Crowds stream into Yosemite National Park

[jason]

It’s just past 8 on a Saturday morning in late April, and rush hour at the Curry Village coffee counter is in full swing.
Among the more than 50 bleary-eyed tourists waiting in line for hot java is Monterey, Calif., builder Mickey Gawlowski, who has vacationed in 19th-century environmentalist John Muir’s “mountain mansion” for more than a quarter century. Gawlowski has just spent nearly a week in Yosemite Valley, gawking at thundering waterfalls. Fed by near-record snows, the torrents are helping draw what park officials say could be a record 4.2 million visitors this year.
And now, he’s ready to leave.
“This is such an incredibly beautiful place,” says Gawlowski, “but everywhere you look, there are people and cars and buses. I hate to use the term, but the park is being loved to death.”
Last month’s news that Craigslist scalpers have been snapping up coveted Yosemite campground reservations and Half Dome climbing permits and hawking them to the highest bidders might seem to bolster Gawlowski’s argument. Yet America’s first natural preserve, which became a national park in 1890 and now ranks as its third most-visited (behind Great Smoky Mountains and Grand Canyon), has always teeter-tottered between preservation and public enjoyment.


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