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Yosemite Valley from
Tunnel View at Midday, 2013; photo by David Iliff, Creative Commons License
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On October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed
legislation establishing the country’s third national park at Yosemite.
Congress had recognized Yosemite as worthy of protection since 1864, when in
the midst of the Civil War it granted the magnificent and awe-inspiring
Yosemite Valley and “the Land embracing the Mariposa Big Tree Grove” to the
State of California “inalienable
for all time.”