How Yosemite Got the Park Service's Longest-Running Deaf Services Program

Maureen Fitzgerald (left) interprets for Dale Dahl and ranger naturalist Eileen Berrey, Yosemite, July 1979. Harpers Ferry Center/National Park Service.

A commitment in 1979

In 1979, Yosemite National Park pledged to make the park more accessible to visitors with disabilities, part of the Park Service-wide "Year of the Visitor." Ever since, a full-time sign language interpreter has worked at Yosemite every summer — the longest-running program of its kind in the National Park Service. It grew from the work of two citizens: Dale Dahl, a Deaf man who used a wheelchair, and Maureen Fitzgerald, a hearing sign language interpreter.

A note on words: "Deaf" with a capital D refers to people who share Deaf culture — a common language (American Sign Language), history and values; lowercase "deaf" refers to the medical condition of not hearing. Scholars write "D/deaf" to include both.

Activists first

Dahl and Fitzgerald were already veterans of disability rights work in the Bay Area, 150 miles west of Yosemite. They met in 1975 at the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, founded in 1972 as a community center run by and for disabled people, offering services such as skills training, peer counseling and wheelchair repair. Dahl, by one colleague's account, was the reason the center had Deaf services at all: he taught sign language to staff and community members — Fitzgerald among them — and built ties between Berkeley's D/deaf and physically disabled communities.

Those ties mattered in the protests of the late 1970s. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 barred discrimination against disabled people in federally funded activities, but it couldn't take effect until the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare signed the regulations. In April 1977, activists staged sit-ins across the country to press the Carter administration; the longest lasted almost a month at the HEW building in San Francisco. Dahl took part, and Fitzgerald visited often and stayed overnight. The regulations were signed on April 28, 1977.

A camping trip

In 1979, Dahl and Fitzgerald — by then a couple — went camping in Yosemite. They met Donna Pritchett, the park's Disabled Access Coordinator, who also used a wheelchair and urged them to help the park serve D/deaf visitors. On a bird walk, Chief Naturalist Len McKenzie noticed Fitzgerald interpreting for Dahl; McKenzie had already widened access for people with physical disabilities at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. With national attention on disability rights growing, Yosemite was investing in staff workshops, and Dahl was invited to contribute that spring.

Building the program

The park then hired Fitzgerald for the summer of 1979 to interpret and create a Deaf Services Program. Despite her efforts, it didn't hire Dahl, who volunteered his expertise and community ties instead. Fitzgerald later reflected, in a 1999 oral history, that a hearing person who signs can seem less threatening than a Deaf person — and that Dahl spent a good deal of time at Yosemite during her summers there.

That first summer, Fitzgerald:

• interpreted for D/deaf visitors at visitor centers and selected programs;
• taught sign language classes several times a week, and set up informal lunchtime practice with D/deaf visitors;
• raised staff awareness of Deaf culture and disabled visitors' rights;
• added lasting changes that worked even with no interpreter on site: video captions, printed scripts and a teletypewriter (TTY), which let people exchange typed messages in real time by phone.

An article in The Yosemite Sentinel invites staff to learn sign language, July 1980. Yosemite National Park.

Knowing that people won't use tools they don't know about, the two reached out to the Deaf community, which suggested printed information and clear signs at every entrance station. Mary Ellen Lentz, a Deaf camper and hiker, reviewed materials, helped with classes and created sign names for places and rock formations that the park still uses. The first summer's success led to a permanent seasonal job, today's Deaf Services Coordinator in the Visitor Information Services division, who oversees paid and volunteer interpreters.

Rights, not charity

The program shows the ripple effects of the disability rights activism of the 1970s: the 504 regulations made it possible for the Park Service to widen access, and the 1977 sit-in put disabled Americans' civil rights in the spotlight, building disability pride. Activists like Dahl and Fitzgerald spoke of access as a matter of rights, not charity. Fitzgerald credited Section 504 with opening her own career, as interpretation became required at federally funded activities. When Yosemite's staff showed interest, the two were ready — and the result was permanent change.

Sources

Based on Ellie Kaplan (National Council for Preservation Education intern with the National Park Service Park History Program), "Founding Yosemite's Deaf Services Program," National Park Service, 2023, drawing on oral histories of Maureen Fitzgerald and Corbett O'Toole in the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office and on Yosemite's Deaf Services records; quotations from the oral histories are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Phrases lost from the imported text are restored from the live page.