Greetings family, friends and neighbors. More than four million people will visit Yosemite by automobile in 2025, a far cry from the first two intrepid visitors who visited the park by machine a hundred and twenty years ago. I hope that you enjoy today's snippet " A Plethora of Teslas"..........Bill
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A PLETHORA OF TESLAS
My maternal grandmother, Annie Swinnock. was born in 1887 and grew up during the transitional period when horse and buggies were beginning to be replaced by motorized
vehicles, and although she’s been gone for nearly seventy five years I can still remember her calling the new fangled contraptions “machines”.
The first machine to enter Yosemite Valley was a brand new 1900 Locomobile, manufactured by one of the first American automobile companies and was powered by a two-cylinder, ten horsepower steam engine. The flimsy device, described as two bicycles separated by a box seat and steered by a paddle, could puff up to a hair raising top speed of forty miles per hour. The owner of the horseless carriage, Oliver Lippincott, figured that his highly promoted trip would be good for his Los Angeles photography business, for the Locomobile Company, and good for Yosemite. Lippincott had his auto shipped by rail to Fresno where he and his mechanic and codriver Edward Russell took on extra gas and water for the unprecedented journey sharing the steep rough and dusty road with bicyclists, horse drawn carriages and stagecoaches.
A second Locomobile entered Yosemite National Park in 1900, three more two passenger machines in the following year, and more than five thousand visitors arrived by automobile in 1907 much to the consternation of park authorities and an outright banning of all motorized vehicles. The ban held until 1913 when motoring enthusiasts were once again allowed park entry only if they observed sixty five oppressive regulations restricting speed, routes, rights-of-way, hours of travel, and were required to leave their machines in an auto camp or garage until departing the valley. Visitation increased and regulations eased as roads and park access improved, and in 1927 with the opening of Yosemite’s “All Year Highway”, nearly a half million visitors arrived by automobile.
In the one hundred and twenty five years since Lippincott and Russell drove their steam powered machine into Yosemite, advance reservations during peak periods are required for the parks four million annual visitors arriving in a variety of machines, including a plethora of Teslas.
-Bill 6/25
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