Yosemite National Park Superintendent Don Neubacher looked across the forest of mostly young faces in front of him and said the park’s 125th birthday celebration should be focused on youth rather than on the age of the nation’s first national park.
“The focus of this event is on youth,” he said, “because the future of the park is in their hands.”
Neubacher was presiding Tuesday over a celebration that was the first of several scheduled through Oct. 1, the day when in 1890 Yosemite became the model for what would become the National Parks System.
Nine-year-old Gabriel Lavan-Ying of Florida was at Neubacher’s side as an honorary chairman of the festivities. He was declared an honorary park ranger last year as a Make-A-Wish Foundation grantee. That was during the 150th-year celebration of the signing of the Yosemite grant in 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln...