Lynn’s grandmother on the Glacier Point rock in 1900
My family has been going to Yosemite since 1900 — my grandmother’s family went into the park in a covered wagon and camped when she was 19 years old. She crawled out onto the Glacier Point rock. On the back of the photograph, she wrote “Can’t go any farther scared”.
In the 1940s my aunt was friends with Dick Canette, the manager of the Ahwahnee Hotel, and she helped do the floral arrangements for the tables in the Grand Dining room. In the 1950s my uncle’s family camped in the valley.
Then from 1967 to 1974 while going to college I worked for Yosemite Park and Curry Co. in the summers. I started as a maid at Camp Curry making 68 beds a day in the tent cabins.
Lynn Hart Perata in Yosemite in the 1970s
Each summer I had different jobs: cafeteria server in Camp Curry, hostess in the Four Seasons and Mountain Broiler Room at Yosemite Lodge. When I graduated in 1971 I moved to Wawona and worked at the Pro Golf Shop at the hotel and in the winter I managed the hamburger stand at Badger Pass. I lived there until 1974 after trying to get a teaching job in the Valley School, moved back to Alameda and started my teaching career. So, Yosemite has been in my family for many years.
Lynn Hart Perata, Donor