The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America's Most Popular National Park by Jen A. Huntley

Abstract

 Reviews bust, tracing the diverse popular genres of the early days (Tin Pan Alley,workers’songs,brass bands, classical music) through the growth of jazz and big band styles dominant through the midtwentieth century. Armbruster draws portraits of music performance contexts,and as often as possible,lets the voices of their original players speak,paying particularly good attention to the perspectives of women in the generally male-dominated field. Archival photos enhance the text. The survey stops in 1979, and as the title suggests, does not cover rock genres except as they are peripherally connected to rhythm and blues and the lives of working musicians during the 1960s and 1970s. Although connecting rock cultures to traditional players and scenes in the city would have been useful and made the book more appealing to younger readers, the history of rock in Seattle does not readily fit Armbruster’s effort to trace the life-long careers and stalwart institutions that provided the live soundtrack for the growth of the city. A primary strength of this book is its description of the development of the Musicians Association of Seattle Local 76 and 76-493 (the result of the merging of the black and white unions).Additionally, the history of the Seattle Symphony under the direction of Milton Katims is particularly vivid.Sections of this book would make good ancillary reading for college courses in the history of the Pacific Northwest because they provide excellent descriptions of the role of music in the development of cultural institutions as varied as worker saloons,the coffee-shop folk scene (and its attending progressive politics), the symphony , and the opera. Particularly fascinating is the description of the growth experienced by “high”forms of musical culture in a consumer environment dominated by music for dancing. Ambruster examines the connections between the city’s power brokers and their ideas about music and morality, paying close attention to the changes in laws governing alcohol sales and dancing venues.At the same time,he describes the challenges classical music fans and players faced in developing and sustaining their institutions in a place that for many years remained a cultural and geographic backwater (if not in reality, certainly in self-image). This book is an excellent contribution to the history of music cultures in the Pacific Northwest and is a laudable example of a civic history based on a cultural form that impacts daily life but often remains invisible. Sarah Dougher Portland State University The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America’s Most Popular National Park by Jen A. Huntley University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2011. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 248 pages. $34.95 cloth. James Hutchings won a certain fame as the publicist who revealed the glories of Yosemite Valley to Californians and the American people. An immigrant from England, Hutchings first entered Yosemite Valley in 1855, a scant four years after Anglo-Americans first stumbled upon the valley. He entered the publishing business and soon won attention promoting the incomparable Yosemite Valley with Hutchings’ Illustrated California Magazine and Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity. Huntley devotes close to half her book to Hutchings’s early career as a printer and a creative lithographer. His business career, however, is not the main thrust of the book. Huntley wishes to restore Hutchings’s rather unsavory reputation regarding his activities inYosemiteValley.Historians have maintained that while he promoted the valley, he also promoted himself. He has also been attacked for his obsession with owning land in fee simple (without condition) in the heart of the valley.  OHQ vol. 113, no. 4 Privateownershipwasnotthe intentof the 1864 Yosemite Act, which granted the valley to the State of California with the condition that the “premises shall be held for public use . . . and shall be inalienable for all time” (p. 107). In the meantime, Hutchings had purchased“two sections of land”(p.120).Presumably he never receivedadeedinfee simple.TheYosemite Park Commission refused to recognize Hutchings’s land claims — even though he pared it down to 160 acres — and offered him $24,000 to dismiss them.He refused the payment,trusting his case to the courts.In 1873,the Supreme Count ruled against...