Quote
plawrence
Maybe the Park Service should hook one up between the top of Half Dome and Glacier Point!
(Just kidding, folks)
;-)
Well, you might be kidding but there were multiple proposals throughout the 20th century to build cable cars from the Valley to Glacier Point. According to Chapter III of Hank Johnston's Yosemite's Yesterdays:
"In September 1913...W.H. Hendricks, a prominent San Francisco real estate developer, petitined the Department of Interior for the right to construct an 'accident-proof' electric elevator [!] from Camp Curry to the top of Glacier Point."
and
In 1917 [after the Glacier Point Hotel was built], Stephen Mather expressed interest in "...a shaft by which the tourist could be carried directly from the Valley to Glacier Point"
and
"In 1929...the Yosemite Park and Curry Co...approached the Federal Government with a plan for a counterbalanced cableway to run from Happy Isles to Glacier Point."
and
"...when studies began for a Yosemite Master Plan in 1967...the Yosemite Park and Curry Co...[was asked] to undertake studies to 'determine the feasibility of constructing and operating an aerial passenger tramway to Glacier Point.'"
Even as late as 1985, former Park Superintendent Horace Albright said in an interview that he thought there was still an outside chance such a tramway might be constructed.
I'd like to think that the idea won't surface again but, unfortunately, where there's a buck to be made, you can never be sure.
--David