Merced Lake

Originally built by D.J. Desmond in 1916 as part of Stephen Mather’s vision to make Yosemite’s backcountry accessible, Merced Lake was the first of the High Sierra Camps. It closed during World War I when Desmond’s company went bankrupt, then reopened in the 1920s under the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 18, 2014 (NRIS #14000407).

Native American Era

Pre-1850

Long before European explorers arrived, Merced Lake served as a vital waypoint along trans-Sierra trade routes. The Ahwahneechee (Southern Miwok), Mono Lake Kootzaduka’a, and Western Mono tribes used these trails for centuries, conducting summer trading expeditions across the Sierra Nevada.

The lake and surrounding meadows provided an ideal resting place for trading parties carrying obsidian, pine nuts, and salt from the eastern slopes, while traders from the west brought clamshells, dried fish, and acorns. Archaeological evidence suggests these routes were active for thousands of years, making Merced Lake one of the oldest continuously used sites in the Sierra Nevada.

Military Era

1890–1914

When Yosemite became a national park in 1890, the U.S. Army took responsibility for protecting and managing the wilderness. The cavalry established a patrol outpost at Merced Lake in 1905, recognizing its strategic location for monitoring the backcountry.

Cavalry troops spent summers patrolling the park on horseback, expelling sheepherders whose flocks damaged fragile alpine meadows, confiscating firearms from poachers, and constructing trails that would later become the backbone of the park’s backcountry access system.

Vision & Creation

1916

In 1916, Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the newly created National Park Service, envisioned a network of backcountry camps that would draw visitors out of the congested Yosemite Valley and into the pristine high country. Mather believed that experiencing the wilderness firsthand would create advocates for conservation and the national park ideal.

The Desmond Park Service Company, Yosemite’s concessioner at the time, constructed three “mountain chalets” that summer: Tenaya Lake, Tuolumne Meadows, and Merced Lake. At Merced Lake that meant two 18-by-84-foot rock-and-canvas buildings for the office, lounge, dining room, and kitchen, and twenty-four “guest bungalows” — tents set in two facing rows — with rowboats packed in by mule for the lake. Each camp kept a manager, a cook, and an “expert” fisherman to teach guests to cast. Bed, breakfast, and dinner cost $3.00 a day — revolutionary for backcountry travel at the time.

Boys’ Sports Camp

1922–1924

The camps faced immediate challenges. World War I and the Desmond Company’s bankruptcy closed all three in 1918, after just two seasons. After the war, the reorganized Yosemite National Park Company experimented with different uses for the facilities.

From 1922 to 1924, Merced Lake operated as a boys’ sports camp, complete with basketball courts, tennis courts, and a baseball diamond. This experiment introduced hundreds of young people to the Sierra wilderness, many of whom became lifelong conservationists.

Modern Era

1926–2014

In 1926, the Yosemite Park and Curry Company took over operations with a camp for 20 guests, establishing the template for High Sierra Camps that continues today. The camp proved so popular with long-staying guests that in 1928 it was rebuilt and expanded to house 59 — and became, in the words of the camps’ 1977 history, “the only camp to boast hot-and-cold showers and canvas cabins with permanent floors.” That capacity of 59 held for the next fifty years.

Through the mid-20th century, the camps evolved to meet changing visitor expectations while keeping their rustic character. Concrete foundations replaced dirt floors and propane replaced kerosene for cooking, while Merced Lake kept its reputation as the most “luxurious” of the High Sierra Camps.

On July 18, 2014, Merced Lake High Sierra Camp was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRIS #14000407), recognizing its significance in American conservation history, outdoor recreation, and wilderness education.

Contemporary Challenges

2015–Present

In 2015, the Yosemite Valley Stables — the camp’s traditional supply base — gave its last public trail rides under the park’s river plans, staying on solely to supply the High Sierra Camps by pack mule. Meanwhile, increasing wildfire activity has periodically closed access trails. When the current concession contract took effect in 2016, Merced Lake was reduced from 22 tent cabins to 11, cutting its capacity by 18 guest beds. Between 2017 and 2025, the camp was open only once, in 2018.

In February 2025, the camp’s status changed formally: Amendment No. 4 to the Yosemite concession contract — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request — removed Merced Lake and Vogelsang from the concessioner’s required services and assigned facilities, ending all contract rights and obligations for the two camps. The amendment records the reason in the Park Service’s own words: it “can no longer provide potable water at two of the five High Sierra Camps.” The same amendment removed the Yosemite Valley Stables — the camp’s century-old supply base — from the contract as well.

The stables’ removal changes the camp’s logistics as much as its status. For a century, everything Merced Lake needed came up the Merced River canyon by mule — thirteen trail miles from the Valley floor. With the Valley stables gone from the contract, the one stable still packing to the High Sierra Camps is at Tuolumne Meadows, and any future resupply would have to come from there instead: roughly fifteen trail miles over the high country via Lyell Canyon, the longest haul to any of the five camps.

Merced Lake is now closed and outside any operating contract, its government-owned buildings still standing on the lakeshore. It remains off the 2026 guided loop, with no announced plan for its future — yet more than a century of history, and a place on the National Register, argue for one.