National Park Service the United States. In 1872, there was no state government to manage it, so the federal government assumed direct control. Yosemite National Park began as a state park; the land for the park was donated by the federal government to the state of California in 1864 for perpetual conservation. Yosemite was later returned to federal ownership. At first, each national park was managed independently, with varying degrees of success. In Yellowstone, the civilian staff was replaced by the U.S. Army in 1886. Due to the irregularities in managing these national treasures, Stephen Mather petitioned the federal government to improve the
History of the Yosemite area John Muir Wilderness were also protected under the act and include regions removed from the park immediately before it was unified with the state grant in 1906. The "Yosemite Firefall", in which the embers from a bonfire were pushed off a cliff near Glacier Point to create a spectacular effect, was ended in 1968 because it was deemed to be inconsistent with park values. The firefall was occasionally performed in the 1870s and became a nightly tradition with the founding of Camp Curry. Broader tensions in American society surfaced in Yosemite when a large number of youths gathered in the