A personal search for Yosemite's Chinese American history

As a kid, I’d made the 5½-hour drive from Los Angeles to the park many times with my family. I’d always held my breath as we emerged at Tunnel View to the luminous sight of El Capitan and Half Dome.

My awkwardly large Chinese American family first visited in 1972, when we rarely saw people in the park who looked like us. Yet there was something about the way my mercurial father’s mood shifted once he got here—one glance at Yosemite Falls, with its lace-like mist, and Ba became a whole other person, his dark moods floating away like a cloud. Amid the giant sequoias, he became his best self: an amateur botanist, a skilled burger chef, and the dad with an endless supply of knock-knock jokes.

My connection to Yosemite has always been deep and undeniable, and I’ve long wondered why—maybe there was another reason for my bond to this landscape?

Chan was a college intern with the National Park Service in Yosemite when her supervisor told her that Chinese workers in the 1800s had built the original Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows.

After graduating from Yale, working various environmental jobs, and earning a master’s degree, Chan joined the park service as a ranger in 2003. Three years later, she began to research the workers’ lives in earnest, and she has been lecturing publicly and writing articles about Sing and his pioneering compatriots ever since.

“The story of Asian Americans in Yosemite had been lost, and it’s never been highlighted until recently,” she says. “The Chinese are a big part of the park’s early history, and that’s a big source of pride.” 

Later that afternoon, not far from Bridalveil Fall, we hike up a wide trail to see a stone embankment. At first glance, it looks like any 19th-century retaining wall. But Shu says the wall’s interlocking stones woven together as one solid mass have all the hallmarks of Chinese engineering. 

“The Chinese who came to work in Yosemite weren’t mere laborers,” Shu explains. “They came with skills. This wall was built without any mortar, and it still stands after 130 years.”

He added, “The workers didn’t always get credit for their labor. The government passed laws against Chinese labor during that time—many Americans felt threatened having to compete with Chinese workers.” 

These workers had come from southern China as early as 1848, first drawn to the West by California’s gold rush. By 1850, however, the government had levied a tax on foreign miners, which, along with the dwindling natural supplies of gold, made mining a losing proposition. Facing hostility—and, on occasion, robbery and 
assault—the men searched for other work to support their families back in China, and some found their way to Yosemite. 

Taking the road the Chinese built

In the 1870s, some 300 of them turned toward building roads around Yosemite. In the winter of 1874–1875, for example, the owners of the Wawona Hotel hired Chinese workers to construct Wawona Road so that the hotel could welcome tourists the following spring and summer.

The Chinese carved the thoroughfare, sometimes using blasting powder and handheld picks to cut through solid rock. They worked in bitter frost and slept in tents. And in 1882, some 250 Chinese and 90 Americans of European descent began work on a 56-mile road that led from Crocker’s Station, at 4,200 feet above sea level, to Tioga Pass, at 9,945 feet.

The Chinese were paid $1.20 per day, while the European Americans made $1.50 per day. It was during this period that Mark Twain famously described the Chinese as being “as industrious as the day is long.” He added, “A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a lazy one does not exist.” 

The next morning, our group hikes through sequoia forests along a road the Chinese built. “Take a moment to think about how hard it must have been for our ancestors,” Chan says. I look up at the trees and question if these brave men ever took a moment to enjoy the beauty around them. I wonder if they knew that their labor would transform Yosemite into one of America’s most cherished places.   

During Mather’s 1915 and 1916 excursions into Yosemite’s backcountry, Sing reportedly worked culinary magic, with innovative tricks up his sleeve. To keep beef and chicken fresh for barbecuing, for example, he wrapped the meat in wet newspapers soaked in the chilly mountain rivers and placed it in a cool breeze.

For biscuits, it’s said that Sing placed the dough near one of the accompanying mules so that the animal’s body heat helped the dough rise. Sing then baked biscuits in a portable iron oven, serving them hot, with freshly brewed coffee, for breakfast.

The Mather men raved about the meals and dubbed Sing “the gourmet chef of the Sierra.” In August of 1916, Congress created the National Park Service, and Mather became its first director. 

Sing gave his life to the wilderness in 1918; he was killed in a backcountry accident. It was a tragic end, but when I look back on Sing’s legacy, I’m filled with awe: Sing’s dedication helped to preserve Yosemite and other wilderness areas, and he lived long enough to know that his memory would endure in the Sierra thanks to his namesake peak. 

Meeting the tiger

In most years, all the hikers make it to the top. “But in some years, there’s a lot of snow, people slip and trip, and decide to turn back before summiting,” Chan says. After hiking for most of the morning, I turn back, as planned—my backpacking abilities are limited; my camping skills, nonexistent. But others, including several senior citizens, push on. For Shu, who has led a small group to the top every year, the struggle is worth it. 

“Sing Peak is one of the prettiest peaks in all of the Sierra,” he says of the mountain that stands 10,552 feet above sea level. “It has neat features. It’s above the timberline, so there are no trees. And from the top you get a view of the park you would never otherwise see—lakes, the Minarets, and a sweeping view of Yosemite. There’s nothing like it.”

In other words, you meet the tiger. 

Because I didn’t make it to the top, I’d been telling myself after the trip that I didn’t meet the tiger. This echoed through me like a reprimand I couldn’t un-hear.

Then a week after the Sing Peak hike, Shu calls to tell me how the trek went after I left the group. With abundant snow on the ground, the journey was arduous. Only seven hikers made it to the top. He muses about all the hikers he’d led to the summit over the years, including Gladys Wong, a former San Francisco teacher who’d never backpacked before. 

“She was a retiree, and had to scramble on all fours to the top, but she persevered,” Shu says. “She told me that even though she wanted to quit, she thought about her mother, a Chinese immigrant, and everything she had to go through during her journey to an American life. She did it for her mother’s spirit. Gladys made it to the top.” 

History, Shu says, has the power to bring people together, to cultivate respect and understanding and peace among cultures. For that reason, he believes the story of who helped build Yosemite needs to evolve. 

“So my question to myself has always been, ‘How do we change that narrative?’ ” he says. Shu hikes to “commemorate the history of everyone who had a part in establishing Yosemite.” He adds: “It wasn’t just John Muir. It was our ancestors, and other immigrants, too. The untold Yosemite stories have to be told.” 

I realized after my trip that my connection to Yosemite ran much deeper than my own family’s visits. This new appreciation of a mostly lost history meant more to me than reaching any summit. Perhaps I did meet the tiger after all.

Alison Singh Gee is the author of the memoir Where the  Peacocks Sing: A Palace, a Prince, and the Search for Home.