Moore recalled several instances in which thunderstorms or icy conditions forced climbers down from the valley walls and inside the chapel. Open to visitors 24/7, the chapel has been a sanctuary for many over the years. Years after the event, he learned that several members of one family whose last group photo was taken at the Yosemite Valley Chapel were killed when United Airlines Flight 93 went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. “Obviously, the place was packed,” he said. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place when he was less than a year into the job, and the chapel drew countless mourners. Like people with other unique Yosemite jobs, Moore has seen it all, from presidential visits to bears in the chapel meadow (none have gotten inside the church, to his knowledge). “She saw in me more than I saw in myself,” Moore said. The Montana native and longtime San Fernando Valley resident beat out 99 other applicants to win the job after his wife, fittingly named Faith, applied on his behalf. Moore is the chapel’s 13th full-time Protestant minister. We have this long-standing tradition of services of worship that are unique to Yosemite.” “Obviously, consider it quite a privilege. “There was a very tangible sense of standing on the shoulders of others who have gone before me,” he said. The scene has hosted many weddings, baptisms and marriage vow renewals over the years, of which Moore has seen his fair share. “So, a bride and groom stepping out from their vows come down, and the first thing they see is Yosemite Falls. “If you walk out the front door, what you see is Yosemite Falls,” said Moore, who was named pastor at Yosemite Community Church in December 2000. Courtesy of Scott Gediman/National Park Service He eventually came around to the idea and even spoke on its opening day. When it was first proposed, the idea of a church inside Yosemite National Park infuriated John Muir. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and hosting upward of 80 weddings in a busy year, the chapel sits just across the valley from one of Yosemite’s most well-known natural attractions. Park staff later boosted it 3 feet to its current height - a move that might have saved the building when the park’s devastating 1997 flood brought in water up to the pews. A “busy community” of buildings around it near the base of the Four Mile Trail were taken down as activities shifted to other parts of the valley, leaving the chapel alone before it was moved in the early 1900s to its present site, about a mile west down busy Southside Drive.
Two decades later, Yosemite was changing around the chapel. Muir himself actually spoke in the chapel on its opening day and later went on to do many teachings there, Moore added. Why controversial? Muir and others, including “Guardian of Yosemite” Galen Clark, “were appalled at the idea of the chapel” and objected to the proposal a church be built in a natural cathedral, according to pastor Kenneth Brent Moore. Its controversial construction actually predates the existence of the National Park Service, standing today as the oldest building in Yosemite Valley still in public use. The first service was held to an “ overflowing” crowd on June 7, 1879.
Charles Geddes, a San Francisco architect, designed it. Donations and membership fees paid for the steep-roofed building, which cost between $3,000 and $4,000 to build. Yosemite Valley Chapel, formally known as Yosemite Community Church, was built in 1879 under the sponsorship of the California State Sunday School Association. But the New England-style building might not have been erected at all if John Muir, the celebrated and beleaguered “Father of the National Parks,” had had his way.
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