Our Yosemite logo carries California's grizzly and lone star above “California Republic · Est. 1850,” the year of statehood — the shared retro emblem of every Merlin Classics California place. Printed in a worn black-and-white that recalls an old WPA park poster and a crate-label stamp, the bear is California in shorthand: wild, durable, and at home in big country. The bear is the through-line that links Yosemite to every other California place we make. What makes this one Yosemite is everything around it — the granite of Half Dome and El Capitan, the sequoias, the waterfalls, and the valley that taught America to save its wild places.
Today Yosemite is a crown jewel of the national parks — granite, giant sequoias, and the valley where, in 1864, America first decided some land was too beautiful to lose. Its story runs from the Ahwahneechee homeland and the 1851 displacement, through the 1864 Lincoln Grant and Muir's advocacy, to the 1890 park and a World Heritage Site visited by millions. Our Yosemite designs gather that identity into wearable form — the bear, the granite, and the sequoias. Yosemite, California: granite, giant sequoias, and the valley that taught America to save its wild places. Est. 1890.
Why People Visit Yosemite
Yosemite offers wilderness on a scale few places can match — a glacier-cut valley of granite cliffs and waterfalls, giant sequoias older than the country, and the high Sierra beyond, all carrying the founding story of the national-park idea. Visitors come for Half Dome, El Capitan, and the falls, and stay for the sequoias, the meadows, and the long Sierra light. From a valley stroll to the high country, it rewards a day or a week. It is timeless, humbling, and unmistakably California.
