Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park
Muir J. 1890. Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park. The Century Magazine
THE upper Tuolumne Valley is the widest, smoothest, most serenely spacious, and in every way the most delightful summer pleasure park in all the high Sierra. And since it is connected with Yosemite by two good trails, and with the levels of civilization by a broad, well-graded carriage-road that passes between Yosemite and Mount Hoffman, it is also the most accessible. It lies in the heart of the high Sierra at a height of from 8500 to 9000 feet above the level of the sea, at a distance of less than ten miles from the northeastern boundary of the Yosemite reservation. It is bounded on the southwest by the gray, jagged, picturesque Cathedral range, which extends in a south-easterly direction from Cathedral Peak to Mount Lyell and Mount Ritter, the culminating peaks of the grand mass of icy mountains that form the "crown of the Sierra"; on the northeast, by a similar range or spur, the highest peak of which is Mount Conness; on the east, by the smooth, majestic masses of Mount Dana, Mount Gibbs, Mount Ord, and others, nameless as yet, on the axis of the main range; and on the west by a heaving, billowy mass of glacier-polished rocks, over which the towering masses of Mount Hoffman are seen. Down through the open sunny levels of the valley flows the bright Tuolumne River, fresh from many a glacial fountain in the wild recesses of the peaks, the highest of which are the glaciers that lie on the north sides of Mount Lyell and Mount McClure.