Yosemite, The Forest Domain of the Pierce-Arrow

by John C. Meyer III

“No attempt has been made . . . to remain objective about anything . . . in a deep valley that’s barely a mile wide, Yosemite has scenery from snow-capped mountains to shirt-sleeved meadows and waterfalls . . . but with a whisper so quiet it’s hard to imagine.”

A beautiful book in every respect. First to capture your eye is its striking copper-toned foil-embossed art on the deep green background cover. Once you start to explore its pages, the vintage and contemporary (contemporary meaning then two years prior to the book’s 1984 publication) images and reproduced historic documents draw attention.

Judging by what your commentator finds with a quick online search, I’m not alone in thinking this book is special. Though it’s long out of print, available copies draw a respectable amount of coin.

The portions of the story that relate the history of transportation in Yosemite from the turn of the century (meaning 1900s) was made possible by the cooperation of the Yosemite National Park Research Library. Those words and the documents that are reproduced fill the first two-thirds of the book. The concluding third briefly mentions multiple tours the Horseless Carriage Club made to Yosemite during the 1950s before focusing on the June 1982 three-day event when the Southern California Region of the Pierce-Arrow Society toured Yosemite with 32 Pierce-Arrows participating.

Over the years Pierce-Arrow became the nearly exclusive motor vehicles used in and around Yosemite Park because of their strength and durability as well as ability to handle the steep grades, up and, equally importantly, down.

The reproduced early documents trace the development of access to and around Yosemite. One quoted is a Thomas D. Murphy whose travel reports around the American West were published in 1921. He describes the various routes into and around the park though said he longed for the day when there might be “broad, smooth roads.” Instead he describes what he and his group experienced as “narrow, tortuous trail[s] . . . at times laboriously steep . . . yet with many magnificent vistas.” Toward the end of his narrative he notes, “The punishment the stage lines gave the many Pierce-Arrows year after year must have been brutal . . . and a testament to the quality of construction and design of Pierce-Arrows.”

Not the E.T. of more current times. This one was Edwin T. Huffman, the businessman most associated with initially providing mechanized tourist transportation to and around Yosemite. As the chapter title suggests, he favored Pierce-Arrows.

Further on the book’s author John C. Meyer notes that “Nearly all of the Pierce-Arrows used were the ‘medium’ line of Pierces having 4-inch by 5.5-inch six-cylinder engines. The large 66-horsepower six-cylinder Pierce-Arrow had 824 cubic inches of displacement . . . that’s 13,508 cc’s or the equivalent of seven of today’s family economy cars.”

In 1936, the park’s transportation concessionaire E.T. Huffman purchased ten brand-new Pierce-Arrows to be used exclusively in Yosemite. They were referred to as Pierce “busses” for they had multiple rows of passenger seating in addition to the driver’s area and room for luggage in back. Maximum seating capacity of each bus was 21 passengers. The busses remained in “constant use at Yosemite until they began to wear out and were ‘cannibalized’ one-by-one until there were none left. The last Pierce-Arrow tour bus stopped its service in 1951.”

Contemporary photos by the author of some of the Pierce-Arrows participating in the 1982 Southern California Region’s tour of Yosemite.

With that, Meyer segues to telling first of the Horseless Carriage Club’s 1953 visit before moving on to telling and showing the 1982 car tour of the Southern California Region of the Pierce-Arrow Society. This is the tour that lends the book its title for it marked a return of Pierce-Arrows to the magnificence of Yosemite Park which had once been its domain.

Lest you think vintage Pierces weren’t meant to be driven consider the oldest Pierce on that 1982 tour was a 1913 38-C. In addition to touring Yosemite, it had first been driven by its owners from Bolton, Massachusetts and would be driven back to home by them once the tour concluded.

More 1982 photos of some of the Pierce-Arrows participating in that 1982 three-day tour of Yosemite. Far left of top left photo is author’s 1934 1240A.

For the three days of the tour, the cars’ owners and their guests occupied “practically the entire Wawona Hotel complex.” Each day, they toured to different parts of the park to see and experience as much of Yosemite as possible. Most of the nearly 40 photos in this third of the book demonstrate author John Meyer’s eye and skill with the camera.

To say it was a memorable trip is as much an understatement as is noting how special this slim volume is.