Mail came through, even during the winter

Mountain Moments

By Dwight Barnes

(Updated: Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 6:05 PM)

Most all of us have mailed off post cards from Yosemite Valley and had no question about their delivery, whether it be summer or winter. Things weren't quite the same130 years ago when the Yo Semite Post Office, as it was called until 1907, opened in the Valley.

In a November, 1947 article for Yosemite Nature Notes, the late Emil F. Ernst, for many years the Yosemite National Park's forester, recalled that daily mail service was an "established feature" of Valley life between May 1 and Nov. 1, starting in 1878.

This came via stage over routes first from Merced, then Madera and finally Fresno as the Southern Pacific Railroad moved on south through the San Joaquin Valley.

When in 1886, the railroad built a spur from Berenda to Raymond, the "Cannonball Express" operated by the Washburn Brothers could make the trip into Yosemite Valley with passengers and mail in a single day, although regular stages took two days, stopping overnight in Wawona.

Winters were a much different story.

For many years, Ernst noted, not more than a dozen persons remained in the Valley during the winter months. These included Galen Clark, the designated "Guardian of the Valley," who took care of whatever might arrive through various intermittent efforts to deliver mail. "Snowshoe Thompson," who in the middle of the winter carried the mail over the Sierra up around Placerville, was famous for his efforts.

Yosemite had its own mid-winter mailman in John M. Phelan, who apparently used the same Norwegian type of long skis and a single pole as Thompson to make his way from Groveland over the Big Oak Flat trail into the Valley, starting in 1880.

Four years later, other contractors traveled by way of the Merced River via Hites Cove.

Around 1889, Ernst reports, the Branson brothers, Joe and Hiram, had a contract to carry the winter mail from Raymond through Grub Gulch, Jerseydale and on into the Yosemite.

They delivered to Yo Semite on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and carried outgoing mail on alternate days. For several winters in the 1890s, Chris Degnan performed the duties of winter mail carrier for the 1890s.

"The men who maintained this hazardous winter mail service for over a quarter of a century must have been a hardy and capable lot," Ernst concluded, "for we do not hear of any serious accidents ever having befallen them.

"They were on their own and there must have been many times when storms, slides and other incidents of a very rough trail caused delays that occasioned many hours of anxious waiting. But the mails came through."