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 On Tuesday, more than 125 years after the Scottish-American
naturalist's advocacy helped inspire the creation of Yosemite
National Park, some of its most hallowed sites are set to be
stripped of their famous names as part of a bitter, $50 million
legal squabble.
At issue are the monikers for such beloved visitor attractions as
the Ahwahnee Hotel, a national historic landmark built in 1927 whose
name reflects the Northern California park's American Indian
heritage. Yosemite, which regularly ranks among the top U.S. tourist
attractions, saw a record 4.3 million visitors in 2015.
"This dispute is like an ugly divorce, with the park-loving public
as the children," San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders
wrote.
The court fight began quietly in September, when the Delaware North
Company, having lost its lucrative Yosemite concessions contract to
competitor Aramark, sued the National Park Service claiming
ownership of the trademarks, which it valued at $44 million. The
company is also seeking compensation for millions of dollars in
other assets, as well as damages.
 The lawsuit made nationwide headlines in January after park service
officials announced that it would be forced to rename the landmarks
by March 1, the day Aramark formally took over, infuriating park
visitors who saw Delaware North as a selfish corporate villain
holding the historic names hostage.
"This is corporate greed," Eric Raymond, a Bay Area resident wrote
in a Tweet urging support for a petition that seeks the release of
the names "to the citizens of the United States."
The National Park Service also claimed in its response to the
lawsuit that Delaware North failed to notify them when it registered
the names years earlier, accusing the company of "a business model
whereby it collects trademarks to the names of iconic property owned
by the United States."
But in filing an amended version of its lawsuit, Delaware North in
turn accused the park service of changing the names as part of a
cynical legal strategy to foment public outrage and drive down the
value of the trademarks.
Delaware North also offered to allow the National Park Service to
use the disputed names during the legal battle, according to court
filings and interviews.
The company said it was required to purchase Yosemite's so-called
intellectual property when it was first awarded the concessions
contract in 1993 and trademarked the names as a routine business
practice under that stipulation.
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The trademarking action was available in the public record, said Dan
Jensen, who retired as president of Delaware North's Yosemite
operation in October and now serves as a consultant to company.
"There's nothing sinister about this," Jensen said. "It was not done
in the dark of night, not done in secret."
The Department of Justice, which is representing the National Park
Service in the lawsuit, declined to comment to Reuters.
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said renaming the Ahwahnee the
Majestic Yosemite Hotel and Curry Village as Half Dome Village was
necessary to ensure a "seamless transition" to the new
concessionaire, which takes over on Tuesday.
"In the future, depending on what happens, we remain interested and
always have been interested" in reverting back to the original
names, Gediman said.
Meantime, park fans are addressing the dispute on social media,
lamenting in particular the re-naming of the Ahwahnee, which means
"large mouth" in the Miwok Indian language and was what they called
the valley before the arrival of settlers in the mid-19th century.
Scott Reid, whose Twitter account identified him as a poet from
Northern California, Tweeted: "The big trees/are going to be
talking/about this/for some time/Ahwahnee."
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; editing by Sara Catania, Dina Kyriakidou
and Alan Crosby)
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