“Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” — John Muir

Robert James “Jim” Barton, a longtime resident of Three Rivers, Calif., passed away peacefully on Friday, July 5, 2024, at his assisted-living home in Visalia, where he had resided for the past year. He celebrated his 100th birthday with a family gathering two months prior.

A sunrise graveside service will be held Sunday, July 21, at 8 a.m. at Three Rivers Cemetery. All who knew Jim are invited to attend and share a story.

Jim was born on April 30, 1924, in Berkeley, Calif., to Muriel May Barton and Robert Hardin Barton of Three Rivers. His mother stayed with family in Berkeley to be near a hospital while she was pregnant. Meanwhile, his father, Bob, was in Mineral King building the family cabin that is still used by descendants a century later.

Jim was raised on the Three Rivers cattle and citrus ranch that had been in the family since 1880. The family escaped the searing heat of the foothills by moving to Mineral King each summer, where Jim’s father relocated his cattle operation. Jim was the fourth generation of the Barton family to reside on the North Fork property and in Mineral King.

Jim graduated from Three Rivers School and Woodlake High School. In his senior year of high school, he served as student body president, narrowly defeating his best friend, Jim Tobin, by three votes. During the week before the first day of his senior year, the two Jims and a Barton cousin, Milton Savage, were on a pack trip in the backcountry east of Mineral King. The morning before they were to ride out, they discovered their stock had wandered off. Jim hiked out to make it to school on time, while Milton and Jim Tobin stayed behind to locate the horses and pack mule; they were more than a week late showing up for school. Jim had his suspicions about how long it really took them to round up the pack stock!

After graduating high school in 1942, Jim attended Visalia Junior College (now College of the Sequoias) and drove the Visalia JC bus from Three Rivers to Visalia and back. During his first weeks of college, Army recruiters came to the campus to sign up those eligible to serve in World War II. They told Jim that if he enlisted that day, he could finish out his year of college. So he signed on, but before the first term ended, he was sent to training camp. “I never again believed anything the Army told me,” Jim would joke for the rest of his life.

Jim served in the U.S. Army during World War II from September 1942 to May 1946. From 1943 to 1946, he served with the Signal Corps as a vehicle mechanic and dispatcher in the U.S. Army’s 89th Infantry Division.

While home on leave in December 1945, he attended a potluck with his parents at Community Presbyterian Church. Standing on the church steps in his Army uniform, a 14-year-old Three Rivers girl named Jeanette Tario spotted him and whispered to her best friend, Lois Dixon, “I’m going to marry that man.” Jeanette was true to her word. Jim and Jeanette were married on June 10, 1950, by Reverend John Buchholz (the bride’s brother-in-law) at the same church where they first met.

Upon returning to Three Rivers after World War II, Jim graduated from Visalia JC, then attended Fresno State University and UC Berkeley on the GI Bill. He graduated from Fresno State with a major in Math and a minor in Physics.

The newlyweds spent the next 12 summers living in Sequoia National Park (and one season in Kings Canyon NP) where Jim was a National Park Service ranger. They first resided at Hospital Rock, where there was formerly a ranger station, then moved up to Last Hill, where there was also a ranger station. (Last Hill is the final climb of the Generals Highway before reaching the Giant Forest Museum. The ranger station was located where there is a big parking turnout.) The cabin that Jim and Jeanette lived in during the 1950s is today located at Wolverton Meadow.

The final summers of the 1950s were spent at Cabin Creek in one of two cabins now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. While stationed there, Jim was the patrol ranger for this northern portion of Sequoia as well as the Dorst Campground ranger. Back then, rangers were multi-faceted; Jim did everything from leading campfire programs to technical search-and-rescue in the backcountry.

While on duty in Sequoia, Jim met a Boy Scout leader who had his troop at a camp just outside the park for a few weeks. This Boy Scout leader also happened to be an administrator for Santa Monica Unified School District, and he offered the newly graduated math major a job.

So Jim and Jeanette moved to Santa Monica, where in 1952, Jim started his career teaching math at Lincoln Junior High and later, Santa Monica High School. In 1962, the couple, now with two young children, moved to Seattle, where Jim attended the University of Washington and obtained his Master’s degree. Jim continued working as a ranger in the summer months but transferred to Yellowstone National Park, where the family lived at Lewis Lake for the rest of his career.

Jim considered working full-time with the Park Service but became disillusioned with the police tactics that were being encouraged. “If I ever once thought I needed a gun in a situation with a visitor, I might have considered the weapons training they were mandating, but being unarmed had never been an issue for me,” he recalled in a previous interview. With an advanced degree in hand, Jim applied for and was offered a job teaching mathematics at College of the Sequoias in Visalia. In January 1969, the family packed up for the last time and left Santa Monica, this time heading home to Three Rivers and the ranch where Jim was raised and his parents continued to reside.

Besides his 40 years as a teacher and 20 years as a seasonal NPS ranger, Jim had some interesting Three Rivers jobs. His first job ever was repairing a gate for his granddad Jason Barton, for which he received a 1922 silver dollar that was never spent and is still in the family’s possession. Jim was 15 years old when he apprenticed with the builders of the Community Presbyterian Church. He drove a touring bus (like the historic yellow buses used in Yellowstone except it was red) for Sequoia concessioner George Mauger from Sequoia to Highway 180 and the Fresno train depot to pick up park visitors, then drove them to Three Rivers and back up to Giant Forest’s Camp Kaweah, a loop of 205 miles. He drove a supply truck for Ray Buckman, hauling whatever was needed from ice to machine parts up the Mineral King Road to the Mineral King Store and the pack station. Jim was working at Britten’s Store (present-day Three Rivers Market) when he heard over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

Jim served on the Sequoia Parks Conservancy board (when it was Sequoia Natural History Association) for many years, as well as the Woodlake High board (1977-1991), Mineral King District Association (founding member), Mineral King Preservation Society (founding member), Three Rivers District Cemetery, and several other boards. He has been inducted into the Woodlake High School Hall of Fame and the College of the Sequoias Hall of Fame. His retirement years were spent with Jeanette traveling, tinkering at home, or at his favorite place of all, Mineral King.

At the age of 91, Jim attended the eighth Central Valley Honor Flight in October 2015, an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., so World War II veterans could visit the monument erected in their honor. This trip, as well as connecting with someone who served in his same infantry division, ignited a pride of military service in Jim that he had never really discussed before. It was the WWII stories that dominated his memory in his last years.

Jim was preceded in death by his wife of 66 years, Jeanette, on February 18, 2017.

He is survived by his daughter, Sarah Elliott, and her husband, John, of Three Rivers; his son Mark of Three Rivers; granddaughter Jennie Elliott Inouye and her husband Jimmy of Moraga, Calif.; grandson Johnnie Barton Elliott and his life partner Briana Muñoz of Albuquerque, N.M.; one great-granddaughter, Sequoia Muñoz; his brother, William Jason “Bill” Barton, of Port Orchard, Wash.; and several nieces and nephews.

If so inspired, remembrances may be made in Jim’s name to the Mineral King Preservation Society, Three Rivers Historical Society, and/or Woodlake Union High School Foundation.

[SOURCE: Family]