NPS Historic Photograph Collection

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt, left, posed with John Muir for pictures on Overhanging Rock at the top of Glacier Point, near which the men camped in a hollow and awoke to five inches of snow.

Oral history passed down by local American Indians says the people of the Yosemite area were created here and have been here since the beginning of time. Seven present-day tribes descend from the people who first called this area home. As Europeans arrived in the mid-1800s, violent disruption ensued that displaced the native populations. Early white settlers arrived and hosted writers, artists, and photographers who spread the fame of "the Incomparable Valley" throughout the world. Park pioneers, like Galen Clark, then spoke of Yosemite’s need for protection, and that environmental philosophy was advocated by the scientists of the time and later enforced by the park’s first nature guides.

• Early on, women helped make Yosemite what it is. Read their stories on a fact sheet on significant women. [323 kb PDF].