#50StoriesFor50Years

Thanks to Jon, Destry and other impactful leaders and passionate teachers, NatureBridge has served 8,964 kids since 2012 in Prince William Forest Park. After nearly 80 years, the park is living up to the promise of experiential education that was made in the 1930s. On the very same grounds where segregated housing was built, NatureBridge centers equity in its student programs. Not only is the promise being realized, but it is being expanded and made better for the next 50 years and beyond.

Andrew West attended Yosemite Institute in 1997 as a high school junior with a group of students from the Redding Area. That trip was transformative for Andrew. It was the foundation of his life's work, as he returned to Yosemite National Park upon college graduation where he worked for over a decade.

When Isabel Esparza was nine years old, she said goodbye to her family, greeted a crew of friendly flight attendants and flew half-way across the country to Michigan — alone. It was one of many trips for the former NatureBridge educator that was driven by her mother’s adventurous spirit. Isabel shares how that infectious spirit influenced her career path and the way she dreams of raising her own children. She also reflects on how an equity thought experiment she would propose — “Imagine a scientist” — helped students at our Mid-Atlantic campus see themselves represented in environmental education.

Miho has dedicated her life’s work to increasing visibility and access to environmental education, careers, public lands and outdoor adventure for those whom our system has failed to provide these opportunities. Miho’s journey with NatureBridge began in 2000 as an Environmental Science Educator at our Golden Gate National Recreation Area campus, on the traditional territory of Coast Miwok, Ohlone and Graton Rancheria.

NatureBridge began in Yosemite National Park with one person and an idea. That person was high school math teacher Donald Rees. His idea? A week-long trip to Yosemite National Park for his students at Laguna Blanca School in Santa Barbara. The year was 1971, the cost was $80 per student and the promise was a rewarding and educational experience in Yosemite Valley. That trip inspired the founding of Yosemite Institute—now NatureBridge—and 50 years of overnight environmental education in our national parks.

When she was a child on the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s reservation, Cameron Macias would listen to her grandmother tell tales of 100-pound salmon swimming up the Elwha River. Read on for our interview with Cameron, a NatureBridge alum and graduate research assistant at the University of Idaho studying wildlife on the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe reservation.

Tracy Thompson has been an advocate and partner of NatureBridge for nearly 30 years. Read about the importance of her photograph from the late wilderness photographer Galen Rowell and why she's gifting it to NatureBridge.

In the 5th grade, Kia went on a field trip to NatureBridge in Yosemite that would shape the rest of his life. 14 years later, he reflects on that trip and how it influenced his path today.