A granite valley carved by glaciers over hundreds of thousands of years, ringed by El Capitan, Half Dome and Yosemite Falls, and the landscape that shaped the American idea of wilderness through John Muir’s writing and the photographs of Ansel Adams. It remains one of the most demanding and most watched arenas in world rock climbing.
At a glance
Yosemite National Park covers 3,081 square kilometres of the Sierra Nevada in Mariposa County, California. It was established as the third national park in the United States, after Yellowstone and Sequoia, in 1890, and the park was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. At its heart lies Yosemite Valley, a glacially carved granite chasm that has drawn artists, scientists and climbers since it first became accessible to visitors in 1855.
The valley’s form results from three geological stages: the slow cooling of the Sierra Nevada granite batholith around 100 million years ago, the carving action of Pleistocene glaciers roughly 20,000 years ago, which filled the valley to a great depth and left its characteristic U-shape, and the later isostatic rebound of the rock, which produced the exfoliation cracks visible on El Capitan and Half Dome today.
Key facts
- Location: Yosemite Valley, Sierra Nevada, Mariposa County, California, USA
- Area: 3,081 square kilometres
- Established: 1890, the third US national park
- Heritage status: UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed 1984
- Valley floor: around 11 km long and 1 km wide, at an elevation of 1,219 metres
- Notable features: El Capitan (2,307 m, 900 m vertical face), Half Dome (2,693 m, 600 m north-west face), Yosemite Falls (739 m, the highest waterfall in North America) and Bridalveil Fall (188 m)
History
Yosemite Valley was long inhabited by the Ahwahneechee, a Southern Sierra Miwok people who called it Ahwahnee, the Place of the Gaping Mouth. Their community, numbering perhaps a few hundred people, had lived in the valley for around 3,000 years before outside contact. The first non-indigenous people to enter the valley were members of the Mariposa Battalion, a California state militia pursuing the Ahwahneechee during the Mariposa Indian War in March 1851; the name Yosemite is thought to derive from an Ahwahneechee term applied to them by outsiders.
John Muir, later known as the Father of the National Parks, first visited Yosemite in 1868 and lived in the valley for six years, writing The Mountains of California (1894) and The Yosemite (1912). In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club. In May 1903 Muir camped with President Theodore Roosevelt in the Mariposa Grove and the valley for three nights, a trip that led Roosevelt to arrange for the valley’s transfer from California to federal control and to the creation of numerous national monuments and forests during his presidency. Muir’s later years were marked by the campaign against the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley within the park to supply water to San Francisco; he fought it for a decade and lost, the dam being approved shortly after his death in 1914.
What you see
From Tunnel View, at the eastern end of the Wawona Tunnel, El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall and Half Dome appear together in the single composition that has become the defining image of the park. On the valley floor, meadows and black oaks border the Merced River beneath granite walls streaked in spring by snowmelt waterfalls.
El Capitan’s sheer south-east face has become one of the central sites in the history of rock climbing. Its route known as the Nose was first climbed by Warren Harding in 1958 over 47 days spread across 18 months; in 2018 Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell set a speed record on the same route of under two hours. In June 2017 Honnold climbed the Freerider route without rope or protection in under four hours, becoming the first person to free solo El Capitan, an ascent later the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo.
Half Dome’s north-west face was first climbed in 1957 by Royal Robbins, Mike Sherrick and Jerry Gallwas. Non-climbers can reach the summit via the cables route, where the final stretch is fixed with two steel cables and wooden crossbars. From the top, the valley lies far below, with the Clark Range to the south-east and the Cathedral Range to the east.
Practical information
- Half Dome cables route: access requires a permit issued by the National Park Service; demand is high and advance planning through the official park website is essential.
- Half Dome hike: the round trip from Happy Isles covers around 22 to 25 kilometres with roughly 1,463 metres of elevation gain, and is considered a full-day undertaking.
- El Capitan and technical climbing: routes such as the Nose require serious multi-day rope climbing experience and are not suited to casual visitors.
- Best overview: Tunnel View, at the east end of the Wawona Tunnel, gives the classic simultaneous view of El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall and Half Dome.
Getting there
Yosemite National Park lies in the Sierra Nevada of California. The valley has been accessible to visitors since 1855, and current routes, entrance stations and seasonal road conditions are best checked through the National Park Service’s official channels before travelling.
Nearby
- Mariposa Grove — within the park, the site of John Muir’s 1903 camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt.
- Hetch Hetchy Valley — within the park, dammed in 1913 after Muir’s decade-long campaign against it.
- Happy Isles — the trailhead for the standard route up Half Dome.
- Wawona Tunnel — its eastern portal gives access to Tunnel View, the panoramic overlook of the valley.
Sources
- UNESCO
- Sierra Club
- John Muir, The Mountains of California (1894)
- John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)
- Free Solo (documentary, 2018)
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photo