The story behind the mummies discovered in Yosemite Valley

More than a century ago, miners claimed to have found two ancient mummies at what is now Yosemite National Park. The news spread like wildfire across America.

A mummified woman — said to be a “giantess mummy” at almost 7 feet tall — was reported to be cradling a mummified child in her arms when she was found nestled in a cave near Bridalveil Fall.

It’s a tall tale fit for the Old West, one that’s mentioned in the blog of a Yosemite Archives intern. The intern said they stumbled across the story while doing inventory in an old filing cabinet at the Yosemite Museum: “After some time, I stumbled upon a folder entitled ‘The Yosemite Mummy.’ I struck gold,” the intern wrote.

“We do, in fact, have these remains in our collection,” Sabrina Sieck, Ripley Entertainment Inc. spokesperson, said in an email. “They are on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Guadalajara.” Somehow my weekslong journey in finding the story behind the rumored “Martindale Mummies” led me from the heart of Yosemite to a museum in Mexico. But how did they get here — an almost 140-year, 2,000-mile trek?

While there are varying accounts of how the mummies were found, most stories tell a similar narrative, some with more detail than others.

“Scientists of the West are greatly interested in the mummified remains of a woman, supposed to have belonged to a prehistoric race,” stated an article titled “Prehistoric Woman” appearing in the Sept. 10, 1899, edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer.

The article said the mummies were found by G.F. Martindale in 1885 — hence the name “Martindale Mummies” — “who, with a party of friends, was out in the Yosemite Valley on a pleasure expedition” at the time of the discovery. As the story goes, the discovery of the remains “was made quite by accident” when one member of the party started prying up stones as the group stopped to rest. “A hole was discovered, and, upon further investigation, a hermetically sealed cave of large dimensions was revealed.”

The woman measured 7 feet, 6 inches tall, according to the article. She had “jet black” hair, squared off toes all roughly the same length, well preserved teeth and fingernails, and was thought to have “many characteristics not possessed by any race of people known.” The story went on to discuss an alleged race of people that roamed the Earth almost 11,500 years ago in Central America and southern Mexico with characteristics like this woman, later comparing it to similar mummy finds in Mexico.

The mummies were reportedly “drawing big crowds” in each place they appeared.

But if this supposed race of giant people lived in Central America, why would the mummified remains of a giant mother and child be entombed in Yosemite Valley?

For the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation Vice Chairperson Waylon Coats, the stories of that ancient race are more than just tabloid fodder, they’re generational legends passed down as fact.

“There’s two different ideas,” Coats told SFGATE in a phone interview. “We have the Giant of Yosemite. Then you have the myth, which are the red-haired giants. We do believe that there was a giant.”

The descendants of Yosemite’s Ahwahneechee tribe aren’t the only Indigenous peoples with similar beliefs, according to Miranda Fengel, a writer and former curator at the Mariposa Museum and History Center: “The Paiute Indians in Nevada had a legend of these red-haired, 10-foot-tall giants that they were eventually able to defeat.”

Fengel said many tribes in the southwest U.S. believe giants existed. “The legend is definitely there,” she said.

So, are the “Martindale Mummies” real or did someone take advantage of this Indigenous mythology to turn a quick buck? “The terrain just doesn’t lend itself to that at all,” Fengel said. “[There’s] no cave. You can imagine what the condition of a mummy would be with all that moisture in the air.”

She’s not the only one who’s quick to point out the story’s inconsistencies.

John Corcoran is the director of exhibits and traveling shows at Ripley Entertainment Inc.

“To the average person, we’re in the museum business,” Corcoran said. “But what we exhibit is about both educating and entertaining people. We put unusual stuff on display. Things you can’t see anywhere else.” 

Things like Lee Harvey Oswald’s toe tag, the only first-generation video of the moon landing, one of two guns carried by President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin and, yes, a pair of Yosemite mummies. The museum bought the dilapidated mummies in 1998, acquiring the pair from an amateur archeologist who was determined to “get to the bottom” of the zany story.

“He tracked it down, wanted to X-ray it and the owner wouldn’t let him, so he bought it,” Corcoran said. 

An X-ray revealed wires and staples and cow bones. “It does have a couple of human teeth, I’m told,” Corcoran added.

“The only thing I can tell you is that it’s probably not a real mummy,” he said. “I don’t know if it was truly found in Yosemite. That is the legend. Sometimes when people want to start a hoax, they go to great lengths to plant something.”

Corcoran would know. Of the few fake items Ripley’s possesses, he told SFGATE the museum “plays up” the story for each in its display. He referenced several other hoaxes of that time, all in the same vein and legend. In each case, someone claimed to have unearthed an extraordinary artifact in a very unnatural place.

The “Martindale Mummies” were likely produced right here in California, Corcoran said. “There seems to have been a company out there that was producing gaffes. We know this West Coast company made other stuff.” 

Other fake mummies from that time suspected to have come from this particular company were found to have newspapers stuffed inside their patchwork wrappings. But these “Martindale Mummies” had no such newspaper stuffing, so Corcoran couldn’t definitively say they were produced there. Later, he sent me a newspaper ad from the Sept. 30, 1906, edition of the Los Angeles Herald.

“Egyptian Mummies Made While You Wait,” the headline exclaimed.

“A lot of people have made a lot of money off those mummies over the years,” Corcoran said of the Yosemite pair. “But it’s definitely a fake. The people in the know that are sideshow historians, when they looked at it, they knew right away it wasn’t real.”

Today, the “Martindale Mummies” sit inside a neatly enclosed tomb in Ripley’s Guadalajara location. Painted hieroglyphics and clay pottery decorate the surrounding walls, part of the idea to “play up” their story. This is a setting fit for an Egyptian pharaoh. But these two mummies didn’t come from Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, and they likely didn’t come from the Yosemite Valley, either.

If only mummies could talk.