In 1915 plans were made for the improvement of the Yosemite Village. In the same year occurred an event of greater importance for the Park. Chiefly through the efforts of Stephen T. Mather, the disused Tioga Road became a part of the Yosemite road-system. This road has been reopened and will be a great advantage and convenience to Yosemite visitors. It extends across the Park from east to west, passing near the Big Trees, the Parsons Memorial Lodge, and Tuolumne Meadows, invading the High Sierra, and crossing the range through Tioga Pass. Henceforth automobilists from the East may leave the main continental highway in Nevada and reach the Yosemite Park _via_ Mono Lake and this road. The name of Galen Clark is pleasantly interwoven with the history of the Yosemite National Park. John Muir thus described the man: "The best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.... His kindness to all Yosemite visitors and mountaineers was marvelously constant and uniform." Galen Clark enjoyed showing people of all ages the various wonders of Yosemite Valley, never tired of answering questions, and endeavored carefully to explain the facts concerning each point of interest. Thousands of visitors to the valley came to know him intimately. He came to the Park to live in 1857, and for more than fifty years it was his permanent home. For twenty-four years he was a member of the Yosemite State Park Commission. The Indians of the valley were fond of him, and from them he gathered much interesting information. His serene disposition and his almost constant outdoor life kept his body and mind normal to the day of his death. After he reached the age of ninety, deciding to become an author, he wrote and published three little books relating to the Indians and to the natural wonders of the Yosemite National Park. III THE SEQUOIA AND THE GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS The Sequoia National Park has a crowded luxuriance of wild flowers. It abounds in varied bird-life and has a number of wild sheep, bears, deer, and other animals. It has lakes, cañons, and glaciated mountains. But the supreme attraction of this and the neighboring General Grant Park is the sequoia or Big Tree. Nowhere else on earth are trees found that are so large or so imposing. In places the Big Trees are attractively mixed with other forest trees. Besides the large aged trees, there are middle-aged ones, young trees, and seedlings. The General Grant Park has a sequoia that is thirty-five feet in diameter. This Park, like the Sequoia, was established principally to preserve Big Trees. Both became National Parks in 1890, chiefly through the efforts of George W. Stewart. The General Grant Park has an area of four square miles, the Sequoia Park of two hundred and thirty-seven square miles.