A major donation was announced Friday that will help preserve the original register from Yosemite during the 1800’s. The register contains thousands of signatures from visitors including some of the most notable of the era like William Randolph Hearst, John Muir and Uslysses S. Grant.
abc7news.com: “‘It’s an irreplaceable record of Yosemite’s early history,’ Yosemite National Park Superintendent Mike Tollefson said.
The $130,000 donation was given by Ambassador Bill Lane, former publisher of Sunset magazine, to the Yosemite Fund to enable the nonprofit to purchase the register from its current owners, according to the fund.
‘The register is a journey of discovery into the hearts and minds of California’s pioneers,’ Lane said. ‘That’s priceless to me.’
The 800-page ‘Grand Register of Yo-Semite Valley’ contains 18,000 entries from guests who passed through the park in the late 1800s.
Among those who signed the register are William Randolph Hearst, John Muir, General William Sherman, Rudyard Kipling, Buffalo Bill Cody and U.S. presidents Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes and Theodore Roosevelt. “