When Shelton Johnson looked up at the Roosevelt Arch at Yellowstone National Park, he was awed by its inscription, "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." And perplexed.


"It struck me," said Johnson, a national park ranger who is African-American. "There are so few people of color."

His stark realization that not many African-Americans visit national parks hasn't changed much in 22 years since he first began working at Yellowstone. Today, he is an interpretive ranger at Yosemite, where he talks to visitors about park history and its natural values. He's determined to inspire young inner-city kids to experience what he said, "transformed my life."

"Here I am at this iconic national park and on any day I can see people from all over the world, from Finland to Madagascar and throughout Europe, but I never meet a black family from nearby Oakland, Fresno or Stockton," Johnson said. "The whole idea doesn't register with them. They must think, 'Why go to a national park? It's not a black thing, something that we do.' "

Johnson, a Detroit native, is quite the achiever. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English literature, won a Major Hopwood Award in poetry, taught school in Liberia with the Peace Corps and performs at the International Storytelling Center in Tennessee. Recently, he was featured in the Ken Burns documentary on PBS, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

Johnson is one of the only African-American park rangers at Yosemite and speaks movingly in the documentary about our national parks and the need to protect them.

"When you have people who come here vacationing, they have a reluctance to leave," he said. "The longer you've been here, you get caught. Yosemite is one of those places you don't enter. It enters you."

California boasts so many great outdoors destinations. There are more national parks here than in any of the other lower 48 states - Yosemite, Mount Lassen Volcanic, Sequoia, Channel Islands, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Kings Canyon and Redwoods.

"We have plenty of people of color in California, so there must be a way to bridge the level of disconnect," Johnson said. "The degree of African-Americans and other minorities not embracing and participating in our national parks must be overcome. If there is to be progress, it has to be in California because of our amazing range of habitats and ecosystems, from the mountains to the sea, from the valleys to the redwoods."

He knows the Yosemite terrain having hiked the famous trails to Half Dome, Cloud's Rest, Mono Pass and Wawona, and brought stock down from Tuolumne Meadows - some 30 miles on horseback - to the valley floor. He fishes for trout in the back country and taught his son to hook rainbows in the Merced River, just across the road from his house in El Portal.

Johnson's crusade centers on education and the belief that every parent should want their children to have access to education. He uses his new book, "Gloryland," that tells the story of Yosemite through the eyes of a Buffalo Soldier in 1904. The book is the "bait" he uses to get people to come to his beloved Yosemite.

"Now that we have that history that Buffalo Soldiers were once here, it shouldn't take much," he said.

Buffalo Soldiers were cavalry and infantry units formed in 1866 as a direct result of the Civil War, when tens of thousands of black men fought for the Union Army. The all-black units served in the Plains Indians wars. The name Buffalo Soldiers was actually given by the Indians, who said the curly hair and dark skin of the soldiers resembled the hair between the horns of the buffalo and its dark fur. It was also a term of respect because bison to Plains Indians were sacred animals.

Buffalo Soldiers later became the forgotten stewards in 1903 and 1904 of both Yosemite and Sequoia National parks.

"No one else was here in those early years," Johnson said. "Buffalo Soldiers were stationed here because there were no park rangers and only civilian rule. There was no law and order to protect the natural resources."

Johnson explained that after the national parks were established in 1890, people had not accepted the idea of fully protected land. They still were going into the mountains and into the newly established parks to hunt animals, cut firewood and run herds of cattle and sheep, just like they always had done.

"The only way to protect the parks and to stop folks from carrying on these activities was to send in the cavalry," Johnson said. "Thus, the solders were the first park rangers and the task of protecting these places was actually set in place by the military.

With this history and his book, Johnson is creating a bridge of relevance to Yosemite and other wild lands.

"I use history to tie culture to this place," he said. "Once people are here and see Half Dome, waterfalls, granite monoliths and groves of redwoods, they become like everyone else and ask, 'Why haven't I come here before?' "

Contact outdoors reporter Peter Ottesen at (209) 546-8269 or pottesen@recordnet.com.