The Yosemite National Park is much greater, both in area and beauty,
than is generally known. Nearly all Americans who have not explored it
consider it identical with the far-famed Yosemite Valley. The fact is
that the Valley is only a very small part, indeed, of this glorious
public pleasure ground. It was established October 1, 1890, but its
boundary lines have been changed several times since then. It now has an
area of 1,176.16 square miles, 752,744 acres.
This magnificent pleasure land lies on the west slope of the Sierra
Nevada about 200 miles due east of San Francisco. The crest of the range
is its eastern boundary as far south as Mount Lyell. The rivers which
water it originate in the everlasting snows. A thousand icy streams
converge to form them. They flow west through a marvelous sea of peaks,
resting by the way in hundreds of snow-bordered lakes, romping through
luxuriant valleys, rushing turbulently over rocky heights, swinging in
and out of the shadows of mighty mountains.
The Yosemite Valley occupies 8 square miles out of a total of 1,176
square miles in the Yosemite National Park. The park above the rim is
less celebrated principally because it is less known. It is less known
principally because it was not opened to the public by motor road until
1915. Now several roads and 700 miles of trail make much of the
spectacular high-mountain region of the park easily accessible.
For the rest, the park includes, in John Muir’s words, “the headwaters
of the Tuolumne and Merced Rivers, two of the most songful streams in
the world; innumerable lakes and waterfalls and smooth silky lawns; the
noblest forests, the loftiest granite domes, the deepest ice-sculptured
canyons, the brightest crystalline pavements, and snowy mountains
soaring into the sky twelve and thirteen thousand feet, arrayed in open
ranks and spiry pinnacled groups partially separated by tremendous
canyons and amphitheaters; gardens on their sunny brows, avalanches
thundering down their long white slopes, cataracts roaring gray and
foaming in the crooked, rugged gorges, and glaciers in their shadowy
recesses, working in silence, slowly completing their sculptures;
new-born lakes at their feet, blue and green, free or encumbered with
drifting icebergs like miniature Arctic Oceans, shining, sparkling, calm
as stars.”