Yosemite National Park

Swollen by melting snows in spring, numerous waterfalls cascade down the almost vertical granite walls of the Merced River Valley (known to the Spanish as El Rio de Nuestra Se¤ora de la Merced). These walls rise to between 3,000 and 5,000ft/900 and 1,500m.Flora and faunaThe almost flat valley bottom (at 4,000ft/1,200m above sea-level) is covered in lush flower-strewn meadows, thick bushes and dense clumps of trees. The vastly different levels to be found in the park (between 130 and 1,300ft/400 and 4,000m) produce ideal living conditions for a wide range of animals and plants. Thus wild deer, black bear, coyotes, badgers and numerous rodents roam the lower regions, while marmots frequent the inhospitable mountain heights.Several clumps of mighty redwoods (sequoia gigantea) are also one of the special sights to be seen in Yosemite National Park.HistoryOriginThe Yosemite Valley was formed over millions of years. Originally there was a wide valley here with a river which in time hollowed out a canyon up to 2,100ft/650m deep. During the Ice Age the canyon became filled right to the top with ice and possibly glaciers. The ice widened the canyon at its weakest points and hollowed out the U-shaped Yosemite Valley. The last glacier filled it to a depth of only about one-third, leaving a moraine of ice behind. Behind this moraine the melting ice formed a lake, which slowly filled with deposits, thus forming the plains in the valley on which meadows and forests are found today.DevelopmentThe first men must have come to the Yosemite Valley 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and Miwok Indians (Ahwahnee) lived there for more than 4,500 years before the Europeans came. In the middle of the 19th century, when the gold-rush and its accompanying army of adventurers descended upon California and the villages and hunting-grounds of the Indian aborigines, the latter often carried out bloody reprisal attacks on the white man's mining towns and trading posts. Whilst on a punitive expedition against the Indians on March 25th 1851 the Mariposa Battalion became the first white men to enter the valley. They gave it the Indian name of "U-zu-mate", the name of the grisly bear native to these forests.The reports made by the Mariposa soldiers quickly aroused public interest in this special and beautiful part of the country and the first visitors were attracted there as early as 1851. In 1864, during the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Transfer of Ownership, which ceded the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to California, on condition that it was preserved in its state of natural beauty.The Scottish naturalist John Muir, who came to the Yosemite Valley four years later, became the chief advocate of the National Park concept. Yellowstone National Park was the first to be created in 1872. It was followed by Yosemite in 1890. California then returned the area to the Federal Government, and with the passage of time it grew to its present size.Recent historyThe first cavalrymen entered the valley along Indian trails; ten years later the first roads were laid and in 1900 the first car came in along the Wawona Road, although cars were not officially allowed until 1913. In 1907 the railway line from San Francisco to El Portal was built along the western boundary of the park, and this remained in use until 1945. The all-weather road from Merced was completed in 1926. That was when tourists began to flood into Yosemite National Park; now some 2.5 million people visit it every year. In 1984 Yosemite National Park received very special recognition from the United Nations who added it to the list of World Heritage Sites, which includes the natural and made-made Wonders of the World.

Yosemite National Park Highlights