Yosemite National Park

Glaciers and the Merced River cut Yosemite Valley some 3,000 feet into solid granite. They left walls that go straight up: El Capitan rises more than 3,000 feet above the valley floor, and Half Dome nearly 5,000.

The Ahwahneechee lived here and called the valley Ahwahnee. The name that stuck came from outside. In 1851 the Mariposa Battalion, a militia sent after the valley's people, rode in, and its doctor, Lafayette Bunnell, proposed the name Yosemite.

On June 30, 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, giving the valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias to California to be held for public use. It was the first time the federal government set land aside for that purpose. Albert Bierstadt had sketched in the valley for several weeks the summer before; his canvases showed the East a valley full of golden light.

This picture works in that tradition. A sheer granite wall rises on the left, warm in the low sun. On the right a dome with a cut face stands over a darker cliff, where a thin waterfall drops into a bank of mist. Between them a slow river holds the light, and three deer graze in the meadow.