Description
Yosemite National Park ([joʊˈsɛmɨtiː]?) is a national park in eastern California. It covers an area of over 3,000 km² and lies on the western slopes of the central Sierra Nevada, in eastern Tuolumne, Mariposa, and Madera Counties. Established in 1890 thanks to the efforts of conservationists like John Muir, Yosemite National Park was one of the first national parks in the United States and the world. It came under the management of the National Park Service in 1916. Since 1984, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It attracts approximately 4 million visitors annually, making Yosemite the 6th most visited national park in the United States (2022). The park is famous for Yosemite Valley, a glacier-carved valley with granite cliffs, of which Half Dome and El Capitan are the most recognizable. U-shaped valleys like Yosemite Valley and Hetch Hetchy were carved by shifting glacial ice that accumulated in the Sierra Nevada during the ice ages. The park also encompasses high mountains, clear alpine rivers and waterfalls, and rare giant sequoia forests like Mariposa Grove. Nearly 95% of Yosemite is protected as wilderness and is home to a wide range of biodiversity.
