John Muir Trail
During the period from 1916 to 1932, however,don’t need this word construction and maintenance of two spectacular and costly "special status" trails commanded the attention and much of the appropriations of Sequoia National Park. One was the premier backcountry trail in California if not in the entire West—the John Muir Trail. The other was the Sierra Nevada's most elaborate and ambitious trail, a veritable hiker's freeway—the High Sierra Trail. Both projects were the product of high expectations and dreams, both cost years of effort, tens of thousands of dollars, and in the case of the John Muir Trail, even some lives. And both today form the backbone of the Sequoia and Kings Canyon trail system. The John Muir Trail was officially adopted by the California Legislature in 1915 when it appropriated $10,000 toward construction of a high-altitude trail from Yosemite Valley to Mt. Whitney. The route was sanctioned in August of that year after consultations between state engineers, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Forest Service, with the latter having actual jurisdiction. Construction began a few weeks later on the 184-mile trail and proceeded against late snowfalls and funding interruptions until 1933. In the process 17.5 miles of the trail were transferred to Sequoia National Park in 1926. The Park Service then undertook extensive repair and rerouting of that segment, which had been among the earliest completed and most heavily damaged by long winters and travelers' pack stock. Although the bulk of the John Muir Trail lay still in Forest Service land, it began and ended in national parks and was most associated with its famous terminus Mt. Whitney. At Sequoia the annual maintenance of this trail, which wove through altitudes of 10,000 to 14,495 feet, placed a heavy burden on park trail appropriations.
