Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful and visited natural sites in California. However, it’s not just another pretty place- it is a place full of history, controversy, and meaning. The park is located up North, spanning 747, 956 acres across parts of Madera, Mariposa, and Tuolumne counties. Its lowest point of elevation is 2,127 feet and it reaches its highest point of elevation at 13, 114 feet. (Wikipedia). Long before humans walked the earth, the Sierra Nevada’s were lifted and slanted. As a result, slopes of various sizes were created, along with large canyons. Over time, snow and ice built up, layer by layer. This formed glaciers that moved and shaped the valleys into what they are today.
Yosemite stretches across the
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Yosemite National Park has a long and political history behind its creation. The area was originally named Ahwahnee but is now named after an American Indian tribe that was forced out of the territory by the Mariposa Battalion. It was not until 1851 that Americans began to even explore Yosemite, and only did so to seek out American Indians that had supposedly attacked gold miners. The captain of the pursuit came back and told everyone about the beautiful land he had encountered. This inspired others, including an editor of Hutchings Magazine, to see it for themselves. The editor, James Mason Hutchings, wrote that Yosemite offered, “"to the dyspeptic denizens of our larger cities … recreation and medicine … pure, free air, and … ice-cold water." (Adam Wesley Dean, 2010). He viewed Yosemite as an object that could benefit America as a nation and help the country to compete against Europe’s tourist sites. Frederick Billings, a lawyer who focused on land claims, also visited and wrote about the valley. However, he opposed the idea of making it into a public park and instead agreed with it coming under private ownership. Others began to advocate that all areas of such natural beauty should be preserved as state parks. With …show more content…
John Muir, the famous naturalist, reinforced these beliefs in his reporting of problems of overgrazing of the Yosemite meadows, the logging of the sequoia, and other damage.
Politicians began advocating for federal control of state parks. The federal government paid Hutchings and Lamon to give up their claims. While all of this was going on, the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1868, leading to a huge influx of people visiting the park, as well as people looking to profit off of it,
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yosemite Bill, putting Yosemite under federal control. It was to be a symbol of Union nationalism and the ability of the republican government to remain in control even during a time of so much conflict. It was also said to be a tribute to those who had fought in the Civil War to preserve the government. Not only did this bill put Yosemite under federal control, but it decided that future parks would also be put under federal
John Muir: John Muir also known as "John of the Mountains", was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States and was the founder of the Sierra Club.
It is a sad comparison to the past John Muir, who first documented Yosemite Valley, to today’s reality. The condition of Yosemite National Park should be introduced to the American public in order to protect its historic beauty and significance, eliminate current pollution, and prevent future repercussions. In
Cuyahoga Valley National Park was formed the same way that most other valleys were. It is believed that long before the ice age occurred an ancient river carved through this area. This river left behind deposits that after millions of years transformed into the parks sandstone bedrock. As the ice age came into effect, this river froze and became part of a glacier that had an even bigger effect on the landscape of the valley. These glaciers scraped through northeastern Ohio and in the process left behind deposits that now make up the parks fertile soil (“Rock, Ice, and River”).
The Little Missouri River eroding the mountain range is the reason that the park is as it looks today. The park is believed to be <60 million years old. Over 60 million years ago volcanos all over the west were erupting and spitting out amounts of ash. The rivers near the volcanos were gathering. The rivers began to dry out, leveeing the ash behind. The ash was being dried in layers and turned into sandstone, siltstone and mudstone while the ash layers became bentonite clay. This Bentonite clay is dangerous because it gets people stuck, like quick sand it is located throughout the park. It can pull the car tires un...
Yosemite and its history, young to old the story of an area of land that is doomed to be mined, forcibly stripped naked of its natural resources. In 1864 Yosemite land grant was signed into act by president Abraham Lincoln, the first area of land set aside for preservation and protection. Yosemite being a very important historical plot of land, some time ago president Theodore Roosevelt visited the park managing to disappear from the secret service with John Muir. Through the years the contrast of ideas between the industrialists and the preservationists have clashed, Yosemite’s history both interesting and mysterious but more importantly inevitable .
The idea came to life in 1845 when a woman by the name of Asa Whitney presented to congress a written plan that she hoped would be handed over to the federal government. Her goal was for the federal government to consider a plan that would include the building of a railroad that began near the Mississippi River and ended near the Pacific Ocean. At first look, funds were far too low, and a plan would need to come into place to collect funding. The federal government began receiving funds from the Oregon Boundary Dispute which was concluded in 1846, the discovery of gold in California in 1849, and a collection of western territories. In the Year 1853, the congress approved the idea with a collection of funds. They began to survey different possible routes.
Located in the popular Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in California. Every year, mother nature’s breathtaking beauty attracts millions of people from around the world. People hike for three long and fatiguing hours in anticipation of witnessing forceful water rushing down the steep mountain from 2,425 feet above. Last summer, my family and I backpacked through the Yosemite Falls Trail and I came to learn what a truly exhausting experience it is.
Malibu has been burning ever since it’s been known to mankind. The geographic condition along with fierce Santa Ana wind has made it the perfect burning zone. Yosemite is prone to fire because of its natural condition but not to the extent like Malibu. Malibu has been inhabited for more than a century. Malibu is a place where people went to settle down because of the natural beauty. Mountains along with pacific shoreline are the perfect dream location for many reality businesses. All these natural beauties and the addition of hot and dry weather came with a dangerous problem; which is nothing but fire: a fire which is intensified exponentially by the wind of Santa Ana. In his book Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis explained that the fire hasn’t slowed down the population growth or building new homes in Malibu.
The Pacific Railroad bill of 1862 launched the transcontinental railroad construction project. The Pacific Railroad bill granted 6,400 acres of public lands and government loans ranging from $16,000 to $48,000 per mile of track completed to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad companies. (Pacific Railroad Bill) Following the Pacific Railroad bill a series of federal and state acts between 1862 and 1871 granted more than 130 million acres of public land and supplied additional monetary loans of approximately $150 million dollars to the expansion of the railroads. (Gillon p.652)
Sequoia and Kings National Park has some of the most jaw dropping geological features and resources a park can have, part of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range lies in the park. This is the longest mountain range in America. Mt. Whitney is in this range and rises to 14.491 feet above sea level. The park has eleven additional peaks that are above 14,000 feet and also lie in the park. In Kings Canyon National Park ridges expand into the west and create the goddard and monarch divides with mountains that are taller than 13,000 feet (United States National Park Service, “Overview”, 2015). The Great Western divide is what people see when they first go to Mineral King and the Great Western parallels the Sierran Crest.
Every year, over nine million hikers and adventure seekers travel to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park making it the most visited national park in the United States. There are abundant reasons for this, but many popular reasons include over 150 hiking trails extending over 850 miles, a large portion of the Appalachian Trail, sightseeing, fishing, horseback riding, and bicycling. The park houses roughly ten thousand species of plants and animals with an estimated 90,000 undocumented species likely possible to be present. It is clear why there was a pressing interest in making all this land into a national park. My research was started by asking the question; how did the transformation of tourism due to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park affect surrounding cities such as Gatlinburg and Sevier County, and in return, its effect on the popularity of the park?
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to save the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. John Muir was one of the earliest advocates of the national park idea, and its most eloquent spokesman.
The dominant kind of rock in Yosemite National Park is granite. Most of the landscapes in the Yosemite area are cut from the granitic rock of the batholith, which is crystallized magma miles underground.At those kind of depths, magma is well insulated and cools very slowly, making the latter formed granite strong. Granite is often has a “black and white” appearance. The lighter-colored minerals in granite are quartz, potassium feldspar, and plagioclase feldspar, whereas the darker-colored minerals are biotite and hornblende. here are also minor amounts of other minerals, like titanite and zircon. granite has coarse grain size, angular grain shape and poorly sorted.
John often left the tourists and went for a hike and went for a hike at Vernal Fall.(Wadsworth,Ginger, Page 56) John Muir has a Redwood forest in San Francisco. Many people love Muir's love for exploration, and knowledge of nature. He continued his studies of glaciers, and as he continued he came to the sense that the glaciers were the reason for the carved out valleys and the canyons of Yosemite. Though other scientists didn't believe him he kept pushing for more