Yosemite National Park
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Yosemite National Park
The park is located in the central Sierra Nevada of California and lies 150 miles east of San Francisco
Yosemite National Park has long been known for its rugged beauty and unique geography and houses the fifth tallest waterfall in the world. You are sure to find your favorite outdoor adventure here where visitors can go backpacking, fishing, mountaineering, day hiking, camping, wildlife viewing, bird watching, boating, kayaking, rafting, swimming, rock climbing, skiing, both down hill and cross-country, snowshoeing, biking and horseback riding. Check below for further information on Yosemite National Park.
Uniqueness
Yosemite National Park embraces a spectacular tract of mountain-and-valley scenery in the Sierra Nevada, which was set aside as a national park in 1890. In 1984, Congress designated over 95% of Yosemite National Park as Wilderness. The park harbors a grand collection of waterfalls, meadows, and forests that include groves of giant sequoias, the world’s largest living things. Two federally designated wild and scenic rivers, the Merced and Tuolumne, begin within Yosemite’s borders and flow west into California’s Central Valley.
Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its spectacular granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, and biological diversity. The 750,000-acre, 1,200 square-mile parks contains thousands of lakes and ponds, 1,600 miles of streams, 800 miles of hiking trails, and 350 miles of roads. Yosemite Valley serves as a gateway to wilderness travelers, with the 211-mile John Muir Trail (which ends at Mount Whitney) originating from Happy Isles. From the Yosemite Valley Floor at an elevation of 4,000 feet, the magnificent cliffs such as El Capitan and Half Dome rise 3,000 to 4,000 feet higher to forested uplands on either side. Annual park visitation exceeds 3.5 million, with most visitor use concentrated in the seven square mile area of Yosemite Valley.
Yosemite has an elevation range from 2,000 to 13,123 feet and contains five major vegetation zones: chaparral/oak woodland, lower montane, upper montane, subalpine and alpine. Of California’s 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur in the Sierra Nevada and more than 20% within Yosemite. There is suitable habitat or documented records for more than 160 rare plants in the park, with rare local geologic formations and unique soils characterizing the restricted ranges many of these plants occupy.
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