Geography

Yosemite National Park is located in the central Sierra Nevada of California. It takes 3.5 hours to drive to the park from San Francisco and about 6 hours from Los Angeles. Yosemite is surrounded by wilderness areas: the Ansel Adams Wilderness to the southeast, the Hoover Wilderness to the northeast, and the Emigrant Wilderness to the north.

The 1,189 sq mi (3,081 km²) park contains thousands of lakes and ponds, 1,600 miles (2,600 km) of streams, 800 miles (1300 km) of hiking trails, and 350 miles (560 km) of roads.^[4] Two federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Merced and the Tuolumne, begin within Yosemite's borders and flow westward through the Sierra foothills, into the Central Valley of California. Annual park visitation exceeds 3.5 million, with most visitor use concentrated in the seven square mile (18 km²) area of Yosemite Valley.