Yosemite National Park History

Yosemite National Park is an amazing place both physically and culturally but the physical history is much longer than its human history. Geologically, the park was not much more than a few gentle rolling hills with a maze of streams and rivers. Over time, a series of earth upheavals formed California’s Sierra Nevada creating mountains. This in turn shifted the Merced River west, which caused deep carvings into the rocks creating v-shaped canyons.

During the ice age, over time, glaciers formed and again carved away the v-shaped canyons effectively creating a u-shaped valley that we see today. The glaciers created hanging valleys and tributary creeks fell of shear cliffs effectively creating the park’s first waterfalls that it’s now famed for. With sediment washing down of the high country to fill Lake Yosemite, the valley was born.

As far as the cultural history goes, there has been recorded activity in this region for thousands of years. The Ahwahneechee people were amongst the first Native Americans to live in this area between 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. Different tribes lived in the area during this period. The Miwok tribe was the most recent of people and they named the valley Ahwahnee – ‘Place of the Gaping Mouth’.

The Native Americans used these areas for hunting and fishing, but all that changed when the white settlers in the 1800’s came to the area for gold mining. The white settlers angered the Natives and the two groups battled when eventually the Mariposa Battalion captured the tribe. The Natives returned to the valley and it was named after them.

In 1855, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant; influenced by Californians; to make the park a state supervised public reserve. Tourists had been arriving for nine years prior but some tourists had been using the area for timber interests and so in 1890, congress set aside the park as a national park.

Later on, the areas in Mariposa Grove and Wawona, which was once a Native American encampment, were set aside for building more amenities for tourists such as Clark’s Station that served as a stop for visitors and Wawona Hotel, which is still operating today. This area focuses on the human history of the park and so has the Pioneer Yosemite History Center that educates people on the human history.

Overtime, more amenities were added including The Ahwahnee hotel, enormous and beautiful in structure, now a National Historic Landmark.
©Ted McCaleb