Posted: August 17th, 2005

The work of National Park Service (NPS) Ranger and Buffalo Soldier Specialist Shelton Johnson has been invaluable to the campaign to diversify access to and support for the national forests.

Shelton Johnson, a native of Detroit, Michigan, has worked as a U.S. park ranger since 1987. His work assignments have included Yosemite National Park, Great Basin National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and park areas within and around Washington D.C. He served with the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa, and attended Graduate School at the University of Michigan, majoring in Creative Writing.

Ranger Johnson has presented “Yosemite Through the Eyes of a Buffalo Soldier” at venues across the United States, including the Oakland, Fresno, and Haggin Museums in California, and public schools in Cleveland, Ohio at the request of the local PBS affiliate. Most recently he has performed at the Department of Interior’s Yates Auditorium in Washington, D.C., the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia, and the International Storytelling Center in Tennessee, all in 2004. Ranger Johnson is also the first NPS employee to perform at the International Storytelling Center. His living history program about the Buffalo Soldiers was selected by Sunset Magazine as one of the best interpretive programs in the western United States.

This reproduction of a historic photograph captures several African-American infantry soldiers of the U.S. Army, known as Buffalo Soldiers, in Yosemite, when the park was still administered by our country’s military. Such Buffalo Soldiers patrolled the high country of the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant (Kings Canyon) National Parks.

Ranger Johnson’s image is significant because it counters the common perception that African-Americans played no role in the founding of our great national parks. The history of the Buffalo Soldiers challenges the validity of our traditional understanding of what really happened as the Sierra Nevada was explored and settled. These soldiers were park rangers before the National Park Service was even created.

From 1891 to 1914, U.S. Army soldiers protected some of the first national parks in the United States. In Yosemite, the troops were based in Wawona, near the southern boundary of the park, and at Sequoia, the military was stationed just outside the park in Three Rivers. About 10% of the soldiers serving in the Sierra were African-American. Troops of the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry served in the Sierra in 1899, 1903, 1904.

These soldiers traveled from their winter garrison (the Presidio of San Francisco in 1899 and 1903, and the Ord Barracks at Monterey in 1904) along a route first laid down in 1891. The duties of these Buffalo Soldiers were the same as for their Euro-American counterparts. This involved extensive patrols of park roads and trails.

Ranger Johnson has been researching the presence and role of Buffalo Soldiers in the Sierra national parks. One of the results of his work is a web site dedicated to the story of the Buffalo Soldiers of the Sierra Nevada. It features photographs, articles, and links to more information.

Shelton has won several writing awards, including a Major Hopwood Award in Poetry from the University of Michigan in 1981.

Recent accomplishments include graduating from Yosemite’s Mounted Horse Patrol School in 1996; being selected as a member of a National Park Service delegation to mainland China during the summer of 2000; personally representing the Director of the National Park Service while riding in an equestrian unit in the 2001 Tournament of Roses Parade; being chosen as the Pacific West Regional recipient of the Freeman Tilden Award - ”the highest award given by the National Park Service for Interpretation” - in 2002; serving as a keynote speaker at the National Interpreters Workshop in Reno, NV in 2003, the first such keynote address at the national conference ever by an employee of the federal government; and being asked to accept a resolution passed by the California Legislative Black Caucus honoring the contribution made to Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks by the Buffalo Soldiers, an event held in the California State Assembly on August 28, 2003.