Yosemite Outdoor Recreation Activity

The environmentalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries presents a picture of America at the time: torn between the desires to expand while seeking to protect nature. Although all members of the movement sought to protect nature, there were two predominant schools as to how to go about this. In their two philosophies, they created two methods for human interaction with the wilderness. The conservationist movement can be called the utilitarian movement, and sought the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest term. In contrast, the preservationist school aimed at keeping nature in its current state, although the

Yosemite National Park is a beautiful park that is just hours away from San Francisco and has some of the best hiking and scenic areas found in our National Parks. Camping at Yosemite can be a challenge though. All of the campsites within Yosemite are on a reservation system that fills up in seconds after the dates are opened. Seriously! If you know you want to camp within the park, please plan way ahead of time to secure a spot. When making a reservation make sure you are signing up for an RV or a tent space. If you are tent camping, know that you will have to park a little bit away and carry your gear in as there is no space for you to park next to your tenting spot. Yosemite camping can get

1. Karl Jacoby book brings the remarkable accounting of the negative aspects of conservation movement to the sunlight. Jacoby uses the early years of Adirondack Park, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon Forest Preserve to demonstrate his theme of the locals’ reactions to the creation of the park and the actions from the conservationists. And the fantasies the early conservationists’ promulgated of the locals of being satanic rapists of the environment are dispelled (193).

Yosemite National Park, is a beautiful piece of nature it is a 195 mile nature getaway from the urban life that is lived San Francisco, CA and 315 miles away from the fast pace and overwhelming life that is lived in Los Angeles CA. This place is like no other in the beauty of its nature. The park is “747,956 acres, and is the home to hundreds of wildlife species and thousands of Yosemite plants” (U.S. Nat. Park Service). Yosemite is known for so many beautiful features, from its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves and biological diversity. And also for its two rivers which are the Tuolumne and Merced rivers. These rivers begin in the park and flow as far as west to the

At Yosemite National Park I got a chance to truly experience the nature and wildlife around me. The Merced River ran through the valley, and I could hear the sound of the rushing water from far away. I could hear the whistle of the wind and the birds chirping from high up in the trees. The vivid colors of the flowers there were incredible. On top of Pride Rock, there was a splendid view of famous landmarks including the Half Dome. From OMG Point the view of the valley below was absolutely breathtaking. --Some plants and trees had a nice scent to them.-- The Jeffrey Pine tree had a pleasant aroma of vanilla. I also got a chance to smell the fresh scent of earth when rain was falling on the last but one day of the trip. --We got to taste the leaves

One of America’s greatest conservation achievements is the Wilderness Act of 1964. Fifty-two years later, this act has a legacy to withhold. A legacy that meant something in 1964 and remains the same today: to protect unspoiled land. Even though, through this act millions of acres have been conserved, the key word is continue. That is why America should pass laws to preserve the wilderness before developers spoil them.

In June 1864 the Yosemite Land Grant was signed by Abraham Lincoln, which deeded 39,000 acres of the Mariposa Big Tree Grove and Yosemite Valley to the State of California (Hawken 40). It was an unprecedented piece of legislation, having almost universal support from private business, environmentalists and Congress. Sparked largely by the de-barking of “The Mother of the Forest”, one of the oldest sequoias in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove, several years earlier (Hawken 39). The Yosemite Land Grant was the first piece of legislation founded on the principle that nature needed to be preserved and protected from humans (Hawken 40). After nearly a century of clearing many forests on the East Coast, affording protection to land on the West Coast was a novel concept.

In the book The Great Smokies From Natural Habitat to National Park, one can see the true passion and application that the author, Daniel S. Pierce, holds for one of the United States most prized possession, the Great Smoky Mountains. Like most, he is intrigued by the incomparable beauty and thrill of the wilderness, with his main goal being to show that the propose of this national park isn’t just to protect undeveloped land but more to reclaim the wildness and all it stands for. He looks in-depth to the different land use of the smokies over time and the people who have called it home for centuries with his lager focus on the movement to turn the Great Smokies in to the national park it is today.

Yosemite National Park is a national park located in Northern California, attracting countless tourists from countries all across the world for its luscious green landscape, beautiful waterfalls, and variety of different hiking trails. However it is known by many for far more than its physical beauty, and a deep history and significance have created the national park that Americans love today.

First arriving at the Yosemite Valley in 1869, John Muir lived in the valley for years and knew it its beauty by heart. Feeling an innate admiration towards the wilderness, he considered the valley to be a sanctuary from the Industrial West and a revelation of God; “He contemplated the life of a raindrop, probed the mosses growing underneath alpine meadows, marveled at the tenacity of plants somehow clinging to life on bare granite, soaked sequoia cones in water and drank the purple liquid ‘to improve my color,’ he explained, ‘and render myself more tree-wise and sequoical.’” Eager to share the beauty of Yosemite, he guided visitors onto a spiritual journey in the park, and in the 1890s, he stopped the reclusive life in Yosemite and started to teach and write about value of wilderness. With poetic and passionate language, his writings empowered his audience with a new level of sensitivity to the beauty of nature and achieved great popularity in the national market as it catered to the curiosity and the myth of the west, and his book The Mountains of California was recognized as “the most consequential awakening of the public

In a time when the United States was consumed by industrialization, John Muir dedicated his time to the opposite spectrum. John worked vigorously to prove to the government that the nature of the west coast needed to be saved, not destroyed. He did so by taking some of the most important people on simple camping trips to prove that conservation was needed in the United States. He even founded a club, that served to protect nature for years to come. Because of his passion for nature, John Muir was a monumental influence on preserving the United States’ natural beauty by dedicating his life to creating the foundation of the National Parks System.

Since the early 1920s to the 1970s, there has been a debate regarding the perceptions and standards by which national parks should be established and limiting the expansion of national parks, limiting access for people living in urban areas and threatening open spaces due to urban sprawl and over population. Gradually traditional perceptions gave way to the preservationists’ viewpoints which redefined and gradually expanded federal definition of national parks. This was to include areas that may not be extraordinarily scenic but still required environmental protection or allowed recreational access for urban citizens, allowing for expansion and more funding.

Environmentalism has always been two sided. Nature versus urban. locals versus national. Frequently, large tracts of public and federal land are bought and developed by industry. Pristine wilderness turned to bustling epicenters of human activity, all in the name of progress and economic growth. This tale of preserving natural wilderness is one that begins with John Muir, an advocate against the taming of Yosemite national park and the Hetch-Hetchy reservoir, while the head of the US Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, insisted on the reservoir to supply the city of San Francisco with water. This timeless epic of conservation or preservation brings us to the Jumbo Valley, a vast expanse of uninhabited, pristine wilderness home to diverse

In the history of the U.S. Forest Service, landscape architects have shaped conservation policies, but have often been unsung heroes, writers, visionaries and leaders. For instance, Arthur H. Carhart was the first U.S. Forest Service landscape architect and the first to realize the significance of conservation. From 1919 to 1923, Carhart created the recreational facilities of national forests in six states, from Superior Forest on Wisconsin’s Lake Superior to the San Isabel in southern Colorado. Furthermore, Carhart’s writings during his employment with the U.S. Forest Service are the standing pillars for the wilderness and recreation policies that exist today. Looking further back, in 1892 the father of landscape architecture - Frederick Law

Beyond conservation then, lies the sense that historians have frequently neglected to incorporate how preservation of specific recreational areas into their scholarship. This is vital considering that without this frame of reference, conservation is lost within the idea that it is separate from nature. As an attempt to explain this neglect is the awareness that “One group of critics has suggested that the complexity and stochasticity of natural processes invariably complicate attempts to preserve wilderness,” creating an additional layer