History of the Yosemite area people for the creation of a unified Yosemite National Park. The Sierra Club began to organize annual trips to Yosemite in 1901 in an effort to make the remote area more accessible. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt camped with John Muir near Glacier Point for three days in May 1903. During that trip, Muir convinced Roosevelt to take control of the valley and the grove away from California and give it to the federal government. On June 11, 1906, Roosevelt signed a bill that did precisely that, and the superintendent's headquarters was moved from Wawona to Yosemite Valley. To secure congressional
Yosemite National Park The cavalry left another legacy in the park, the ranger hat. From 1899 to 1913, cavalry regiments of the Western Department, including the all Black 9th Cavalry (known as the "Buffalo Soldiers") and the 1st Cavalry, stationed two troops at Yosemite and brought with them the trooper's campaign hat with its distinctive Montana Peak we recognize today as the "ranger hat." This peak had been formed into the trooper's stetson by veterans of the 1898 Spanish–American War to better shed tropical rain. Muir and his Sierra Club continued to lobby the government and influential people for the creation of a