Sierra Nevada Network

About Us: Sierra Nevada Parks

The Sierra Nevada Inventory and Monitoring Program is part of an effort in the National Park Service to develop a stronger scientific basis for stewardship and management of natural resources throughout the National Park System.

The Sierra Nevada Network comprises four parks with shared geography and natural resources: Devils Postpile National Monument and Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks. All are located in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California; all share many similarities in their geology and species of animals and plants that live there; all are becoming islands of wildness in an increasingly urbanized environment.

Parks of the Sierra Nevada Network:

Yosemite National Park

Tunnel View , Yosemite Photo: © Mike Matenkosky

In 1864 Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees were “granted” by Act of the U.S. Congress to the State of California for “public use, resort and recreation” and to “be inalienable for all time.” The significance of the area was recognized well before establishment of Yosemite National Park and nearly eight years before Yellowstone was set aside as the world’s first national park. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York City’s Central Park, provided early direction in managing the Yosemite Grant and saw it as a museum of natural science and native species, as well as a field of study for art.

In 1906 Congress accepted transfer of the Yosemite Grant back to the United States, adding it to Yosemite National Park, which had been established in 1890 “to preserve from injury all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders within the park area and to retain them in their natural condition.” Several changes to the park boundary were made over the years. In 1984, Yosemite was designated a World Heritage Site.

Yosemite is particularly noted for its textbook-perfect glacial features – domes, moraines, sheer rock walls, and hanging valleys – as well as its stunning waterfalls, “free-leaping” from the edges of hanging valleys over sheer granite walls. As John Muir noted: “… every peak, ridge, dome, canyon, lake basin, garden, forest, and stream testifies to the existence and modes of action of … scenery-making ice.”

Yosemite protects a diversity of natural and cultural resources of the central Sierra Nevada including the headwaters of two Wild & Scenic Rivers: the Merced and the Tuolumne. The park also contains Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir on the Tuolumne, one of the major water supplies for the City of San Francisco.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

Bullfrog Lake, Kings Canyon Photo: © Howard Weamer

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks protect a variety of landscapes containing biological and cultural resources in the southern Sierra Nevada of California. They are two distinct national parks, created by acts of Congress fifty years apart. Today these parks are administered as a single unit. The parks are designated as a unit of the International Biosphere Preserve Program. Primary purposes of the two parks as expressed in legislation are to preserve the forest resources, particularly the giant sequoia groves, and to protect a vast wilderness for both its scenic and recreational values.

Established September 25, 1890, Sequoia National Park is the second oldest national park in the United States. The campaign to create the park – initiated and executed by nearby San Joaquin Valley residents – focused on the scenic and inspirational values of the region's giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) groves. Since 1890 Sequoia National Park has undergone two major enlargements, both of which added higher elevation lands to the park, preserving the headwaters of the Kern and Kaweah River drainages and the rugged, ice-sculptured alpine terrain that includes the highest peak in the lower 48 states, Mt. Whitney. Today, the best known and most appreciated features of Sequoia National Park remain the sequoia groves and high country.

Grant Grove National Park was designated in 1890. In 1940 it was incorporated into Kings Canyon National Park, which featured additional giant sequoia groves and great glacial canyons and scenic alpine headwaters of the South and Middle Forks of the Kings River. In 1965, the floors of Tehipite and Kings Canyon were added to protect scenic river segments from reservoir development.

Devils Postpile National Monument

"Postpile" Lava Formation, Devils Postpile

Devils Postpile was established in 1911 to preserve “the natural formations known as the Devils Postpile and Rainbow Falls” for their scientific interest and for public inspiration and interpretation. The Devils Postpile formation is a dramatic mass of columnar-jointed basalt, the remnants of lava that flowed down the valley of the Middle Fork San Joaquin River less than 100,000 years ago. Nearly 20,000 years ago, a glacier overrode the fractured lava mass exposing a wall of columns 18 meters high resembling a giant pipe organ. Nearby, Rainbow Falls, along the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, drops 31 m over a volcanic cliff. Devils Postpile is located high on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in Madera County, California near the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River.