Yosemite - Hardcover

Ogden, Kate Nearpass

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780235275 ISBN 13: 9781780235271

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2015

Synopsis

In 1851 a small militia trekked through California's Sierra Nevada Mountains and discovered a site so spectacular that, over the succeeding century and a half, many millions followed in order to experience the splendour of Yosemite. October 2015 will see the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Yosemite National Park. In Yosemite, Kate Nearpass Ogden provides a comprehensive and unique scientific and cultural history of this remarkable area of natural beauty, exploring everything from its geological origins to its nineteenth-century discovery and the creation of the magnificent park that it is today.Known for its unusual rock formations, breath-taking vistas and variety of waterfalls, Yosemite is visited by nearly 4 million people each year. The area was actually named due to a misunderstanding: although the valley was known to its native Miwok inhabitants as Ahwahnee ('place like a gaping mouth'), Anglo-American visitors mistook another Miwok phrase, yosemite ('there are killers among them'), to be the great valley's name. Its history features a cohort of colourful characters, including Scottish-born naturalist John Muir, early inn-keeper James Mason Hutchings and mountain man and park guardian Galen Rowell. Today, however, the valley most commonly hosts an array of painters, photographers, hikers, campers and tourists from across America and around the world.Yosemite traces the park's formation, exploration, exploitation and preservation. Ranging through the natural and human forces that have sculpted the valley itself, the book also takes in the art it has inspired. Rich in detail as well as intriguing anecdotes, Ogden's history of California's 'incomparable valley' is beautifully illustrated with more than 100 fine images, from nineteenth-century artworks and engravings to historical and modern colour photographs.

About this title

Review:

"This slim volume offers a concise history of a national icon. Nearpass Ogden's writing is crisp and clear, with little jargon. The endnotes, although spare, provide a serviceable list of primary and secondary sources on the park. Art historians, as well as historians of the environment or the American West, will find the volume useful. . . . Fusing archive, museum, and internet, Yosemite's unique source base provides a new methodological lens on a familiar subject."--Guy McClellan, University of New Mexico "Environmental History "

"Ogden presents an engaging introduction to the natural history, discovery, and evolution of Yosemite in this concise, handsomely illustrated, octavo-sized volume. . . . With its crisp prose, 100-plus illustrations (most in color), notes, and bibliography, the book helps readers to understand why the area was first protected in 1864 and why it became a national park in the fall of 1890, and remains among the country's most popular national parks. . . . Highly recommended."
--Choice

"Ogden takes in a lungful of classic America in Yosemite. Taking an accessible ramble through its history and geology, it places the park at the centre of the USA's cultural heartland and changing attitudes."--Wanderlust

"The author looks at the scientific and cultural history of the area. . . . the book features more than 100 images illustrating Nearpass Ogden's engaging text, together with sections on the geology, plants, and wildlife found in and around Yosemite."--Outdoor Photography

"Clear and intelligent writing . . . with instructive sections on geology, plants, and animals, human history, art and literature, tourism, and more. Clearly this is the one book on Yosemite to read and reread. Ogden brings the perspectives of a thoughtful twenty-first-century cultural historian to bear on her subject. Her commentary is most helpful in the chapters that deal with religious and artistic responses to the valley. It is refreshing to have Yosemite placed within the broad context of American ideas and ideals."
--David Robertson, author of West of Eden: A History of the Art and Literature of Yosemite

About the Author:

Kate Nearpass Ogden is Professor of Art History at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Her essays on the artists of Yosemite Valley have appeared in Yosemite: Art of an American Icon and Yosemite and Sequoia: A Century of California National Parks.

About this edition

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1780235275
• ISBN 13: 9781780235271
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200