Page:Tioga Road (HAER No. CA-149) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/3

 II. HISTORY

This is one in a series of reports prepared for the Yosemite National Park Roads and Bridges Recording Project. HAER No. CA-117, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK ROADS AND BRIDGES, contains an overview history of the park roads.

HISTORY OF THE TIOGA ROAD

There was little white interest or knowledge of the High Sierra section of the Yosemite area until 1852, when Lt. Tredwell Moore and a detachment of the Second Infantry returned from a punitive expedition against Chief Tenaya's Indians bearing a few gold-laden quartz samples. Moore and his men had penetrated the area around Bloody Canyon on the present park's eastern boundary in the Tioga Pass region. Excitement over their gold find led to prospecting and development. Leroy Vining, for whom Lee Vining, California at the base of Tioga Pass is named, established a camp on "Vining's Creek" in 1854.1

Interest in the potential gold fields led Tom McGee, a merchant and saloon keeper at Big Oak Flat, to reopen the western section of the old Mono Trail, an Indian route, clearing and cutting blazes to mark the path in 1857. Although it was mainly used as a route to mining camps at Dogtown (predecessor of the famous gold town of Bodie) and Monoville, some tourists followed the trail to see the high country by the late 1850s. The trail ran from Big Oak Flat to Tamarack Flat, then by Tenaya Lake to Tuolumne Meadows, then east over Mono Pass into Bloody Canyon and the Mono Basin.2 The western slope Miwok Indians had used the old trail as a trading route with the eastern slope Piutes. This had been a foot trail only; Dr. Lafayette Bunnell stated the Indian routes "had been purposely run over ground impassible to horses."3

In the early 1860s, the California Geological Survey under Josiah D. Whitney conducted surveys in the area. Whitney noticed the current Tioga Pass (which he called MacLane's Pass) and suggested it might be better than the Mono Pass as a route across the mountains, being some 600' lower in elevation.4 Newspaper reports indicate that a wagon road across the mountains through the pass was considered as early as 1862. In November of that year, a survey was run by civil engineer J. T. Haines for a route by Yosemite Creek, Tenaya Lake, and Tuolumne Meadows.5 However, no construction resulted from the survey.

By this time, sheep were being herded into the high country meadows to graze over the summer. John Muir made his first trip to Tuolumne Meadows with a herd of sheep in 1869.6 Sheep were common in the area until the Yosemite National Park was created in 1890, after which the U.S. Cavalry began a long campaign to expel them from the park.

A dentist, George W. Chase, staked a claim for the "Sheepherder Mine" on Tioga Hill* northwest of Tioga Pass in 1860, although he never opened the mine. Chase took his samples to Monoville to be assayed, and while there heard of the big strike at Aurora. Excited by the latest strike, Chase and his companions never returned to Tioga Pass. A shepherd named William Brusky (or Brosky) came upon the tin location marker for Chase's abandoned claim in 1874, did some prospecting, and located a rich find of silver ore.7 By 1878, Brusky had filed on four claims along the lode.


 * This is near Gaylor Lake, not Tioga Peak, which is northeast of Tioga Pass.

Brusky was unable to finance a mining operation, and the claims were acquired by interests in Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts, who organized the Great Sierra Consolidated Silver Company in December 1881. An English surveyor was