Yosemite National Park
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Some history of Yosemite National Park (see more videos below)
Although Yosemite’s history as a national park goes back more than 100 years, its geologic history is timeless. The greatest alterations in Yosemite Valley were made by glaciers.
Roche Moutonnée (sheep rock): These asymmetrical outcroppings of rock resemble sheep feeding in a meadow. The gentle, sloping ridge points in the direction from which the glacier came. An example of this type of formation is Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows.
Glacial Polish and Striations: The shiny, flat surface of some rocks is the handiwork of glaciers that polished them centuries ago. Sand and other small abrasives that pressed against the granite under the weight of the glaciers cut distinct striations, or scratch marks, on the rocks, which indicate the direction the glaciers were moving. Examples of glacial polish can be seen on the domes surrounding Tenaya Lake.
Dikes: Some rock faces show long white lines that are so neat and straight that they resemble the divider in streets. These are rocks rich in feldspar and quartz, which, in their fluid state, oozed up through a crack in the rock and solidified.
Yosemite Valley’s first residents were American Indians who inhabited the Valley region perhaps as long as 4,000 years ago. By the time Euro-Americans entered the Yosemite region in the mid-19th century, the Valley was inhabited by the Southern Sierra Miwok. The Miwok called Yosemite Valley, Ahwahnee, which loosely translates into “Place of a Gaping Mouth.” It was at that time that they began calling themselves the Ahwahneechee. They harvested black oak acorns, hunted and fished, and traded these and other items native to Yosemite Valley, with the Mono Lake Paiute people for obsidian, rabbit skins, pine nuts and insect foods.
Few non-Indians knew of the existence of Yosemite Valley prior to 1851. The discovery of gold in the Sierra foothills in 1848 brought thousands of gold seekers to the area. By 1851, the continued theft of Indian lands and murder of native people resulted in the Mariposa Indian War. On March 27, 1851, in an attempt to subdue a group of Indian people, the state-sanctioned Mariposa Battalion entered Yosemite Valley. They became the first group of non-Indians to record their entry into the Valley.
Word of Yosemite’s beauty gradually spread, and in 1855, the first party of tourists arrived. Nine years later, in the middle of the Civil War, a group of influential Californians persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to grant Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the state as the country’s first public preserve.
The drive for federal protection of the Yosemite region began shortly after the first non-Indian settlers arrived and before conservationist John Muir first visited in 1868.
Abraham Lincoln provided this protection when he signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864. This grant is considered the foundation upon which national and state parks were later established. The grant deeded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to the state of California. However, no such protection existed for the vast wilderness surrounding the Valley and grove.
In 1889, John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson, the influential editor of Century magazine, found the high country overrun with flocks of domestic sheep. Muir wrote of the devastation that these ‘hoofed locusts’ wrought upon the land as early as 1869. They not only voraciously consumed meadows and wildflowers but also destroyed the soul of the land. As they camped together in Tuolumne Meadows, Muir urged Johnson to do something about it. Johnson responded by using his influence on key citizens and politicians back East to help preserve the region. Johnson’s resolve became as strong as Muir’s. Together, they planned a campaign to make the high country surrounding Yosemite Valley into a national park.
While Johnson lobbied for the park, Muir spoke and wrote eloquently of the need for legislation to designate the land for a national park, as was done when Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872. Remarkably, their efforts were rewarded in just one year. On October 1, 1890, the U.S. Congress set aside more than 1,500 square miles of ‘reserved forest lands’ soon to be known as Yosemite National Park. It included the area surrounding Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. However, it took a meeting between President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir in 1903, and the effective lobbying of railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman, to have Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove ceded from the state of California’s control and included with Yosemite National Park in 1906.
Here is an awesome look at some of Yosemite.
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