LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS OF HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS FAVORS YOSEMITE ROUTE FOR CROSSING OF THE SIERRAS BY JOSEPH WALKER, NAMESAKE FOR WALKER LANE, IN 1833

Until recently, Joseph Walker, namesake for the Walker Lane tectonic belt and other geographic features in the western Great Basin, has generally been credited with leading the first Euro-American party to view Yosemite Valley. Scott Stine (2015) in A Way across the Mountain, Joseph Walker’s 1833 Trans-Sierran Passage and the Myth of Discovery proposed that reasonable travel rates for the party in the eastern Sierran foothills, landscape interpretations and timeline constraints from Zenas Leonard’s first-person account of their journey, and Walker’s absence of a claim for viewing Yosemite, favor a Stanislaus River path across the Sierras. Stine found that the growth of Walker lore and emerging renown of Yosemite as a wonderous place, coincident with America's centennial and Walker's passing in 1876, contributed to improper interpretation of Leonard's narrative by numerous historians. Landscape re-interpretations of Leonard’s narrative, in the context of Walker party member George Nidever’s narrative, accounts by Mariposa Battalion leader Lafayette Bunnell that support Walker's personal claim for a Yosemite route, maps authored by John Fremont that Walker helped develop, and comparative reasonableness of route choices, along with geologic, climatic, biologic, and historical data or interpretations not considered by Stine, demonstrate that a Yosemite path, that approximates Stine’s maximum allowable travel rate through the eastern Sierran foothills (via the Adrian River, Smith Valley and West Walker River) was Walker's more likely route.