Eastern Madera County
Collective Projects

  • TRADEMARK APPROVED January 2025! “Oakhurst, California, The Carved Bear Capital of the World” – create a Carved Bear map where visitors and locals can venture around EMC and find the bears.  Lots that can be done with this.  (Rhonda)

  • Connecting Yosemite Communities Trail System – Jorge Negrete/Trails Committee Chair - ConnectingYosemiteCommunities.org

COMMUNITY ART BANNERS

The Eastern Madera County Foundation’s Beautification Committee was proud to launch the first annual Eastern Madera County Art Banner Project in 2024 and it was a HUGE success!

 The Foundation gave out banners to be painted by local artists and hung throughout the community commercial cores in Oakhurst, North Fork, Coarsegold and Bass Lake.  One side of the banner featured the Artist painting and the other had a “Welcome To” message with Sponsor information along the bottom. 

We are excited to continue this great community project for years to come. What a great opportunity for locals and visitors to gain exposure to our amazing local artists. The banners provide a bit of beauty & culture to our local commercial districts.

The banners will hang yearly from mid-May through ARTober at which time they will be auctioned off at our Art Banner Auction Gala to raise money for further beautification projects.

Save the Date for the 2025 Art Banner Auction Gala on November 15th from 5 to 8 pm at the Oakhurst Community Center.

Oakhurst Projects

  • Who are we? See if we can put interpretive signs, park like area, photo stop (like the Oakhurst sign) at the corner of 41/49 dirt area. It’s been sold and the owners are looking for a usage for this. (Dave)

  • Oakhurst River Parkway – maintain, events, fundraising for projects (several people)

  • Work with Madera County and the Transportation Planning Study to be conducted in 2023 - Bobby lead

  • Pedestrian Crosswalk from new hotels across Highway 41. Safety, visitor experience, ADA. Bobby asked the group to write a letter to Cal Trans regarding the need for this and collect signatures (County, OAC, EMCF, VYMC, hotels, businesses across from hotels, and anyone else we can think of). ACTION: form a committee to gather photos, write letter, and information to submit to CalTrans. Work with Bobby on this and the Clean CA Grant(?) for funding. (Rhonda/Bobby)

  • Signage: posts/flags/wayfinding around Oakhurst to beautify (Deb)

  • Decorative/Trees medium down the middle of Highway 41 (Deb) – Bobby talked about creating a beautification County Ordinance along Highway 41. Also talked about reporting violations to signage, etc. to the County.

  • Oakhurst Community Park

  • Existing Library/Park bridge repair/replace and make accessible to Emergency vehicles. Clean California Grant/Cal Trans – the County is submitting an application on this (Bobby)

  • Stable funding (Dave)

  • New Bridge to connect the Park to the Community Center

Coarsegold Projects

  •  Clean-up creek area when you enter Coarsegold & the bend area on Highway 41.  Make it a place to stop for photos, maybe interpretive signage.  (Laura)

  • Clean up areas in Coarsegold with the historic “walls” – made by Native Americans.  Identify which are historic, find the history, clean up the area, add interpretive signage.  (Laura & Randy leads)

  • Community Signage:  when leaving Chukchansi there’s a strip of land that would be perfect to put community/marketing type signage that could be artistic.  (Laura)

  • Coarsegold Community Center – needs help to keep open and needs repairs to comply for ADA as well as aging building repairs (Jennifer)

  • The Nature of Wildworks - non-profit dedicated to the lifetime quality care of non-releasable wild animals.

 Yosemite Lakes Park:

  • Roadways – suggested to form a Maintenance District (Randy)

  •  Water Infrastructure (Randy)

  • YLP Communications (Randy)

North Fork Projects

  •  Trail System in North Fork to connect with Manzanita Lake – currently working with the County and have Grant specs out to CrisCom.  Michael Olwyler - contact with SVSB group.   (Wade)

  • Beautify Downtown North Fork – lighting and creation of a park.  (Wade)

  •  Promotion of local area hidden gems like the Sierra Vista Scenic Byway – so EMC is known for its gems instead of just a sleep-over for Yosemite.  (Wade)

  • Cultural Arts displays throughout the town.

Bass Lake Projects

  • South Shore Bike Lane

  • Purchase park in the Pines Village to use for events, etc.  Make sure it remains a park. UPDATE: the park sold to a private owner 5/2024

  • Bass Lake Water Taxi. UPDATE: Currently working on feasibility and insurance requirements. 5/2024

  • Bass Lake Trails