National Parks

On this week’s Valley Edition: The first African American park superintendent was instrumental in building a wagon road into Sequoia National Park back in 1903. Now for Veterans Day, a portion of Highway 198 will be renamed for this dynamic Colonel.

We also take you to Tulare County where a dynamic mother-daughter team advocates for infrastructure improvements and basic needs, like drinkable water, in unincorporated communities.

This Veterans Day a portion of Highway 198 next to Sequoia National Park is getting a new name in honor of Colonel Charles Young. He’s the first African American to serve as superintendent of a national park and achieve the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army.

People love seeing black bears when they visit places like Yosemite National Park. They’re powerful creatures that can be docile or ferocious depending on the encounter. In such a highly visited place incidents with bears are bound to happen, and as FM89’s Ezra David Romero reports the park has come up with a new plan to keep bears and people safe.

It’s Fresno State student Quiang Chang’s fifth time to Yosemite National Park. He and his friends are walking along the Lower Yosemite Falls Trail. He still hasn’t seen a bear yet, but if he does he says he has a plan.

A new study out this week suggests that more people of color are interested in public lands than previously thought. FM89’s Ezra  David Romero reports.

The National Park Service announced Wednesday that Yosemite Hospitality, LLC, a subsidiary of Aramark, will receive a 15-year contract for visitor services in the park. Park officials say the deal is valued at $2 billion in gross revenues over the life of the contract. 

Park spokesperson Scott Gediman says while changes in concessions are common in other national parks, this deal is unique.

Gediman: "This is the largest single concession operation in the National Park System."

This week on Valley Edition we take two hours to look at the November election. The program begins with KVPR reporter Diana Aguilera’s story on a community displaced by a gas leak in Arvin. Valley Edition Host Joe Moore interviews Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin who is running for California State Controller. He also speaks with her opponent Betty Yee.

Monday marked the 150th anniversary of the land grant that established what we know now as Yosemite National Park. On June 30, 1864 in the middle of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln signed an act “authorizing a grant to the State of California of the Yo-Semite Valley, and of the land embracing the Mariposa Big Tree Grove.” 

National parks across the country may be off-limits to visitors due to the government shutdown, but in the Sierra, it hasn’t stopped efforts to recover from the Rim Fire.

A crew of around 50 fire response specialists are still on the job in the Stanislaus National Forest and in Yosemite National Park.

One hundred years ago this summer, a group of U.S. Army cavalry soldiers left the Presidio in San Francisco, and made the hot dusty trek across the San Joaquin Valley to both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Veterans of the Spanish American War, were charged with protecting the new national parks from poachers, timber thieves, and with building park infrastructure. They were in essence America's first park rangers.