Bancroft's Tourist's Guide. Yosemite. San Francisco and Around the Bay, (south.)

In 1871, as America's first great national park entered its second decade, a guide appeared for the discerning Victorian traveler who wished to see Yosemite before the crowds arrived, before the railroad changed everything. This is not merely a practical handbook of routes and lodgings, though it contains both in abundance. It is a passionate argument that experiencing nature's sublimity is essential to the cultured traveler, a document from the precise moment when Americans began to see their own landscape not as obstacle but as cathedral. The guide details routes from San Francisco into the Sierra Nevada, the options available to travelers in an age before automobiles, the inns and waypoints that have long since vanished, and the various forms of public conveyance. But more than logistics, it offers a window into what it meant to be a tourist in a young nation discovering that its wild places were worth preserving.