1 “Morrill Act (1862),” National Archives, Milestone Documents, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/morrill-act (accessed Feb. 10, 2025).

2 Christopher Newfield argues that the Morrill Act “gave a new and lasting momentum to the idea of college education for a growing middle class.” Newfield, Christopher, Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 26 Google Scholar. The provision on stock investments is located in Section 4 of the Morrill Act.

3 “Yosemite Act, 1864,” America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/anps/anps_1a.htm (accessed Feb. 10, 2025).

4 The absence of any educators on the initial Board of Regents was noted in Schulte, Gustavus, A Glance from a German Standpoint at the State University of California (San Francisco: Bacon & Company, 1871), 8Google Scholar.

5 LeConte, Joseph, The Autobiography of Joseph LeConte (New York: Appleton, 1903), 239 Google Scholar. Both John and Joseph LeConte provided service to the Confederacy through their scientific expertise. See Cohen, Michael David, Reconstructing the Campus: Higher Education and the American Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 41 Google Scholar.

6 Haight’s inaugural address as governor in 1867 warned that Reconstruction would “create a negro empire on our southern border.” Inaugural Address of Henry Haight, Governor of the State of California, December 5, 1867 (New York: Douglas Taylor, 1868). On white supremacy among California labor activists, see Saxton, Alexander, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar

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11 Comprehensive institutional histories include William Warren Ferrier, Origin and Development of the University of California (Berkeley, CA: Sather Gate Book Shop, 1930); Stadtman, Verne A., The University of California, 1868–1968 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970)Google Scholar; May, Henry F., Three Faces of Berkeley: Competing Ideologies in the Wheeler Era, 1899–1919 (Berkeley: Center for Studies in Higher Education and Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, 1993)Google Scholar; Douglass, California Idea and American Higher Education. On the role of gender and race in shaping the university, see Nerad, Maresi, The Academic Kitchen: A Social History of Gender Stratification at the University of California, Berkeley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Wilkie, Laurie A., The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A Historical Archaeology of Masculinity at a University Fraternity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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13 Sorber’s view of populist critics as a bulwark of resistance to modernity builds on long strand of scholarship, including Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Vintage, 1955)Google Scholar; Veysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodwyn, Lawrence, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

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15 Postel, Charles, The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Gelber, Scott M., The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher Education in an Era of Populist Protest (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 8Google Scholar.

17 Julie Beck, “Americanitis: The Disease of Living Too Fast,” Atlantic, Mar. 11, 2016. One popularizer of this concept, S. Weir Mitchell, wrote in 1871: “The man who lives an outdoor life—who sleeps with the stars visible above him—who wins his bodily subsistence at first hand from the earth and waters—is a being who defies rain and sun, has a strange sense of elastic strength.” Silas Weir Mitchell, Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1871), 8. See also Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schuster, David G., Neurasthenic Nation: America’s Search for Health, Happiness and Comfort, 1869–1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

18 By the 1870s, demonstration farms had been established in Wisconsin, Illinois, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, and several other states. Gelber notes that the president of Kansas State Agricultural College went so far as to assert that the campus as a whole “should resemble a prosperous farm.” Gelber, University and the People, 29.

19 Muir, John, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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21 John Muir to Jeanne Carr, circa 1872, in Kindred and Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr, ed. Bonnie Johanna Gisel (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), 179.

22 Whitney is referred to as the “ruling potentate of California rocks” in Worster, Donald, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 194 Google Scholar.

23 For details on the dispute, see Dean, Dennis R., “John Muir and the Origin of Yosemite Valley,” Annals of Science 48, no. 5 (1991): 453–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 One travel writer calls the dispute between Muir and Whitney “one of the classic amateur-beats-the-pro tales of geology.” James Kaiser, Yosemite: The Complete Guide (Chicago: Destination Press, 2007), 55. See also Lonely Planet Yosemite, Sequoia, and King’s Canyon National Parks (New York: Lonely Planet, 2012), 204; Brown, Ann Marie, Moon Yosemite (Berkeley, CA: Avalon Travel Publishing, 2009), 222 Google Scholar.

25 Postel, Populist Vision, 65.

26 Yosemite has served as a key example of the clash between, on the one hand, figures like John Muir who emphasized wilderness preservation and, on the other hand, conservationists like Gifford Pinchot who advocated for managed access to resources. Ben Minteer calls this the clash between “ecocentrism” and “anthropocentrism.” Minteer, Ben A., The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1. Donald Worster contends that Muir was never wholly on the side of the ecocentrists, instead embracing a “more enlightened utilitarianism.” Worster, Passion for Nature, 315. See also Smith, Michael B., “The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot,” Historian 60 (Summer 1998): 757–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hyde, Anne Farrar, “Temples and Playgrounds: The Sierra Club in the Wilderness, 1901–1922,” California History 66 (Sept. 1987): 208–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Dorceta E., The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Woodhouse, Keith Makoto, The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Notable exceptions include Smith, Michael L., Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, and White, Richard, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar. Smith emphasizes efforts by California scientists to persuade the public to support environmental conservation but does not address how these activities helped legitimize the university itself.

29 For camping as an escape from everyday life, see Young, Terrence, Heading Out: A History of American Camping (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For camping as an expression of politics, see Young, Phoebe S. K., Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 For middlebrow culture, see Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976)Google Scholar; Rubin, Joan Shelley, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Levine, Lawrence W., Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 In his journal, LeConte mentioned meeting Yelverton and refers to her as one of “our friends.” LeConte, Joseph, A Journal of Ramblings through the High Sierra of California (San Francisco: Francis and Valentine, 1875), 57 Google Scholar. Yelverton’s relationship with Muir is discussed in Sanborn, Margaret, Yosemite: Its Discovery, Its Wonders, and Its People (New York: Random House, 1981), 133–34Google Scholar.

32 Therese Yelverton, Zanita: A Tale of the Yo-Semite (1872; Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1991), 3.

33 Yelverton, Zanita, 7–8.

34 Yelverton, Zanita, 23.

35 Donald Worster refers to Muir’s 1870 meeting with LeConte as Muir’s “first substantive encounter with mountain geology.” Worster, Passion for Nature, 192. Bart O’Brien notes that “LeConte proved to be an important ally to Muir because of his association with the formal scientific community.” O’Brien, Bart, “Earthquakes or Snowflowers: The Controversy over the Formation of Yosemite Valley,” Pacific Historian 29 (Summer–Fall 1985): 37.Google Scholar

36 LeConte, Joseph, “On Some of the Ancient Glaciers of the Sierra Nevada,” American Journal of Science 5 (May 1873): 325–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 John Muir, “Living Glaciers of California,” Harper’s Monthly, Nov. 1875.

38 Yelverton, Zanita, 131, 145, 109, 138.

39 Barton Alexander to John LeConte, Jan. 10, 1869, box 1, LeConte Family Additions, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California. A legislative report in 1870 expressed fears of the corrupting influence of San Francisco, noting that establishing a campus there would “expose the large number of young men that are the most likely to seek education in the University to all the temptations and dangers of a great city.” Ferrier, Origin and Development of the University of California, 312.

40 Yelverton, Zanita, 77, 84–85.

41 Yelverton, Zanita, 79, 83–84.

42 Olive Logan, “Does It Pay to Visit Yo Semite?” Galaxy Magazine 10 (Oct. 1870). In addition to her work as an actress, Logan was an important critic of the emerging U.S. culture industries. See Logan, Olive, Before the Footlights and Behind the Scenes: A Book about ‘The Show Business’ in All Its Branches (Philadelphia: Parmelee, 1870).Google Scholar

43 Twain, Mark, Roughing It (1872; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 420.Google Scholar

44 For examples of popular writings that Twain may have encountered, see Whitney, Josiah, The Yosemite Book (New York: Julius Bien, 1868)Google Scholar, and Hittell, John, Yosemite: Its Wonders and Its Beauties (San Francisco: Bancroft, 1868).Google Scholar

45 Twain, Roughing It, 254, 136.

46 Ferrier, Origin and Development of the University of California, 309.

47 Ezra Carr, “Prof. Carr’s Reply to the Grangers and Mechanics,” in University of California and Its Relations to Industrial Education, 41.

48 Carr, “Prof. Carr’s Reply to the Grangers and Mechanics,” 42.

49 Carr, “Prof. Carr’s Reply to the Grangers and Mechanics,” 16, 31. The regents in question were Andrew Moulder and Samuel Butterworth. Carr’s accusations are supported by evidence that Butterworth recommended the purchase of the property in Oakland. Report on Purchase of Brayton Estate, Nov. 11, 1870, box 3, folder 13, Records of the Board of Regents of the University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.

50 Carr, Ezra, Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast (San Francisco: Bancroft, 1875), 371.Google Scholar

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52 Swinton, “University and its Managers Before the People and the Law,” 55.

53 Populist groups in this period often had to reconcile “contradictory truths” to build coalitions. Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 38 Google Scholar. In California, the petitioners disagreed on key points – with mechanics seeking an urban campus and agrarians seeking a demonstration farm – but shared an interest in advocating for the university to respect the Morrill Act’s promise of uplift for their trades.

54 On Wisconsin’s implementation of the Morrill Act, see Lincoln Steffens, “Sending a State to College: What the University of Wisconsin Is Doing for Its People,” American Magazine 67 (Feb. 1909): 349–64.

55 “Memorial of California State Grange and Mechanics’ Deliberative Assembly on the State University,” in University of California and Its Relations to Industrial Education, 112.

56 Gelber, University and the People, 25–27.

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58 Pinney, New Education, 13.

59 “Education,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1874, 124–25.

60 Frank Soulé “Joseph LeConte in the Sierra,” Sierra Club Bulletin 4 (Jan. 1902): 3–4.

61 LeConte, Ramblings, 18 (original emphasis).

62 LeConte, Ramblings, 138, 41, 24.

63 See, for example, “The Berkeleyans,” Oakland (California) Enquirer, Feb. 11, 1898.

64 “Professor Joseph LeConte of State University Dies in Yosemite Valley,” San Francisco Call, July 7, 1894. The entire front page was dominated by coverage of his death.

65 Charles Palache, “Autobiography – College,” circa 1940, MSS C-D 5193, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.

66 LeConte, Ramblings, 102.

67 LeConte, Ramblings, 125, 53.

68 Michael L. Smith notes that “distancing tactics” by scientists were rooted in their “uncomfortable awareness of how closely they might appear to resemble the tourists they denounced.” Smith, Pacific Visions, 77.

69 Stephens, Lester D., Joseph LeConte: Gentle Prophet of Evolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 70.Google Scholar

70 Louis Agassiz to O. P. Fitzgerald, Aug. 5, 1868, box 2, folder 16, Records of the Regents of the University of California, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.

71 LeConte, Joseph, The Race Problem in the American South (New York: Appleton, 1892), 376, 378.Google Scholar

72 Joseph LeConte, “Domestic Ducks That Fly Abroad Like Pigeons,” Science 1 (Apr. 1883): 249.

73 Joseph LeConte, “Scientific Relation of Sociology to Biology,” Popular Science Monthly 14 (Jan. 1879): 336.

74 For populism and race in California, see Lew-Williams, Beth, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)Google Scholar; Saxton, Indispensable Enemy.

75 LeConte, Ramblings, 106. For the massacre of indigenous people in Yosemite, see Spence, Mark David, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Solnit, Rebecca, Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1994), 309 Google Scholar. For the settler-colonial roots of the Morrill Act itself, see Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel, “The Morrill Act as Racial Contract: Settler-Colonialism and U.S. Higher Education,” Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, Working Paper Series, University of California Berkeley, Feb. 2024.

76 Emma LeConte Furman, Yosemite journal, 1882, box 6, folder 9, LeConte/Furman/Carter Family Papers, Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

77 Jefferson Davis to Mary Graham, Feb. 2, 1889, box 1, LeConte Family Additions, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, California.

78 John Aubrey Douglass notes that advocates of practical education unsuccessfully sought to hobble the university through legislation in the 1870s. Douglass, California Idea and American Higher Education, 54–55. Scott Gelber similarly notes that the convention generated proposals to “ban intangible subjects, require manual labor, and elect regents by popular vote.” Gelber, University and the People, 27. In a sign of the shifting tides of public opinion in the state, the 1879 constitution did not simply reject these proposals but added new protections against future political interference, cutting against the national trend toward heightened populist influence in higher education policy.

79 LeConte, John, “What Have the Regents of the University to Show for Their Expenditure?” in Report of the Board of Regents, State University, to the Constitutional Convention (Berkeley: University of California, 1878), 11.Google Scholar

80 Hilgard’s role in winning over agrarian groups is noted in Millicent Shinn, “The University of California,” Overland Monthly, Oct. 1892, 357.

81 Douglass, California Idea and American Higher Education, 69.

82 Hoover, Herbert, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874–1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 19.Google Scholar

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84 Yosemite’s mediating role echoed that of intercollegiate college football, which helped secure public affection for universities in this period and shed the reputation for elitism. See Ingrassia, Brian M., The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. William Ritter, one of LeConte’s students, would go on to establish the Science Service, which used radio as a middlebrow space for popular science in the 1920s; see LaFollette, Marcel Chotkowski, Science on the Air: Popularizers and Personalities on Radio and Early Television (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Yelverton, Zanita, 96–99.

86 George Henderson asserts that John Muir’s “passions for nature were stoked by Henry George’s well-known arguments against the buying and selling of nature.” Henderson, George, California and the Fictions of Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 202 Google Scholar. See also Shelton, Tamara Venit, A Squatter’s Republic: Land and the Politics of Monopoly in California, 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

87 Denis Kearney, “Appeal from California: The Chinese Invasion,” Indianapolis Times, Feb. 28, 1878.

88 George, Henry, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth (San Francisco: W. M. Hinton, 1879).Google Scholar

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91 Smith, Pacific Visions, 151.

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94 David Starr Jordan, “California and the Californians,” Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1898, 796.

95 Postel, Populist Vision, 56, 303. Scott Gelber notes that populists across the United States “lobbied for extension programs that could benefit a broader swath of the citizenry.” Gelber, University and the People, 78.

96 Orsi, Richard J., Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. California’s “university on wheels” followed similar initiatives in Iowa, Missouri, and other states. In Texas, agents were assigned “eight hundred miles of railroad to stump on behalf of demonstration, to persuade farmers to try new seeds, fertilizers, and plowing techniques.” See Loss, Christopher P., Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 59.Google Scholar

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99 Angela Ruggiero, “UC Berkeley Strips Names of Slaveowners, Racists from Two of Its Halls,” San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 18, 2020.

100 “Estimated Average Costs for California Residents, 2025–26,” https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/tuition-financial-aid/tuition-cost-of-attendance/ (accessed Aug. 8, 2024).