Yosemite National Park

Every national park in America is spectacular for its own reasons but Yosemite National Park has a very unique story behind its astounding scenic views. Yosemite is known for its many geologic features and landscapes. Yosemite Valley is one of the most beautiful qualities within the park, which is a mile-wide, 7-mile-long canyon that was cut by a river then widened and deepened by glacial action over time (National Geographic, 2016). Not very many national parks have a variety of topographies like Yosemite does, which is one of the many reasons why the park is nothing less than spectacular.
The land that we now know as Yosemite National Park was first occupied by the Ahwahnechee, which had lived there for generations. The Ahwahnechee tribes
Geologically speaking, the Sierra Nevada is a huge block of the Earth’s crust that was broken free on the east along a bounding fault system. This fault system was uplifted and tilted westward and this combination of uplift and tilt created the present mountain range (Geology, 2016). The Sierra Nevada Mountain range is part of the North American Cordillera, which was formed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic age. The Sierra Nevada Mountain range is part of the Nevadan orogenic belt and arose due to the engagement of tectonic plates which deformed the Earth’s lithosphere (North American Cordillera, 2016). Yosemite National Park is a glaciated landscape, which is where most of the beauty comes from. The scenery that resulted from the interaction of the glaciers and the underlying rocks was the basis for Yosemite’s preservation as a national park. Some of the remarkable landforms that were the direct result of the glaciation in Yosemite include U-shaped valleys, domes, waterfalls, moraines, and arêtes (Geology, 2016). A few iconic landmarks in Yosemite National Park include Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite Falls, Vernal and Nevada Falls, Bridalveil Falls, Half Dome, Clark Range and Cathedral Range (Geology,
This allows for many visitors to visit each the park each and every day. To make the trip as convenient as possible for tourists there are 214 miles of paved roads, 20 miles of paved walking and bike paths, eight different lodges to stay at, and four different campgrounds. Because of the accessibility that the National Park Services have created at the convenience of the visitors to see the beauty of Yosemite National Park, there are more than four million park visitors each year. The fascinations lure in these visitors includes some of the 400 different species of vertebrates, diverse vegetation that changes with the elevation of the park, a plethora of waterfalls that flow into scenic Valley meadows, specifically Yosemite Falls which ranks as the tallest in North America at 2, 425 feet (seen in Figure 9), enormous granite mountains, and glaciated landscapes. A few of the top places to go in Yosemite National Park include Wawona, which is the home to the Big Trees Lodge and the Pioneer Yosemite History Center, Mariposa Grove, which is a forest of ancient giant sequoia trees, Glacier Point, which an overlook with a commanding view of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, and High Sierra, Tuolumne Meadows and Tioga Road, which is a large, open meadow surrounded by majestic peaks and domes, Crane Flat Area, which is a pleasant