Gates Stand Guard Again at Tioga Pass The park service did the labor and a private group paid. By Mark Grossi The Fresno Bee - September 16, 1999 YOSEMITE - National Park Service Director Robert Stanton caught a whiff of autumn Wednesday in the nippy breezes and brilliant sunshine along the highest paved pass in the Sierra Nevada. He asked with a wry smile: "Can I take credit for this weather?" But Stanton, one of the few folks at Tioga Wednesday in a suit and tie, had come to Yosemite National Park to take credit for restoring a piece of history at the Tioga Pass entrance station. And, he could only take partial credit for that. The National Park Service did the work to build and install a replica of the massive wood and stone Tioga Pass gates, which basically fell apart 35 years ago. But the Yosemite Fund, a fund-raising park advocate based in San Francisco, paid the $86,000 bill. Yosemite workers this summer built the 1,000-pound gates with lodgepole pine and granite, both common in Yosemite. The original gates were installed in the 1930s, but they had deteriorated in the harsh winters at the Sierra crest. Stanton, park Superintendent Stan Albright and other dignitaries climbed into a 1925 touring bus for a ceremonial appearance at the 9,945-foot entrance on Tioga Road. With lines of cars waiting on both sides of the gate, Stanton and Yosemite Fund officials briefly praised the project. Sam Livermore, board chairman of the Yosemite Fund, said it is an example of what private citizens can do to help national parks. "The fund has helped with installing bear boxes for people to keep their food, as well as restoration projects such as Glacier Point," he said. "We've been able to commit $13 million in private funding for more than 150 projects in Yosemite." The Yosemite Fund also plans such projects as restoration and reorganization of the Yosemite Falls area, currently mired in bus traffic and a crowded approach trail. In rebuilding the Tioga gates, officials had to bring in a crane to move one of the anchoring, 55,000-pound stone pylons or pillars. Craig Struple, a park service employee who works on historic preservation in Yosemite, supervised the project. "It's a lot more complex than it looks," he said. "Somehow one pylon was moved 17 feet after the gates were taken down in the 1960s, and we had to move it back." Struple said he conceived the idea of replicating the old gates and wanted to complete the project in 1997. But Yosemite experienced one of its biggest floods in modern history, so efforts were directed elsewhere. In 1998, Struple was thwarted because there was so much snow that the entrance station remained buried well into June. This summer, he was able to complete the project at the east entrance station, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places. The station was built in the 1930s at the same time as the original gates. After the gates fell apart and the pylon was moved, gates simply were not mounted on this entrance. Barricades are normally placed on Tioga Road, or Highway 120, and the station for about half of the year from mid-November to mid-May because winter is too severe to keep the roadway clear of snow. About seven miles west of the Tioga entrance station on Wednesday, the park service and the Yosemite Fund also celebrated the $59,900 restoration of the Parsons Lodge, named after Edward Parsons, a climber and longtime friend of John Muir's. The log-and-stone lodge, built in 1915, is at the east end of Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite Superintendent Albright said it, too, is an example of partnership between private and public entities. "This place will now provide stability for future generations," Albright said. "You know what you're going to find here. Other places will change, but this one will not."