Yosemite

Yosemite Valley was given state protection as early as 1864, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant handing the land to California as a state park — the first instance in history of public land protected for recreational use, and the direct model for Yellowstone eight years later. It did not become a federal national park until 1890, thanks in large part to the campaigning of the Scottish naturalist John Muir, whose writings and 1903 camping trip in the valley with President Theodore Roosevelt proved decisive in widening its protection. Muir co-founded the Sierra Club here in 1892, one of the most influential conservation organisations in the world. The park's monolithic granite formations, carved by glaciers, include El Capitan and Half Dome, icons of world climbing.