Smiles Reappear on Road to Yosemite By Mike Conway Modesto Bee - October 22, 2000 EL PORTAL -- Business owners are looking forward to an economic rebound in the months ahead, now that Highway 140 leading to Yosemite National Park is fixed. Flooding in January 1997 tore up the road, and Mariposa County tourism officials say many people believed, wrongly, that Yosemite had been closed. "When people read the headlines and it sounds like something is happening in Yosemite, a lot of times they'll get the idea the whole park is closed," said Steve Hayes, head of the Mariposa County Visitors Bureau. The park saw a sharp decline in visitors during road repairs, a two-year project that was just finished. The road between El Portal and Yosemite Valley is now wider and safer. Traffic got through during the project, but only when crews did not have the highway closed intermittently. "The worldwide tourist industry is touting the park as not being accessible," said Jan Menning of the Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce. "There are two other highways (into the park) that were very valid." Highway 120 was open from the north and Highway 41 was available for tourists coming from the south. Tioga Pass Road also was open, except during its regular winter closure. The perception that the park was closed hurt Mariposa County, where it is estimated that one job in every household is tied to the tourism industry. Hayes said visitors contribute about $300 million a year to the county's economy. Visitors to the park dropped from 4.1 million in 1996 -- the year before the flood -- to 3.3 million last year. Hayes did not have a figure on how much money the county lost, but he estimated it in the millions. Barry Brouillette, vice president of Yosemite Motels, said his company lost $1.5 million while the highway was being worked on. Visits at Cedar Lodge and Yosemite View Lodge in the Merced River Canyon were way down, he said. Business also was off at the company's two motels in Mariposa and one in Oakhurst. "There was a widespread perception that it was more difficult to get into the park," Brouillette said. "There was so much misinformation out there, they didn't come at all." Michael Habermann, who runs the Boulder Creek Bed and Breakfast in Mariposa, said: "Our town was pretty depressed the first year (after the flood). By the third year everybody was used to it." Habermann, who came to the United States from Germany in 1985, weathered the slump by using the Internet to book foreign tourists. "I still have to explain on the phone all the time that the park is open." Tour buses that used to take Highway 140 into the park did not want to deal with the scheduled closures. "We used to have about 20 buses a day," said Steven Song, a waiter at the China Restaurant in Mariposa. "After the road closed, it went down to 10, eight, sometimes only five buses a day." The restaurant, which catered to busloads of Asian tourists, had to lay off two employees. Song said business has picked up, with completion of the road work last month, but it is mostly car travelers who are stopping. "We'll see next year how the buses do. Around June is when the buses start coming in." Hugh Carter is no fan of buses, because they do not stop at his small El Portal Market near the park's entrance. Carter's business also was hurt when a number of riverside campsites were closed. "Day-trippers bring their own beer and soda," he said. "Campers have to come in and replenish their supplies." The 1997 flooding closed the road completely for five months, leaving the market empty. "Our last good year was in 1996," Carter said. "In the last couple years, business has been off 30 percent, at least." The small general store carries a little of everything to serve campers, along with the 635 residents of El Portal, many of whom work in the park. "Without the employees we would really be in trouble." Carter is a National Park Service concessionaire and he said he plans to quit as soon as his contract expires in five years. With the increased emphasis on bus travel in and out of the park, and the decline in campers, "It's just not worth it," he said. Highway 140 is billed as the "all-weather" highway to Yosemite because it is at a lower elevation than other roads leading in and out of the park. Except during the winter, it no longer is the road most people take to enter the park. This year, one third of the park's visitors came through the southern Highway 41 entrance, while 29 percent of them came in from the north on Highway 120. The Highway 140 entrance had 19 percent of the visitors, while the Tioga Pass entrance did almost as well with 17 percent of the traffic. "We used to be up near 23-24 percent," Hayes said. But Highway 140's popularity has been declining for the past 15 or 20 years, he said. Frequent rockslides and road closures in the Merced River Canyon have encouraged drivers to use the other entrances. "The trend away from Highway 140 started when there were some serious slides," Brouillette said. "But if people take a look at it, they will find it's the most scenic road and the most direct road. It will recapture what had once been its status as the primary entrance to Yosemite. "In the long run we're going to benefit from the improvement," Brouillette said. "But it's probably easier to say that now that it's over."