Yosemite Creek Yosemite Creek Yosemite Creek is a creek of the Sierra Nevada, located in Yosemite National Park, Mariposa County, California. The creek's headwaters are at the Grant Lakes (), and it flows southwest to drop over Yosemite Falls to Yosemite Valley, then flows southeast to its mouth at the Merced River, just southwest of Yosemite Village. () The Merced is a tributary of the San Joaquin River, in the San Joaquin Valley. Today, Yosemite Creek flows over the Yosemite Valley rim to create Upper Yosemite Fall. Before its diversion about 130,000 years ago, Yosemite Creek flowed down an older channel just
Yosemite National Park River Gorge. Lee Vining Glacier carved Lee Vining Canyon and emptied into Lake Russel (the much-enlarged ice age version of Mono Lake). Only the highest peaks, such as Mount Dana and Mount Conness, were not covered by glaciers. Retreating glaciers often left recessional moraines that impounded lakes such as the long Lake Yosemite (a shallow lake that periodically covered much of the floor of Yosemite Valley). With its scrubby sun-baked chaparral, stately groves of pine, fir, and sequoia, and expanses of alpine woodlands and meadows, Yosemite National Park preserves a Sierra Nevada landscape as it prevailed before Euro-American settlement. In