Scenic Road Trips > Yosemite National Park

Yosemite Information

There are so many amazing facts and stories about Yosemite, which I'm not even going to try to give a thorough account of. I'll try to summarize the basics though and point you towards some other resources if you'd like to learn more.

Info & Some History

Yosemite National Park is located a few hours east of San Francisco, CA in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The park is roughly the size of Rhode Island and almost all of its land is wilderness, only reachable by multiple-day backcountry hiking trips. It is one of the most visited parks in the country, drawing over three million people a year from all over the world.

Yosemite was established as a national park on October 1, 1890, becoming the second park in the new system (after Yellowstone). It was originally given some protection by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, on June 30, 1864 in the Yosemite Grant. The grant was the first time land had ever been protected for future generations to appreciate. Although the grant was given to protect the rare Giant Sequoia trees that grow in Yosemite's southern region, the park's boundaries were expanded tremendously through the work of naturalist John Muir, amongst others. Muir figured out that to protect the trees, the entire surrounding area needed to be protected as well, since they were all one system.