THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE IN YOSEMITE

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the "horseless carriage" was still very much a novelty in America. Only about 8,000 automobiles - each painstakingly handmade-existed in the whole country in 1900. Few people considered the newfangled contraptions to be anything more than a rich man's noisy plaything.

The typical early motor car looked much like an open buggy fitted with a steering tiller. Amenities such as windshields, tops, and self-starters were yet to be discovered. Moreover, in rural areas, the narrow, rutted wagon paths that served as roads made a ride in the frail vehicles a dusty, teeth-jarring adventure.

Nonetheless, the venturesome pioneers of the new industry were sure that automobiles represented the way of the future. Manufacturers encouraged owners to take their machines on challenging road tests to prove their worth. Accounts of daring conquests of steep hills and distant mountains were just the sort of advertising material neophyte car builders needed to overcome public skepticism about their products.

Because of its remoteness, Yosemite Valley was still a lightly visited place in 1900, even though its glorious waterfalls and striking rock formations had achieved wide renown through articles and photographs. What better publicity for car and driver than to accomplish the almost unthinkable feat of driving a motor car up the mountains and into the Valley under its own power?

Access to Yosemite at this time consisted of three rudimentary state roads-two entering the Valley from the north and one from the south. Completed within a year of each other in the mid-1870's, the narrow, dusty thoroughfares-with declivitous grades of 14 to 20 percent in places-were challenging enough to daunt even the most intrepid driver and his machine.

On Saturday morning, June 23, 1900, the flimsy automobile that was to become famous as the first motor vehicle to enter a national park left the foothill town of Raymond on a historic journey to Yosemite. The car was a brand-new Locomobile, produced by the Locomobile Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the first major manufacturers of automobiles in the United States. A standard production model, the car weighed 640 pounds empty, 850 pounds when the gasoline and water tanks were full. A two-cylinder, ten-horsepower steam engine, running at 150 pounds pressure, powered the vehicle. Top speed was 40 miles an hour.

The unlikely owner of the Locomobile, a 300-pound barrel of a man named Oliver Lippincott, operated the Art Photo Co. in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by Edward E. Russell, a thirty-six-year-old- Los Angeles machine shop owner, who squeezed into the narrow seat beside the corpulent Lippincott as the driver-mechanic. According to Russell, Lippincott hoped to generate interest in both Yosemite, where he set up a photographic sales tent the following summer, and the Locomobile Company, which used a picture of the Yosemite car in its advertising for the next several years.

Lippincott had shipped his Locomobile by express freight over the Southern Pacific Railroad (a Lippincott photography client) from Los Angeles to Fresno. When he wanted to add extra cans of gasoline, wary train officials at first refused to accept them. Thinking quickly, Lippincott said it was only "developer," and the shipment was permitted. After the Locomobile was unloaded at Fresno, Lippincott and Russell drove to Raymond, where they spent the night of June 22 in a hotel.

Departing at 6:45 the next morning, well before the horse stages were on the road, the pioneering motorists and their little machine covered the first leg of the unprecedented journey, Raymond to Wawona, in only five hours and eighteen minutes of actual running time. The stage took all day to cover the same forty-four-mile stretch.

"When we stopped at Grub Gulch to renew our water for steam," Lippincott wrote in his account of the trip, "a local woman called to her husband to come quick and see something that looks like two bicycles with aseat in the middle. Another woman said that the world was surely coming to an end when they begin to make things like that.

The only unpleasantness of the trip occurred on a steep grade about eight miles above Raymond, when a freighter, whose four-horse team had become unsettled at the sight of the Locomobile on the road, yelled at its occupants: What in Sam Hill do you want to bring such a nuisance up into this country for? You city people, with all your conveniences, are always making trouble!"

At Wawona, the hotel porch was crowded with people awaiting sight of the little machine, for word of the adventure had preceded the travelers. Upon arrival, Russell demonstrated the new means of transportation by taking some of the inquisitive guests for rides around the circular drive in front of the hotel.

The thirty-mile run from Wawona to Yosemite Valley was accomplished in exactly three hours. "The records of speed made by our little box on wheels were quoted at many a campfire," Lippincott said. "The Yosemite stage drivers, however, looked askance at our method of traveling. One asked where I kept my hay, and another declared he wouldn't go steering that thing without a whip."

Lippincott and Russell spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley, staying at the Sentinel Hotel. During their visit, they "kept the roads of the Valley warm" by treating tourists and locals alike to "propulsion amid the wilds of nature," according to Lippincott. "At night the mere sight of the Locomobile's headlights and the sound of its shrill electrical bell were sufficient to secure its right-of-way over every other vechile," Lippincott said, "for horses were willing to jump over the bank or climb a tree to make way for us." Gasoline, which cost $1.50 a gallon delivered to the Valley, was brought in by stage from Madera as needed.

The only serious mechanical problem of the trip occurred when a strut rod on the Locomobile gave way. Russell quickly repaired it by brazing the rod back together using brass from an opium box provided by a local Chinese.

Henry Washburn, superintendent of the Yosemite Stage & Turnpike Company and the most influential man in the area, was especially interested in the Locomobile. He took an eight-mile tour of the Valley with Russell, declaring afterward that he "hardly know where he had been." Later, Washburn persuaded Russell to drive him to Glacier Point. Lippincott, intimidated by the steep, serpentine road, followed in a horse-drawn wagon driven by veteran Washburn employee, Tom Gordon. After five hours on the road, the party finally reached the Mountain House hotel at the summit after dark.

"We had trouble because of the lower oxygen content in the air as we climbed," Russell said. "The flame in our burners burned so low it caused frequent overheating."

"Nothing would do the next morning," Lippincott said, "but that the Locomobile must go out on the overhanging rock where only the most fearless and level-headed have ever dared to stand." Babe Burnett, the next year's Stanford football captain, and Washburn tied ropes around their waists, and with the help of the other men in the group, tugged and prodded the little car out on the narrow, jutting slab more than 3,200 feet above the Valley floor. The women, meanwhile, "buried their heads in their hands, horrified at the sight."

"I firmly believe," Lippincott said, "that if the machine had gone over, every man of the party would have gone with it. We hung on with tooth and nail while the camera was adjusted. No picture was ever so long in being taken. I was sure I felt the rock shaking under me."

Neither Lippincott nor Russell reported details of their anticlimactic return trip to Raymond, from which point the Locomobile was shipped back to Los Angeles by rail. Instead, Lippincott concluded his account with this prophetic comment: "The unassuming little machine will probably inaugurate a new era in the mode of conveyance into YosemiteŠ. Cleanliness and comfort will be better subserved by swifter modes of travel. But whatever the new styleof conveyance, it cannot detract from the sublimity of the great Valley or lessen the majesty of the eternal hills."

Today, more than a century after Lippincott's historic journey, over a million motor vehicles enter Yosemite National Park every year, around the calendar, with no letup in sight. If they could somehow see it now, even those skeptical old Yosemite stage drivers would have to admit that Oliver Lippincott and his little "box on wheels" were really on to something after all!