Yosemite's Camp Curry Celebrates 100 Years of Memories by Carl Nolte San Francisco Chronicle - May 31, 1999 The old days were back in style in Yosemite over the Memorial Day weekend: The roads in the famous valley were jammed with cars and the past was on center stage as Camp Curry celebrated its 100th birthday. There was even a faux firefall to celebrate the memory of David Curry, who with his wife, Jennie, opened the famous tent camp on June 1, 1899. A lot has changed in a century -- huge crowds of visitors, floods, fires and even three slayings this year have disturbed the spirit of what John Muir called ``the incomparable valley'' -- but Camp Curry still seems to stay the same. It still has tent cabins (although the charge now is $40 a night and higher), the same long lines for the same plain but honest food, and the same corny camp songs, at least for this weekend. ``It seems very much like it was when I was here as a child,'' said John Foster Curry, a 69-year-old South Carolina resort executive and consultant. He is the grandson of the original Currys. Curry is the oldest name in the California hospitality industry, and John's grandparents turned a seven- tent camp into a million-dollar business that became world famous. In Yosemite, Camp Curry became a spot for people who, David Curry said, wanted ``to make their dollar go as far as it will.'' The National Park Service calls Camp Curry an ``economy'' resort, as compared with the upper-middle-class Yosemite Lodge and the luxurious Ahwahnee Hotel, where rooms go for $300 a night and gentleman guests must wear a tie to dinner.Camp Curry is for ordinary people, like Ruth Mahr Strange of the San Joaquin Valley town of Ceres, who wrote in the guest book yesterday that she remembered coming in the 1930s with a girlfriend and ordering a 5 cent soda with two straws. ``I also spent my honeymoon here in 1951,'' she wrote. At least five other guests at what is now called Curry Village said they had come every year for more than 40 years. ``It has a feeling of making memories that are going to last,'' said Jerry Ernest, the Curry Village general manager. ``Being here gives you a warm, comfortable feeling.'' Sometimes, other forces have closed in on Yosemite. There was a huge forest fire in 1990; a flood that closed the valley for three months in 1997; a rock fall that killed a tourist that year; and the slayings of three female tourists in February. ``People realize that things happen,'' Ernest said, ``but they can happen anywhere.'' What was happening over the weekend, though, was a kind of old- fashioned beginning of summer -- amiable crowds, long lines, lots of traffic and the spectacular beauty of Yosemite. All the campgrounds and hotels were full. All 427 tent cabins and 201 wooden cabins at Curry Village are booked through summer. Last year, Curry Village had 330,000 visitors, almost as many people as the population of Oakland. People came both to see Yosemite and for a vacation. Every night this summer there is a free show on the village stage. The show this weekend featured Tom Bopp, a singer and piano player, and John Huey, who is normally the regional safety and risk manager for the Yosemite Concession Services Corp., and who this weekend is impersonating David Curry. Bopp played a few of the old and campy camp songs, like ``I'm Strong for Camp Curry'' and ``Toot Your Horn for Camp Curry.'' As Bopp played and sang and the light slowly faded on Half Dome, the years seemed to roll back, and it was as if you were on your grandmother's summer vacation. When it was dark, Huey, playing the iron-lunged David Curry, stepped forward and yelled up to Glacier Point, 3,000 feet above: ``Hell-ooo Glacier Point!'' Far away, like a voice from the clouds, came a voice, ``Hell-ooo Camp Currrrrry!'' Then, like generations of camp directors before him, Huey roared up into the dark, ``LET THE FIIIIRRRREE FAAAALLL!'' Every summer night until the end of 1967, a cascade of embers would come tumbling down the cliff, a thousand-foot-long cascade of fire and ash, a sight so beautiful that no one who ever saw it ever forgot. But that was long ago. The firefalls drew so many crowds that the meadows in Yosemite Valley were trampled. The firefalls were too good to last and were abolished. Instead, over the weekend at night they showed slides of what it looked like. Bopp, like dozens of camp entertainers before him, sang ``The Indian Love Call'' -- ``When I'm calling you, oo-oo-ooh, oo-oo- ooh'' -- as the slides clicked past. The 100-year birthday party will go on today and tomorrow with special shows and the firefall program at dusk. There will, of course, be no actual firefall. All that is left of it is the ember of a memory.