96 Fun Facts About Yosemite National Park

Yosemite's snow-fed waterfalls are at their fullest in which season?

Spring is the season to go: snowmelt peaks in May or June, and by August some of the park's most famous falls have shrunk to a trickle or dried up entirely.

Which president signed the 1864 Yosemite Grant, the first land the federal government set aside for preservation and public use?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864, in the middle of the Civil War; its promise of scenic land held 'inalienable for all time' became the model for the national parks that followed.

Under the 1864 Yosemite Grant, who was handed the valley and the big sequoia grove 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.

Yosemite became a national park in 1890, 18 years after which park became America's first?

Yellowstone became America's first national park in 1872, yet it followed Yosemite's lead: the 1864 grant protecting the valley had set the precedent for keeping scenic land public.

Which company named version 10.10 of its desktop operating system after Yosemite in 2014?

Apple had named a decade of Mac systems after big cats before switching to California places in 2013; OS X Yosemite followed in October 2014 as a free upgrade.

Which president went camping in Yosemite with John Muir in May 1903?

Theodore Roosevelt camped with Muir in May 1903, waking near Glacier Point under fresh snow; Muir pressed him to protect the valley, and in 1906 Roosevelt signed the bill adding it to the national park.

Who explored Yosemite's biggest sequoia grove in the 1850s and became the Yosemite Grant's first guardian?

Galen Clark went to the mountains after a lung haemorrhage to find a cure or end his days there; instead he lived to 95 and served two long stints as the grant's guardian.

Which Yosemite dome, rising nearly 5,000 feet above the valley floor, is the park's best-known landmark?

Half Dome never lost a half: geologists call that an illusion of the view from the valley, since the dome is really a thin ridge of rock and most of the original is still there.

How did George Anderson first climb Yosemite's famous dome in 1875?

Drilling eye bolts into the smooth rock got George Anderson to the top in October 1875, after a state survey report had declared the dome 'perfectly inaccessible' and never to be trodden by human foot.

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

A pair of steel cables has run up the dome's steep east side since 1919; crews raise them onto posts each May and take them down again in October.

What must hikers obtain before climbing to the top of Yosemite's famous dome?

A permit is needed to thin the crowds on the final stretch: at most 300 hikers a day may go up, and most of the places are handed out by lottery.

Who led the 1957 first ascent of the sheer northwest face of Yosemite's famous dome, America's first Grade VI climb?

Royal Robbins, Jerry Gallwas and Mike Sherrick took five days in June 1957; rival Warren Harding, who had planned his own attempt, hiked up the back to meet them on the summit.

Which 3,000-foot monolith on the north side of Yosemite Valley is a world-famous big-wall climbing site?

El Capitan's sheer walls were once thought unclimbable; since a first team got up in 1958, they have become the proving ground of big-wall climbers from all over the world.

Which bird of prey nests on Yosemite's cliffs, closing some climbing routes for part of each year?

Peregrine falcons were nearly wiped out by the pesticide DDT, which thinned their eggshells; climbers helped biologists reach the cliff nests, and routes near them still close while chicks are raised.

Roughly how many days of climbing did the 1958 first ascent of the Nose, Yosemite's famous big-wall route, take?

About 47 days of climbing, 45 by some counts, went into the first ascent because Warren Harding's team worked in siege style, fixing ropes up the wall and linking camps along the route like an expedition.

Which climber, later famous for the Dawn Wall, free-climbed the Nose with his then-wife Beth Rodden in 2005?

Tommy Caldwell and Beth Rodden swapped leads to free every pitch in October 2005; two days later he went back and free-climbed the whole route again in under 12 hours.

Which waterfall, dropping 2,425 feet in three stages, is the tallest in Yosemite National Park?

Yosemite Falls drops 2,425 feet in three stages, the upper fall alone 1,430 feet, yet the park's tallest waterfall often runs completely dry by August.

Which low-volume Yosemite Valley waterfall has the park's highest single vertical drop, 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 eastern edge of Yosemite's great monolith 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, a nightly summer show that ended in 1968?

Embers pushed off a cliff at Glacier Point fell 3,000 feet in a glowing stream; the custom is said to have begun in the 1870s, when a hotel keeper kicked his campfire coals over the edge to end the evening.

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

The Ahwahnee never appears on screen: Kubrick's designers copied its Great Lounge for the Overlook's Colorado Lounge and built the set in a studio in England.

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

A trademark dispute forced the change: the departing concessionaire claimed it owned the park's historic names, so they were swapped out until a 2019 settlement brought the originals back.

Which grove near Wawona is Yosemite's largest stand of giant sequoias, with several hundred mature trees?

Mariposa Grove, by the park's south entrance, reopened in June 2018 after a three-year restoration to get roads and buildings off the roots of its ancient trees.

What became of the Wawona Tunnel Tree, the Yosemite sequoia that carriages drove through from 1881?

It fell under heavy snow in February 1969, 88 years after the tunnel was cut through its base; the park left the giant lying where it landed, and visitors still walk out to see it.

Which valley in Yosemite's northwest was dammed in 1923 to supply San Francisco with water, over John Muir's opposition?

Hetch Hetchy was flooded behind a dam finished in 1923, after a fight John Muir lost: 'As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches,' he had protested.

Which outdoor clothing brand's logo is a stylised drawing of Yosemite's most famous dome?

The North Face was founded in San Francisco in the 1960s to supply climbers, so in 1971 it took the dome's outline as its logo and has kept it ever since.

Which river drains the entire northern part of Yosemite National Park?

The Tuolumne rises below the park's highest peaks, cuts its own 'Grand Canyon' through the high country, then fills the reservoir that sends drinking water to San Francisco.

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 the flat-floored, U-shaped valley that visitors see today.

What is the highest point in Yosemite National Park, at about 13,120 feet?

Mount Lyell carries what was once the park's largest glacier, but the ice has shrunk so much that a 2013 study found it no longer moves, making it an ice field and not a glacier.

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

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.

Tie Sing, for whom a peak on Yosemite's boundary is named, won fame on a 1915 parks expedition by doing what?

Cooking its meals: Tie Sing, for decades the Geological Survey's backcountry chef, fed the influential guests so well that his feasts are credited with helping to win Congress over to a national parks agency in 1916.

Which painter visited Yosemite Valley in 1863 and turned his studies into huge exhibition canvases?

Albert Bierstadt painted his first large Yosemite canvas, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, in 1865 from those studies; grand Western views of this kind made his fortune.

Which state militia, led by James Savage, entered Yosemite Valley in 1851 and drove out its native people?

The Mariposa Battalion, a state militia under Major James Savage, entered the valley in 1851 during the Mariposa War, burned the villages and food stores, and marched the people to a reservation on the Fresno River.

Which chief led the people of Yosemite Valley when a state militia drove them out in 1851?

Tenaya was marched with his people to a reservation on the Fresno River in 1851 and died two years later; Tenaya Lake and Tenaya Canyon still carry the chief's name.

Which famed Army troops patrolled Yosemite as some of its first rangers?

The Buffalo Soldiers, Black regulars of the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry, came up from the Presidio of San Francisco in 1899, 1903 and 1904 to evict poachers and timber thieves and put out forest fires.

Why did Yosemite hire its first female ranger in 1918?

The war draft had left the park short of men, so Clare Marie Hodges, a teacher at the valley school who knew the trails, asked the superintendent for a ranger's job and got it.

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

David and Jennie Curry, both schoolteachers, opened their tent camp in the valley in 1899; after David died in 1917, Jennie carried it on, known to guests as 'Mother Curry'.

What did Thomas Ayres do on James Hutchings's 1855 tourist trip to Yosemite Valley that helped make it famous?

Sketched the scenery: lithographs made from Ayres's drawings ran in Hutchings's illustrated magazine and were much of the valley's earliest publicity.

Almost 95 percent of Yosemite National Park carries which federal designation?

Wilderness covers almost 95 percent of Yosemite, so nearly all of the park can be reached only on foot or horseback, while most visitors keep to the small part that has roads.

Yosemite Valley, where most visitors spend nearly all their time, covers roughly what share of the park?

About 1 percent of the park is Yosemite Valley: roughly seven square miles out of nearly 1,200, yet it is where most visitors arrive and stay.

Roughly how many visits does Yosemite National Park record in a typical year?

About 4 million visits is the norm, with a record of 5.2 million in 2016; most of those people crowd into the one famous valley and leave the high country quiet.

Which famous viewpoint on the Wawona Road gives arriving visitors their classic first look at Yosemite Valley?

Tunnel View hits drivers all at once: they emerge from the 0.8-mile Wawona Tunnel, finished in 1933, to find the whole valley laid out ahead of them.

Which large subalpine meadow, at about 8,600 feet, is the starting point for many of Yosemite's high-country trails?

Tuolumne Meadows was where John Muir and a magazine editor camped in 1889, saw the damage grazing had done, and planned the campaign that made Yosemite a national park.

Which long-distance national trail crosses Yosemite's high country on its way from Mexico to Canada?

The Pacific Crest Trail runs about 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada; in the Sierra it shares roughly 160 miles of path with the John Muir Trail, so hikers walk two famous routes at once.

Which Yosemite animals were once notorious for breaking into parked cars to get at food?

Black bears were once fed at the park's open garbage dumps as a tourist show and then turned to cars; the dumps were closed and campgrounds given bear-proof lockers so food is not left in vehicles.

Which rock makes up nearly all of Yosemite's landforms?

Granite here crystallized deep underground; as the rock above wore away it cracked into curved sheets that peel off, a process called exfoliation that shaped Yosemite's rounded domes and arches.

Which famous landscape architect chaired the first commission set up to manage the Yosemite Grant?

Frederick Law Olmsted used his 1865 report to argue that government should keep great scenery open to the public and protect its 'value to posterity', an idea later central to the national parks.

In 1937 Rosalie Edge persuaded Congress to buy 8,000 acres beside Yosemite, saving which giant pines from loggers?

Sugar pines beside the park were about to be felled when Rosalie Edge's Emergency Conservation Committee took up their cause; the same committee's pamphlets had revived the drive for Olympic National Park.

The geologist who called John Muir an 'ignoramus' said Yosemite Valley formed how?

Its floor sank, insisted the head of the state survey, who never gave the idea up; Muir, the 'ignoramus', argued that ice had carved the valley, and most scientists came round to him.

Which Christmas pageant, staged at Yosemite's grand valley hotel since 1927, did Ansel Adams direct for decades?

The Bracebridge Dinner re-creates a Christmas feast from a Washington Irving story; Adams played the jester-like Lord of Misrule in its first two years, then took over as director in 1929.

In 1984 Yosemite received which international designation?

World Heritage Site status came in 1984 for the glacier-carved cliffs, waterfalls and giant sequoias, so the park's protection is now also a treaty promise to other nations.

Which conservation club built a memorial lodge in Yosemite Valley in 1903?

The Sierra Club, co-founded by John Muir in 1892, built LeConte Memorial Lodge as its valley base; an 18-year-old Ansel Adams became its summer custodian in 1920, long before his photographs were known.

Which 1879 building is the only one from Yosemite Valley's old village still standing in the valley?

The chapel, built in 1879, was moved to its present site in 1901 and stayed put when every other building of the old village was carted off to a history centre at Wawona or pulled down.

Which bird shares California's 2005 state quarter with John Muir and Yosemite's most famous dome?

California condors made the coin although they had vanished from Yosemite and, by 1987, from the wild altogether; captive-bred birds have since been released elsewhere in the West.

Which grazing animals, called 'hoofed locusts' by John Muir, did the 1890 campaign for Yosemite National Park aim to drive out?

Sheep had stripped the high meadows; Muir showed the damage to editor Robert Underwood Johnson on an 1889 camping trip, and Johnson's magazine and lobbying helped carry the park bill through Congress.

What natural disaster in January 1997 wrecked Yosemite Valley's campgrounds, roads and bridges?

A flood struck at New Year when heavy rain fell on deep snow; the valley's river tore out roads and bridges, and two wrecked riverside campgrounds were removed for good.

Why was Yosemite's nightly Firefall stopped for good in 1968?

It was unnatural: director George Hartzog called a halt because the spectacle was man-made and its crowds were trampling the meadows; the hotel that staged it burned down 18 months later.

Two men made the first leap of which extreme sport from the top of Yosemite's great monolith in 1966?

BASE jumping's first leap from the cliff, a parachute jump by Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert, left both men with broken bones; the Park Service now prosecutes jumpers under an old aerial-delivery rule.

State Route 120 runs east from Yosemite's high pass down to which salty lake, famous for its tufa towers?

Mono Lake, about 13 miles east of the park, has no outlet, so the salts washed in by Sierra streams stay behind as its water evaporates; its tufa towers are limestone that built up under the water.

Which borax millionaire, later the Park Service's first director, bought Yosemite's high-country toll road for the park in 1915?

Stephen Mather paid for the old toll road with his own money and donations he gathered, opening the park's high country to motorists two years before he became the Park Service's first director.

Mount Dana, a 13,061-foot peak on Yosemite's eastern boundary, is built of metamorphic rock of which colour?

Red: Mount Dana's metamorphic rock is older than the molten rock that built most of the Sierra, a remnant of the roof that once lay over it; for all its height, the easiest route up is a plain hike.

Yosemite's high road over the Sierra crest began in 1883 as a wagon road built to reach what?

Silver mines east of the crest were the road's whole purpose; it then became a private toll route, and the pass it crosses still carries the name of one of the mines.

What glacial landform is Yosemite's Clouds Rest, whose northwest 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 Yosemite Valley's 3,000-foot monolith in June 2017?

Alex Honnold climbed the 2,900-foot route alone on June 3, 2017, with no rope and no protection, in 3 hours 56 minutes; no roped team had managed the cliff in a single day until 1975.

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 on Yosemite's great monolith, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature?

Free Solo was filmed by a team led by Jimmy Chin, a professional climber, and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who had to record a ropeless ascent on which a single slip would have been fatal.

Who made the first free ascent of the Nose in Yosemite in 1993?

Lynn Hill freed every pitch of the route, announced 'It goes, boys!', then came back a year later and free-climbed the whole thing again in a single push of 23 hours.

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

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

Which walk-in Yosemite Valley campground, long the home of the park's climbers, joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2003?

Camp 4 won its listing after climber Tom Frost took the Park Service to court to stop staff dormitories being built beside it; it is honoured as a birthplace of modern rock climbing.

Which Yosemite Valley boulder problem, first solved by Ron Kauk in 1978, was then among the hardest in the world?

Midnight Lightning owes its name and its white chalk bolt to John Bachar, who joked that climbing it was as likely as lightning striking at midnight, a nod to a Jimi Hendrix song.

Which future outdoor-clothing magnate forged his own pitons in the late 1950s and sold them to Yosemite climbers from his car?

Yvon Chouinard bought a second-hand coal forge in 1957 and hammered out hardened steel pitons between climbs; the gear business he ran from his car grew into Patagonia in 1973.

Which 594-foot Yosemite waterfall, known for its 'bent' profile, drops beneath the dome of Liberty Cap?

Nevada Fall takes its name from the Spanish for 'snowy', after its white spray; the native name, Yo-wy-we, described the twist the water makes where it strikes the sloping rock partway down.

Which popular Yosemite trail climbs from Happy Isles to the top of Vernal Fall by a stairway of over 600 steps?

The Mist Trail is named for the spray that soaks hikers on the stairway below the fall; the John Muir Trail leaves from the same footbridge and reaches the top by a longer, drier route.

During World War II, the Navy took over Yosemite's grand valley hotel to use it as what?

A hospital: the Navy leased the hotel in 1943 and turned its grand public rooms into wards for wounded sailors and marines until the war ended in 1945.

Which president signed the 1913 act letting San Francisco dam a valley inside Yosemite National 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.

In 2012 a deadly outbreak of which virus was traced to tent cabins in Yosemite Valley?

Hantavirus is carried by deer mice, which had nested in the insulation of newly built double-walled tent cabins; guests breathed in dust from their droppings, and the park closed the cabins.

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

El Portal was as far as the tracks could go, because railroad building was banned inside the park; passengers finished the trip to the valley by stagecoach and, after 1913, by motor stage.

Gilbert Stanley Underwood, architect of Yosemite's grand valley hotel, also designed lodges for which pair of Utah national parks?

Zion and Bryce Canyon got their Underwood lodges in the 1920s, as did the Grand Canyon's North Rim in 1928; his rough stone-and-timber buildings became a model of the rustic national park style.

What are the 'timber' beams and siding on the outside of Yosemite's grand valley hotel really made of?

Stained concrete was poured into moulds to imitate the grain of wood, because the builders wanted the look of a timber lodge in a hotel that would not burn down.

Which ski area inside Yosemite National Park is the oldest downhill skiing area in California?

Badger Pass was developed in the 1930s because the park's concessioner wanted winter guests for its new grand hotel; California's first slalom race was run there in 1933.

Cartoon outlaw Yosemite Sam made his 1945 debut as the enemy of which character?

Bugs Bunny first faced Yosemite Sam in the 1945 short Hare Trigger; the short, red-haired gunslinger was in some ways a caricature of his own director, Friz Freleng, who usually denied it.

Which 1989 Star Trek film opens with Captain Kirk climbing a Yosemite cliff alone while on shore leave?

The Final Frontier was directed by William Shatner, who trained for the scene on a wooden replica; his close-ups used a fibreglass cliff set up in front of the real one.

Which 2013 blaze, started by a hunter's illegal campfire, burned into Yosemite as the largest wildfire then recorded in the Sierra Nevada?

The Rim Fire took its name from the Rim of the World overlook near where it began; it burned 257,314 acres and smouldered so long that it was not declared out until November 2014, over a year later.

What started the 2018 Ferguson Fire, which shut the roads into Yosemite Valley?

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 Yosemite National Park in historical times?

The brown bear's California form, the grizzly on the state flag, was hunted to extinction by 1924; the bears still seen in Yosemite belong to a smaller, different species.

What hit the valley floor near Happy Isles in Yosemite in July 1996, driving a deadly air blast ahead of it?

A rockfall of about 30,000 cubic metres landed so hard that it drove a blast of air across Happy Isles; it was that blast, not the rock itself, that killed one person and wrecked buildings.

Yosemite's giant sequoias hold which record among the world's trees?

Most massive: other trees grow taller and a few live longer, but none packs as much wood into a single trunk as a giant sequoia, and Yosemite has three groves of them.

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

The Philippines, then an American territory, had its stamps printed in Washington, where the wrong picture was used: the 1932 issue labelled Pagsanjan Falls actually shows Vernal Fall.

Why is Mirror Lake, at the east end of Yosemite Valley, slowly disappearing?

Sediment is filling it in: the creek that feeds the lake drops its load of sand there, and by late summer the bed is a grassy flat that is often called Mirror Meadow.

The John Muir Trail runs more than 200 miles from Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley to the top of which mountain?

Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet the highest peak in the contiguous United States, is the trail's southern end; work on the route began in 1915, a year after Muir's death, and it was named in his memory.

From which rock ledge on the shoulder of Yosemite's famous dome did Ansel Adams make his 1927 photograph 'Monolith'?

The Diving Board is a ledge on the dome's shoulder; with one glass plate left, Adams fitted a deep red filter to turn the sky black, the first time he 'visualized' a print before exposing it.

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

Kodak Brownie box cameras were made for beginners; the 14-year-old took his first Yosemite pictures with one on that family trip, and photography went on to displace the piano career he had been training for.

Carleton Watkins's 1860s photograph of which Yosemite sequoia helped convince Easterners that 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 sent tourism to Yosemite Valley surging?

The transcontinental railroad opening brought tourists within reach, yet the last leg was still a long ride on horseback until three stagecoach roads were built into the valley in the mid-1870s.

What federal designation do both of Yosemite's two main rivers hold?

Wild and Scenic Rivers status protects the free-flowing stretches of both, the northern river from 1984 and the valley's from 1987, some sixty years after a dam drowned one of the northern river's valleys.