Modern History
Yosemite Valley is listed as a National Historic District and as a California Historical Landmark.
Curry Village was the site from where villagers and visitors watched the famous Yosemite Firefall. These "falls" were large batches of red hot embers dropped from Glacier Point. The Park Service stopped this practice in 1969 as part of their long process of de-emphasizing artificial park attractions.
On July 6, 1996 a massive rock slide, weighing an estimated 60–80,000 tons, crashed 1800 feet (550 m) into the valley from the east side of Glacier Point, travelling at over 160 mph (260 km/h). Dust blanketed that part of the valley for days, and the wind speed in front of the slide is estimated to have been 300 mph (480 km/h). One person was killed in the slide.
Yosemite is now a world rock climbing attraction. The massive 'big walls' of granite have been climbed countless times since the 1950s and have pushed climbers' abilities to new heights. While climbers traditionally take several days to climb the monoliths, bivvying on the rock faces, modern climbing techniques help climbers ascend the cliffs in mere hours. Many climbers stay at Camp 4 before beginning big wall climbs.
Half Dome figures prominently on the reverse side of the California state quarter.
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Famous quotes containing the words modern history, modern and/or history:
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)