President Abraham Lincoln granted the Yosemite Valley area to the State of California in 1864. But John Muir, known for his nature preservation efforts and the namesake of the Muir Woods Park, just north of San Francisco's with its towering sequoia redwood trees, was the one responsible for attaining national park status for Yosemite National Park in 1890. Given that the park encompasses roughly 1,200 square miles of pristine land, Yosemite has countless opportunities to discover priceless views and within its vastness and shifting nature, there is every opportunity to attain views that are likely being seen by no other human at that moment or previously.
But one view that is well known to have been witnessed my millions in all of its glory during the 119 years since Yosemite became one of the nation's first National Parks, is the turnout on the park road known as "Tunnel View." This is the most famous of many well known views in the park, and is always on visitors' lists of places to see within the park. Due to the drive-up accessibility, Tunnel View draws up to seven thousand visitors per day. Some sit for hours taking in its expanses, its nuances, or waiting for clouds and light to project new images, while others hang cameras out of car windows merely to record it without ever turning the car off or stepping out, but almost no one goes to the park without taking in this particular vantage point which stretches down the Yosemite Valley and encompasses the massive granite wall of El Capitan and the towering Half Dome and Bridal Veil Falls. Given its preeminence as one the park's most awe inspiring, and accordingly popular, destinations, the Yosemite National Park has just spent $3 million renovating the "Tunnel View" turnout to create an expanded viewing area that is separate from the parking lot, and to fix crumbling walls and beautify the area, ensuring that everyone who wishes to have the opportunity to grasp the vastness and majesty of the park from one particular viewpoint may do so. And even though in that moment, and at that particular vantage point, you know that you are sharing your view with many others, with the newly finished upgrade, the priceless view remains, priceless.
