Yosemite National Park

• 1. Introduction

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  Yosemite National Park has a waterfall that sometimes glows orange: Horsetail Fall, which spills over the eastern edge of El Capitan. It usually flows only in winter and is easy to miss. On rare evenings in mid- to late February, the setting sun lights it from behind. The sky has to be clear, because even minor haze or cloud spoils the effect.

  The park spreads across 1187 square miles of California's central Sierra Nevada, in four counties, under the care of the National Park Service. It became a World Heritage Site in 1984. About four million people visit each year.

  Behind that glowing water sits a much larger set of questions. Where does a name like Yosemite come from, and what did it originally mean? What forces turned solid granite into domes, cliffs and a valley shaped like a U? Who lived here first, and what happened to them? And how did a single valley end up shaping the idea of a national park?

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• 2. Granite and Ice

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  About 210 million years ago, in the late Triassic, the first great phase of granite formation began about 6 miles below the surface. It continued until roughly 150 million years ago and produced the Sierra Nevada Batholith, a huge mass of igneous rock that cooled deep underground. Over the same span, the Nevadan orogeny raised an ancestral mountain range to a height of 15,000 feet. A second major phase followed between about 120 million and 80 million years ago, in the Cretaceous.

  Ten million years ago, movement along the Sierra fault began lifting the whole range. As the block tilted, the streams flowing west grew steeper and faster, and they cut their valleys more quickly. Uplift sped up again about two million years ago, during the Pleistocene. Exposed to lower pressure at the surface, the granite began to peel away in sheets, a process called exfoliation. That peeling gave Half Dome and North Dome their rounded shapes, and it carved inset arches such as Royal Arches.

  Long vertical cracks called joints guided where erosion worked fastest. These joints do not move, so they are not faults. Silica in the rock sets their spacing, with more silica making harder rock and wider gaps. Cross joints produced pillars and columns such as Washington Column and Lost Arrow.

  Starting 2 to 3 million years ago, a series of glaciations reshaped the region, and the last one ended around 10,000 years ago. Geologists recognize at least four major ones, locally named Sherwin, Tahoe, Tenaya and Tioga. The Sherwin glaciers were the largest, and one of them almost surely did the main excavation of Yosemite Valley. The ice reached depths of up to 4000 feet and turned river-cut V-shaped valleys into U-shaped canyons. The longest glacier ran 60 miles down the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, well past Hetch Hetchy Valley. Only the highest peaks, such as Mount Dana and Mount Conness, stood clear of the ice. As the glaciers retreated, their rubble dammed the 5.5-mile-long Lake Yosemite, a shallow lake that periodically covered much of the valley floor.

  The idea that glaciers carved the valley was once disputed. The naturalist John Muir was among the first to propose it, in defiance of established scientists such as Josiah Whitney.

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• 3. Water and Weather

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  Yosemite Falls drops 2425 feet in the valley, making it the fourth tallest waterfall in North America according to the World Waterfall Database. Nearby, Ribbon Falls carries far less water but has the highest single vertical drop, at 1612 feet. Bridalveil Fall is perhaps the most prominent of the valley's waterfalls, and Wapama Falls pours into Hetch Hetchy Valley. The flow peaks in April, May and June as the snow melts. After heavy rain or a big melt, hundreds of temporary waterfalls spring to life.

  The Tuolumne and Merced rivers both begin along the crest of the Sierra inside the park, and both are federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers. Together they have carved canyons 3000 to 4000 feet deep. The Tuolumne drains about 680 square miles in the north, and the Merced drains about 511 square miles in the south. The park also holds approximately 3,200 lakes larger than 100 square meters.

  The Lyell Glacier, at 160 acres, is the largest glacier in Yosemite. It is not a leftover of the great Ice Age glaciers that sculpted the valley. It formed later, during one of the cooler episodes since the Ice Age, such as the Little Ice Age. In 1871, the Black Mountain Glacier was marked on record, and by the mid-1980s it had vanished. The Lyell and Maclure glaciers, the last two in the park, have shrunk over the past century and are expected to disappear.

  At park headquarters, 4018 feet up, January averages 38.0 degrees Fahrenheit and July averages 73.3. The thermometer reached a record 112 degrees on the 22nd and the 24th of July 1915. It fell to a record low of -7 degrees on the 1st of January 2009. The wettest year was 1983, with 66.06 inches of precipitation, and the driest was 1976, with 14.84 inches. The snowiest winter, 1948-1949, brought 176.5 inches. Less than three percent of the yearly precipitation falls in summer, which is why the climate is classed as Mediterranean.

  Temperatures in the park have risen in recent decades, and the Sierra Nevada snowpack has shrunk. Snow now melts earlier, more winter precipitation falls as rain, and the timing of river flow has shifted. Some plants and animals are moving upslope to find cooler conditions, while others struggle to adjust at all. Hotter, drier weather also lengthens the fire season. That matters in a park where dry vegetation, low humidity and summer thunderstorms already combine to start frequent lightning fires.

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• 4. The Ahwahneechee

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  Yohhe'meti, a Southern Sierra Miwok word meaning "those who kill" or "the killers," is where the name Yosemite comes from. Linguistic analysis shows it was a derogatory label that surrounding Miwok groups gave to the Ahwahneechee, whose band under Chief Tenaya had raided neighboring villages. The Ahwahneechee called themselves "dwellers" in Ahwahnee, their name for the region, which they translated as "big mouth."

  The Ahwahneechee were the only tribe living inside today's park boundaries. They belonged to the Southern Sierra Miwok and were related to the Northern Paiute and Mono tribes. Central Sierra Miwoks and Yokuts from the San Joaquin Valley visited to trade and intermarry, and that blending of cultures later helped preserve a Native presence in Yosemite. Acorns were a dietary staple, along with other seeds and plants, salmon and deer.

  The California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 changed everything. More than 90,000 European Americans arrived in 1849, and miners competed with residents for resources. One estimate puts the Indigenous population of California at 300,000 about 70 years before the Gold Rush, then 150,000, and just ten years later about 50,000. Disease, falling birth rates, starvation and conflict all played a part. The fighting in Yosemite, known as the Mariposa War, was part of the California genocide, the systematic killing of Indigenous peoples across the state between the 1840s and 1870s.

  In December 1850, California funded a state militia to drive Native people from contested land. That same month, a Fresno trader named James D. Savage had his trading post attacked. He rallied miners and local officials, and at the start of 1851 he was appointed a United States Army major and leader of the Mariposa Battalion. With Captain John Boling, he pursued the Ahwahneechee and drove them west, out of Yosemite. In March 1851, the battalion captured about 70 Ahwahneechee, who escaped before reaching a planned reservation in Fresno. In May, Boling's men captured 35 more, including Tenaya, and marched them there. Most were eventually allowed to leave, and the rest escaped. Tenaya fled across the Sierra Nevada and settled with the Mono Lake Paiutes. He was killed in 1853, either over stolen horses or a gambling dispute. Savage's men had also set fire to an Ahwahneechee camp. The blaze spread into the forest, and the militia had to abandon its raid to save its own camp.

  Attached to Savage's unit was Doctor Lafayette Bunnell, who wrote with awe about the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite. His accounts are the first well-documented reports of European Americans in Yosemite Valley. Bunnell is credited with naming it, based on interviews with Tenaya. He wrongly believed the word meant "full-grown grizzly bear." The Miwok term for the Ahwahneechee is easily confused with a similar term for grizzly bear, so the mistake lingers.

  After the war, Native Americans stayed in reduced numbers. The remaining Ahwahneechee were forced into a village the state government built in 1851. There they adapted by working in tourism, making and selling goods, and offering services. In 1851 and 1852, California's Indigenous peoples proposed treaties that would have set aside reservations, but Congress refused to ratify them. Totuya, also called Maria Lebrado, a granddaughter of Chief Tenaya, died in 1931. She was the last full-blooded Ahwahneechee.

  Park officials were often hostile to Native culture. They penalized Native people for playing games and drinking during the Indian Field Days of 1924. In 1929, Superintendent Charles G. Thomson judged the Indian village aesthetically unpleasant and ordered the camp burned down. In 1953, the National Park Service banned non-employee Natives from living in the park. By 1969 only a few families remained, all employees and their dependents. They were moved to other park housing, and the village structures were demolished in firefighter training exercises. A reconstructed Indian Village of Ahwahnee now stands behind the Yosemite Museum. The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation is still seeking tribal sovereignty and federal recognition.

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• 5. Tourists Arrive

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  In 1855, the entrepreneur James Mason Hutchings, the artist Thomas Ayres and two others became the first tourists to visit Yosemite. Ayres drew the valley in a detailed style with exaggerated angularity, and his work was distributed nationally. An exhibition of his drawings was held in New York City. Between 1855 and 1860, Hutchings wrote articles and special issues that drew more visitors.

  Galen Clark found the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia at Wawona in 1857. He built simple lodgings and roads there. In 1879, the Wawona Hotel opened to serve visitors to the grove. As tourism grew, so did the number of trails and hotels.

  John Degnan and his wife opened Yosemite's first concession in 1884, a bakery and store. In 1899, David and Jennie Curry started the Curry Company and founded Camp Curry, now Curry Village. Park administrators decided that fewer concessionaires would be more financially sound. In 1925, the Curry Company and its rival, the Yosemite National Park Company, were forced to merge into the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. The new company built the Ahwahnee Hotel in 1926-27.

  The Wawona Tree, also called the Tunnel Tree, stood 234 feet tall and measured 90 feet around. In 1881, workers cut a carriage-wide tunnel through it, and it became a favorite photograph for visitors. Carriages and later automobiles drove through it. The tunnel weakened the tree permanently, and in 1969 it fell under a heavy load of snow. It was estimated to be 2,100 years old.

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• 6. Protecting the Park

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  On the 30th of June 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant. Galen Clark and Senator John Conness had pressed for protection, worried about the effect of commercial interests. It was the first time the United States government set land aside for preservation and public use. It also set a precedent for the creation of Yellowstone, the nation's first national park, in 1872. Historians Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr wrote that "the Yosemite Grant was a direct consequence of the war... an embodiment of the ongoing process of remaking government... an intentional assertion of a steadfast belief in the eventual Union victory."

  The valley and the Mariposa Grove were ceded to California as a state park. Clark became its first guardian, but neither he nor the commissioners had the power to evict homesteaders, a group that included Hutchings. The United States Supreme Court invalidated the homesteaders' land claims in 1872. A separate dispute that reached the Supreme Court in 1880 ousted Clark and the commissioners, and Hutchings became guardian. Both court decisions are treated as precedents in land management law. The first transcontinental railroad, finished in 1869, and three stagecoach roads built in the mid-1870s made the trip easier.

  John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist and explorer who wrote articles and scientific papers about Yosemite. Sheep had overgrazed the meadows, and loggers were cutting giant sequoia. Muir brought influential guests to see the damage, among them Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of Century Magazine. Together they lobbied Congress, which created Yosemite National Park on the 1st of October 1890. California kept control of the valley and the Mariposa Grove. On the 19th of May 1891, Troop I of the 4th Cavalry took charge of the park, camping at Wawona under acting superintendent Captain Abram Epperson Wood. From 1899 to 1913, cavalry regiments stationed two troops at Yosemite, including the all-Black 9th Cavalry, known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

  In May 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt camped with Muir for three days near Glacier Point. Muir persuaded him to return the valley and Mariposa Grove to federal control, and Roosevelt signed the bill in 1906. In 1903, a dam had also been proposed in Hetch Hetchy Valley to supply San Francisco with water and hydroelectric power. Muir and the Sierra Club opposed it, while Gifford Pinchot supported it. The Raker Act cleared the way for the O'Shaughnessy Dam in 1913.

  The National Park Service was formed in 1916 and took over Yosemite. That year, Tioga Pass Road and Tuolumne Meadows Lodge were completed. Ansel Franklin Hall helped found the Yosemite Museum in 1926. Clare Marie Hodges became the park's first female ranger in 1918, and Enid Michael followed as a seasonal ranger in 1921 and served for 20 years. In 1937, conservationist Rosalie Edge lobbied Congress to buy about 8,000 acres of old-growth sugar pines on the park's edge that were slated for logging.

  By 1968, summer traffic and parking in the valley had become a concern. The park service scaled back attractions that lured visitors, such as the Firefall, in which red-hot embers were pushed off a cliff near Glacier Point at night. In 1984, preservationists persuaded Congress to designate 677,600 acres, about 89 percent of the park, as the Yosemite Wilderness.

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• 7. Life and Fire

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  The park climbs from 2127 feet to 13,114 feet, and it holds five major vegetation zones, from chaparral and oak woodland to alpine terrain. Of California's 7,000 plant species, more than 20 percent grow within the park, which has suitable habitat for more than 160 rare plants. It also holds about 352.36 square miles of old-growth forest. More than 400 vertebrate species live here, and 262 bird species have been documented. Three groves of giant sequoia remain: the Mariposa Grove with 200 trees, the Tuolumne Grove with 25, and the Merced Grove with 20.

  Black bears were once a tourist attraction at the park's garbage dumps, where visitors gathered to photograph them feeding. Bears also broke into parked cars for food. As encounters and property damage grew, the park closed the open dumps and installed bear-proof trash receptacles and food lockers. Rangers use rubber bullets to teach bears to associate people with unpleasant experiences, since aggressive bears are usually destroyed. They also tag and radio-collar individual bears. The park notes that ear-tag color is assigned randomly and does not signal problem behavior.

  The brown bear, the California condor and the least Bell's vireo have all disappeared from the park within historical time. About 40 species hold special status under California or federal endangered species laws. More than 130 non-native plant species have been documented, including yellow star thistle, which sends down a long taproot to outcompete natives for water. Ozone pollution damages sequoia tissue and leaves the trees more open to insects and disease. Sequoia cones need fire-touched soil to germinate, so decades of fire suppression have hurt the trees' ability to reproduce.

  In 2016, The Trust for Public Land bought the 400-acre Ackerson Meadow on the park's western edge for $2.3 million and donated it to the park service. It was the largest addition to Yosemite since 1949. Cattle ranching, logging and water diversion had eroded gullies and dried out the vegetation. Restoration cost $17.7 million, ran from fall 2023 to spring 2025, and turned the meadow into a wildlife corridor.

  Indigenous residents set small fires in the early 1860s and before to clear brush. Those burns resembled today's controlled burns and helped keep the forest resilient. Today the park service supports the Yosemite Ancestral Stewards, an all-Indigenous crew that restores meadows, reduces fuel and protects archaeological sites.

  The Meadow Fire, started by lightning on the 19th of July 2014, burned about 4971 acres and forced helicopter evacuations of hikers from Half Dome. In 2018, the Ferguson Fire on the western boundary closed the valley and other sections in the largest closure in almost thirty years. In July 2022, the Washburn Fire threatened hundreds of giant sequoias near the Mariposa Grove, including the Grizzly Giant. Earlier prescribed burns had cut the fuel and slowed the fire, and the grove reopened on the 3rd of August 2022. The park service notes that about 20 percent of California's giant sequoias were lost to severe fires in recent years.

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• 8. Visiting Today

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  El Capitan's face rises 3300 feet, and climbers can be seen on it in the snow-free months. Camp 4, a walk-in campground in the valley, was instrumental in developing rock climbing as a sport. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Half Dome climbs 4800 feet above the valley floor, and hiking to its summit requires a permit whenever the cables are up, usually from Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day. A lottery admits 300 hikers a day past the base of the subdome, 225 day hikers and 75 backpackers. The park has over 800 miles of trails.

  Badger Pass Ski Area, the oldest downhill ski area in California, runs from mid-December through early April. Since 1927, the Ahwahnee Hotel has hosted the Bracebridge dinner, a holiday event inspired by Washington Irving's descriptions of an English Christmas in his Sketch Book. Ansel Adams organized the show from 1929 to 1973.

  In 2016, Yosemite passed five million visitors for the first time, a record. Between 2020 and 2025, park managers sometimes used advance reservations to pace vehicle volume. In February 2026, the Department of the Interior rescinded the reservation requirement for Yosemite and other busy parks and chose real-time traffic diversions when parking fills. The National Parks Conservation Association criticized the change, warning of traffic, damage to resources and strain on already-reduced staff.

  Yosemite once kept about 410 permanent employees. After federal hiring freezes and budget cuts that began in early 2025, the number fell to 387 in 2025 and 362 by early 2026. Visitor center hours were reduced, and some ranger-led educational programs were suspended. Laid-off park service workers hung a giant upside-down American flag at El Capitan as a distress signal. Meanwhile, the Great American Outdoors Act provided $31.6 million to rehabilitate the Ahwahnee Hotel, with seismic upgrades, a new kitchen and replacement of critical building systems.

  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, released in 1989, opens with scenes shot in the park. Documentaries filmed here include Valley Uprising in 2014, The Dawn Wall in 2017 and the Academy Award-winning Free Solo in 2018. Untamed, a 2025 murder mystery series set almost entirely in Yosemite, was filmed in British Columbia.

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