Welcome to Yosemite

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a document that would change the world — the Yosemite Grant, which handed Yosemite Valley to the state of California to be preserved for public use forever. It was the first time any government on Earth had formally set aside wild land for its scenic value alone. The idea was radical: that some places were too beautiful to be owned, logged, or mined. That wilderness had value simply by existing.

Yosemite is carved from some of the strongest rock on the planet — granite formed 85 to 105 million years ago, deep underground, when molten magma slowly cooled into towering crystalline masses. Glaciers then did the sculpting. Over millions of years, rivers of ice thousands of feet thick ground through the Sierra Nevada, deepening V-shaped river canyons into broad U-shaped valleys, sheering off cliff faces, and leaving behind the hanging valleys from which waterfalls now pour. The last glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago, leaving behind a landscape unlike anything else on Earth.

Today Yosemite National Park covers nearly 1,200 square miles — but most of the drama happens in a valley just seven miles long and one mile wide. We will visit eight of its most legendary landmarks, from the classic gateway view of the valley to the ancient sequoias of Mariposa Grove to the sweeping panorama at Glacier Point. Let's go.