San Diego
San Diego is a major city in California, United States. It is in San Diego County, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, approximately 120 miles south of Los Angeles and immediately adjacent to the border with Mexico. With an estimated population of 1,394,928 as of July 1,2015, San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest in California. It is part of the San Diego–Tijuana conurbation, the second-largest transborder agglomeration between the US and a country after Detroit–Windsor, with a population of 4,922,723 people. San Diego has been called the birthplace of California, historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area for Spain, the Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá, founded in 1769, formed the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of the newly independent Mexico, in 1850, California became part of the United States following the Mexican–American War and the admission of California to the union.
The city is the seat of San Diego County and is the center of the region as well as the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. San Diegos main economic engines are military and defense-related activities, international trade, the presence of the University of California, San Diego, with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center, has helped make the area a center of research in biotechnology. The original inhabitants of the region are now known as the San Dieguito, the area of San Diego has been inhabited by the Kumeyaay people. The first European to visit the region was Portuguese-born explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailing under the flag of Castile, sailing his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain, Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire in 1542, and named the site San Miguel. In November 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast, in May 1769, Gaspar de Portolà established the Fort Presidio of San Diego on a hill near the San Diego River. It was the first settlement by Europeans in what is now the state of California, in July of the same year, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was founded by Franciscan friars under Junípero Serra.
By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in, Mission San Diego was the southern anchor in California of the historic mission trail El Camino Real. Both the Presidio and the Mission are National Historic Landmarks, in 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and San Diego became part of the Mexican territory of Alta California. In 1822, Mexico began attempting to extend its authority over the territory of Alta California. The fort on Presidio Hill was gradually abandoned, while the town of San Diego grew up on the land below Presidio Hill. The Mission was secularized by the Mexican government in 1833, the 432 residents of the town petitioned the governor to form a pueblo, and Juan María Osuna was elected the first alcalde, defeating Pío Pico in the vote
Salmon
Salmon /ˈsæmən/ is the common name for several species of ray-finned fish in the family Salmonidae. Other fish in the family include trout, grayling. Salmon are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, many species of salmon have been introduced into non-native environments such as the Great Lakes of North America and Patagonia in South America. Salmon are intensively farmed in parts of the world. Typically, salmon are anadromous, they are born in water, migrate to the ocean. However, populations of species are restricted to fresh water through their lives. Various species of salmon display anadromous life strategies while others display freshwater resident life strategies, folklore has it that the fish return to the exact spot where they were born to spawn, tracking studies have shown this to be mostly true. A portion of a salmon run may stray and spawn in different freshwater systems. The percent of straying depends on the species of salmon, homing behavior has been shown to depend on olfactory memory.
The term salmon comes from the Latin salmo, which in turn may have originated from salire, the nine commercially important species of salmon occur in two genera. The genus Salmo contains the Atlantic salmon, found in the north Atlantic, the genus Oncorhynchus contains eight species which occur naturally only in the North Pacific. As a group, these are known as Pacific salmon, Chinook salmon have been introduced in New Zealand and Patagonia. Coho, freshwater sockeye, and Atlantic salmon have established in Patagonia. † Both the Salmo and Oncorhynchus genera contain a number of species referred to as trout, within Salmo, additional minor taxa have been called salmon in English, i. e. the Adriatic salmon and Black Sea salmon. The steelhead anadromous form of the rainbow trout migrates to sea, a number of other species have common names which refer to them as being salmon. The British Columbia salmon fossil provides evidence that the divergence between Pacific and Atlantic salmon had not yet occurred 40 million years ago, Both the fossil record and analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggest the divergence occurred by 10 to 20 million years ago.
This independent evidence from DNA analysis and the fossil record rejects the theory of salmon divergence. Atlantic salmon reproduce in northern rivers on both coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, landlocked salmon live in a number of lakes in eastern North America and in Northern Europe, for instance in lakes Sebago, Ladoga, Saimaa, Vänern, and Winnipesaukee
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a national park spanning portions of Tuolumne and Madera counties in Northern California. The park, which is managed by the National Park Service, on average, about 4 million people visit Yosemite each year, and most spend the majority of their time in the seven square miles of Yosemite Valley. The park set a record in 2016, surpassing 5 million visitors for the first time in its history. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness, Yosemite was central to the development of the national park idea. First, Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals. The park has a range from 2,127 to 13,114 feet and contains five major vegetation zones, chaparral/oak woodland, lower montane forest, upper montane forest, subalpine zone. Of Californias 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur in the Sierra Nevada, there is suitable habitat for more than 160 rare plants in the park, with rare local geologic formations and unique soils characterizing the restricted ranges many of these plants occupy.
The geology of the Yosemite area is characterized by granitic rocks, about 10 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was uplifted and tilted to form its relatively gentle western slopes and the more dramatic eastern slopes. The uplift increased the steepness of stream and river beds, resulting in formation of deep, about one million years ago and ice accumulated, forming glaciers at the higher alpine meadows that moved down the river valleys. Ice thickness in Yosemite Valley may have reached 4,000 feet during the early glacial episode, the downslope movement of the ice masses cut and sculpted the U-shaped valley that attracts so many visitors to its scenic vistas today. The name Yosemite originally referred to the name of a tribe which was driven out of the area by the Mariposa Battalion. Before the area was called Ahwahnee by indigenous people, as revealed by archeological finds, the Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, though humans may have first visited the area as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The indigenous natives called themselves the Ahwahneechee, meaning dwellers in Ahwahnee and they are related to the Northern Paiute and Mono tribes. Many tribes visited the area to trade, including nearby Central Sierra Miwoks, a major trading route went over Mono Pass and through Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake, just to the east of the Yosemite area. Vegetation and game in the region were similar to that present today, acorns were a staple to their diet, as well as seeds and plants, salmon. In 1851 as part of the Mariposa Wars intended to suppress Native American resistance and he was pursuing forces of around 200 Ahwahneechee led by Chief Tenaya. Accounts from this battalion were the first well-documented reports of ethnic Europeans entering Yosemite Valley, attached to Savages unit was Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician, who wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite. Bunnell is credited with naming Yosemite Valley, based on his interviews with Chief Tenaya, Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya was the founder of the Pai-Ute Colony of Ah-wah-nee
Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California, in the United States. It was established on September 25,1890, the park is south of and contiguous with Kings Canyon National Park, the two are administered by the National Park Service together as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. They were designated the UNESCO Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976, the park is famous for its giant sequoia trees, including the General Sherman tree, the largest tree on Earth. The General Sherman tree grows in the Giant Forest, which five out of the ten largest trees in the world. The Giant Forest is connected by the Generals Highway to Kings Canyon National Parks General Grant Grove, the parks giant sequoia forests are part of 202,430 acres of old-growth forests shared by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Indeed, the preserve a landscape that still resembles the southern Sierra Nevada before Euro-American settlement. Many park visitors enter Sequoia National Park through its entrance near the town of Three Rivers at Ash Mountain at 1,700 ft elevation.
The last California grizzly was killed in this park in 1922, the California Black Oak is a key transition species between the chaparral and higher elevation conifer forest. At higher elevations in the front country, between 5,500 and 9,000 feet in elevation, the landscape becomes montane forest-dominated coniferous belt, found here are Ponderosa, Jeffrey and lodgepole pine trees, as well as abundant white and red fir. Found here too are the giant sequoia trees, the most massive living single-stem trees on earth, between the trees and summer snowmelts sometimes fan out to form lush, though delicate, meadows. In this region, visitors often see deer, Douglas squirrels, and American black bears. There are plans to reintroduce the bighorn sheep to this park, the vast majority of the park is roadless wilderness, no road crosses the Sierra Nevada within the parks boundaries. 84 percent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks is designated wilderness and is only by foot or by horseback. Sequoias backcountry offers a vast expanse of high-alpine wonders, covering the highest-elevation region of the High Sierra, the backcountry includes Mount Whitney on the eastern border of the park, accessible from the Giant Forest via the High Sierra Trail.
On the floor of canyon, at least two days hike from the nearest road, is the Kern Canyon hot spring, a popular resting point for weary backpackers. From the floor of Kern Canyon, the trail ascends again over 8,000 ft to the summit of Mount Whitney, in the summertime, Native Americans would travel over the high mountain passes to trade with tribes to the East. By the time the first European settlers arrived in the area, smallpox had spread to the region. The first European settler to homestead in the area was Hale Tharp, Tharp allowed his cattle to graze the meadow, but at the same time had a respect for the grandeur of the forest and led early battles against logging in the area
Ohlone
The Ohlone, named Costanoan by early Spanish colonists, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, at that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages belonged to the Costanoan sub-family of the Utian language family, the term Ohlone has been used in place of Costanoan since the 1970s by some descendant groups and by most ethnographers and writers of popular literature. In pre-colonial times, the Ohlone lived in more than 50 distinct landholding groups and they lived by hunting and gathering, in the typical ethnographic California pattern. The members of various bands interacted freely with one another. The Ohlone people practiced the Kuksu religion, prior to the Gold Rush, the northern California region was one of the most densely populated regions north of Mexico. However, in the years 1769 to 1833, the Spanish missions in California had an effect on Ohlone culture. The Ohlone living today belong to one or another of a number of distinct groups, most.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has members from around the San Francisco Bay Area, and is composed of descendants of the Ohlones/Costanoans from the San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Francisco missions. The Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, consisting of descendants of intermarried Rumsen Costanoan, the Amah-Mutsun Tribe are descendants of Mutsun Costanoan speakers of Mission San Juan Bautista, inland from Monterey Bay. Most members of group of Rumsien language, descendants from Mission San Carlos. These groups, and others with smaller memberships are separately petitioning the government for tribal recognition. The Ohlone inhabited fixed village locations, moving temporarily to gather seasonal foodstuffs like acorns and their vast region included the San Francisco Peninsula, Santa Clara Valley, Santa Cruz Mountains, Monterey Bay area, as well as present-day Alameda County, Contra Costa County and the Salinas Valley. Prior to Spanish contact, the Ohlone formed an association of approximately 50 different nations or tribes with about 50 to 500 members each.
Over 50 distinct Ohlone tribes and villages have been recorded, the Ohlone villages interacted through trade and ceremonial events, as well as some internecine conflict. Cultural arts included basket-weaving skills, seasonal ceremonial dancing events, female tattoos and nose piercings, the Ohlone subsisted mainly as hunter-gatherers and in some ways harvesters. Their staple diet consisted of crushed acorns, grass seeds and these food sources were abundant in earlier times and maintained by careful work, and through active management of all the natural resources at hand. Animals in their mild climate included the grizzly bear, pronghorn, the streams held salmon and stickleback
Pinnacles National Park
Pinnacles is managed by the National Park Service and the majority of the park is protected as wilderness. The national park is divided by the formations into East and West Divisions, connected by foot trails. The east side has shade and water, the west has high walls, the rock formations provide for spectacular pinnacles that attract rock climbers. The park features unusual talus caves that house at least thirteen species of bat, Pinnacles is most often visited in spring or fall because of the intense heat during the summer months. Park lands are prime habitat for prairie falcons, and are a site for California condors that have been hatched in captivity. Pinnacles National Monument was established in 1908 by U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt, Pinnacles National Park was created from the former Pinnacles National Monument by legislation passed by Congress in late 2012 and signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 10,2013. Native Americans in the Pinnacles region comprised the Chalon and Mutsun groups of the Ohlone people and these native people declined with the arrival of the Spanish in the 18th century, who brought novel diseases and changes to the natives way of life.
The last Chalon had died or departed from the area by 1810, from 1810 to 1865, when the first Anglo-American settlers arrived, the Pinnacles region was a wilderness without human use or habitation. The establishment of a Spanish mission at Soledad hastened the areas native depopulation through disease, archaeological surveys have found thirteen sites inhabited by Native Americans, twelve of which post-date the establishment of the missions. One site is believed to be about 2000 years old, by the 1880s the Pinnacles, known as the Palisades, were visited by picnickers from the surrounding communities who would explore the caves and camp. The first account of the Pinnacles region appeared in print in 1881, between 1889 and 1891, newspaper articles shifted from describing excursions to the Palisades to calling them the Pinnacles. Interest in the rose to the point that the Hollister Free Lance sent a reporter to the Pinnacles. Investors came from San Francisco to consider placing a hotel there. In 1894 a post office was established in Bear Valley, since there was at least one other Bear Valley in California, the post office was named Cook after Mrs.
Hains maiden name. In 1924 the post office was renamed Pinnacles, Schuyler Hain was a homesteader who arrived in the Pinnacles area in 1891 from Michigan, following his parents and eight siblings to Bear Valley. White, was a student at Stanford University, and White brought one of his professors to see the Pinnacles in 1893, dr. Gilbert was impressed by the scenery, and his comments inspired Hain to publicize the region. Hain led tours to Bear Valley and through the caves, advocating the preservation of the Pinnacles, Hains efforts resulted in a 1904 visit by Stanford president David Starr Jordan, who contacted Fresno Congressman James C. Jordan and Needham in turn influenced Gifford Pinchot to advocate the establishment of the Pinnacles Forest Reserve to President Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt proclaimed the establishment on July 8,1906
Joshua Tree National Park
Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. Declared a U. S. National Park in 1994 when the U. S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act and it is named for the Joshua trees native to the park. It covers a area of 790,636 acres —an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. A large part of the park, some 429,690 acres, is a wilderness area. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park, in 1950, the size of the park was reduced by about 265,000 acres to exclude some mining property. The park was elevated to a National Park on 31 October 1994 by the Desert Protection Act, the higher and cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of Yucca brevifolia, the Joshua tree for which the park is named. It occurs in patterns from dense forests to distantly spaced specimens, in addition to Joshua tree forests, the western part of the park includes some of the most interesting geologic displays found in Californias deserts. The dominant geologic features of landscape are hills of bare rock.
These hills are popular amongst rock climbing and scrambling enthusiasts, the flatland between these hills is sparsely forested with Joshua trees. Together with the piles and Skull Rock, the trees make the landscape otherworldly. Temperatures are most comfortable in the spring and fall, with an average high/low of 85 and 50 °F respectively, winter brings cooler days, around 60 °F, and freezing nights. It occasionally snows at higher elevations, summers are hot, over 100 °F during the day and not cooling much below 75 °F until the early hours of the morning. Joshua trees dominate the open spaces of the park, but in among the outcroppings are piñon pine, California juniper, Quercus turbinella, Quercus john-tuckeri. These communities are under stress, however, as the climate was wetter until the 1930s, with the same hot. These cycles were nothing new, but the vegetation did not prosper when wetter cycles returned. The difference may have been human development, cattle grazing took out some of the natural cover and made it less resistant to the changes.
But the bigger problem seems to be invasive species, such as cheatgrass, in drier times, they die back, but do not quickly decompose. This makes wildfires hotter and more destructive, which some of the trees that would have otherwise survived
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the United States. Straddling the border of California and Nevada, located east of the Sierra Nevada, the park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, valleys and mountains. It is the largest national park in the lower 48 states and has declared an International Biosphere Reserve. Approximately 91% of the park is a wilderness area. It is the hottest and lowest of the parks in the United States. The second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere is in Badwater Basin, the park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment. Some examples include creosote bush, bighorn sheep and the Death Valley pupfish, several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams, the valley became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies.
Tourism blossomed in the 1920s, when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994. The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology, the valley itself is actually a graben. The oldest rocks are metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean, additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. This uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes, the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, in 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association. There are two valleys in the park, Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years, the result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and more subsidence there.
Uplift of surrounding mountain ranges and subsidence of the floor are both occurring. The uplift on the Black Mountains is so fast that the fans there are small
Golden Gate
The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, the strait is well known today for its depth and powerful tidal currents from the Pacific Ocean. Many small whirlpools and eddies can form in its waters, with its strong currents, rocky reefs and fog, the Golden Gate is the site of over 100 shipwrecks. The Golden Gate is often shrouded in fog, especially during the summer, heat generated in the California Central Valley causes air there to rise, creating a low pressure area that pulls in cool, moist air from over the Pacific Ocean. The Golden Gate forms the largest break in the hills of the California Coast Range, allowing a persistent, dense stream of fog to enter the bay there. Before the Europeans arrived in the 18th century, the area around the strait, descendants of both tribes remain in the area. The strait was surprisingly elusive for early European explorers, presumably due to this persistent summer fog.
The strait is not recorded in the voyages of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo nor Francis Drake, the strait is unrecorded in observations by Spanish galleons returning from the Philippines that laid up in nearby Drakes Bay to the north. These galleons rarely passed east of the Farallon Islands, fearing the possibility of rocks between the islands and the mainland, the first recorded observation of the strait occurred nearly two hundred years than the earliest European explorations of the coast. Until the 1840s, the strait was called the Boca del Puerto de San Francisco, on 1 July 1846, before the discovery of gold in California, the entrance acquired a new name. Frémont wrote, To this Gate I gave the name of Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate, for the reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras. In the 1920s, no bridge spanned the watery expanse between San Francisco and Marin in California—so when the U. S, post Office issued a postage stamp on 1 May 1923, celebrating The Golden Gate, the issue naturally portrayed the scene without a bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a bridge spanning the Golden Gate. As part of both US Highway 101 and California Route 1, it connects the city of San Francisco on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension span in the world when completed in 1937. Since its completion, the length has been surpassed by eight other bridges. It still has the second longest suspension bridge span in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked fifth on the List of Americas Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects, Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres of public grounds
Pescadero, California
Pescadero is a census-designated place in San Mateo County, California two miles east of State Route 1 and Pescadero State Beach. The center of town, on Pescadero Creek Road, is located at latitude 37.255, the town is 14.4 miles south of Half Moon Bay. The ZIP Code is 94060 and the community is inside area code 650, the population was 643 at the 2010 census. Pescadero is a farming and ranching community near the Pescadero Marsh, Pescadero Creek, the longest stream in San Mateo County, is an annual creek that empties into the Pacific Ocean near the town. Pescadero hosts the annual Pescadero Art and Fun Fair on the weekend of each August. The Alto Velo Bicycle Racing Club holds the annual Pescadero Coastal Classic Road Race, many of the buildings in town date from the 19th Century. Pescadero is situated near the Pacific Ocean about 17 miles south of Half Moon Bay, the town is home to Pescadero High School. The Pescadero High School and Middle School Teams are the Vikings, KPDO, at 89.3 FM, is Pescaderos community radio station.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP covers an area of 4.0 square miles,99. 79% of it land, the 2010 United States Census reported that Pescadero had a population of 643. The population density was 159.4 people per square mile, the racial makeup of Pescadero was 314 White,2 African American,2 Native American,5 Asian,1 Pacific Islander,294 from other races, and 25 from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 402 persons, the Census reported that 624 people lived in households,19 lived in non-institutionalized group quarters, and 0 were institutionalized. There were 17 unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 3 same-sex married couples or partnerships,41 households were made up of individuals and 8 had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.20, there were 137 families, the average family size was 3.75. The median age was 33.5 years, for every 100 females there were 110.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 123.1 males, there were 216 housing units at an average density of 53.5 per square mile, of which 86 were owner-occupied, and 109 were occupied by renters.
The homeowner vacancy rate was 2. 3%, the vacancy rate was 4. 4%. 205 people lived in owner-occupied housing units and 419 people lived in housing units. In 2000, there were 250 single-family owner-occupied homes, the value was 411,500
National Park Service
It was created on August 25,1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act and is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. As of 2014, the NPS employs 21,651 employees who oversee 417 units, the National Park Service celebrated its centennial in 2016. National parks and national monuments in the United States were originally individually managed under the auspices of the Department of the Interior, the movement for an independent agency to oversee these federal lands was spearheaded by business magnate and conservationist Stephen Mather, as well as J. Horace McFarland. With the help of journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather ran a publicity campaign for the Department of the Interior and they wrote numerous articles that praised the scenic and historic qualities of the parks and their possibilities for educational and recreational benefits. This campaign resulted in the creation of a National Park Service, Mather became the first director of the newly formed NPS.
On March 3,1933, President Herbert Hoover signed the Reorganization Act of 1933, the act would allow the President to reorganize the executive branch of the United States government. It wasnt until that summer when the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Roosevelt agreed and issued two Executive orders to make it happen. In 1951, Conrad Wirth became director of the National Park Service, the demand for parks after the end of the World War II had left the parks overburdened with demands that could not be met. In 1952, with the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, he began Mission 66, New parks were added to preserve unique resources and existing park facilities were upgraded and expanded. In 1966, as the Park Service turned 50 years old, emphasis began to turn from just saving great and wonderful scenery, Director George Hartzog began the process with the creation of the National Lakeshores and National Recreation Areas. Since its inception in 1916, the National Park Service has managed each of the United States national parks, Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the United States.
In 1872, there was no government to manage it. Yosemite National Park began as a park, the land for the park was donated by the federal government to the state of California in 1864 for perpetual conservation. Yosemite was returned to federal ownership, at first, each national park was managed independently, with varying degrees of success. In Yellowstone, the staff was replaced by the U. S. Army in 1886. Due to the irregularities in managing these national treasures, Stephen Mather petitioned the government to improve the situation. In response, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane challenged him to lobby for creating a new agency, Mather was successful with the ratification of the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916. Later, the agency was given authority over other protected areas, the National Park System includes all properties managed by the National Park Service
Alta California
Alta California, founded in 1769 by Gaspar de Portolà, was a polity of New Spain and after the Mexican War of Independence in 1822, a territory of Mexico. The region included all of the states of California and Utah. Large areas east of the Sierra Nevada and San Gabriel Mountains were claimed to be part of Alta California, to the southeast, beyond the deserts and the Colorado River, lay the Spanish settlements in Arizona. The areas formerly comprising Alta California were ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican–American War in 1848, two years later, California joined the union as the 31st state. Other parts of Alta California became all or part of the U. S. states of Arizona, Utah and Wyoming. The Spanish explored the area of Alta California by sea beginning in the 16th century. During the following two centuries there were plans to settle the area, none of which were effectively carried out. Ultimately, New Spain did not have the resources nor population to settle such a far northern outpost.
To ascertain the Russian threat a number of Spanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest were launched, the Spanish Crown funded the construction and subsidized the operation of the missions, with the goal that the relocation and enforced labor of Native people would bolster Spanish rule. The first Alta California mission and presidio were established by the Franciscan friar Junípero Serra, the following year,1770, the second mission and presidio were founded in Monterey. In 1773 a boundary between the Baja California missions and the Franciscan missions of Alta California was set by Francisco Palóu, the missionary effort coincided with the construction of presidios and pueblos, which were to be manned and populated by Hispanic people. The first pueblo founded was San José in 1777, followed by Los Ángeles in 1781, by law, mission land and property were to pass to the indigenous population after a period of about ten years, when the natives would become Spanish subjects. In the interim period, the Franciscans were to act as mission administrators who held the land in trust for the Native residents, the transfer of property never occurred under the Franciscans.
As the number of Spanish settlers grew in Alta California, the boundaries, conflicts between the Crown and the Church and between Natives and settlers arose. State and ecclesiastical bureaucrats debated over authority of the missions and they advocated that the Natives owned property and had the right to defend it. Governor Diego de Borica is credited with defining Alta and Baja Californias official borders, Mexico won independence in 1822, and Alta California became a territory of Mexico. The Spanish and Mexican governments rewarded retired soldados de cuera with large grants, known as ranchos, for the raising of cattle. Hides and tallow from the livestock were the primary exports of California until the mid-19th century, the construction and domestic work on these vast estates was primarily done by Native Americans, who had learned to speak Spanish and ride horses
.jpg)
