Stopping the Road

"The struggle of an unusual coalition of activists is wonderfully told in Stopping the Road. It should be required reading for all who love the High Sierra."-Carl Pope, past director, The Sierra Club.

Stopping the Road is an exceptional recounting of a fifty-year battle to stop the building of another road through the pristine wilderness of the Sierra Nevada, the breathtaking, 400 mile mountain range which encompasses Lake Tahoe, Mount Whitney and the Yosemite Valley-three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. The book, written by historian Jack Fisher, brings together the history, geology, politics, and local human stories that characterized the struggle, which finally ended dramatically in 1972, with then-California governor Ronald Reagan riding out on horseback, wearing the white cowboy hat of the good guy, announcing a final defeat of the road-by order of President Richard Nixon.

How did it happen that a loose coalition of local citizens, with little or no political experience, were victorious against partisan politics? Fisher's carefully researched saga brings real-life drama to the pages of history, another chapter in the enduring struggle between the interests of humanity and the temple of nature.

"Stopping the Road is a remarkably well researched accounting of a landmark environmental victory. It tells us how perseverance in the struggle to protect natural lands can block a divisive road in its tracks."-David Livermore, The Nature Conservancy

"Stopping the Road is an inspirational story of heroic determination in order to preserve a community and its nearby environment. Their efforts culminated in the 1984 California Wilderness Act."-Deanna Dulen, superintendent, Devils Postpile National Monument.