- John Muir
John Muir was one of the first modern preservationists. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, and wildlife, especially in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, were read by millions and are still popular today. His direct activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. - Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer, best known for his black and white photographs of the American West. Adams also authored numerous books about photography, including his trilogy of technical instruction manuals ("The Camera", "The Negative" and "The Print"); co-founded Group f/64 along with other masters like Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, and Imogen Cunningham; and created, with Fred Archer, the "zone system". - Hans Florine
Hans Florine is an American rock climber, who together with Yuji Hirayama holds the current Speed Climb World Record for climbing "The Nose" of Yosemite’s El Capitan in 2 hours, 48 minutes and 50 seconds. El Capitan is traditionally done by a strong party of two climbers in three to five days. "The Nose" route is 2900 ft long and features over 31 pitches of strenuous, exposed climbing. Florine thus climbed The Nose at roughly 6 minutes per pitch. - Royal Robbins
Royal Robbins (born 1935) was one of the early pioneers of American climbing. Learning his skill at Tahquitz he moved on to put up many of the early Yosemite routes. A prolific writer, Robbins has written numerous influential magazine articles emphasizing a philosophy of minimal climbing equipment - maximum climbing skill. He authored "Basic Rockcraft" and "Advanced Rockcraft", two very influential books, which passed on his skill and ethic, … - Ron Kauk
Ron Kauk (born 1958) is an American rock climber and Yosemite Camp 4 regular. Kauk began spending summers in Yosemite in 1974. In 1975 he free climbed the east face of Washington Column with John Long and John Bachar, renaming the route "Astroman" (5.11c). "Astroman" held title as the hardest long free route in Yosemite Valley for over 10 years. - Cary Stayner
Cary Stayner (born August 13, 1961) is an American serial killer currently on death row for the 1999 murders of four women in Yosemite, California. Stayner's victims were Carole Sund , her daughter Julie, Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso and park employee Joie Armstrong . - Galen Clark
Galen Clark (March 28,1814 - March 24,1910) is known for his discovery of the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees and for his role as Guardian of Yosemite National Park for 21 years. In 1853, Clark had a severe lung infection that was diagnosed as consumption, as tuberculosis was called in Clark's time. Doctors gave him six months to live at most. He then moved to the Wawona area as a homesteader. "I went to the mountains to take my chances of dying or growing better, … - John Long
John Long (born 1953) is an American rock climber and author. A one-time divinity student at Claremont School of Theology and former weightlifter, Long was a founding member of an elite group of Idyllwild climbers in the 1970s known as the "Stonemasters". Others in this group included John Bachar, Rick Accomazzo, Richard Harrison, Tobin Sorenson, Rob Muir, Gib Lewis, Jim Wilson, Mike Graham. - William Henry Jackson
William Henry Jackson (April 41843 - June 301942) was an American painter, photographer and explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America's national symbol Uncle Sam. - Chief Tenaya
Chief Tenaya (died 1853) was a Native American chief of the Yosemite Valley people in California. Tenaya's father was the chief of the Ahwahneechee (or Awahnichi), which means "people of the Ahwahnee" (Yosemite Valley). The Ahwahneechees were a totally different tribe then any other surrounding tribes. Lafayette Bunnell, the doctor of the Mariposa Battalion, wrote that "Ten-ie-ya was recognized, by the Mono tribe, as one of their number, … - John Bachar
John Bachar (1957~) is an American rock climber who took the art of climbing without a rope, or free soloing, to unprecedented levels. - Pat Ament
Pat Ament (born 1946) is an American rock climber who has achieved distinction not only with his first ascents, but as an author of more than two dozen books on the sport. Ament began his climbing career in 1958, and by the mid 1960s had established the first 5.11 climbs in Colorado (Supremacy Crack) and Yosemite (Center Slack). A former college gymnast, he was also a dedicated boulderer, and put up many challenging problems on Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder, Colorado. - John Salathe
John Salathe (1900-1993) was a pioneering rock climber and the inventor of the modern piton. Salathe was born in Switzerland and emigrated to the United States. He had been a blacksmith before a mid-life spiritual conversion led him to devote his life to ascetic meditation and rock climbing. When he began climbing in 1945, he found that traditional pitons used for climbing in the Alps were too soft to be driven into narrow cracks without buckling. - Carl Sharsmith
Carl W. Sharsmith (March 14, 1903 - October 14, 1994) was an American naturalist. - Shirley Sargent
Shirley Sargent was a historian of the Yosemite area in the United States. Sargent was born in Pasadena, California. Her father was a surveyor who helped rebuild the Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park, starting in 1936. So she had the good fortune of spending her childhood as a self-described “tomboy” in Yosemite. A rare crippling disease, dystonia musculorum deformans, kept her to a wheelchair from age 14, but that didn’t stop her. - George Fiske
George Fiske was a well-known landscape photographer in the United States. Fiske was born in Amherst, New Hampshire and moved west with his brother to San Francisco. He apprenticed with Charles L. Weed and worked with Carleton E. Watkins, both early Yosemite photographers. Fiske and his wife moved to Yosemite in 1879 and lived there until he committed suicide in 1918. - Malcolm Margolin
Malcolm Margolin is an independent publisher (founder owner of Heyday Books) and an author with a special interest in memoirs and diaries, the Native-American ethnic groups of the U.S. state of California, and the geographical territory that California covers. Born in Boston on October 27, 1941, he graduated in literature from Harvard in 1964 and moved to New York. In 1967 he and his wife rented a car and drove across the plains, the badlands, and the desert to Yosemite. - James Mason Hutchings
James Mason Hutchings was born in England on February 10, 1820. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1848, then went to California in 1849 during the Gold Rush. He became wealthy as a miner, lost it all in a bank failure, then became wealthy again from publishing. On July 5th, 1855 James Hutchings set out on what would be one of the most historic trips of the region, leading the second tourist party into Yosemite. (The first tourist party, in 1854, was lead by Robert C. Lamon, … - Lafayette Bunnell
Lafayette Houghton Bunnell (1824-1903), an explorer of Yosemite Valley, was born in Rochester, New York. In 1851, Bunnell was a member of the Mariposa Battalion that became the non-indigenous discoverers of the Yosemite Valley. Discovery was not the main purpose of the trip: the Battalion rode out in search of Native American tribal leaders involved in recent raids on American settlements. Bunnell explored the Valley and named many of its features. - David R. Brower
David Ross Brower (July 1, 1912 - November 5, 2000) was a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmentalist organizations, including the Sierra Club Foundation, the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth (1969), the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute (1982), North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences. From 1952 to 1969 he served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, … - Peter Habeler
Peter Habeler (born July 22 1942 in Mayrhofen, Austria) is an Austrian mountaineer. Among his accomplishments as a mountaineer are his first ascents in the Rocky Mountains (first European to climb on the Big Walls in Yosemite National Park). He began climbing with Reinhold Messner in 1969. Several accomplishments in mountaineering followed. The most spectacular event was the first ascent without supplemental oxygen of Mount Everest in 1978 together with Messner, … - Kevin Thaw
Kevin Thaw British alpinist - rock climber - mountaineer. Titled in several publications as the UK’s best all round climber, member of The North Face climbing team. Thaw has climbed notable routes and added many first ascents since commencing in Britain’s Peak District then relocating to California and journeying extensively through: Yosemite, El Capitan, Argentine Patagonia, the Himalaya, Alaska, Canadian Rockies, … - Bob Kamps
Bob Kamps was an American rock climber whose climbing career spanned five decades. Born in Wisconsin, he began climbing in California in 1955, and was a member of that cadre of Yosemite pioneers who first ascended many of its great walls in the 1950s and 1960s. He was particularly adept on steep rock faces, and was among the first to shift attention from aid climbing to free climbing. Over the years he made more than 3,100 climbs, … - Lucy Telles
Lucy Telles (c.1885 - 1955) was a Paiute Native American born near Mono Lake, in Mono County California. Her American Indian name was Pa-ma-has which translates to meadows in the Paiute language. Her parents were Louisa and Bridgeport Tom. Her maternal grandparents were Mono Lake Paiute Captain Sam and Yosemite Paiute Susie Sam. She lived with her family both in Yosemite Valley and at Mono Lake. She caught fish in the Valley to sell to hotelkeepers and played near Galen Clark's cabin. - Jim Savage
Jim Savage was born in the Midwest between 1815 and 1820. Around the age of fifteen, his family settled in Princeton, Illinois. On the pioneer road to California, he lost his wife and child to the harsh overland trip. He established trading posts on the Mariposa, Merced and Fresno rivers. Savage was reputed to have gone native and to have become a chief of the Mariposa tribes. - Creed Bratton
Creed Bratton (born William Charles Schneider on February 8 1943) was a member of the Grass Roots and is now an actor. Born in Los Angeles, he grew up in Coarsegold, Calif., a small town near Yosemite. His grandparents, mother, and father were all musicians and he took a liking to music at a very early age. When he was 13, he received his first guitar from a Sears mail order catalogue. - Carl Parcher Russell
Carl P. Russell, historian, ecologist, and administrator, was born January 18, 1894 in Fall River, Wisconsin. He joined the National Park Service (NPS) in 1923 as a Naturalist in Yosemite National Park. In 1931 he received a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Michigan. He served as an officer for the NPS for 34 years, from 1923 until his retirement in 1957. He was the Chief Naturalist of Yosemite from 1923 to 1929. - Ansel Franklin Hall
Ansel F. Hall (May 6, 1894, Oakland, California - March 28, 1962) was an American naturalist. He was the first Chief Naturalist and first Chief Forester of the United States National Park Service. - Arthur Clarence Pillsbury
Arthur Clarence Pillsbury (1870-1946) was a United States photographer. Pillsbury's career spilled over into nearly every kind of application for photography. His career began in 1895 when as a student he documented in one hour with 60 different remarkable images the first fraternity rush at Stanford University. - James David Smillie
James David Smillie (January 16, 1833 - September 14, 1909), American artist, was born in New York City. His father, James Smillie (1807-1885), a Scottish engraver, emigrated to New York in 1829, was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1851, did much, with his brother William Cumming (1813-1908), to develop the engraving of bank-notes, and was an excellent landscape-engraver. - Hermann Ottomar Herzog
Hermann Ottomar Herzog (November 15, 1831 - February 6, 1932) was a prominent nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European and American artist, primarily known for his landscapes. He was born in Bremen, Germany and entered the Dusseldorf Academy at age seventeen. Herzog achieved early commercial success and traveled widely and continued his training. His patrons included royalty and nobility throughout Europe. In the late 1860s after an extensive trip to Norway, … - Franklin Knight Lane
Franklin Knight Lane (July 15, 1864 - May 18, 1921) was a Canadian-American Democratic politician who served as United States Secretary of the Interior. Lane was born July 15, 1864 in DeSable, Prince Edward Island, Canada, but in the 1870 his family moved to California. He attended the University of California, Class of 1886, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. - Ken Marcus
Ken Marcus (born October 2, 1946) is an American photographer, best known for his glamour photography with "Penthouse" and "Playboy" magazines. In his retirement he runs a well-known artistic adult fetish and BDSM site. - Theresa Yelverton
Thérèse Yelverton Author. Born circa 1832 as Maria Teresa Longworth, in Cheetwood, Linconshire, England. She married Major William Charles Yelverton, Viscount Avonmore in 1857, and became Thérèse Yelverton, Viscountess Avonmore. However, the bigamist Viscount remarried then used his influence with the British House of Lords to annul his earlier marriage to Thérèse Yelverton. The case had much notariety, with great support for her by the public. - Francis Boggs
Francis W. Boggs (1870-October 27, 1911) was a stage actor and important pioneer silent film director and one of the first to work in Hollywood. Probably born in Santa Rosa, California, while in his teens he began acting with the Alcazar stock company in San Francisco and toured the American southwest. In 1900, he moved to Los Angeles but in 1902 went to Chicago where he continued to work in theatre. - Joan London
Joan London was the eldest daughter of Jack and Bess London, his first wife. She was the author of "Jack London and His Times", a biography of her father. Her other works include "Sylvia Convtry", "Jack London and his Daughters" (an unfinished memoir), and "So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of César Chávez & the California Farm Workers Movement" (co-authored by Henry Anderson). She died of throat cancer in 1971, at the age of 70. - Seaton Schroeder
Seaton Schroeder (17 August 1849 - 19 October 1922) was an admiral of the United States Navy. Schroeder was born in Washington, D.C., on 17 August 1849 and entered the United States Naval Academy in 1864. He served with the Pacific Fleet in 1868 and 1869 under Admiral John Rodgers in screw sloop, "Benicia", and fought in the Salt River near Seoul, Korea. His sea tours took him to Alaska, Japan, and the Philippines in "Saginaw", … - Truman Handy Newberry
Truman Handy Newberry was a U.S. businessman and political figure. He served as the Secretary of Navy between 1908 and 1909. He was a U.S. Senator from Michigan between 1919 and 1922. Newberry was born in Detroit, the son of John Stoughton Newberry (a U.S. Representative from Michigan) and his second wife, Helen P. Handy, the daughter of Truman P. Handy, a well known financier and banker in Cleveland. - Angelo Joseph Rossi
Angelo Joseph Rossi (January 22, 1878 - April 4, 1948) was a U.S. political figure who served as mayor of San Francisco. Rossi was born in Volcano, Amador County, California and came to San Francisco in 1889. He was a florist before his election and kept his store throughout his tenure. He was first appointed when mayor James Rolph resigned to become Governor of California. A Republican, he served as San Francisco's mayor from 1931 to 1944. - Seema Aissen Weatherwax
Seema Aissen Weatherwax (25 August 1905, Chernigov - 25 June 2006) was a Ukrainian-born American photographer. She was born in Ukraine, then under the Russian Czar, to Avram and Reva Aissen. She was the second of three girls. The family emigrated to England in 1912, then Boston in 1922, where the young Seema Aissen found her first job working in a photofinishing lab. She pursued this craft in Boston, New Jersey, New Mexico, California and Tahiti, …
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