Friday, September 22

Mather Pass

We hike out of the South Fork basin to Mather Pass, where Madeleine re-fractures her collar bone scrambling up the mountain where the switch-back has been washed out.

Stephen Mather (1867-1930) began his working life, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, as a reporter for the New York Sun. Later, he worked for the same company in which his father held a senior position: the Pacific Coast Borax Company.

Just before the turn of the century he left the PCBC and, with a partner, began his own borax company. They did well.

By 1914, at age 47, he was a millionaire, had retired from the borax business, and was indulging his passions for the outdoors. That same year he toured Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks and came away unimpressed with the upkeep and administration of the properties. It just so happened that the current Secretary of the Interior was an old classmate, so he fired off a letter of complaint. The Interior Secretary’s response would change history.

“Dear Steve: If you don’t like the way the national parks are run, why don’t you come on down to Washington and run them yourself.”

Within two years Congress had approved the establishment of the National Park Service, and Mather was its first director.