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Show 491. list was the most surprising. They asked for a trail up Tenaya Canyon, justified because it would allow visitors to reach the eastern part of the Park more directly and earlier in the season. This would be a major engineering feat, and would do considerable violence to the landscape, since "... a great deal of blasting will be required. ..." In sum, these improvements would sacrifice the wildest canyons of Yosemite as wildernesses, so that the less adventurous visitors could see them more conveniently. Thus it was that the Club and Muir became committed to the development of National Parks as a first priority, at the expense of wild areas in the Parks and other areas outside Parks to which they paid no heed. Such attention to Parks as islands was and is a dangerous view. When Mather purchased and improved the Tioga Road which now bisects the Yosemite Park he was extending this 1908 suggestion, and so we can perhaps trace the genesis of the new Tioga Highway, and others like it, to the policy of "rendering accessible" to which Muir and the Club committed themselves early in the nineties. Because access is so closely associated with development, I don't think it is reaching too far to suggest that Mission '66 (which would bring, after mid-century, not only improved roads, but also many new and redesigned visitor services to the Parks) was a further extension of the strategy which required graduated experiences for a divided clientele in the National Parks. Holway Jones has presented a sort of apology for the Club, |