14 Facts About Yosemite Valley

Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of Central California.

Yosemite Valley Falls is the highest waterfall in North America and is a big attraction especially in the spring, when the water flow is at its peak.

Yosemite Valley is the main attraction in the park for the majority of visitors and a bustling hub of activity during tourist season in the summer months.

Yosemite Valley is on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, 150 miles due east of San Francisco.

Yosemite Valley represents only one percent of the park area, but this is where most visitors arrive and stay.

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The flat floor of Yosemite Valley holds both forest and large open meadows, which have views of the surrounding crests and waterfalls.

The view from the lower end of the Yosemite Valley contains the great granite monolith El Capitan on the left, and Cathedral Rocks on the right with Bridalveil Fall.

Now a grand curve back to the right begins, with Yosemite Valley Falls on the north, followed by the Royal Arches, topped by North Dome.

Features in Yosemite Valley are made of granitic rock emplaced as plutons miles deep during the late Cretaceous.

The youngest Yosemite Valley pluton is the 87-million-year-old Half Dome granodiorite, which makes up most of the rock at Glacier Point, the Royal Arches, and its namesake, Half Dome.

Biological community on the floor of Yosemite Valley is a diverse one, with more than 400 species of grasses and wildflowers and thousands of species of insects having been identified there.

The band returned the next year to the Yosemite Valley but took refuge among the Mono Paiutes after further conflicts with miners.

The problems that Yosemite Valley Park had under state control was one of the factors in establishing Yellowstone National Park as the first completely national park in 1872.

Yosemite Valley is listed as a National Historic District and as a California Historical Landmark.