Yosemite National Park
| Yosemite | |
 | |
| Designation | National park |
| Location | California USA |
| Nearest City | El Portal, California |
| Latitude | 37° 45' N |
| Longitude | 119° 30' W |
| Area | 761,266 acres 3080.73 km² |
| Date of Establishment | September 25 1890 |
| Visitation | 3,380,038 (2003) |
| Governing Body | National Park Service |
| IUCN category | Ib (Wilderness Area) |
Yosemite National Park (pron. yo-SEM-me-tee, SAMPA: IO"sEm@ti) is a national park largely in Mariposa County, and Tuolumne County, California, United States. The park covers an area of approximately 1,189 mile² (3,079 km²) and stretches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Over 3 million people visit Yosemite each year. The park is about 3.5 hours east of San Francisco, California by car.
Geography
Yosemite Valley is only five percent of the park, but this is where most visitors arrive and stay. The highest point above Yosemite valley, El Capitan is one of the most popular world destinations for rock climbers because of its diverse range of difficulties and numerous established climbing routes in addition to its year-round accessibility. The peaks in the images below rise 3000 feet above the valley floor.
| Notable park features |
Altitude | Average Temperature |
Average Precipitation |
| Yosemite Valley | 3970 ft (1210 m) |
53 ° F (12 ° C) |
37 inches (94 cm) |
| Yosemite Falls | |||
| El Capitan | 7500 ft (2270 m). |
||
| Half Dome | |||
| Mariposa Grove | 6000 ft (1800 m) |
48 °F (9 °C) |
45 inches (115 cm) |
| Tuolumne Meadows | 8600 ft ( 2620 m) |
39 °F (4 °C) |
35 inches (89 cm) |
| Tenaya Lake | 8149 ft (2484 m) |
43 °F 6 ° |
40 inches (102 cm) |
| Mount Dana | 13,053 ft (3978 m) |
32 ° (0 °C) |
25 inches (63 cm) |
The high country of Yosemite contains beautiful areas, such as Tuolumne Meadows, Dana Meadows, the Clark Range, the Cathedral Range, and the Kuna Crest. The Sierra crest and the Pacific Crest Trail run through Yosemite, with peaks of red metamorphic rock, such as Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, and granite peaks, such as Mount Conness.
It has groves of ancient sequoia trees and also hosts Mule Deer and black bears. The black bears of Yosemite were once famous for breaking into parked cars to steal food.
Yosemite is surrounded by wilderness areas: the Ansel Adams Wilderness to the southeast, the Hoover Wilderness to the northeast, and the Emigrant Wilderness to the north.
Temperature decreases with increasing elevation and precipitation increases with elevation until around 8000 feet (~2400 m) when it slowly decreases to the crest.
History
Early history, white exploration, and the Mariposa Battalion
Miwok and Paiute peoples lived in the area for decades prior to the first white explorerations into the region. A band of Miwok lived in Yosemite Valley when the first Caucasians entered it. These Native Americans called the valley that provided them with nuts, berries, and small game Ah-wah-nee and called themselves the Ah-wah-ne-chee. Their leader was Chief Teneya, who grew up in the nearby Mono Basin with his mother's tribe the Mono before moving to Yosemite Valley in the early 19th century to start his own band.
Like humans before and humans since, the Ahwahnechee changed the valley to suit their needs. Since the band depended upon acorns for 60% of their diet, they burned vegetation on the valley floor, which favored Black Oak (an acorn-making tree species). Fire management also expanded meadows and reduced brush within woodlands, thus making ambush by invading tribes difficult.
Significant debate still surrounds the issue of just who and when the first white man saw the valley. In the autumn of 1833 Joseph Reddeford Walker may have seen the valley. He later described trying to lead his party across that part of the Sierra Nevada and approaching a valley rim that plunged "more than a mile" (1.6 km).
The part of the Sierra Nevada where the park is located was long considered to be a physical barrier to White settlers, traders, trappers, and travelers. That status changed in 1848 due to the discovery of gold in the foothills west of the range in the California Gold Rush. White travel and trade activity dramatically increased in the area, competing with the local Native Americans. The first reliable sighting of the valley by a whiteman occurred on October 18, 1849 by William P. Abrams and a companion. Abrams accurately described some valley landmarks but it is not known for sure whether or not he or his companion actually entered the valley.
United States Army Major James Savage led the Mariposa Battalion into Yosemite Valley in 1851. Savage and his men were in pursuit of around 200 Ahwaneechees led by Chief Tenaya and suspected of raiding trading posts in the area - most notably Savage's - as part of the Mariposa Wars. On Thursday March 27 of that year the company of 50 to 60 men reached what is now called Old Inspiration Point and saw the major features of the valley laid out before them (they named the overlook Mt. Beatitude). Attached to Savage's unit was Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician who later wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite.
While camped in the valley at Bridalveil Meadow he suggested that the valley be named '"Yo-sem-ity", an Anglicization of Uzumati meaning grizzly bear - the supposed name of the tribal unit they were pursuing. The name stuck even though the tribe they were after were called the Ahwahnechee. Bunnell went on to name many other local topographic features on the same trip. Others in the company were also moved by what they saw and recounted their journey to friends and family after they returned, increasing interest in the valley and surrounding area. Bunnell soon after drafted an article about the trip but destroyed it when a newspaper correspondent in San Francisco suggested cutting his 1500 foot (460 m) height estimate for the valley walls in half (the walls are in fact twice the height that Bunnel surmized). So the first published account of the valley was written by Lt. Tredwell Moore for the January 20, 1854 issue of the Mariposa Chronicle. The modern spelling of Yosemite was established by that article.
Cheif Tenaya and his band were eventually captured and their village burned, fulfilling a prophecy an old and dying medicine man gave Tenaya many years before. The Ahwahnechee were escorted by their captor Captain John Bowling to a reservation near Fresno, California. Life on the reservation was unpleasant and the Ahwahnee longed for their valley, prompting reservation officials to allow Tenaya and some of his band to return on their own recognizance.
A group of eight miners entered the valley in the Spring of 1852 and were subsequently attacked by Tenaya's warriors. His band fled the Valley and sought refuge with the Mono, his mother's tribe. In Summer or early Fall 1853 the Ahwahneechee apparently returned to the Valley but later betrayed the hospitality of their Mono hosts by stealing some horses that the Mono had taken from White ranchers. In return the Monos tracked down and killed most of the remaining Ahwahneechee, including Tenaya. Tenaya Lake is named after the fallen chief.
Artists, photographers, and the first tourists
Entrepreneur James Hutchings, artist Thomas Ayres, and two others ventured into the area in 1855, becoming the valley's first tourists. After returning to Marriposa Hutchings wrote an article about his experience which appeared in the July 12, 1855 issue of the Mariposa Gazzette and was later published in various forms nationally. Ayres' scretch of Yosemite Falls was published in fall that year and four of his drawings were presented in the lead article of the July 1856 and initial issue of Hutchings' California Magazine. These were the first known accurate pictures of Yosemite Valley. Ayres returned in 1856 and visited Tuolumne Meadows in the area's high country. His highly-detailed but angularly-exaggerated artwork and his written accounts were nationally published. An art expedition of his drawings was later held in New York City.
Hutchings brought photographer Charles Leander Weed to the Valley in 1859. Weed took the first photographs of the Valley's features and a September expedition in San Francisco presented them to the public. Hutchings published four installments of "The Great Yo-semite Valley" from October 1859 to March 1860 in his magazine. A book by Hutchings titled Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California collected these articles and the book stayed in print well into the 1870s.
Photographer Ansel Adams was famous for his pictures of Yosemite. He willed the originals of his Yosemite photos to the Yosemite Park Association, and visitors can still buy direct prints from his original negatives.
In 1856 Milton and Houston Mann (2 of 42 tourists to visit the valley the year before) finished a toll road to the valley that traveled up the South Fork of the Merced River. Before they were bought out by Mariposa County they charged the then large sum of two U.S. dollars per person. Under county control the road was free.
Wawona was an Indian encampment in what is now the south western part of the park. Settler Galen Clark discovered the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia in Wawona in 1856. Clark also provided a way station for tourists traveling on the road that the Mann brothers built to the valley. Simple lodgings, later called the Lower Hotel, was completed soon afterward. In 1879 the more substantial Wawona Hotel was built to serve tourists visiting the nearby Grove. As tourism increased the number of trails and hotels also increased.
Early protection efforts and the state park
A Unitarian minister named Thomas Starr King visited the valley in 1860 and saw some of the negative effects that homesteading and commercial activity were having on the area. King went on to become the first person with a nationally-recognized voice to call for a public Yosemite park. Pressure by King, photographs by famed photographer Carleton Watkins, and geologic data from the Whitney Survey of California prompted legislators to take notice. But the American Civil War slowed progress by shifting the nation's attention.
Visitation and interest in Yosemite continued through the national crisis, however. Fredrick Law Olmstead, the United States' most widely respected landscape architect, became interested by Kings' warnings and visited Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove in 1863 to see for himself. Concerned by what he saw he convinced Senator John Conness of California to introduce a Park bill in the United States Senate.
The uncontroversial bill passed both houses of the United States Congress and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30, 1864. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a state park for "public use, resort and recreation." A board of Yosemite commissioners was proclaimed by the state's governor September that year but the body did not convene until 1866.
Galen Clark was appointed by the commission as the park's first guardian but neither Clark nor the commissioners had the authority to evict homesteaders, starting an 11 year struggle. Josiah Whitney, the first director of the California Geological Survey, lamented that Yosemite Valley may become like what Niagara Falls was at the time - a tourist trap where proprietary interests place tolls on every bridge, path, trail, and viewpoint. Previously-mentioned Hutchings was one of a small group that had claims on 160 acres (65 ha) of the valley floor. The issue was not settled until 1875 when the land holdings of Hutchings and three others were invalidated. A State grant of $24,000 for improvements Hutchings made to Upper Hotel helped compensate for his loss. Two years after losing his land, Hutchings published a second Yosemite guide, Hutchings' Tourist Guide to the Yo Semite Valley and the Big Tree Groves.
However, under Clark's on and off stewardship through 1896, access to the park by tourists improved and conditions in the valley were made more hospitable to humans. Tourism started to significantly increase after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 but the long horseback ride needed to reach the area was a deterrent. Three stagecoach roads were built in the mid-1870s to provide better access to the growing number of visitors to the valley;
Life on the valley floor was plagued by mosquitos and the threat of contracting diseases they carry. So in 1878 Clark used dynamite to breach a recessional moraine in the valley that impounded a swamp behind it. Numerous hiking and horse trails were also cleared, including a walking path through Mariposa Grove.
Clark and the reigning commissioners were ousted in 1880 and Hutchings became the new park guardian.
John Muir's influence and the national park
Scotland-born naturalist John Muir first came to California in 1868 and immediately set out for the Yosemite area. Articles written by Muir helped to both popularize the area and increase scientific interest in it. Muir was one of the first to theorize that the major landforms in Yosemite were created by large alpine glaciers, bucking established scientists such as Josiah Whitney who regarded Muir as an amateur (see geology of the Yosemite area#Controversy). Muir also wrote scientific papers on the area's biology.
Alarmed by over-grazing of meadows (especially by sheep who Muir called "hooved locusts"), logging of Giant Sequoia, and other damage, Muir changed from being a promoter and scientist to an advocate for further protection. As part of this new role he persuaded many influential people to accompany him to camp in the park (such as Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1871). On these trips Muir would try to convince his guests of the importance of putting the area under federal protection. None of his guests through the 1880s could do much for Muir's cause except for Robert Underwood Johnson, who was editor of Century Magazine. Through Johnson, Muir had a national audience for his writing and a highly motivated and crafty Congressional lobbiest.
His wish was partially answered on September 25 (check date; may be October 1), 1890 when the area outside the valley and sequoia grove became a national park under the un-opposed Yosemite Act. The Act withdrew these lands from "settlement, occupancy, or sale" and protected "all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders" along with prohibiting "wanton destruction of the fish and game and their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit." The State of California, however, retained control of the Valley and Grove. Muir also helped persuade local officials to virtually eliminate grazing from the Yosemite High Country. A dairy herd was kept in the valley and all horses brought there grazed in its meadows, however. Muir and 181 others founded the Sierra Club in 1892 in part to lobby for the transfer of the Valley and Grove into the national park.
Army administration and a unified national park
Like Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite was at first administered by the United States Army. Captain Abram Wood led the U.S Fourth Cavalry Regiment into the new park on May 19, 1891 and set up camp in Wawona. A major problem facing the Cavalry were the approximately 100,000 sheep that were illegally led into Yosemite's high meadows by shepherds each year. Laking the legal authority to arrest the herders, the Cavalry instead escorted the shepherds several days hike away from their flock. This left the sheep vulnerable and thus became an excellent deterrent. By the late 1890s sheep grazing was no longer a problem but at least one herder continued grazing his sheep in the park into the 1920s.
An extensive trail system was developed by the Cavalry that later formed the basis for the current trails. To mark trails, the cavalrymen blazed capital Ts into trees, a practice continued from that point onward even though none of the originally blazed trees are still standing.
Galen Clark retired as the state park's guardian in 1896, leaving the Valley and Grove under ineffective stewardship. Pre-existing problems in the state park worsened and new problems arose but the Cavalry could only monitor the situation. Long a proponent of creating a unified Yosemite national park, Muir and his Sierra Club continued to lobby the government and influential people for the creation of a unified Yosemite National Park.
Then in May of 1903, Theodore Roosevelt, who was then President of the United States, camped with John Muir near Glacier Point for three days. On that trip, Muir convinced Roosevelt to take control of the Valley and the Grove away from California and give it to the federal government. In 1906, Roosevelt signed a bill that did precisely that. A huge compromise had to be made to get Congressional approval, however; the pre-1906 park extent was substantially reduced, excluding natural wonders such as Devils Postpile and prime wildlife habitat.
The National Park Service was formed in 1916 and Yosemite was transfered to that agency's jurisdiction. Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, Tioga Pass Road, along with campgrounds at Tenaya and Merced lakes were also completed in 1916. 600 automobiles entered the east side of the Park using Tioga Road that summer. In 1926 the "All-Weather Highway (now California State Route 140) opened, ensuring year-long visitation and supplies under normal conditions.
"Dam Hetch Hetchy!"
To the north of Yosemite Valley is Hetch Hetchy Valley, which was considered by many, including John Muir, to be nearly identical in beauty and significance to Yosemite Valley. A long and nationally-polarized fight, pitting preservationists like Muir who wanted to leave wild areas wild against conservationists like Gifford Pinochet who wanted to manage wild areas for the betterment of mankind, ensued. Congress eventually authorized the O'Shaughnessy Dam in 1913 through passage of the Raker Act. The valley was flooded in 1923 by impounding of the Tuolumne River behind the O'Shaughnessy Dam, forming the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. The dam supplies drinking water and some cash (from electricity sales) to the San Francisco Bay Area.
More recent history
Three different protected zones were later added adjacent to Yosemite National Park.
These additional protected areas include areas removed from Yosemite National Park in the 1906 Act as well as other public land.
In the late 1990s, there was a high profile murder case in the park and some serious rock slides; one rockslide from the face beneath Glacier Point ended near the Happy Isles of the Merced River. It created a debris field at least the size of a football field. Tourism dropped a little after those incidents but soon after returned to previous levels.
A 1984 act of Congress set aside about 95% of the park in a highly protected wilderness area. No roads, motorized vehicles (except rescue helicopters and other emergency vehicles), or any development of any kind beyond trail maintenance are allowed in this area.
Human impact
In 1914 127 cars became the first automobiles to enter the park.
These changes did not come without consequences and the tention between access and preserving what people want to see and experience presents an ongoing struggle. Draining the swamps and fire suppression have reduced the size of meadows on the valley floor from 750 acres (300 ha) in the 1860s to 340 acres (138 ha) in the late 1990s that are only maintained through the yearly felling of young invadding trees. Pollution and traffic congestion from the hundreds of thousands of automobiles that carry over four million visitors to the park each year by the 1990s also presents a problem. Hunting large, potentially dangerous predators like the grizzly bear, wolf, and Mountain Lion to local extinction has also adversly affected the natural environment.
Geology
Main article: Geology of the Yosemite area
The area around Yosemite National Park was on the passive edge of a very young North America from the Precambrian to the early Paleozoic. At first sediment quietly settled in shallow water over the passive margin. Compressive forces from a newly-formed subduction zone in the mid-Paleozoic fused seabed rocks and sediment to the continent. Heat generated from subduction created island arcs of volcanos (not unlike Japan) that were also thrusted into the continent in the area of the park. These volcanic and sedimentary rocks were later heavily metamorphosed.
Most of the current landform of Yosemite National Park is composed of granitic rock which was formed below the surface 210 to 80 million years ago. This plutonic rock was emplaced as molten plutons about 6 miles (10 km) under the surface as a result of heat generated from subduction off the coast of North America. Over time most of the overlying rock (made mostly of sedimentary and volcanic rock) was uplifted along with the rest of the Sierra Nevada and transported or eroded away from the area (the Sierras started to uplift in earnest two million years ago). This exposed the granitic rock to surface pressures and it responded by exfoliation (responsible for the rounded shape of the many domes in the park) and mass wasting following the numerous fracture joint planes (cracks; especially vertical ones) in the now solidified plutons.
A series of glaciations from about 30 million years ago until around 8000 BC further modified the area. These ice age glaciers accelerated exfoliation and mass wasting through ice-wedging, glacial plucking, [[glacial scouring | scouring/abrasion] and the release of pressure after the retreat of each glaciation. Severe glaciations formed very large glaciers that tended to strip and transport top soil and talus piles far down glacial valleys while less severe glaciations deposited a great deal of glacial till further up in the valleys.
Activities
References
- Geology of National Parks: Fifth Edition, Ann G. Harris, Esther Tuttle, Sherwood D., Tuttle (Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing; 1997) ISBN 0-7872-5353-7
- Yosemite: A Visiters Companion, George Wuerthner, (Stackpole Books; 1994) ISBN 0-8117-2598-7
- Yosemite National Park: A Natural History Guide to Yosemite and Its Trails, Jeffrey P. Schaffer, (Wilderness Press, Berkeley; 1999) ISBN 0-89997-244-6