Transforming Paradise

Glacially-sculpted granite cliffs and breathtaking vistas lure millions of visitors annually to Yosemite National Park. Relatively few, however, know about the contributions and sacrifices made by post-Depression Americans that fundamentally transformed Yosemite into the park of today.

John Broesamle’s Transforming Paradise vividly tells that story, with compelling prose seasoned equally by his years in the Yosemite back country and his expertise as a political historian. In many ways, this is a tale that only Broesamle could tell.

The 1930s were easily the most important and interesting decade in the history of Yosemite. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created the park we recognize today. Because Roosevelt considered it the preeminent national park, Yosemite became the focal point for addressing the question, what should a national park be? Nothing remotely comparable to the scale of New Deal conservation and construction initiatives has been attempted in Yosemite since.

Strikingly, the story of New Deal Yosemite has never been told. As a senior Yosemite interpretive ranger put it recently: “We know nothing about this.” Transforming Paradise fills the void. Connecting the 1930s with today, it addresses conflicts around environmental theory, battles over protecting iconic natural features, and climate change (first identified in the park in 1935). Transforming Paradise is about Yosemite, and about the planet.

The book further describes a great social and governmental experiment that provided federal jobs to the unemployed. Eight thousand young men worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Yosemite. The book’s cast of characters includes four CCC volunteers – three of them from immigrant families ruined by the Great Depression, and one himself an immigrant from Mexico who went on to become a renowned news photographer. His CCC photos are a highlight of the book.

Transforming Paradise is as much about people as about the park itself. Prominent figures include Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; General Douglas MacArthur; the legendary Yosemite naturalist Carl Sharsmith; Lorena Hickok, the leading woman reporter of her time; Harold Ickes, the irascible, visionary Secretary of the Interior; Don Tresidder, the controversial head of park concessions; and an all-but-forgotten Yosemite Superintendent, Charles Thomson, who turns out to have been a transformational leader. The book tells how these people changed Yosemite, and how it in turn changed them.

“Everyone knows Yosemite National Park, a magnificent treasure loved by Americans. Fewer know the New Deal, an extraordinary experiment in public policy that saved an America ravaged by the Great Depression. No one but John Broesamle knows what the New Deal did to remake Yosemite so that millions of Americans could enjoy its glory. This book tells that story – no mere historical anecdote but a vital tale that lives on in Yosemite’s landscape of campgrounds, trails, buildings, and roads today.”
Richard A. Walker
Executive Director, the Living New Deal

For more information, see www.transformingparadise.com.

227 Pages English (16 - 18 years reading age)