History of the Yosemite area San Francisco. Hutchings published four installments of "The Great Yo-semite Valley" from October 1859 to March 1860 in his magazine and re-published a collection of these articles in his "Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California", which remained in print into the 1870s. Carleton Watkins exhibited his Yosemite views at the 1867 Paris International Exposition. Photographer Ansel Adams made his first trip to Yosemite in 1916; his photographs of the valley made him famous in the 1920s and 1930s. Adams willed the originals of his Yosemite photos to the Yosemite Park Association, and visitors can still buy direct prints from
Geography of the Yosemite area and the Pacific Crest Trail run through Yosemite, with peaks of red metamorphic rock, such as Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, and granite peaks, such as Mount Conness. Mount Lyell is the highest point in the park, standing at . The Lyell Glacier is the largest glacier in Yosemite National Park and is one of the few remaining in the Sierra Nevada today. The park has three groves of ancient giant sequoia ("Sequoiadendron giganteum") trees; the Mariposa Grove (200 trees), the Tuolumne Grove (25 trees), and the Merced Grove (20 trees). This species grows larger in volume than any other