The untold story of the Chinese Americans who helped create Yosemite

From the park's mountain peaks to its winding roads to its wood-led buildings, Chinese American history is everywhere in Yosemite – if you know where to look.

Hidden beyond the iconic Half Dome monolith, about a 90-minute drive north-east from Yosemite Valley, a quiet section of Yosemite National Park emerges. Here in Tuolumne Meadows, less-gazed-upon domes and peaks are served with a refreshing dose of serenity in the subalpine terrain. Lurking in the background, just out of view, is Sing Peak, rising 10,552ft from the park's south-eastern corner.

"The way the topography is with certain ridge lines and perspectives, [Sing Peak] just gets hidden. But it's on our park map – the one that millions of people receive," said Yosemite park ranger Yenyen Chan, explaining that only a few dozen of the hundreds of peaks in Yosemite are listed on the map.

It's somewhat symbolic that a massive summit named after Chinese American chef Tie Sing in 1899 has remained largely unrecognised in Yosemite for more than a century.

In fact, Chinese immigrants have long been part of Yosemite's story, from building large parts of the park's early infrastructure to running the kitchen and laundry services at the park's 1856-built Victorian-style Wawona Hotel. Yet, their contributions have remained ignored.

Yosemite's Chinese American history has likely been buried because of the nation's long history of anti-Asian sentiment and discrimination. The surge of Chinese who immigrated to California during the Gold Rush in the late 1840s were immediately slapped with a foreign miners tax in 1850 and a hefty $20 a month "non-citizens" fee. That forced many to find work in other industries, like hotels and railroads. But then came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning Chinese labourers from entering the country, a policy that remained in place until 1943.

Chan, who has been a US Park Ranger since 2003, got her first hint of Yosemite's Chinese American history in 1993 as a park intern, when her supervisor told her that the Chinese built the Tioga Road, which climbs above the valley and crosses the park from east to west back in 1882-83.

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