99 Fun Facts About Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park is in which U.S. state?

Yosemite National Park lies in California, spread across four counties in the central Sierra Nevada, roughly 140 miles east of San Francisco.

Which president signed the 1864 Yosemite Grant, the first US land set aside for preservation?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864, in the middle of the Civil War; it set the precedent for Yellowstone in 1872.

Under the 1864 grant, the valley and the big sequoia grove were handed to whom to manage as a park?

The State of California ran the valley and the sequoia grove as a state park until 1906, when Congress and the president accepted them back into federal control.

In what year did Congress create Yosemite National Park after a naturalist's campaign?

Congress passed the act creating Yosemite National Park on October 1, 1890, protecting the high country surrounding the state-run valley grant.

Which Scottish-born naturalist led the campaign for the 1890 park and co-founded the Sierra Club?

John Muir, born in Dunbar, Scotland, in 1838, co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and argued that glaciers, not a catastrophic collapse of the floor, carved the valley.

Which president camped with Muir near Glacier Point for three days in May 1903?

Theodore Roosevelt camped with Muir for three nights in May 1903; Muir urged him to take the valley and grove back from the state, which Roosevelt did by signing a 1906 bill.

Who found the park's biggest sequoia grove in 1857 and became the Yosemite Grant's first guardian?

Galen Clark came upon the grove in 1857 and in 1866 was appointed the Yosemite Grant's first guardian, a post he held in two stints until 1897.

Which landmark, rising 4,800 feet above the valley floor, is the park's most famous?

Half Dome's summit stands at 8,839 feet, roughly 4,800 feet above the valley floor, and the sheer-faced dome appears on the state's commemorative quarter.

Who first climbed the park's famous dome in October 1875 by drilling iron eye bolts into the rock?

George Anderson, a local trail builder, drilled eye bolts and roped his way to the summit on October 12, 1875, after first trying pine pitch on his boots; Muir followed within weeks.

Hikers finish the trail up the park's famous dome by hauling themselves up the final 400 feet using what?

A pair of steel cables, first strung by the Sierra Club in 1919, runs up the dome's east shoulder; rangers raise them on poles in late May and lower them in October.

Under the 2012 permit plan, how many hikers may climb the dome's cables daily?

The 2012 plan capped cable hikers at 300 a day, roughly 225 day hikers and 75 backpackers, chosen by a preseason lottery held each March.

Which trio made the first ascent of Half Dome's northwest face in 1957, the first Grade VI climb in the US?

Royal Robbins, Mike Sherrick and Jerry Gallwas spent five days on the Regular Northwest Face in June 1957, the first route in the United States rated Grade VI.

Which 3,000-foot monolith on the valley's north side is the world's most famous big-wall site?

El Capitan, Spanish for 'the Captain', rises about 3,000 feet of unbroken rock from the valley floor, and its south-west and south-east faces hold well over a hundred climbing routes.

What is the 3,000-foot monolith's most famous climbing route, up the prow between its faces?

The Nose follows the monolith's central prow between its south-west and south-east faces; Warren Harding's team first climbed it in November 1958 using siege tactics and fixed ropes.

Roughly how many days of climbing did the first ascent of the Nose take in 1958?

The first ascent took 47 days of climbing spread over 18 months; the final 12-day push topped out on November 12, 1958.

Which married couple free-climbed the Nose together in October 2005?

Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden, then married, freed every pitch of the route over four days in October 2005; days later Caldwell free-climbed it again in under 12 hours.

Which valley waterfall, 2,425 feet in total, is the tallest in the park?

Yosemite Falls totals 2,425 feet in three sections; the upper fall alone plunges 1,430 feet, and flow peaks with snowmelt in May before often drying up by August.

Which low-volume valley waterfall has the highest single vertical drop in the park, 1,612 feet?

Ribbon Fall plunges 1,612 feet in one unbroken drop from the valley's north rim, west of the great monolith; fed by a small creek, it usually runs dry by midsummer.

Which small waterfall on the great monolith's eastern edge glows orange at sunset for a few February evenings?

Horsetail Fall, a seasonal thread of water off the monolith's east buttress, catches the low February sun at dusk and glows like lava when skies are clear and snowmelt is flowing.

What was the Yosemite Firefall, ended in 1968?

Camp Curry founder David Curry would bellow 'Let the fire fall!' at 9 pm; NPS director George Hartzog killed it because it was unnatural and the crowds trampled the meadows.

Which grand valley hotel, opened in 1927, inspired the Overlook Hotel's interiors in The Shining?

The Ahwahnee opened in July 1927 and is a National Historic Landmark; its Great Lounge and lobby informed the Overlook's sets in Kubrick's 1980 film.

Why was the grand valley hotel temporarily renamed the 'Majestic Yosemite Hotel' from 2016 to 2019?

Outgoing concessionaire Delaware North claimed trademarks on the hotel's name, and the resulting trademark dispute forced the renaming; a 2019 settlement with the Park Service restored the original name.

Which stand of sequoias near Wawona is the park's largest, with several hundred mature trees?

Mariposa Grove, near the park's south entrance by Wawona, holds about 500 mature giant sequoias and reopened in June 2018 after a three-year restoration that removed the old parking lot.

What happened to the Wawona Tunnel Tree, the sequoia carriages drove through since 1881?

It was about 2,100 years old and 234 feet tall; the tunnel had weakened it for good.

Which valley in the park's northwest was dammed in 1923 to supply water to San Francisco, over Muir's opposition?

Hetch Hetchy Valley in the park's northwest was flooded when its dam was finished in 1923, and the water first reached the city 167 miles away in 1934.

Which 1913 act of Congress authorised flooding the valley in the park's northwest?

The Raker Act, signed in December 1913, granted San Francisco the right to dam the valley; Muir and the Sierra Club had fought the scheme for years and lost.

Which river drains the entire northern part of the park?

The Tuolumne River rises below the park's highest peaks and runs west through the high country and its own 'Grand Canyon' to the reservoir in the park's northwest.

Which river flows through Yosemite Valley itself?

The Merced River runs the length of Yosemite Valley; Ice Age glaciers widened its V-shaped canyon into today's U-shaped valley, and it leaves the park at the western Arch Rock entrance.

What is the highest point in the park, at about 13,120 feet?

Mount Lyell, in the park's south-east corner, tops out at about 13,120 feet; the Lyell Glacier on its north face was once the park's largest and has lost most of its ice over the past century.

Which State Route 120 pass is the park's eastern gate and the highest highway pass in the Sierra?

Tioga Pass carries State Route 120 over the Sierra crest at the park's east entrance; snow normally closes it from November until late May or June.

Which people lived in the valley and gave it its original name meaning 'big mouth'?

The Ahwahneechee, a band of the Southern Sierra Miwok, took their name from their word for the valley, meaning 'big mouth' or 'gaping mouth', and lived there until the 1851 expulsion.

The word 'Yosemite' comes from a Miwok term meaning what?

'Yosemite' derives from the Miwok yohhe'meti, 'they are killers', a name neighbouring Miwok used for the valley's band; the militia that named the valley in 1851 took it to mean grizzly bear.

Which militia, led by James Savage, made the first well-documented entry into the valley in 1851?

The Mariposa Battalion, a state militia under Major James Savage, entered the valley on 27 March 1851 during the Mariposa War and marched its people to a reservation on the Fresno River.

Which chief led the valley's people when the battalion attacked in 1851?

Chief Tenaya led the valley's people; taken to the Fresno reservation, he escaped to the Mono Lake Paiutes and was killed in 1853, and Tenaya Lake and Tenaya Canyon carry his name.

Which Buffalo Soldier regiment's troops patrolled the park in 1903 and 1904?

Troops of the 9th Cavalry, Black regulars nicknamed Buffalo Soldiers, marched from the Presidio of San Francisco to patrol the park in 1903 and 1904, evicting sheep, fighting fires and building trails.

Who was hired in 1918 as Yosemite's first female park ranger?

Clare Marie Hodges, a schoolteacher from the area, was sworn in as a seasonal ranger in May 1918 while men were away at war, patrolling on horseback in a Stetson.

Which schoolteacher couple founded the 1899 Yosemite tent camp that became a village bearing their name?

David and Jennie Curry, Indiana schoolteachers, pitched seven tents at the foot of the valley's south wall in 1899 and hosted 292 guests their first season; Jennie ran the camp as 'Mother Curry' after David died in 1917.

Which entrepreneur and which artist were among the first tourists to visit the valley in 1855?

Ayres's angular drawings were exhibited in New York and Hutchings's articles drove the first tourist boom.

Roughly what share of the park is designated wilderness?

The Yosemite Wilderness, designated by Congress, covers about 704,000 of the park's roughly 748,000 acres, almost 95 percent.

Yosemite Valley makes up roughly what fraction of the park's area, though most visitors never leave it?

Yosemite Valley covers about seven square miles of the park's 1,169, roughly one percent, yet most visitors spend nearly all their time there.

In what year did the park first top five million visitors?

Visitation first passed five million in 2016, the Park Service centennial year, when the park logged about 5.03 million visits.

Which famous viewpoint on the Wawona Road gives the classic first look at the valley?

Tunnel View, at the east end of the Wawona Tunnel on State Route 41, opened in 1933 and frames the valley with the great monolith on the left, Bridalveil Fall on the right and the famous dome beyond.

Which large high-country meadow is the park's best-known subalpine expanse?

Tuolumne Meadows, at about 8,600 feet beside the park's high road, is one of the largest subalpine meadows in the Sierra Nevada and the hub of its high-country trails.

Which long-distance national footpath crosses the park along the Sierra's spine?

The Pacific Crest Trail, 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada, crosses the park's high country from Donohue Pass in the south to Dorothy Lake Pass in the north.

Which animals in the park were once famous for breaking into parked cars for food?

Yosemite's black bears learned to pry open car doors and windows for food; in the late 1990s they broke into more than a thousand vehicles a year, until bear-proof lockers and canisters cut the damage sharply.

Which rock, formed underground as the Sierra Nevada Batholith, makes up nearly all the park's landforms?

Exfoliation of the granite produced the rounded domes and inset arches like the Royal Arches.

Which glaciation, the largest of the Sierra's four, did most of the excavating of Yosemite Valley?

The Sherwin glaciation, about a million years ago, filled Yosemite Valley to the brim and did most of the cutting; the three later, smaller stages only reached partway down the valley.

Which conservationist's committee got Congress to buy 8,000 acres of old-growth sugar pines by the park in 1937?

Rosalie Edge's Emergency Conservation Committee lobbied Congress in 1937 to buy the Carl Inn sugar-pine tract on the park's western edge, saving the old-growth stand from logging.

Which state geologist rejected Muir's glacier theory and called the dome 'perfectly inaccessible'?

Josiah Whitney, the state geologist from 1860, held that the valley floor had dropped in a cataclysmic collapse and dismissed Muir as a mere sheepherder; his survey's 1865 report called the dome 'perfectly inaccessible'.

Which Christmas pageant, staged at the grand valley hotel since 1927, did Ansel Adams organise from 1929 to 1973?

The Bracebridge Dinner, staged each Christmas since 1927, dramatises Squire Bracebridge's Yorkshire feast from Washington Irving's Sketch Book; Adams first played the Lord of Misrule before directing it for decades.

In what year was the park designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

UNESCO inscribed Yosemite as a World Heritage Site in 1984, citing its glacier-carved cliffs, waterfalls, giant sequoia groves and biological diversity.

Which California senator pushed the 1864 Yosemite Grant through Congress?

Senator John Conness introduced the grant bill in 1864, and 12,590-foot Mount Conness on the park's north-eastern boundary was later named in his honour.

Which battalion doctor named the valley and later wrote The Discovery of the Yosemite?

Dr Lafayette Bunnell, the battalion's surgeon, proposed the name Yosemite at the campfire in March 1851, believing it meant grizzly bear, and published his memoir The Discovery of the Yosemite in 1880.

Who was the last full-blooded member of the valley's native band, dying in 1931?

Totuya, known in Spanish as Maria Lebrado, was a granddaughter of the chief driven from the valley in 1851; she revisited the valley in 1929 and died in 1931.

Which Century Magazine editor lobbied Congress with the naturalist for the 1890 park act?

Johnson had camped with Muir in the high country in 1889 and commissioned the magazine articles that made the case for a national park.

Which Army regiment's Troop I first took charge of the new national park in May 1891?

Troop I of the 4th Cavalry under Captain Abram Epperson Wood, the first acting superintendent, camped at Wawona from May 1891 and spent the decade chasing sheep herders out of the high country.

Which Park Service director ordered the Firefall stopped in January 1968?

Director George Hartzog ended the Firefall in January 1968 as an unnatural spectacle whose crowds trampled the meadows; the hotel that staged it burned down 18 months later and was never rebuilt.

Which 1870s hotelier is credited with starting the Firefall tradition for his guests?

James McCauley, who built the Four Mile Trail and ran the Mountain House on the rim above the valley, first tipped a campfire over the edge in 1872; after his 1897 eviction a valley camp revived the show in 1899.

How high is the park's eastern entrance pass, the highest highway pass in California?

The pass tops out at 9,945 feet, the highest point reached by any highway in the state; snow usually closes it from November to late May or June.

Who bought the high-country toll road for the park in 1915, largely with his own money?

Stephen Mather, a borax millionaire then assistant to the Interior Secretary, raised some $15,500 to buy the old mining road, much of it from his own pocket, and became the Park Service's first director in 1917.

Which 13,061-foot peak of red metamorphic rock marks the park's eastern boundary?

Mount Dana, 13,061 feet, is the park's second-highest summit; its reddish metamorphic rock is a remnant of the older roof above the Sierra batholith, and it is a class 1 walk-up from the pass.

Which peak, named for a survey cartographer, rises above May Lake at the park's centre?

Charles F. Hoffmann mapped the Sierra for the California Geological Survey; the summit is a 6.2-mile day hike from the high-country road.

What glacial landform is Clouds Rest, whose face rises 5,000 feet above the creek below?

Clouds Rest is an arête: glaciers grinding out the canyon on one side and Little Yosemite Valley on the other left a knife-edge ridge between them, topping out near 9,930 feet.

Who made the first ropeless ascent of the valley's 3,000-foot monolith in June 2017?

Alex Honnold climbed the wall without a rope on June 3, 2017, starting at 5:32 am and topping out at 9:28, a climb of 3 hours 56 minutes.

Which route was free soloed in 3 hours 56 minutes in the monolith's first ropeless ascent?

Freerider, a 5.13a line on the monolith's south-west face established by Alexander Huber in 1998, shares its lower pitches with the Salathé Wall; its cruxes are the Boulder Problem and the Enduro Corner.

Which 2018 documentary shot in the park won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature?

Free Solo, directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, premiered at Telluride in 2018 and took the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in February 2019.

In what year did Lynn Hill first free climb the monolith's famous prow route?

Lynn Hill freed the prow route over four days in September 1993, declaring 'It goes, boys'; she returned in 1994 to free it in under 24 hours, and neither feat was repeated until 2005.

Which Czech climber made the first repeat of the Dawn Wall in 2016, in just eight days?

Adam Ondra freed the Dawn Wall that November over eight days, leading every pitch, on a route whose first ascent had taken 19 days in January 2015.

Tent-only Camp 4 is celebrated as a birthplace of the modern form of which sport?

Camp 4, a walk-in campground below the cliffs on the valley's north side, was the base for Yosemite's big-wall pioneers and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 for its role in rock climbing.

Which Camp 4 boulder problem from 1978 is marked by a painted white thunderbolt?

Midnight Lightning, on the Columbia Boulder in the middle of Camp 4, was first climbed by Ron Kauk in 1978 after John Bachar chalked the lightning bolt; it is rated about V8.

Which future Patagonia founder forged climbing gear on an old anvil at Camp 4?

Yvon Chouinard hammered out chrome-molybdenum pitons on a portable forge at Camp 4 in the late 1950s, selling them from his car; Chouinard Equipment led to Patagonia in 1973.

From which overlook did Dean Potter and Graham Hunt make their fatal 2015 wingsuit flight?

Dean Potter and Graham Hunt launched from Taft Point, 3,500 feet above the valley floor on the south rim, on May 16, 2015; both struck rock trying to clear a notch and neither deployed a parachute.

Which Southern California crag is where the Yosemite Decimal System was actually devised?

Sierra Club climbers including Don Wilson and Chuck Wilts devised the class 5 decimal grades at Tahquitz Peak above Idyllwild in the mid-1950s; 5.9 was meant to be the hardest climb possible, and the system later took Yosemite's name.

Which 594-foot waterfall with a distinctive 'bent' profile drops beneath Liberty Cap?

Nevada Fall drops 594 feet off the Giant Staircase beneath Liberty Cap; its Spanish name means 'snowy' for the white spray, and its native name Yo-wy-we described the twist in the falling water.

Which route from Happy Isles soaks spring hikers with spray below Vernal Fall?

The Mist Trail climbs beside the river from Happy Isles, crossing the footbridge and then more than 600 stone steps, often drenched in spray, to the top of the 317-foot fall.

The valley's native people called Bridalveil Fall 'Pohono', which means what?

Pohono, 'Spirit of the Puffing Wind', fits a 617-foot fall that a breeze blows sideways into spray; the English name came from a local newspaper editor in 1856.

The dam that flooded the park's northwestern valley is named for which engineer?

Michael O'Shaughnessy, San Francisco's city engineer from 1912, oversaw the city's Sierra water project; the dam bearing his name was finished in 1923 and raised another 85 feet in 1938.

Which president signed the 1913 act letting San Francisco dam a valley inside the park?

Woodrow Wilson signed the act on December 19, 1913, after it passed the Senate 43 to 25; it required the project's power to go to public utilities, a clause the Supreme Court found the city had violated in 1940.

The park's dammed northwest valley likely takes its name from a Miwok word meaning what?

The name most likely comes from the Miwok hatchhatchie, 'edible grasses', for the seed-bearing grass, probably blue dicks, that the valley's people harvested on its floor.

The Yosemite Valley Railroad (1907–45) ended at which town on the park's western edge?

El Portal, at the park's western boundary on the river road, was the railroad's terminus from 1907; passengers finished the last miles to the valley by stagecoach until motor stages replaced horses around 1913.

Which architect designed the grand valley hotel, plus the Zion and Bryce Canyon lodges?

Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the Park Service's favoured lodge architect, designed the 1927 hotel as well as Zion Lodge, Bryce Canyon Lodge and the Grand Canyon's North Rim lodge.

What are the 'timber' beams and siding on the grand valley hotel's exterior really?

Fire resistance was the goal; the dining room's wooden-looking beams are hollow and hide steel inside.

Which ski area inside the park is the oldest downhill skiing area in California?

California's first slalom race was held there in 1933, and it is one of only three lift-served ski areas in any US national park.

Who created Yosemite Sam, the outlaw introduced in 1945's Hare Trigger?

Friz Freleng created Yosemite Sam as a more formidable foe for Bugs Bunny than Elmer Fudd, introducing the pint-sized outlaw in the 1945 short Hare Trigger.

Which 1989 film opens with Kirk, Spock and McCoy on shore leave camping in the park?

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, directed by William Shatner, opens with Kirk climbing the valley's great monolith before a campfire with Spock and McCoy and a round of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'.

Which 2013 blaze, lit by a hunter's campfire, burned more park acreage than any earlier fire?

The Rim Fire, started near the Rim of the World viewpoint in the Stanislaus National Forest in August 2013, burned 257,314 acres, nearly 79,000 inside the park, and was not declared out until November 2014.

What started the 2018 Ferguson Fire, which forced the valley to close?

Investigators traced the Ferguson Fire to superheated fragments from a vehicle's faulty catalytic converter landing in dry brush near Savage Trading Post in July 2018; it burned 96,901 acres.

Which animal survives in the park only as a small reintroduced herd near the eastern pass?

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep were wiped out in the park by hunting and disease from domestic flocks; a herd was reintroduced below the eastern crest in 1986, and the subspecies was listed as endangered in 2000.

Which of these animals has become extinct within the park in historical times?

The brown bear, in its grizzly form, was hunted out of the Yosemite region before 1900 and vanished from the state by 1924; the bears that remain in the park are a different species.

Under the Köppen system, what type of climate does the park have?

Yosemite has a Mediterranean climate of wet winters and dry summers, with less than three percent of its precipitation falling in summer and most of it arriving as winter snow above 6,000 feet.

How many groves of giant sequoia does the park contain?

The big southern grove has about 200 trees; the two small groves near Crane Flat have only around 25 and 20.

A 1932 stamp from which country mistakenly shows Vernal Fall instead of its own waterfall?

The Philippines' 1932 stamp was meant to show Pagsanjan Falls in Laguna province, but the engraver worked from a picture of Vernal Fall, a famous philatelic error.

Why is Mirror Lake, at the valley's east end, slowly disappearing?

It is the last trace of the Ice Age lake that once covered most of the valley floor, which silted up the same way.

The 213-mile trail named for the park's naturalist runs from Happy Isles to which summit?

The trail ends on the 14,505-foot summit of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States; built between 1915 and 1938, it gains roughly 46,000 feet along the way.

From which shoulder ledge did Ansel Adams make his 1927 photograph 'Monolith'?

Adams hauled his view camera to the Diving Board, a ledge on the famous dome's western shoulder, in April 1927 and used a deep red filter to blacken the sky, his first conscious 'visualization'.

What camera did Ansel Adams's father give him on his first visit to the park in 1916?

His father gave the 14-year-old a Kodak Brownie box camera on the family's June 1916 trip; four years later Adams was summer custodian of the Sierra Club's LeConte Memorial Lodge in the valley.

Watkins's 1860s photo of which sequoia convinced Easterners the huge trees were real?

Carleton Watkins's 1861 mammoth-plate view of the Grizzly Giant, with men posed at its base for scale, circulated in the East and helped persuade Congress to protect the grove in 1864.

Which 1869 event caused tourism to the valley to surge?

Three stagecoach roads followed in the mid-1870s, though the final leg was still a long ride on horseback.

What federal designation do both of the park's two main waterways hold?

Both rivers are federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers, the valley's river since 1987 and the northern one a few years earlier, protecting their free-flowing stretches inside and below the park.