By Brooke Baitinger, The Fresno Bee
A Yosemite National Park trail is among 10 outdoor routes in the nation “shaped by Black history,” according to AllTrails.
“American public lands are full of Black history — stories of strength and community that stretch from coast to coast and through generations,” the popular outdoor fitness app said in a Feb. 3 article.
AllTrails emphasized the “powerful legacy” of Black leaders such as Manny Almonte, founder of Camping to Connect. His organization seeks to empower young men of color by “fostering deep, in-person connection through nature.”
“Black people have always been part of this story,” Almonte told AllTrails. “We’ve explored, protected, cultivated, served, and endured in these landscapes, even when our contributions were minimized or erased.”
Here’s what to know:
Celebrate history of Yosemite National Park trail
Recognizing the contributions of Black people might be more important than ever, according to AllTrails spokesperson Christina Saint Louis.
“Much of Black history lives on in our public lands,” Saint Louis told The Fresno Bee via email. “At a time when certain signs dedicated to Black history in national parks are being reported or removed, it feels especially important for trailers to continue sharing and preserving stories of Black history in the outdoors.”
AllTrails says visitors can celebrate Yosmite history by hiking the Mist Trail leading to Vernal and Nevada Falls.
How did Black soldiers shape Yosemite?
In the 19th century, so-called “Buffalo Soldiers” — U.S. Army regiments composed entirely of Black servicemen — served as “the first Black national park rangers and backcountry rangers,” AllTrails said, “tasked with fighting fires, preventing poaching and helping create the trails that millions of people explore each year.”
In 1866, Congress created “six segregated regiments” that were then consolidated into four black regiments, the National Park Service said on its website.
Approximately 500 Buffalo Soldiers served in Yosemite National Park and nearby Sequoia National Park with “duties from evicting poachers and timber thieves to extinguishing forest fires,” the National Park Service said. “Their noteworthy accomplishments were made despite the added burden of racism.”
Black troops also protected Yosemite and Sequoia national parks in 1899, 1903, and 1904.
Most of them were veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War and had enlisted in the South, “where opportunities for African-Americans were limited to sharecropping and other labor-intensive work,” the National Park Service said.
The “racial prejudice of the time” made Black park rangers’ jobs challenging, according to the National Park Service.
“In the early 1900s, African-Americans were routinely abused, or even killed, for the slightest perceived offense,” the federal agency said. Yosemite and Sequoia’s Buffalo Soldiers had to be simultaneously strong and diplomatic to fulfill the duties of their job but to avoid giving offense.”
Charles Young, the third African-American graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, served as the acting military superintendent of Sequoia National Park in 1903.
As the first Black superintendent of a national park, his tenure was “groundbreaking,” the National Park Service said.
In addition to confiscating firearms, curbing illegal livestock grazing and stopping timber thefts, the park rangers “oversaw the construction of roads, trails, and other infrastructure,” the federal agency said.
That included the completion of the first usable road into Giant Forest and the first trail to the top of Mount Whitney, California’s tallest peak, in 1903.
Buffalo Soldiers also built an arboretum in Yosemite National Park near the south fork of the Merced River in 1904, that contains the first marked nature trail in the national park system, the National Park Service said.
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