File:Guide leaflet (1901) (14767359845).jpg

Identifier: scienceguide4660amer (find matches)
Title: Guide leaflet
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: American Museum of Natural History Natural history
Publisher: New York : The Museum
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: IMLS / LSTA / METRO

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when at length the Ice Age came to a closethe narrow three-story canyon had been transformedinto a broad U-shaped trough; the craggj slopes hadbeen quarried back to vertical cliffs, and the brokencascades replaced by leaping falls. SeeFig. L) More-over, three new falls of this kind had been created, for indeepening the chasm the glacier had left the gulch ofBridal Veil Creek hanging, thereby causing that streamto leap over a vertical precipice 020 feet high; and in itsdescent from the Little Yosemite the glacier had hewna giant stairway down whose steps the Merced nowmakes two successive leaps, in Nevada and Vernal falls.Finally, a basin had been scooped out in the rock floorof the valley, and in this basin was formed a lakefive and a half miles long ancient Lake Yosemite. Simi-lar but smaller and shallower lake basins were scoopedout in the Little Yosemite and in Tenaya Canyon. The ice was greatly aided in making these prodigiouschanges in the configuration of the Yosemite Valley by
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F. E. Matthes, Photo The Half DomeFrom the trail beneath Glacier Point 19 20 AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLET the numerous cracks, or joints, as they are properlytermed, that divide the granite into natural blocks andmade it easy to quarry away. In Tenaya Canyon alsothe glacial quarrying was facilitated by joints, but inthe Little Yosemite, which is underlain by extremelymassive, undivided granite, the ice could only rasp andpolish, and therefore the Little Yosemite, which is thepath of the master stream, now lies, anomalously, 2,000feet higher than Tenaya Canyon, which is the pathof a feeble tributary. Below the Yosemite Valleyalso the granite was too solid to be quarried effectivelyby the ice and the inner gorge there has thus beenpreserved. The great cliffs and domes of the Yosemite region areall made of essentially massive granite. El Capitanand the Cathedral Rocks project from the walls of thevalley because they consist of enormous monoliths thathave yielded but little to the onslau

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