There’s been a lot of people getting pretty worked up in the last few weeks about some cabins damaged during a rockfall at Curry Village. The jist of it is the NPS is trying to decide what to do with the cabins. Well here’s the inside scoop. They’re crap.
Some of the damaged cabins at Curry Village. Photo by Edie Howe.
No serious. They are absolutely crap. People and animals have been living in the cabins and using them as their personal restroom. When the cabins were damaged during the rockfall they were left unattended and open to the elements and are now full of mold and vermin. Raccoons, rats, possum and mice have taken up residence in most of the places. Some places are littered with sleeping bags, food wrappers and defecation (I guess someone thought it’d be a good place to toke a bowl on lunch). Any other place in California and the Health Department would step in and condemn them without batting an eyelash.
Don’t get me wrong, a couple of them look very nice. At the very most relocate the least damaged that have some historical value but trash the rest. After the floods of ’97 they took out 2 campgrounds and had slated in the old Merced River Plan to remove more buildings in the Valley. Well, here’s your chance. There’s plenty of other, fine lodging around the park. Save the taxpayer money for something more historic that could use renovation or safety and usability upgrades. But don’t waste it on this…this…crap.
If you think they should be saved tell me why in the comments for this post.
If you want to see photos of the cabins you can find a good many on Edie Howe’s Flickr photostream.
Comments
4 responses to “Tear ’em Down”
I pretty much agree with you….except that people have such emotional connections to each piece of Yosemite.
In this day and age of worldwide visitation, not tearing down or moving these is an invite to all kinds of problems. Drunks, sexual predators, hide and seek for those too young to be on their own are a few items of concern to us who live, work and volunteer in the park. We can’t protect everyone from everything but I don’t think we should aid and abet, through lack of action, either.
Too bad some of them can’t be moved out of the rock fall zone. I like the stone foundations and shingle siding.
Since Delaware North took over as concessionaire they have lost cabins at he Lodge and now Curry. I wonder if they ae making any money?
I’m a long time Yosemite camper but just discovered your blog. Keep up the interesting info. I have voulnteered at Yosemite with the YA and hope to it again this year.
OK,let’s face a few facts about these cabins. They only excist for ONE reason. That is to provide a profit to Del. North. Nothing more than that.
I worked for the NPS from 1978-1983 in Yosemite. I worked on the so-called “Master Plan”, which in my opinion was a joke and not doable then, and is no more doable now. The main premise is to ban cars from the valley. Has that happened? No, it has not. What has happened is that the NPS has eliminated almost
ALL of the parking spaces in the valley, so there is almost no where for the day visitor to park.I am guessing that the day time visitor accounts for about 50-75% of the cars in the valley proper.
These cabin,while old, are in a dangerous rock fall zone. This is fact. There are really only two choices, as I see it. Tear them down, or move them. That’s it. Do we really need to have multiple hearings on this.
I lived and worked in the valley. I have lived in Camp 6, now gone, and also in Ranger Club. I have lived in a house up in the Lost Arrow area. The 1980 Master Plan had it hopes on moving most all of the employee’s out of the valley proper, and into El Portal. This has happend to some extent. Now, we have the El Portal 500 each evening as NPS employee’s race home down the canyon. Using what, thier cars, no less. So, instead of riding a bicycle or walking to work, we now drive.
And for all the naysayers out there that say all of the housing needs to be remove, I have this to say. Until you are willing to stand up and say it is time to REMOVE Le Conte Memorial and Parsons Lodge, stop trying to tell us that all the other buildings need to be removed. What is so special about these two, they have been there a long time, the are historical? The housing has been there a long time too. It predates the entire Lodge, and the Ahwahnee Hotel too. The most enviro friending use of the park is the campgrounds. Yet the NPS has removed almost a dozen since 1976, and not added a single campsite, with the exception of the back packers camp in the valley. Soda Springs campground-closed, Smokey Jack-closed, Muir Tree Walk-in-closed, Glacier Point campground-closed. Upper and Lower Rivers- Closed, North Pines- cut in third. Tuoloume Meadows, cut in half. But not a single new campsite.
Tear down these cabin. It is not a NPS money issue. Delaware North owns these, and they should pay for the removal. If a tent cabin cost over $75 a night, which was built in the ’30’s, and are full almost every night, I thing they have the cash to pull this off.