Abram Wood - Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park

On October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into law the legislation creating Yosemite National Park. The act did not provide for management or protection of the park from trespassers, in particular game poachers and lumbermen. However a precedent for detailing Army troops to meet these concerns had been established when Congress had authorized the use of troops to protect Yellowstone National Park in 1883. Secretary of the Interior John W. Noble requested Harrison to provide troops "to prevent timber cutting, sheep herding, trespassing, or spoliation in particular." On April 6, 1891, the commanding general of the Department of California detailed Troop I, 4th Cavalry to protect the park.

The nature of Yosemite meant that the duties and problems of the 4th Cavalry would be different from those encountered in Yellowstone. Big game animals were not present in numbers to attract poachers, nor were there geysers or other fragile formations that careless tourists might "spoil". Yosemite's ancient forests were threatened, however, and game could thrive if the area was protected. The boundaries of the Parks were not marked, and roads into and through the park were virtually nonexistent. Wood marched the troop 250 miles from the Presidio to Yosemite and arrived May 19, 1891, becoming the first Acting Superintendent of Yosemite National Park. He established Camp Wawona at the southern edge of the park a mile west of Wawona, California, which was to be used between May and October each year by troops patrolling the park to prevent trespassing by commercial interests (primarily timber cutters), game poachers, and stockmen, particularly sheepherders.

After posting notices, Wood arrested and evicted trespassers from the park, but this tactic largely failed to deter sheepherders when the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California publicly declared that he would not prosecute violators. Wood's company was detailed to Camp Wawona in both 1892 and 1893, and during these seasons he altered his tactics to those which had proved effective in Yellowstone. Wood's troops arrested the sheepherders to separate them from from their flocks, evicting them and dispersing their herds outside park boundaries on the opposite side of the park. The process of recovering their dispersed herds was time-consuming and uneconomical to the trespassers, and the problem of overgrazing in the park was brought under control until the sheepherders devised counter tactics after 1895.

Wood died at the Presidio, San Francisco, California on April 14, 1894, following surgery to remove cancerous tumors of the tongue and throat.

Camp Wawona was renamed Camp A. E. Wood in his honor by Captain George H. G. Gale (USMA 1879) of the 4th Cavalry, who succeeded Wood as Acting Superintendent, and remained as park headquarters until 1906, when the Yosemite Valley was re-ceded to the U.S. government and the camp moved there. Mount Wood (12,657 ft), just outside the park in Mono County, California, was named in his honor in 1894 by Lieutenant Nathaniel F. McClure (USMA 1887), also of the 4th Cavalry.