Johnny Wilson's Place Orchard

Johnny Wilson’s Place Orchard was planted by Johnny Wilson sometime between 1873 and 1917. Johnny Wilson, who was Southern Sierra Miwok, received a 30-acre allotment from the General Land Office in 1917 for land he and his family were living and farming on. He lived on the property with his wife Nancy and several children and grandchildren. They planted and farmed the orchard along with a vegetable garden until Johnny’s death in 1937. The family sold produce to local residents and concessionaires in Yosemite National Park.

The Orchard and Vegetable Garden

The historic orchard is located on the southern bank of the Merced River near the town of El Portal. Food production on the property was supported by irrigation from a creek that flowed down from the adjoining mountains. A system of irrigation ditches diverted water from the creek to the orchard and vegetable garden. The flow of water was regulated using a small dam of stacked stones that could be removed and replaced when needed. The orchard’s rugged location posed the challenge of crossing the river to get to the road and into town. When the water was low, rock-hopping or wading were reliable methods, but at high water a tram suspended over the river on a cable was used. Historical accounts also tell of deer, bear, and bighorn sheep visiting the orchard.

According to Johnny Wilson’s granddaughters, the orchard included, “Bartlett pear], Winter Grains [Winter Nellis Pears?], crabapples, Yellow Delicious [apples], Red Delicious [apples], Pippins [apples], what they call now Santa Rosa plums, black plums that would turn into prunes on the trees, freestone and cling peaches, green plums, one cherry tree, but they didn’t grow too good here, [and] Roman apples” (Davis-King 1998, 24). In the vegetable garden he grew, “cucumbers, tomatoes, Italian tomatoes, chilies of many types, lettuce, all kinds, celery, onions, carrots” (Davis-King 1998, 109). And berries were a specialty, with blackberries, raspberries, grapes, and strawberries being grown on the property. The strawberries were popular with Mrs. Curry of [Curry Village. Johnny Wilson would travel into Yosemite to sell his produce, and people from the El Portal area would cross the river to get produce directly from the farm. The fruits and vegetables were an important source of income as well as food for the Wilson Family. Johnny Wilson’s granddaughters recalled their grandpa being a great cook who would prepare fried apple slices with cinnamon every morning, and make bread, deer stew, biscuits and gravy, beans, and cooked vegetables.

Historic Transitional Period

The orchard represents an important time in U.S. history—one marked by significant shifts in indigenous ways of living. Johnny Wilson was born around 1852, a year after the Mariposa Battalion killed and forcibly removed Native Americans from Yosemite Valley and burned their villages. Over the next several decades Wilson lived through non-native settlement in his homeland, which brought with it a profound cultural shift for the Sierra Miwok people. An archeological and ethnographic report about the site called it, “one of the only post-contact archaeological sites remaining in the Central Sierra region.” And the site is significant to local Native Americans as “the last functioning village inhabited by Miwok speakers in the region” (Davis-King 1998).

Accounts describing life at Johnny Wilson’s Place tell of the Miwok language being spoken with some family members also able to speak Chukchansi (Johnny Wilson’s dog Jim only understood commands spoken in Miwok). Traditional harvesting and material processing, such as making cradleboards from sourberry branches, happened alongside a more European American style of farming and fruit production. Johnny Wilson’s Place also links to the program of forced assimilation by the federal government through the Federal Indian Boarding School Program. Johnny Wilson’s granddaughter was sent away to the Stewart Indian School in Nevada when she was 15 years old, then to the Sherman Institute in Riverside California for 5 years.

What Remains

Today a few fruit trees remain from Johnny Wilson’s Orchard. Forty fruit trees were counted in the orchard during a survey in 2011, but the numbers were significantly reduced due to damage from the 2018 Ferguson Fire which burned through the site and closed Yosemite National Park for three weeks. In 2019, 7 living fruit trees were counted, consisting of 5 pear, and two apple, all of which were likely root sprouts from the original orchard trees. The remaining fruit trees and the archeological site tell a story of the Wilson family’s resilience during a time of rapid change for indigenous people in the area and throughout the West.

Source Cited: Davis-King. “Johnny Wilson’s Place: Investigations at CA-MRP-362/H and CA-MRP-363H Within the El Portal Archaeological District, Mariposa County, Yosemite National Park, California” 1998

Part of a series of articles titled
Historic Orchards in Yosemite National Park.

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Meyer Orchard

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