October 1, 1890

On the first of this month, six score and three years ago, the United States Congress established Yosemite National Park. The park occupies over 761,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

The effort to protect the spectacular Yosemite Valley began in 1864 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant. This was the first instance in U.S. history in which park land was set aside for public use and protection. Yosemite set the precedent that would later be followed by Yellowstone, our first National Park, in 1872. Sierra Club founder and instrumental conservationist John Muir campaigned to incorporate the surrounding mountains and forests into the park, in addition to the Valley itself. Later Muir convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to take over the park from the state of California, a first step toward the National Park Service, established in 1916.

Yosemite takes its name from the corruption of a Miwok (Native American) word, which literally means, “they are killers.” This word, however, refers to the Ahwahneechee—a particularly violent tribe that inhabited the Yosemite Valley—not the white men who first came through it.