How Robert Redford’s Yosemite Summers Helped Shape a Hollywood Legend

Hollywood is mourning the loss of Robert Redford, who died Tuesday at his home in Sundance, Utah, at the age of 89. Redford’s career spanned more than six decades, with unforgettable performances in films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, and his visionary role in founding the Sundance Film Festival.

Yet, tucked into his life story is a little-known Northern California connection that shaped his path: Yosemite National Park.

Redford first visited Yosemite in 1949 as an 11-year-old recovering from polio. His mother, eager to get him outdoors after weeks confined to bed, made the long drive from Los Angeles. What he saw upon emerging from the tunnel into Yosemite Valley left a lasting imprint.

“I was blown away,” Redford told Smithsonian in 2016. “I didn’t want to just look at it—I wanted to be in it.”

That childhood awe drew him back years later, when he spent two summers working at Camp Curry (now Curry Village) and Yosemite Valley Lodge. While it was simply a seasonal job at the time, the experience cemented his lifelong bond with nature.

Redford carried that love of wild places into his work as one of Hollywood’s most vocal environmental advocates. In 2005, he co-founded The Redford Center with his late son James to promote climate awareness and conservation. He also invested heavily in Utah land preservation and, in 2016, narrated the IMAX documentary National Parks Adventure to mark the National Park Service’s centennial.

For Redford, Yosemite was the spark that fueled both his creative spirit and his activism. His life closed where it so often thrived, in nature. According to his publicist, he passed away peacefully at his Sundance home, “the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.”

Redford leaves behind not just cinematic treasures, but a legacy of environmental stewardship rooted in a boyhood trip to the Sierra Nevada.