In 1957, the National Park Service decided to clear out a warehouse in Yosemite. One item in that warehouse was the 1929 Dodge touring car seen in the current 100 year celebration of Highway 140, the All-Year Highway to Yosemite.
Toney Gorham, a then park service employee, was able to buy the car for $10. It was in pretty poor condition. The engine was frozen and would not turn over. The cloth top and the upholstery were mouse eaten and unusable.
The body was rusting and needed significant repair, but all in all, my dad really liked the car. We lived in Army Row government housing, so he brought the car home and into the garage out back.
I was only eight years old, but he wanted me to help him get the car into shape. We began by sanding, and sanding … and sanding the body to get rid of the rust. Then we removed all the cloth from the seats and the top and started to replace it.
He was a pretty good mechanic and was able to get the engine working. After a few months, the car began to look nice and ran well.
It was a real treat for dad, mom and the four of us boys to putt around in Yosemite, honking the ooh-gah horn and waving at friends and visitors. I can remember him driving through snow that was about a foot thick.
When my parents decided that it was time to move from Yosemite to Mariposa in the spring of 1959, we took everything, including the Dodge to our small ranch on Carleton Road.
Even though the road at that time was not much more that a dirt trail, we drove the car as often as possible. Then one day when I came home from school, I noticed the car was gone.
When dad came home, I asked where it was, and he told me he traded it to a man in Planada for a pickup. I looked at that early 1950s Studebaker pickup and I was heart-broken.
I told him that I thought he got the short end of the trade, but he said that on the ranch, we needed a pickup and the little Dodge wouldn’t do what we needed.
It was just about a month later that he got a call from the park service wanting to know if he would lease the Dodge to them. They said they would lease it for 20 years, put in the El Portal museum on blocks, start it periodically to make sure it would still run and at the end of the lease, we would get the car back.
He told them that he no longer owned the car and gave them the information about the new owner.
NPS was able to work out something with the new owner and the car was moved to the El Portal museum.
It was on display there for many years, along with other vintage automobiles, an early 1900s Harley Davidson motorcycle, and of course the train that sat outside.
I worked in El Portal during my high school years, but after that, I never saw the car again until today at the Mariposa Museum and History Center.
Bill, my only surviving brother, and I were excited to see it again — and to share some memories of the Dodge and Yosemite.
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