YOSEMITE VALLEY, Calif. — You would think the beauty and grandeur of Yosemite would be enough to entice visitors to the national park, but early promoters wanted to offer a “hole” lot more. More specifically, at one point, a sequoia with a hole tunneling through it used to be the park’s main entrance.
The entrance to Yosemite National Park of today is a multi-lane set of toll booths allowing hundreds of cars to move through daily, but that wasn’t always the case.
In person, the tunnel looks far too small to drive through.
“Initially it was horse carriages, but there is plenty of pictures of cars,” said park interpreter Andrew Coval.
Coval says before it was a national park, there were multiple private toll road into Yosemite. To attract tourists to their road, private landowners would cut a picture-worthy tunnel through a living or dead sequoia.
“You can see at the top of the tunnel where they used pipe augers to bore holes in the tree and then get a saw in to cut it out,” said Coval.
The tunnel tree that used to be the park entrance is located in Tuolumne Grove, which is one of just 75 groves of sequoia trees in California. Its cousin, the redwood tree, is the tallest tree in the world but sequoias are the largest trees in the world by mass. Large enough for, well, a car to drive through, but not all vehicles made it.
“I actually read a story about an RV that got stuck in the tunnel,” said Coval.
Tunnel trees became very popular. One tunnel was cut through a dead sequoia tree in 1878, earning it the nickname “Dead Giant Tunnel Tree,” but other entrances into Yosemite National Park started cutting into live trees.
The living tunnel tree in the Mariposa Grove is still standing but the tunnel tree at the Wawona entrance to the park, which was cut in 1881, fell in 1968 due its weak structure and a heavy windstorm.
The park eventually acquired all private entrances but unfortunately in 1993 stopped allowing cars through the tunnel trees, including the one in Tuolumne Grove.
“In 1993 the road was in disrepair and there were lots of hazardous down trees so they closed the road,” said Coval.
You can still walk through the Tuolumne Grove Tunnel Tree but be aware: the trail is about two miles long, up and down a hilly trail.
ANOTHER TALL TREE TALE FROM THE BACKROADS: Travel to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park to get a phenomenal glimpse into California's natural beauty.
