The newly created national park came under the jurisdiction of the United States Army's Troop I of the 4th Cavalry on May 19, 1891, which set up camp in Wawona with Captain Abram Epperson Wood as acting superintendent. By the late 1890s, sheep grazing was no longer a problem, and the Army made many other improvements. The cavalry could not intervene to ease the worsening condition of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove. The cavalry left another legacy in the park, the ranger hat. From 1899 to 1913, cavalry regiments of the Western Department, including the all Black 9th Cavalry (known as the "Buffalo Soldiers") and the 1st Cavalry, stationed two troops at Yosemite and brought with them the trooper's campaign hat with its distinctive Montana Peak we recognize today as the "ranger hat." This peak had been formed into the trooper's stetson by veterans of the 1898 Spanish–American War to better shed tropical rain.

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