Yosemite National ParkEl Capitan, Half Dome, and the giant sequoias — 759,000 acres of granite and waterfall

Yosemite is older than the National Park Service itself. President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant of 1864 — ceding Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to California for "public use, resort, and recreation" — in the middle of the Civil War. It was the first time the federal government set aside land specifically for conservation, the legal seed that grew into the national park system. John Muir's twenty-year campaign helped expand and federalize the park; Theodore Roosevelt camped here with him for three nights in 1903; Yosemite became a full national park on October 1, 1890.

The 759,620-acre park is mostly inaccessible high-country wilderness — granite, alpine meadow, glacier, and giant sequoia. The half-million annual visitors who don't backpack concentrate in Yosemite Valley: a seven-mile, glacier-carved corridor with the most-photographed assemblage of rock and water in North America. El Capitan's 3,000-foot vertical wall (the largest exposed granite monolith on Earth), Half Dome's iconic silhouette, the 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls (the tallest waterfall in North America), Bridalveil Fall, the Royal Arches, the Three Brothers, Cathedral Rocks — all visible from a single overlook called Tunnel View at the western entrance to the valley.

Above the valley, Glacier Point delivers the panoramic side view of Half Dome and the Yosemite Falls cascade. The Mariposa Grove holds about 500 mature giant sequoias, including the 1,800-year-old Grizzly Giant. Tuolumne Meadows in the high country sits at 8,600 feet — accessible only when Tioga Road is open, mid-June through November in normal snow years. UNESCO inscribed the park as a World Heritage Site in 1984.