Yosemite National Park United States

Legendary

Enjoy the beauty of the granite cliffs, rushing waterfalls, and crystal clear lakes.

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In 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, protecting the valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias from development. It transferred the land to California state to manage for public use. The Civil War was still raging, and Lincoln still made time to sign a piece of paper that changed how America thought about wilderness.

Scottish-American naturalist John Muir arrived in Yosemite in 1868, and what he saw convinced him to spend decades fighting to protect wild places across the country. He co-founded the Sierra Club and pushed President Theodore Roosevelt to expand federal protections for land, paving the way for the National Park System we have today.

The two men camped together in Yosemite in 1903, under the stars, working out the future of conservation.

Yosemite sits in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, a 400-mile granite spine running north to south along the state's eastern edge. The granite itself formed 80 to 120 million years ago as magma slowly cooled deep underground.

Glaciers then did the sculpting, grinding through the range over the past million years and retreating as recently as 10,000 years ago, leaving behind the sheer walls and flat valley floor you see today.

El Capitan rises 3,000 feet straight up from the valley floor, making it one of the most dramatic vertical rock faces on earth. In 2017, Alex Honnold free-soloed the entire face without ropes, in under four hours.

Stand at Tunnel View for the classic panorama of the valley, waterfalls, and granite walls. Hike the Mist Trail past Vernal Fall, where you'll get genuinely soaked. In spring, Yosemite Falls runs at full power, dropping 2,425 feet in three tiers. Spot black bears in the meadows at dawn, or rent bikes and cruise the valley floor past wildflower fields and mirror-calm ponds.