Saturday, November 13, 2010

October 12. The Hawthornes Explore Yosemite.

Welcome to Yosemite National Park on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. More than 100 million years ago, the earliest granite of the Sierra started to form deep underground in the Triassic period. Four million years ago, an island arc collided with the west coast of North America and the range started to uplift, producing a set of mountains in an event called the Nevadan orogeny. Erosion by glaciers exposed the granite, formed the mountains and cliffs of the range, and transformed the rolling hills and meandering streams of pre-Pleistocene Yosemite into the colossal landscape of the present.
Indian tribes - the Paiute, Sierra Miwok, and Ahwahneechee lived in the Yosemite area for thousands of years before the first non-indigenous people entered it. The first non-Indian visit to this area was probably made by the Joseph Walker expedition in 1833. It was not until 1851 when the existence of the magnificent Yosemite Valley became known. The Mariposa Battalion was sent to the area to extinguish an ongoing conflict between gold miners seeking their fortune and the resident Native Americans. When the battalion entered Yosemite, word of the land's beauty quickly spread. Enjoy my pictures:

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