Yosemite National Park a larger national park by 1890, one which encompassed the valley and its surrounding mountains and forests, paving the way for the National Park System. Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals. The park has an elevation range from and contains five major vegetation zones: chaparral and oak woodland, lower montane forest, upper montane forest, subalpine zone, and alpine. Of California's 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur in the Sierra Nevada and more than 20% are within Yosemite. The park contains suitable
Yosemite National Park The cavalry left another legacy in the park, the ranger hat. From 1899 to 1913, cavalry regiments of the Western Department, including the all Black 9th Cavalry (known as the "Buffalo Soldiers") and the 1st Cavalry, stationed two troops at Yosemite and brought with them the trooper's campaign hat with its distinctive Montana Peak we recognize today as the "ranger hat." This peak had been formed into the trooper's stetson by veterans of the 1898 Spanish–American War to better shed tropical rain. Muir and his Sierra Club continued to lobby the government and influential people for the creation of a