Moments: When Yosemite Rioted

In early summer, Yosemite Valley’s Stoneman Meadow is a field of shimmering green grass that sprawls from the granite base of Glacier Point toward a languid bend in the Merced River. This is what many visitors picture when they imagine strolling through Yosemite: the imposing face of Half Dome looming far above to the east, 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls thundering away just to the west, sheer gray cliffs soaring toward the heavens on all sides.

The beauty of the valley makes it hard to imagine that during the weekend of July 4, 1970, the tranquility of Stoneman was shattered by the cracks of nightsticks on skulls, the smashing of rocks through the windows of National Park Service vehicles, the clashing of hooves and braying of horses, and the shouts of an enraged, drunken crowd. But for two days that summer, the culture wars that had been convulsing the country flared just steps from the Ahwahnee Hotel.

The American public was shocked. Civil unrest and violence in a sacred