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Presenting Nature
MENU
Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)
Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)
Western Field Office
(1927-1932)
Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)
State Parks
(1933-1942)
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Presenting Nature:
The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942 |
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VI. A DECADE OF EXPANSION, 1933 TO 1942 (continued)
EMERGENCY CONSERVATION WORK (continued)
CHINQUAPIN INTERSECTION, YOSEMITE
The development of Chinquapin Intersection, where the Wawona and Glacier Point roads come together, illustrates how the National Park Service's programs for road construction, building construction, and landscape naturalization were coordinated through the New Deal programs.
Chinquapin was an important stopping point on the road between the valley and Wawona. It was a convenient place to provide comforts and information to the public and to patrol a portion of the park boundary needing deer protection during hunting season. A concessionaire had built a store and gas station here in the 1920s, but the buildings had burned.
Completion of the new Wawona Road in 1933 made possible the construction of the new Glacier Point Road. With increasing traffic and visitors along the Wawona Road and to Glacier Point, park officials decided that "a complete administrative unit" was necessary at the junction. The construction scheme prepared by the Landscape Division called for a ranger station, a comfort station, and a gas station with a small refreshment stand arranged around a plaza area connecting the two roads. The Wawona Road at this point followed a wide sweeping curve, and the Glacier Point Road dissected the arc and extended uphill behind the gas station. [29]
The design for the ranger station drawn up by resident landscape architect John Wosky, called for a one-story frame structure measuring 38.5 feet by 46.5 feet and containing two apartments. One apartment consisted of a bedroom, kitchen, lavatory, and shower, while the other had a living room, bedroom, lavatory, and shower. A porch, eight feet in width, extended along the full length of the building and led to a small hall for public use. The building was set back from the road and was separated from it by an island. It offered a view off the back porch and parking at the front. The foundation was concrete with a nine-inch stone veneer, and the walls were redwood painted white with a touch of gray. The roof was made of royal cedar shingles, each measuring twenty-four inches long and having a random width to add to the irregularity of form. Two telephones were installed, and lighting was provided by the gas station's gasoline-driven power generator. Work began in September 1933 and finished in December of that year, for a total of $4,960. Workers hired by the Civil Works Administration, a short-lived program which created jobs in winter of 1933-34, were detailed to paint interior walls and varnish floors the following February.
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| Chinquapin Intersection, Yosemite National Park, where the Glacier Point Road (left) and Wawona Road (right) came together, was developed by the National Park Service in the 1930s. By September 1934, when this photograph was taken, a ranger station (distant right) and comfort station (far left) had been built with public works funds, the concessioner had built a combination gas station and lunch room (center foreground), and the CCC had begun to install log curbing and plant dozens of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. The intersection was named for the native chinquapin (Castanopsis sempervirens), a flowering shrub that dominated the site s natural vegetation. (National Park Service Historic Photography Collection) |
The design for the comfort station likewise was drawn up by Wosky It was a one-story frame structure with a stone-veneered concrete foundation fit into the hillside, so that the rear wall became a retaining wall of reinforced concrete that extended along the ends of the building in a stepped fashion. Begun in September 1933, it was completed in December and cost $3,469. It was located beyond the ranger station at the far end of the intersection on the corner where the Glacier Point Road branched off and proceeded uphill. On the two ends of the building, entrances were covered by simple gabled porches with lattice screens. Both the ranger station and the comfort station, with their shake roofs and painted horizontal siding, were influenced by the nineteenth-century homes and hotels of the region.
The projects were carried out under the supervision of the park's engineering department, with the assistance of Wosky, the park's resident landscape architect. The gas station and refreshment stand, located on the Wawona Road across from the ranger station with the steep slope of the Glacier Point Road rising behind it, was built by the concessionaire under private contract with the approval of Vint's office. This building too used horizontal painted redwood siding, steeply sloped overhanging shake roof, and stone-faced foundations. It had two connecting sections, one serving the gas station, the other the refreshment area. Here a pair of overhanging porches echoing that of the ranger station became a porte cochère for the gas station and an entry porch for the restaurant.
In spring 1934, enrollees from Wawona Camp set to work on the landscape improvements that were part of Wosky's overall design for the plaza. The area was graded, the steep hillsides behind the gas station and comfort station were flattened and sloped, and log curbing was installed along the roadway, islands, and parking areas. Beside the ranger station, a view was cleared and a viewing area designated by the flagpole and plantings. Trees, shrubs, and flowers were planted throughout the site. Thirty-eight loads of black soil, measuring fifty-six and a half square yards, were hauled in from the woods to prepare the site, and twelve cubic yards of rock were removed from dug holes and hauled away. By July 1934, 213 holes (moving one cubic yard of dirt each) had been dug and the following planted: 27 willows (Salix spp.), 134 chinquapins (Castanopsis sempervirens), 14 cherry (Prunus spp.), 12 manzanitas (Arctostaphylos mariposa), 17 ceanothus (Ceanothus spp.), 27 buckthorn (Rhamnus californicum), 6 ferns, and 2 mountain currants (Ribes spp.). One enrollee spent fifteen days watering, and the total project required 494 enrollee and 50 civilian man-days. [30]
Planting continued in the fall with 384 chinquapins, 18 manzanitas, 2 sugar pines (Pinus lambertiana), 3 willows, 2 buckthorn, 5 cedars (Libocedrus decurrens), and 5 white firs (Abies concolor). Thirty-two cubic yards of black soil were hauled in for planting purposes, and twenty-five cubic yards of poor soil were hauled away. This work, performed over a three-month period, required 688 enrollee and 51 civilian man-days. [31]
During 1935, enrollees from the Cascades Camp installed 852 linear feet of log curbing, requiring thirty-three truckloads of logs. Logs measuring about fourteen inches in diameter were fitted end to end and embedded partially in the ground. The logs were the snags and old logs being cleared under a separate job by other members of the camp and piled up along the old Wawona Road. Two hundred feet of road surface previously treated with oil were removed from the area, and eighty cubic yards of dirt hauled in to create a bank behind the curbs. [32]
The work was finally completed in early 1937. More shrubs were planted than had been originally estimated, and the loss of plants was greater here than in Yosemite Valley, owing to poor soil conditions and an inexperienced foreman. The plantings around the ranger station included chinquapin shrubs in great abundance at all corners, manzanitas and cherry trees at each end of the station, and white firs and cedars on the slopes behind the gas station to create a screen for motorists ascending the Glacier Point Road. Islands in the plaza were planted with chinquapins and other low-growing shrubs. The slopes behind and beside the comfort station were planted with shrubs, predominantly chinquapins. At the end of the parking area for the comfort station, where the road began its ascent, pines were planted to blend the plaza with the roadside vegetation. Recognizing that the results of the planting were not immediately obvious to observers, the camp superintendent advised, "Give the trees and plants a chance to spread out and in another year or two this plot will be one of the beauty spots on the Wawona Road." [33]
Of particular importance is the comprehensive nature of the intersection's development, embracing road design and construction, the building of park facilities, and the finishing touches of landscape naturalization that included village improvements such as curbing and grading as well as plantings that erased construction scars, beautified the area, controlled erosion, and blended the development into the natural setting.
The dominant use of chinquapin, a native shrub characteristic of the intersection's natural setting, was significant. The chinquapin (Castanopsis sempervirens) is a flowering shrub whose height varies from one to six feet depending on altitude, the average being three feet in height and six in width. It has smooth gray bark and "stiff, narrow, pointed, two-inch leaves shining rich deep green on top and underneath first green-gold and later rich dark gold." When in flower, the shrub is arrayed with "long, creamy catkins of bloom—picturesque against the dark leathery foliage, rather dreadfully fragrant, and pervading the whole locality with over-powering sweetness." Bright golden-brown chestnutlike burrs follow the flowers, holding clusters of small round nuts. Calling the chinquapin an endearing shrub, Lester Rowntree in 1939 told readers of Flowering Shrubs of California and Their Value to the Gardener that the best place to see the chinquapin was at the Yosemite Park intersection named for the plant. [34]
Nowhere else in the national park system had an intersection received so much attention. This special treatment was due in large part to the importance that surrounded the construction of the Wawona Road and the many difficulties it encountered. No other road received such scrutiny by national park landscape architects, officials, and the Yosemite Board of Expert Advisers. Elsewhere the advances in park design made by the park designers by 1933 were developed and expanded upon. The principles of naturalistic design were reinforced with full force, and many practices were rediscovered and innovations made, from the rehabilitation of springs to the naturalization of roadsides and newly constructed buildings.
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Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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