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 visitors to Yosemite Valley. John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist and explorer. It was because of Muir that many National Parks were left untouched, such as Yosemite Valley National Park. One of the most significant camping trips Muir took was in 1903 with then president Theodore Roosevelt. This trip persuaded Roosevelt to return "Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to federal protection as part of Yosemite National Park". John Muir wrote articles popularizing the area and increasing scientific interest in it. Muir was one of the first to theorize that the major landforms in Yosemite Valley were created by large