An Eye-Opening 1922 Honeymoon in Yosemite ~ Part 1

“In the afternoon I worked on our camp outfit. It is complete . . . stove, bed, stools and a nice box to fasten on the running board to carry our dishes in. Also, groceries; and I’ll make a table.”

Matthew Keegan, My Grandfather

A Letter to His Fiancé, Tillie Buechler

May 31, 1922, Corona, CA

Thirty-five days before my grandfather, Matt, was to wed his fiancé, Tillie, he wrote the words above to update her regarding their honeymoon camping plans in Yosemite Valley. 

I don’t know a lot about my grandfather since I never met him, but I know enough to explain his diligent planning for their camping trip in Yosemite after their wedding.

Let me provide some background.  Matt was born January 13, 1884 near Cazenovia, Wisconsin, United States of America (US).   Cazenovia is about 45 miles west of Portage, Wisconsin, where John Muir’s family settled after they emigrated from Dunbar, Scotland to the US when John was 11 years old (1849).

Although Matt only spent a short time in Wisconsin before his father moved the family to South Dakota, the beauty of the land in Wisconsin surely impacted him on some level.  It definitely made an impression on John Muir.  In his book, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, Muir wrote the following of Wisconsin’s natural beauty:

“This sudden plash into pure wildness— baptism in Nature’s warm heart—how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful growing lessons . . . Everything new and pure in the very prime of the spring when Nature’s pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping time with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!”

 John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 63–64.

Muir paints an eye-opening picture of the Wisconsin “wildness” that would invigorate the vision of any newborn to appreciate the natural world.  It’s no wonder that thirty-eight years after Matt’s birth, he would select the “Incomparable Valley” of Yosemite as a destination for Tillie and himself to ‘rejoice together’ during their honeymoon.  

Matt yearned to be in the mountains.  Writing to Tillie in early May 1922 to update her on their camping plans, he echoed the sentiments of John Muir’s famous quote about responding to the call of the mountains.  Muir wrote to his sister in 1873, “the mountains are calling and I must go . . .”   Matt wrote similarly to Tillie, “I can’t wait for our honeymoon trip to start. I want to get into the mountains.”  That desire to be in the mountains also explains why Matt chose to be employed as a forest ranger as part of his work history.

Matt Keegan while serving as a Police Officer.

If Matt needed any inspiration from Muir to find a way to get to Yosemite, it would not be lacking during his first thirty-eight years of life.  In 1884, the year Matt was born, John Muir published his first book The Mountains of California.  Although Muir had published magazine articles since 1872, this first book would propel his notoriety as naturalist and conservationist across the globe.  In fact, Muir’s progression as a spokesperson for natural places paralleled Matt’s own growth and development from childhood to young adulthood.

For example, when Matt turned six years of age in 1890, Muir helped establish Yosemite National Park by an act of the US Congress on October 1, 1890, making it the third national park in the US.  Muir, often called the “Father of Our National Parks,” not only worked to make Yosemite a reality, but he also became “personally involved in the creation of Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petrified Forest, and Grand Canyon National Parks,” according to the Sierra Club website.

Additionally, Robert Underwood Johnson, the associate editor of the Century magazine where many of Muir’s articles were printed, joined with Muir to coordinate the development of the Sierra Club in 1892.  Muir became its first president and remained so until he died in 1914.

When Matt turned 16 in 1900, Muir’s influence on the conservation movement became even more significant.  As noted by the Sierra Club website, “In 1901, Muir published Our National Parks, the book that brought him to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903, Roosevelt visited Muir in Yosemite. There, together, beneath the trees, they laid the foundation of Roosevelt's innovative and notable conservation programs.” Being a “mountain man” himself, Matt surely tracked the progress of these two national figures.

Part of that progress for Muir included a flurry of book publishing consisting of seven books from 1911 through 1916, including My First Summer in the Sierra”(1911), The Yosemite (1912), and The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913).

Matt turned 29 years of age when Muir and the Sierra Club failed in their attempts to thwart self-seeking politicians scheming to dam the Tuolumne River in Yosemite to secure water for San Francisco residents. The Raker Act passed in Congress in 1913 and President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation on December 19 allowing the dam to be built.  Work on the dam began shortly after in 1914.  The O’Shaughnessy Dam, as it came to be called, would ultimately turn the Hetch Hetchy Valley, comparable in beauty to Yosemite Valley, into a reservoir.   

By the time Matt and Tillie came to Yosemite in July 1922, the construction of the dam would almost be complete.  What an eye-opening scene to see the narrow and rocky gorge of Hetch Hetchy Valley contaminated with concrete. 

Despite failing to stop the damming of the Hetch Hetchy, Muir and his writings did impact many.  The establishment of the National Park Service resulted in Augst 25,1916 to prevent further desecration of the National Parks by local interests.  Muir’s influence likely touched Matt’s heart and so he and Tillie selected Yosemite as the perfect destination to spend their honeymoon in the mountains.

His exuberant planning for their ‘rejoicing together’ in Yosemite became evident when reading the letters he wrote to Tillie (preserved by my mother).  Although one could conclude in reading the letters that his thoughts focused significantly on planning for the camping trip, he does state emphatically how much he looked forward to being with Tillie on their wedding day.  Less than three months before their July 4^th wedding, he wrote:  “Two months, 22 days and our day has dawned, will I be happy? . . . I can scarcely wait for that happy day. Then I can have you with me all the time, instead of seeing you for a few days once a month.” 

So, the excitement of the trip to Yosemite certainly may not have had equal importance to the wedding day, but I have a suspicion that Matt spent more time thinking about and planning the camping trip than planning for the actual wedding.

I sense that both Matt and Tillie would be headed for some eye-opening experiences on their honeymoon in Yosemite National Park.  Please read next month’s installment in Part 2 of “An Eye-Opening Honeymoon”!

A Studebaker rests in Yosemite valley with its running board being put to good use (1922). Photo courtesy of the Yosemite Archives and The National Park Service. Public Domain; Photographer unknown.