bradley feared that an improved highway might be kept open all year, leading to the intensive development of the Tuolumne Meadows region for winter sports activities. These consequences, Bradley claimed, would cause visitors to forget "just what a National Park is, and for what purpose it was created." In 1948, club directors Ansel Adams and Richard M. Leonard proposed an alternative route that would avoid the exposed granite country around Tenaya Lake. However, this proposal was not accepted by the board,102 and the issue was far from resolved.

In the January 1950 issue of Conservation magazine, Bradley warned that anew high-speed road would increase the rate of serious accidents. He also saw a threat to the park's high country by opening up the terrain to more users. "If a broad highway is built the situation will inevitably change. The tide of population will rise. Crowding will begin and the developments which mass-man always requires for himself will follow." Bradley warned that in times of real or perceived national emergency, the road would become a military highway. He also suggested that reconstruction of the road would draw anew type of motorist, one not interested in the park scenery, but rather a direct east-west route to other destinations. Bradley urged that a new route be chosen over some other pass outside the park, or failing that, widening the existing route to about 14', which, with steep grades of up to 18 percent, would still limit speeds to about 25 mph. As an alternative, he suggested building a second lane parallel to the old road, a proposal already rejected by the Park Service.103

The narrow, rough and twisting central segment almost certainly inhibited many motorists from using the road. In 1955, only 31,157 of the more than one million park visitors traveled over the Tioga Road.l04 Winter weather also caused problems; in some years, the road was only open for three or four months. Yosemite superintendent John C. Preston admitted that the narrow road was actually rather safe, due to the low speed limit, and that no lives had yet been lost on the road. The primary problems were traffic jams caused by vapor lock, fender-benders, trailers hung up on trees, and "the overheating of many people's tempers when a speed of 20 miles per hour was alien to their experience on a narrow mountain highway."105 Preston was a staunch advocate for the reconstruction of the road.

In 1956, National Park Service Director Conrad L. Wirth announced the "Mission 66" program, a ten-year project to upgrade facilities throughout the NPS system. In Yosemite National Park, the project included the relocation of the Big oak Flat Road from Crane Flat to the park boundary, and the reconstruction of the unimproved central section of the Tioga Road. The NPS management wanted to "open up" the High Sierra section of the park to vastly