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Top 10 Most Visited National Parks in the US
3. Yosemite National Park
Photo by David Kingham
Ranking at #3 on the list of most visited national parks in the United States, Yosemite is an expansive park of 747,956 acres (1,169 square miles) in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. About 95 percent of its land are designated Wilderness. Yosemite is home to hundreds of wildlife species, and over a thousand plant species. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is known for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves and biological diversity. Over 5 million visitors have visited the park in 2016. Yosemite is not just a great valley. With its glaciated landscape, and the scenery that resulted from the interaction of the glaciers and the underlying rocks, Yosemite has become an iconic symbol of strength, of the life persistence and of tranquility.
John Muir, a Scottish American naturalist and glaciologist, found the healing shrine in the beauty of Yosemite, wrote: “It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.” He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park.
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