California
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite helped invent the American national-park idea, but its history is not an empty-wilderness story. This regional guide connects Ahwahnee Indigenous homeland, Gold Rush invasion, the 1864 Yosemite Grant, tourism and designed viewpoints, luxury concessions, Buffalo Soldier stewardship, giant sequoias, contested place names and the Hetch Hetchy dam to ask what Americans actually mean when they say a landscape is protected.
Stories in Yosemite National Park
- Tunnel View: The Famous View Was Built
- Indian Village of Ahwahnee: The Valley Was a Homeland
- Yosemite Falls: Tourism Turns Water into Spectacle
- Yosemite Chapel: Preservation Was Never Free of Development
- The Ahwahnee: Luxury Helps Sell Wilderness
- Glacier Point: The View That Used to End in a Firefall
- Mariposa Grove: Giant Trees Help Invent the National Park Idea
- Wawona: Buffalo Soldiers Before the National Park Service
- Tenaya Lake: Naming Is Not the Same as Remembering
- Hetch Hetchy: The National Park Valley San Francisco Dammed