In 1851, a battalion of Indian fighters wandered into Yosemite Valley and were stopped in their tracks, dumbstruck, by the view. They were the first nonnatives to see this landscape, but their descriptions of it ensured they would not be the last. One man later wrote, None but those who have visited this most wonderful valley can even imagine . . . the awe with which I beheld it... As I looked, a peculiar exalted sensation seemed to fill my whole being, and I found my eyes in tears with emotion.

Photograph taken August 2000.