Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park IUCN category II (national park) Tunnel View, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite NP - D Map showing the locale of Yosemite National Park Map showing the locale of Yosemite National Park Governing body National Park Service Yosemite National Park (/jo s m ti/ yoh-sem-it-ee) is a nationwide park spanning portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in Northern California. The park, which is managed by the National Park Service, covers an region of 747,956 acres (1,168.681 sq mi; 302,687 ha; 3,026.87 km2) and reaches athwart the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. On average, about 4 million citizens visit Yosemite each year, and most spend the majority of their time in the seven square miles (18 km2) of Yosemite Valley. The park set a visitation record in 2016, surpassing 5 million visitors for the first time in its history. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, enormous sequoia groves, lakes, mountain peaks, glaciers, and biological range. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness. Yosemite was central to the evolution of the nationwide park idea.
First, Galen Clark and the rest lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, ultimately dominant to President Abraham Lincoln's signing the Yosemite Grant in 1864.
Later, John Muir led a prosperous boss to establish a larger nationwide park encompassing not just the valley, but encircling mountain peaks and forests as well paving the way for the United States nationwide park system. Yosemite is one of the biggest and least fragmented surrounding blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a range of plants and animals.
Of California's 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur in the Sierra Nevada and more than 20% inside Yosemite.
The geology of the Yosemite region is characterized by granitic rocks and remnants of older rock.
Ice thickness in Yosemite Valley may have reached 4,000 feet (1,200 m) amid the early glacial episode.
The name "Yosemite" (meaning "killer" in Miwok) originally referred to the name of a renegade tribe which was driven out of the region (and possibly annihilated) by the Mariposa Battalion.
1.5 National Park Service As revealed by archeological finds, the Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, though humans may have first visited the region as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. The indigenous natives called themselves the Ahwahneechee, meaning "dwellers in Ahwahnee." They are related to the Northern Paiute and Mono tribes.
Many tribes visited the region to trade, including close-by Central Sierra Miwoks, who lived along the drainage region of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers. A primary trading route went over Mono Pass and through Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake, just to the east of the Yosemite area.
In 1851 as part of the Mariposa Wars intended to suppress Native American resistance, United States Army Major Jim Savage led the Mariposa Battalion into the west end of Yosemite Valley.
The Miwok term for the Pai-Ute band was yohhe'meti, meaning "they are killers". Correspondence and articles written by members of the battalion helped to popularize the natural wonders of the Yosemite Valley and the encircling area.
A reconstructed "Indian Village of Ahwahnee" has been erected behind the Yosemite Museum, positioned next to the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center.
Yosemite's first concession was established in 1884 when John Degnan and his wife established a bakery and store. In 1916, the National Park Service granted a 20-year concession to the Desmond Park Service Company.
It bought out or assembled hotels, stores, camps, a dairy, a garage, and other park services. Desmond changed its name to the Yosemite National Park Company in December 1917 and was reorganized in 1920. Administrators in the National Park Service felt that limiting the number of concessionaires in each nationwide park would be more financially sound.
The Curry Company and its rival, the Yosemite National Park Company, were forced to merge in 1925 to form the Yosemite Park & Curry Company (YP&CC). The business assembled the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1927.
A park bill was prepared with the assistance of the General Land Office in the Interior Department. The bill passed both homes of the 38th United States Congress, and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864, creating the Yosemite Grant. This is the first instance of park territory being set aside specifically for preservation and enhance use by action of the U.S.
Federal government, and set a rock for the 1872 creation of Yellowstone as the first nationwide park. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a state park, and a board of commissioners was proclaimed two years later.
Supreme Court. Clark and the reigning commissioners were ousted in 1880, this dispute also reaching the Supreme Court in 1880. The two Supreme Court decisions affecting management of the Yosemite Grant are considered meaningful precedents in territory management law. Hutchings became the new park guardian. Access to the park by tourists improved in the early years of the park, and conditions in the Valley were made more hospitable.
Tourism decidedly increased after the First Transcontinental Railroad was instead of in 1869, but the long horseback ride to reach the region was a deterrent. Three stagecoach roads were assembled in the mid-1870s to furnish better access for the burgeoning number of visitors to Yosemite Valley.
It was because of Muir that many National Parks were left untouched, such as Yosemite Valley National Park.
This trip persuaded Roosevelt to return "Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to federal protection as part of Yosemite National Park". Muir was one of the first to theorize that the primary landforms in Yosemite Valley were created by large alpine glaciers, bucking established scientists such as Josiah Whitney, who regarded Muir as an amateur. Muir wrote scientific papers on the area's biology.
Muir and Johnson lobbied Congress for the Act that created Yosemite National Park on October 1, 1890. The State of California, however, retained control of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove.
The newly created nationwide 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.
Muir and his Sierra Club continued to lobby the government and influential citizens for the creation of a unified Yosemite National Park.
On that trip, Muir convinced Roosevelt to take control of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove away from California and return it to the federal government.
National Park Service The National Park Service was formed in 1916, and Yosemite was transferred to that agency's jurisdiction.
Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, Tioga Pass Road, and campgrounds at Tenaya and Merced lakes were also instead of in 1916. Automobiles started to enter the park in ever-increasing numbers following the assembly of all-weather highways to the park.
More recently, preservationists persuaded Congress to designate 677,600 acres (274,200 ha), or about 89% of the park, as the Yosemite Wilderness a highly protected wilderness area. The Park Service has reduced artificial inducements to visit the park, such as the Firefall, in which red-hot embers were pushed off a cliff near Glacier Point at evening.
In 2016, The Trust for Public Land purchased Ackerson Meadow, a 400-acre tract on the edge of Yosemite National Park, for $2.3 million in order to preserve surrounding and protect the region from development.
On September 7, 2016, the National Park Service accepted the donation of the land, making the meadow the biggest addition to Yosemite since 1949. Yosemite National Park Map Yosemite National Park is positioned in the central Sierra Nevada of California.
State of Rhode Island and contains thousands of lakes and ponds, 1,600 miles (2,600 km) of streams, 800 miles (1,300 km) of hiking trails, and 350 miles (560 km) of roads. Two federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Merced and the Tuolumne, begin inside Yosemite's borders and flow westward through the Sierra foothills, into the Central Valley of California.
On average, about 4 million citizens visit the park each year, with most visitor use concentrated in the seven-square-mile (18 km2) region of Yosemite Valley. Almost all of the landforms in the Yosemite region are cut from the granitic modern of the Sierra Nevada Batholith (a batholith is a large mass of intrusive igneous modern that formed deep below the surface). About 5% of the park's landforms (mostly in its easterly margin near Mount Dana) are metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks. These rocks are called roof pendants because they were once the roof of the underlying granitic rock. Erosion acting on master joints is responsible for creating valleys and later canyons. The single most erosive force over the last several million years has been large alpine glaciers, which have turned the previously V-shaped river-cut valleys into U-shaped glacial-cut canyons (such as Yosemite Valley and Hetch Hetchy Valley).
Yosemite Valley represents only one percent of the park area, but this is where most visitors arrive and stay.
El Capitan, a prominent granite cliff that looms over Yosemite Valley, is one of the most prominent modern climbing destinations in the world because of its diverse range of climbing routes in addition to its year-round accessibility.
The high nation of Yosemite contains beautiful areas such as Tuolumne Meadows, Dana Meadows, the Clark Range, the Cathedral Range, and the Kuna Crest.
The Lyell Glacier is the biggest glacier in Yosemite National Park and is one of the several remaining in the Sierra Nevada today.
The park has three groves of ancient enormous sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees; the Mariposa Grove (200 trees), the Tuolumne Grove (25 trees), and the Merced Grove (20 trees). This species grows larger in volume than any other and is one of the tallest and longest-lived. Tuolumne and Merced River systems originate along the crest of the Sierra Nevada in the park and have carved river canyons 3,000 to 4,000 feet (910 to 1,220 m) deep.
Hydrologic processes, including glaciation, flooding, and fluvial geomorphic response, have been fundamental in creating landforms in the park. The park also contains approximately 3,200 lakes (greater than 100 m2), two reservoirs, and 1,700 miles (2,700 km) of streams, all of which help form these two large watersheds. Wetlands in Yosemite occur in valley bottoms throughout the park, and are often hydrologically linked to close-by lakes and rivers through cyclic flooding and groundwater movement.
Meadow surroundings, distributed at elevations from 3,000 to 11,000 feet (910 to 3,350 m) in the park, are generally wetlands, as are the riparian surroundings found on the banks of Yosemite's various streams and rivers. Located in Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite Falls is the highest in North America at 2,425-foot (739 m).
Also in Yosemite Valley is the much lower volume Ribbon Falls, which has the highest single vertical drop, 1,612 feet (491 m). Perhaps the most prominent of the Yosemite Valley waterfalls is Bridalveil Fall, which is the waterfall seen from the Tunnel View viewpoint at the east end of the Wawona Tunnel.
Lyell Glacier is the biggest glacier in Yosemite (the Palisades Glaciers are the biggest in the Sierra Nevada) and covers 160 acres (65 ha). None of the Yosemite glaciers are a remnant of the much, much larger Ice Age alpine glaciers responsible for sculpting the Yosemite landscape.
Many Yosemite glaciers, including Merced Glacier, which was identified by John Muir in 1871 and bolstered his glacial origins theory of the Yosemite area, have disappeared and most of the the rest have lost up to 75% of their surface area. At the lower elevations below 5,000 feet (1,500 m), temperatures are hotter; the mean daily high temperature at Yosemite Valley (elevation 3,966 feet or 1,209 metres) varies from 46 to 90 F (8 to 32 C).
Climate data for Yosemite Park Headquarters, elev.
Volcanic activeness persisted past 5 million years BP east of the current park borders in the Mono Lake and Long Valley areas.
The uplifting and increased erosion exposed granitic rocks in the region to surface pressures, resulting in exfoliation (responsible for the rounded shape of the many domes in the park) and mass wasting following the various fracture joint planes (cracks; especially vertical ones) in the now solidified plutons. Pleistocene glaciers further accelerated this process and the larger ones transported the resulting talus and till from valley floors.
At least four primary glaciations have occurred in the Sierra Nevada, locally called the Sherwin (also called the pre-Tahoe), Tahoe, Tenaya, and Tioga. The Sherwin glaciers were the largest, filling Yosemite and other valleys, while later stages produced much lesser glaciers.
A Sherwin-age glacier was almost surely responsible for the primary excavation and shaping of Yosemite Valley and other canyons in the area.
The longest glacier in the Yosemite region ran down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River for 60 miles (97 km), passing well beyond Hetch Hetchy Valley.
Merced Glacier flowed out of Yosemite Valley and into the Merced River Gorge.
Retreating glaciers often left recessional moraines that impounded lakes such as the 5.5 miles (9 km) long Lake Yosemite (a shallow lake that periodically veiled much of the floor of Yosemite Valley). With its scrubby sun-baked chaparral, stately groves of pine, fir, and sequoia, and expanses of alpine woodlands and meadows, Yosemite National Park preserves a Sierra Nevada landscape as it prevailed before Euro-American settlement. In contrast to encircling lands, which have been decidedly altered by logging, the park still contains some 225,510 acres (91,260 ha) of old-growth forest. Taken together, the park's varied surroundings support over 250 species of vertebrates, which include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. An American black bear with a conspicuous ear tag, browsing on its natural foods in Yosemite Valley Even with the richness of high-quality surroundings in Yosemite, the brown bear, California condor, and least Bell's vireo have turn into extinct in the park inside historical time, and another 37 species presently have special status under either California or federal endangered species legislation.
The black bears of Yosemite were once famous for breaking into parked cars to steal food.
They were also an encouraged tourist sight for many years at the park's garbage dumps, where bears congregated to eat park visitors' garbage and tourists gathered to photograph the bears.
Yosemite National Park has documented more than 130 non-native plant species inside park boundaries.
The Meadow Fire burns in Little Yosemite Valley, 2014 The Yosemite Hybrid Shuttle, Yosemite's no-charge shuttle bus fitness Yosemite Valley is open year-round and various activities are available through the National Park Service, Yosemite Conservancy, and Delaware North at Yosemite, including nature walks, photography and art classes, stargazing programs, tours, bike rentals, rafting, mule and horseback rides, and modern climbing classes.
Many citizens appreciate short walks and longer hikes to waterfalls in Yosemite Valley, or walks among enormous sequoias in the Mariposa, Tuolumne, or Merced Groves.
Others like to drive or take a tour bus to Glacier Point (summer fall) to see a spectacular view of Yosemite Valley and the high country, or drive along the scenic Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows (May October) and go for a walk or hike.
Most park visitors stay just for the day, and visit only those locations inside Yosemite Valley that are easily accessible by automobile.
A no-charge shuttle bus fitness operates year-round in the valley, and park rangers encourage citizens to use this fitness since parking inside the valley amid the summer is often nearly impossible to find. In addition to seeking the natural features of the park, visitors can also learn about the natural and cultural history of Yosemite Valley at a number of facilities in the valley: the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center, the adjoining Yosemite Museum, and the Nature Center at Happy Isles.
There are also two National Historic Landmarks: the Sierra Club's Le - Conte Memorial Lodge (Yosemite's first enhance visitor center), and the world-famous Ahwahnee Hotel.
The park can be divided into 5 sections for the day-user Yosemite Valley, Wawona/Mariposa Grove/Glacier Point, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, and Crane Flat/White Wolf. Numerous books describe park trails, and no-charge information is available from the Park Service in Yosemite.
Park rangers encourage visitors to experience portions of the park in addition to Yosemite Valley.
Rock climbing is an meaningful part of Yosemite. Camp 4, a walk-in campground in Yosemite Valley, was instrumental in the evolution of modern climbing as a sport, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Climbers can generally be spotted in the snow-free months on anything from ten-foot-high (3 m) boulders to the 3,300-foot (1.0 km) face of El Capitan.
Yosemite Valley is open all year, although some roads inside the park close in winter.
Downhill skiing is available at the Badger Pass Ski Area the earliest downhill skiing region in California, offering downhill skiing from mid-December through early April. Much of the park is open to cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, with a several backcountry ski huts open for use. Wilderness permits are required for backcountry overnight ski trips. Off-trail riding and mountain biking are not permitted in Yosemite National Park. In 2010, Yosemite National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters program. National Register of Historic Places listings in Yosemite National Park "Yosemite National Park".
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This audio file was created from a revision of the "Yosemite National Park" article dated 2005-06-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article.
Yosemite National Park National Park Service: Yosemite National Park The Role of the Railroads in Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks from American Studies at the University of Virginia Project Yosemite | Yosemite HD | Motion Timelapse Video Historic Photographs of Yosemite National Park taken by Edith Irvine Project Yosemite | An ongoing adventure to timelapse Yosemite in an extreme way Yosemite National Park National parks of the United States
Categories:
IUCN Category IIYosemite National Park - Sierra Nevada (U.S.)Protected areas established in 1890 - Parks in Madera County, California - Parks in Mariposa County, California - Parks in Tuolumne County, California - World Heritage Sites in the United States - Hetch Hetchy Project - Protected areas of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.)National parks in California - Nature centers in California
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