Human habitation in the Sierra Nevada region of California reaches back 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Historically attested Native American populations, such as the Sierra Miwok, Mono and Paiute, belong to the Uto-Aztecan and Utian phyla. In the mid-19th century, a band of Native Americans called the Ahwahnechee lived in Yosemite Valley. The California Gold Rush greatly increased the number of non-indigenous people in the region. Tensions between Native Americans and white settlers escalated into the Mariposa War. As part of this conflict, settler James Savage led the Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley in 1851, in pursuit of Ahwaneechees led by Chief Tenaya. The California state military forces burned the tribe's villages, destroyed their food stores, killed the chief's sons, and forced the tribe out of Yosemite. Accounts from the Mariposa Battalion, especially from Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, popularized Yosemite Valley as a scenic wonder.
James Mason Hutchings was an American businessman and one of the principal promoters of what is now Yosemite National Park.
Galen Clark was a Canadian-born American conservationist and writer. He is known as the first European American to discover the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees, and is notable for his role in gaining legislation to protect it and the Yosemite area, and for 24 years serving as Guardian of Yosemite National Park.
John Boyden Adams was a famous California mountain man and trainer of grizzly bears and other wild animals he captured for menageries, zoological gardens and circuses.
Samuel Purdy was an American politician. As a Democrat, he served as the third Lieutenant Governor of California from 1852 to 1856. He also was the first mayor of Stockton, California, where he was in office from 1850 to 1851.
James Van Ness was an American politician who served as the 6th Mayor of San Francisco from 1855 to 1856.
Thomas Hill was an American artist of the 19th century. He produced many fine paintings of the Californian landscape, in particular of the Yosemite Valley, as well as the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
George Henry Burgess was an English American painter, wood engraver and lithographer. In London, he received training in lithography. With two other brothers preceding them, in 1850 Burgess traveled to California in the company of his brother Charles. Once there, the Burgess brothers set up a jewelry and watch repair business in Sonora. Unsuccessful at mining, George spent time sketching the gold fields and mining activity. In 1856, he made the first of three trips to Hawaii, where he painted the royal family and made preparations for lithographic views of Honolulu. In San Francisco, his primary source of income was painting portraits, but he often revisited the Gold Rush theme. Burgess' most well-known work is the massive San Francisco in July, 1849, now located at the Oakland Museum of California.
Charles Leander Weed was an American photographer, who was born in New York state on July 17, 1824, and died in Oakland, California on August 31, 1903. He is perhaps best known for being one of the earliest photographers, if not the first photographer, to enter and photograph what is now Yosemite National Park.
Jack Powers, whose real name was John A. Power, was an Irish-born American outlaw who emigrated to New York as a child and later served as a volunteer soldier in the Mexican–American War in the garrison of Santa Barbara, California. During the California Gold Rush, he was a well-known professional gambler and a famed horseman in the gold camps as well as in San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
Active was a survey ship that served in the United States Coast Survey, a predecessor of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, from 1852 to 1861. Active served on the U.S. West Coast. She conducted the Coast Survey's first reconnaissance from San Francisco, California, to San Diego, California, in 1852. Active sometimes stepped outside her normal Coast Survey duties to support U.S. military operations, serving as a troop transport and dispatch boat during various wars with Native Americans and during the San Juan Islands "Pig War" with the United Kingdom in 1859. She also rushed Union troops to Los Angeles, California, in 1861 during the early stages of the American Civil War.
Carl Christian Heinrich Nahl, later known as Charles Nahl, was a German-born painter who lived in the United States for the last half of his life. He lived most of those 30 years in California and is considered among the state's first significant painters.
Rancho Las Mariposas was a 44,387-acre (179.63 km2) Mexican land grant in Alta California, located in present-day Mariposa County, California.
Arthur Nahl was a German-born artist, daguerreotyper, engraver, portraitist, and landscape painter. Nahl was a painter known for his American Old West paintings of California. He was considered one of California's finest engravers, and was ranked amongst the best gymnasts in California for his time.
The Lyons Station Stagecoach Stop,, was a tavern and stagecoach stop near the southwest corner of Newhall Avenue and Sierra Highway, by Eternal Valley Cemetery. The site is located in the present day Newhall section of Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles County, California.
Charles Dorman Robinson was an American panorama, cyclorama, landscape, and marine painter. He is known for his seascapes and landscapes of Northern California, including over a hundred paintings of Yosemite Valley. He was known as "the dean of Pacific Coast artists".
The California Steam Navigation Company was formed in 1854 to consolidate competing steamship companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. It was successful in this effort and established a profitable near-monopoly which it maintained by buying out or bankrupting new competitors. In response to the Fraser Canyon gold rush and economic growth in the Pacific Northwest, the company expanded to ocean routes from San Francisco north to British Columbia. Similarly, as California's economy grew, the company offered service from San Francisco south to San Pedro and San Diego. It exited these markets in 1867 when competition drove prices to unprofitable levels. While the California Steam Navigation Company was successful throughout its life in suppressing steamboat competition on its core Bay Area and river routes, it could not control the rise of railroads. These new competitors reduced the company's revenue and profit. Finally, in 1871, the company's assets were purchased by the California Pacific Railroad, and the corporation was dissolved.
Ezra Slocum Carr was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of California - Berkeley. He was originally trained as a medical doctor but taught in several scientific fields. He was a one time California Superintendent of Public Instruction. Carr and his wife Jeanne were close friends of John Muir and were extremely influential in Muir's life at several key junctures.
Hutchings' Illustrated California Magazine was a magazine published between 1856 and 1861, in San Francisco, which played an important role in popularizing California in general, and to a large extent Yosemite National Park in particular.
Frederick August Wenderoth or F. A. Wenderoth was a German-born American painter and photographer. Born and educated in Cassel, where he first learned to paint from his father, he established a lifelong friendship with Charles Christian Nahl at school. During the 1840s period of political upheaval in Hesse, he moved to Paris, where he was joined by Nahl and his half-brother Arthur Nahl.
