© 2024 KVPR | Valley Public Radio - White Ash Broadcasting, Inc. :: 89.3 Fresno / 89.1 Bakersfield
89.3 Fresno | 89.1 Bakersfield
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
76 new monthly members to go to reach our March goal! Start a new monthly gift today, or increase your existing monthly donation to help us reach the goal.

Yosemite National Park Unveils Newly Restored Mariposa Grove

Kerry Klein
/
Valley Public Radio
Mariposa Grove and its 1,000-year-old giant sequoias will reopen on June 15 after a 3-year restoration project had closed the area to the public.

As summer tourism heats up at Yosemite National Park, officials there are reopening one of the park’s most popular destinations. On Thursday, the park unveiled the newly restored Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.

The ceremony on Thursday marked the reopening of the stand of over 500 giant sequoias. The grove of 300-foot-tall trees had been closed to the public for three years while the park carried out its biggest ever restoration project. The goal: Reduce the human impacts on the trees while still keeping them accessible to visitors.

Before the restoration, a parking lot ran right up to the trees, diverting water away from the roots. Park restoration ecologist Sue Beatty says the infrastructure was way too close—especially a tram system that weaved narrowly between the trees.

“The tram could hardly fit between the trees and sometimes the paint on the tram was rubbing off on the trees,” she said. “You'd see a green mark on the trees from the paint.”

The park removed 20,000 square feet of asphalt and replaced it with topsoil and native plants. Now, visitors park in a new lot further away from the grove, and shuttle over in hybrid buses. The old tram road was converted to a wide, wheelchair-accessible walking trail. The project’s final price tag was $40 million

These trees are historic—and not just because they’re 1,000 years old. President Abraham Lincoln preserved them in 1864—the midst of the Civil War—in what became the federal government’s first ever act of land preservation.

“It was really the beginning of conservation in the U.S.—and the world, for that matter,” said Frank Dean, president of the philanthropic organization the Yosemite Conservancy.

The project’s final price tag was $40 million.

The restored grove is located just inside the park’s south gate.

Kerry Klein is an award-winning reporter whose coverage of public health, air pollution, drinking water access and wildfires in the San Joaquin Valley has been featured on NPR, KQED, Science Friday and Kaiser Health News. Her work has earned numerous regional Edward R. Murrow and Golden Mike Awards and has been recognized by the Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Environmental Journalists. Her podcast Escape From Mammoth Pool was named a podcast “listeners couldn’t get enough of in 2021” by the radio aggregator NPR One.
Related Content