Pioneer Yosemite History Center: A Village Reassembled

The Pioneer Yosemite History Center is a collection of historic buildings gathered from across the park and assembled at Wawona beginning in the nineteen fifties. The project was part of Mission Sixty Six, a major federal program to upgrade facilities at national parks throughout the country in time for the National Park Service's fiftieth anniversary in nineteen sixty six. The idea was to rescue historic structures that were deteriorating in remote locations and bring them together where visitors could walk among them.

The buildings came from all over Yosemite. A cavalry office, a Wells Fargo office, a homesteader's cabin, and several other structures were dismantled, transported, and reconstructed at the Wawona meadow site. Together they form a small village, a snapshot of the different phases of Yosemite's human history from the indigenous era through the Army administration period.

In summer months, costumed interpreters demonstrate blacksmithing, weaving, and other traditional crafts. Horse-drawn wagons carry visitors across the covered bridge. Walking through the center is an unusual experience in a park where most interpretation focuses on geology and natural history.

Here the emphasis is on the human stories of the people who built, guarded, and used Yosemite before the modern era.