good condition for traveling carriages and baggage wagons. southward from one camping point on it, the foot of Mount Lyell, on the summit of the grand Sierras (sic), can be reached by an easy trail for saddle animals in 11 miles. From another good camping point on it, Mount Conness, on the summit to the northward, can be reached in 10 miles over a good saddle trail, leading practically to the very summit, at an altitude of about 13,000 feet,27 which commands one of the grandest views in the United States. Besides traversing innumerable mountain streams, glacier meadows, and lawns of luxuriant grasses and natural flowers, it touches the shore of Lake Tanaya (sic), skirts the bases of Mounts Hoffman and Dana, and passes within easy distance of the Ten Lake country, and many other places of great interest and natural beauty.
- I am informed, by hearsay, that the original cost of building the road was about $60,000. The foundation shows excellent work, intended to be permanent.28
The next Acting Superintendent of the park, Captain Alex Rodgers, repeated his predecessor's appraisal of the road in 1897, stating: 'There is nothing to add to his remarks, except to call attention to the fact that the condition of this road grows worse from year to year."29 Rodgers suggested that if the Tioga Road were taken over and repaired, many good meadows for grazing would be opened in the high country, providing an alternative to the already congested Yosemite Valley. He estimated that the costs of repairing the Tioga Road 'would probably be not less than $l0,000."30
Rodgers was succeeded by Interior Department Special Inspector J. W. Zevely in 1898. (The military had been temporarily recalled to participate in the Spanish-American War.) Zevely rejected his predecessors' recommendations for the purchase of the Tioga Road, stating that the owners' rights had been extinguished by abandonment, and that in his opinion, the road already belonged to the Government. He called for an appropriation for its repair.31
Zevely was supported by Commissioners Marsden Manson and W. L. Ashe of the California Department of Highways, who noted that the state was endeavoring to construct an eastward extension of the Tioga Road into Mono County. At this point, the state had studied eastward routes down Lee Vining Creek, down Lee Vining and Mill creeks, or down Bloody Canyon. The Lee Vining Creek route was recommended by the surveyors, who thought the road could be built for about $30,000. Commissioner Manson walked the entire route before giving his assent. To open up a complete Trans-Sierran route, Manson and Ashe urged that the federal government take control of the Tioga Road within the park, and initiate surveys and examinations for its reconstruction along easier grades and alignments.32
On 25 September of the same year, Zevely was replaced as Acting Superintendent by Capt. Joseph E. Caine of the Utah Volunteers, U.S. Cavalry. Caine's report also recommended that the government take control of the toll roads in the park, but only after sufficient funds were appropriated for their maintenance. He suggested that the cost of repairing the Tioga Road would probably run closer to $15,000, but warned:
- Unless immediate steps are taken to secure the control of this road to the Government and to place it in repair, it will soon become a thing of the past, and the vast amount of labor expended upon it [by its builders) will be a total loss.
