Then the country did something it had never done before. In 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, ceding Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California on the condition that they be preserved, unspoiled, for public use — the first time the United States set aside scenic land purely for preservation. It predated Yellowstone and the national-park system itself; in a real sense the idea of the national park was born here. Galen Clark, the valley's first appointed Guardian, looked after the grant in those early years.
Muir's campaign carried it the rest of the way. On October 1, 1890, Congress established Yosemite National Park, wrapping federal protection around the high country surrounding the state-held valley; in 1906 the valley and grove were receded to the federal park, and in 1916 the new National Park Service took over its care. The U.S. Cavalry had patrolled the park in the years between, the first rangers in all but name. Step by step a Gold-Rush militia's valley had become a model that the rest of the country, and much of the world, would copy.
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.
