Yosemite ranger Shelton Johnson recognized for promoting diversity in national parks
Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson received a national award for promoting more diversity in national parks.
Johnson is being awarded the 2022 American Park Experience Award for his lifelong efforts helping “more families and youth feel welcome as they see their stories told throughout the country in parks, cultural, and historic sites alike,” announced National Park Trust, the organization that administers the award, on Tuesday.
Johnson has focused his work on telling the story of the “Buffalo Soldiers” – Black soldiers who were among the first park rangers before the creation of the National Park Service.
“His talent and enthusiasm are infectious, and he has used his gifts to encourage all, especially those from diverse communities, to visit, feel welcome, and experience the beauty and history found in our nation’s parks,” said Bill Brownell, National Park Trust board chair, in a news release. “A national park celebrity, Shelton has greatly enhanced the awareness and appreciation of our parks.”
Johnson has also hosted celebrities over his 35 years as a park ranger. Among them: Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King. He met with them during their multi-day camping trip in 2010 that was broadcast around the world.
“Many people first heard about my work to connect the disconnected by watching Oprah’s talk show that year,” Johnson said. “I have had multiple African Americans come up to me in Yosemite Valley just to shake my hand, but Oprah convinced them to visit, and the beauty of Yosemite did the rest.”
He’s worked for Yosemite for 28 years. He formerly served as a park ranger at Yellowstone National Park.
Johnson’s storytelling talent resulted in his prominent role in “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” a documentary series by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, who are also past recipients of the American Park Experience Award. The National Park Trust that administers the award is dedicated to the protection and expansion of national parks.
Johnson said he is humbled by the award for his work to help make public lands a more welcoming environment for everyone.
“Every child in America deserves to have an experience of wonder during their youth,” Johnson said. “Our national parks embody that space where astonishment is the atmosphere we breathe. Those moments of transcendence provide a strong foundation for a future where all our dreams of a truly inclusive democracy can take root, grow, and become kin to that luminous entanglement we call a forest, a desert, a wetland, a homeland, a home.”
Yosemite National Park Superintendent Cicely Muldoon said that “national parks are a true reflection of our democratic society and the diversity of people who shaped this nation” and that “for too long many of those stories have gone untold.”
“Shelton’s life’s work has helped open those floodgates,” Muldoon continued, “and the national parks and the public we serve are better for it. I can’t think of a more worthy recipient for this recognition.”
A new museum exhibit telling the story of Buffalo Soldiers in Yosemite was installed last year in the newly-renamed Yosemite History Center, previously the Pioneer Yosemite History Center. The center’s buildings in Wawona will open regularly again starting in the spring.
Johnson is now a community engagement specialist in addition to being a park ranger. He no longer does regularly-scheduled interpretive programs in Yosemite but “can be seen at the park from time to time.”
His Yosemite Theater shows, “Yosemite Through the Eyes of a Buffalo Soldier,” are currently on hold due to COVID-19 concerns.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 3:01 PM.
