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
Yosemite National Park U.S. Congress authorized the O'Shaughnessy Dam through passage of the Raker Act. In the late 1920s a bid for Yosemite for the 1932 Winter Olympics was put forward. Ultimately, the 1932 Winter Olympics were awarded to Lake Placid, New York. In 1937, conservationist Rosalie Edge, head of the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC), successfully lobbied Congress to purchase about 8,000 acres of old-growth sugar pines on the perimeter of Yosemite National Park that were to be logged. More recently, preservationists persuaded Congress to designate , or about 89% of the park, as the Yosemite Wilderness—a highly protected wilderness area. The Park