Community near Yosemite grieves together on last day in their homes before forced removal

As the sun hung low on the horizon, Neal and Nancy Dawson held each other close in their emptying living room, preparing themselves for the last evening they’d have together in their longtime home near Yosemite National Park.

“It’ll be OK,” Nancy assured her heartbroken husband.

“I hope so,” he responded with a brave smile.

Most of their belongings were packed, but a small wooden bowl – a wedding present – still lay beside them holding treasures, including two sand dollars, lavender, a dried palm twisted into the shape of a flower – a present from Nancy’s son – and a stone heart with the words, “Loving you is what I’ll do forever.”

Neal walked outside to try and conceal a flood of emotion as his wife started to talk about their “wedding bowl.”

The home that has sheltered these precious belongings tied to precious memories is being taken from them. At 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Yosemite leaders terminated the lease for the pad beneath the mobile home they own in the El Portal Trailer Park.

The homeowners learned the week before Christmas that they’d have to remove or surrender their mobile homes in 90 days. Yosemite officials are concerned about the safety of power lines there and have other plans for the site.

No financial compensation or moving help is being provided to the residents.

“I’ve been here 31 years, more than half of my life,” Neal said tearfully of the home he purchased in 1991. “I’ve been here longer than I lived with my parents.”

Of what Yosemite is doing to them, he said, “I understand they want their property, but they’ve allowed us to have our property on this area for such a long time. We should have gotten more of a notice and possibly compensation.”

He said he knows his anguish is far less than that of many elsewhere in the world, such as those fleeing war in Ukraine, but in some ways, he now feels like a refugee himself.

For most in the aging mobile home park established in 1958, removing their longtime homes is not an option, leaving them no choice but to leave them behind. One homeowner tenuously managed to hook one of the slimmer, smaller trailers to an old Chevy truck, but drove it just down the road on Sunday before parking that potentially perilous exit plan for a time.

A group of El Portal residents gathered later that day on a quiet street in the mobile home park to reflect on the gravity of the moment. Neighbors grabbed whatever seats they could find, including overturned buckets and wooden stumps, to grieve together as the circle continued to grow. Many have known each other for decades as Yosemite workers. El Portal residents have to work for Yosemite or its park partners to live in the rural community located along Highway 140 outside the national park, about a five-minute drive from Yosemite’s west entrance.

Some were granted a 30-day extension to remove their belongings, but not live there, making Sunday their final day as a true community. Starting Monday, residents are only allowed to visit their homes during the day to remove items, and power there will be shut off, National Park Service spokespeople said.

Intentional neglect? Power in the mobile home park

Despite that threat, electricity remained on as of Monday afternoon, said Luke Harbin, whose mother is among the affected homeowners.

The trailer park is sandwiched between the hamlets of Old El Portal and Abbieville, where power won’t be shut off.

The Great American Outdoors Act recently funded a major new power line from El Portal to Yosemite Valley, but that work didn’t include the trailer park. Residents recall their mobile homes being bypassed on a daily basis as helicopters flew electrical equipment and power poles over and around them. One wooden power pole in the trailer park on Sunday bearing a PG&E marker was cracked and riddled with holes from woodpeckers. Many see it as intentional neglect on the part of Yosemite leaders, who residents pay for utilities.

Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon told residents in an October letter that if “requisite repairs” to electricity “are not feasible, particularly in the context of the National Park Service’s long-term plan for the site” (turning it into a campground), then NPS would “accelerate” their relocation. Letters titled “NOTICE OF TERMINATION” announcing the end of leases for land beneath their homes arrived in the mail two months later.

Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman in December also told The Bee the site would be needed in 2022 and beyond as a construction staging area for major Yosemite projects. This month, other NPS spokespeople said, “Currently, there is no alternative use planned for the trailer court area in 2022,” declining to explain why this information varies from what was previously shared.

Heartbroken homeowners leave longtime homes near Yosemite

Nine El Portal residents spoke with The Bee on Sunday in the trailer park.

“I’m kind of heartbroken,” Rob Schiefelbein said. “I’ve lived here for probably almost 35 years. Love the place, love the community. It’s just really sad. It would probably be a little easier to accept if it was done in a proper manner with the proper time, with a little respect.”

Schiefelbein is a maintenance worker in Yosemite. He and several others will be able to move into rented employee dorms in Yosemite Valley.

He described the trailer park residents as an extended family.

“I’m just going to miss the little community feeling,” Schiefelbein said. “It’s a special thing. It’s more than just these little trailers.”

Chris and Terri Nishimura, other longtime trailer park homeowners and Yosemite workers, are part of that extended family. They will move to Mariposa, about a 45-minute drive from El Portal.

Terri first moved into the trailer park in 1978 with her mom.

“I think we’ve been too busy to even realize how hurt we are,” Terri said from her kitchen, still filled with belongings that need to be moved.

NPS spokespeople said Yosemite has housing agreements with 12 individuals in the trailer park, also known as the trailer court or trailer village. Two of the homes were being sublet in violation of agreements, spokespeople said.

One of the renters was Gilbert Domingues, a landscaper who previously worked for Yosemite as a firefighter and base camp manager. The Native American man was born in Yosemite and grew up in Yosemite’s last native village before it was destroyed by the Park Service.

Indigenous people have lived in the Yosemite area for thousands of years. Mortar holes on boulders in the trailer park, used to grind food, are reminders of this. The trailer court lies within what Yosemite calls the El Portal Archeological District and the El Portal/Foresta American Indian Traditional Cultural Area.

But after a lifetime in the Yosemite area he loves, the loss of Domingues’ home forced him to move to Oregon this weekend to live with his son.

“I left El Portal for good ... starting over in a new place,” Domingues wrote in a text message Sunday night.

Harbin, who no longer works in Yosemite, is living with friends for now. Unlike in the El Portal homes residents own, up the road in Yosemite Valley, children and spouses of most employees can’t live with them in housing rentals.

“I’m worried about my mom,” Harbin said tearfully. “She’s 66 years old. She couldn’t do this without me.”

Walls inside her mobile home filled with framed photos of Harbin and other family illustrate the loving bond between mother and son. The way their life together is being ripped from them has been devastating.

“My mom’s been here for 38 years,” Harbin said. “I grew up here. I learned how to swim down the road. I learned how to fish down here in the river. It’s been our whole lives.”

Signs of home are everywhere in the trailer park. Yards are filled with potted plants, and wind chimes, dream catchers and hummingbird feeders hang from porches. Some of the mobile homes have stained glass windows.

At one home Sunday evening, a string of colorful Christmas lights were glowing perhaps for the last time in the peaceful community beside the Merced River, mostly populated by oak and pine trees.

Nancy Dawson will take a few seeds from her beloved “prayer tree,” a potted Japanese maple – once a bonsai that’s grown too large to transport – in hopes its offspring will grow at her future home.

The speed of the coming evictions have been hard to navigate. Some Yosemite workers said they just got keys to their new rentals a few days ago, along with the 30-day extensions to remove their belongings.

There’s a GoFundMe donation account and change.org petition to help them.

Many also just recently found storage units. Harbin had to rent one in Fresno, a two-hour drive from El Portal.

There’s also concerns about the safety of remaining belongings in the mobile homes, since residents will no longer be allowed to stay in them overnight. A letter Muldoon wrote Friday promised patrols and the installation of locked gates at the trailer park entrances, what hadn’t happened as of Monday.

Instead, a small faded “road closed” sign sat where a locked gate was promised.

Near the sign sat an empty playground built by Harbin’s late father and other parents when the trailer park was a thriving community filled with children. Homeowners there now are near retirement age. For many years, Yosemite has been gradually closing the trailer park by attrition.

“We all knew at some point we were going to have to leave, but they could have done this way better, instead of just giving us 90 days and kicking us out of here with no compensation,” Harbin said. “We should have had at least a year, and it’s just wrong.”

One eclectic peaceful protest has been empowering: As residents leave, some have added their garden art to a growing collection of statues outside Harbin’s house. It started with Harbin moving some stone woodland creatures painted by his late grandmother to the edge of the road “so when Park Service drives by, they’re all staring at them.”

The “evil squirrel” is particularly menacing.

Harbin hopes the statues remind the National Park Service that “people live here, this is our home.”

Of that home he’s being forced to leave behind, Harbin added, “It’s not a lot, but to us it is. It’s everything.”