Galen Clark

Galen Clark (March 28, 1814 – March 24, 1910) was a Canadian-born American conservationist and writer. He was the first European American to document the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees. His advocacy contributed to the Yosemite Grant of 1864, which protected the grove and Yosemite Valley under state management. He served as Guardian under the Yosemite Commission from 1866 to 1880, and again from 1889 to 1896 – 21 years in total.

Early life and family Galen Clark was born in Shipton, Lower Canada (now Quebec) in 1814. He joined the westward migration as a youth and moved to Waterloo, Missouri in 1836.

In Missouri, he met Rebecca McCoy, and they married in 1839. They had five children: Elvira Missouri Clark (1840–1912), Joseph Locke Clark (1842–1862), Mary Ann Clark (1844–1919), Calen Alonzo Clark (1847–1873), and Solon McCoy Clark (1848–1857). Only two survived their parents: Elvira Clark, who married and became a doctor in Oakland, California; and their other daughter, Mary Ann Clark, who married John T. Regan of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Later life After his wife died young, Clark moved to California to seek his fortune in 1854 at the time of the California Gold Rush. Clark spent subsequent years exploring the area and guiding visitors to the sequoias.

He wrote about protecting the grove to friends and the US Congress. He contributed to the writing and passage of legislation to protect the area, gaining support of US Senator John Conness from California. The act for the Yosemite Grant was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Ceding the land to the state of California for preservation, the grant was the first of its kind. The legislation was to protect Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for "public use, resort, and recreation ... to be left inalienable for all time." Clark was appointed the first guardian of the grant by the Yosemite Commission, the state board created to manage Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove. His lungs healed, and he explored and climbed much of the area.

Clark did not seek to enrich himself from Yosemite Valley or the Sequoia trees. He ran Clark's Station, a modest hotel and guide service at what is now Wawona, providing meals, shelter, and grazing for travelers on the route between Mariposa and Yosemite Valley. The Ahwahnechee people called the site "Pallahchun," meaning "a good place to stop." He sold the property in 1874 to relieve his debts; the buyer, Henry Washburn, later renamed the area Wawona. His house still stands on Shelby Street.

On March 24, 1910, he died at the home of his daughter Dr. Elvira M. Lee in Oakland, California. He was buried in the Yosemite Pioneer Cemetery, at a spot he had personally prepared decades earlier: digging the grave, laying broken glass around its edges to deter rodents, planting six sequoias from the Mariposa Grove around it, and carving his own name on a granite boulder as a marker. Mount Clark and the Clark Range, located east of Yosemite Valley, were named in his honor.

The Mariposa Grove Museum, originally built as a cabin by Clark in 1864 within the Mariposa Grove, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In popular culture Clark's life and efforts to preserve the Giant Sequoias of Yosemite were depicted in the 1976 feature film Guardian of the Wilderness (also known as Mountain Man). He was portrayed by Denver Pyle with John Dehner as John Muir and Ford Rainey as Abraham Lincoln.