Shirley Sargent was a historian of the Yosemite area in the United States.

Sargent was born in Pasadena, California

Pasadena, California

Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

. Her father was a surveyor who helped rebuild the Tioga Road in Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...

, starting in 1936. So she had the good fortune of spending her childhood as a self-described “tomboy” in Yosemite. A rare crippling disease, dystonia musculorum deformans

Dystonia

Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder, in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures. The disorder may be hereditary or caused by other factors such as birth-related or other physical trauma, infection, poisoning or reaction to...

, kept her to a wheelchair from age 14, but that didn’t stop her.

After writing Wawona’s Yesterdays, she went on to write several other Yosemite History books, focusing on stories about people—making them come alive. Her most authoritative book is Galen Clark

Galen Clark

Galen Clark is known as the first European American to discover the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees, and is notable for his role in gaining legislation to protect it and the Yosemite area, and for 24 years serving as Guardian of Yosemite National Park.-Early life and education:Galen Clark...

: Yosemite Guardian. Shirley self-published most of her books, with printer and historian Hank Johnson, under the name Flying Spur Press, and later under her own imprint Ponderosa Press. Other popular books of hers include Pioneers in Petticoats, John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

 in Yosemite National Park, Yosemite & Its Innkeepers, and Yosemite Chapel 1879-1989.

In 1961 she bought and built on Theodore Solomons

Theodore Solomons

Theodore Seixas Solomons was an explorer and early member of the Sierra Club. From 1892 to 1897 he explored and named the Mount Goddard, Evolution Valley and Evolution Basin region in what is now northern Kings Canyon National Park in eastern California...

' homesite in Foresta, California

Foresta, California

Foresta is an unincorporated community in Mariposa County, California, to the immediate west of Yosemite National Park's west boundary. It is located northeast of El Portal, at an elevation of 4314 feet ....

, which had only a fireplace surviving from a 1936 fire. She called her home Flying Spur, but it burned in the 1990 Yosemite A-Rock Fire, which also destroyed her historical papers. She rebuilt her home, but before her death she had to move to her parents’ old home in Mariposa, California

Mariposa, California

Mariposa is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Mariposa County, California, United States. The population was 2,173 at the 2010 census, up from 1,373 at the 2000 census. Its name is Spanish for "butterfly", after the flocks of Monarchs seen overwintering there by early...

due to her illness. She died at her home there.

Selected Books by Shirley Sargent

• Pipeline Down The Valley (fiction, 1955)
• Pat Hawly, Pre-school Teacher (fiction, 1958)
• Three Names for Katherine (with Hannah Smith) (fiction, 1960)
• The Heart-Holding Mountains (fiction, 1961)
• Wawona's Yesterdays (1961)
• Stop the Typewriters (fiction, 1963)
• Galen Clark: Yosemite Guardian (1964)
• Treasure at Flying Spur (fiction, 1965)
• Pioneers In Petticoats (1966)
• Ranger in Skirts (fiction, 1966)
• Yosemite Tomboy (fiction, 1967)
• Theodore Parker Lukens, Father of Forestry (1969)
• John Muir in Yosemite National Park (1972)
• Yosemite and Its Innkeeper (1975)
• The Ahwahnee (1977)
• Yosemite's High Sierra Camps (1977)
• The Yosemite Chapel, 1879-1979 (1979)
• Yosemite's Historic Wawona (1979)
• Dear Papa: Letters between John Muir & Wanda (1985)
• Solomons of the Sierra (1989)
• Enchanted Childhoods, Growing Up in Yosemite (1993)
• Protecting Paradise: Yosemite Rangers, 1898-1960 (1998)

External links

• Sargent: Yosemite Historian by Fernando Peñalosa (Quaking Aspen Books, 2006). Describes book and link includes obituary and bibliography, also by Fernando Peñalosa