Yosemite National Park, CA Photo - Yosemite Valley, California

Yosemite Valley, California is located on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, 150 miles (240 km) due east of San Francisco. It stretches for 7 miles (11 km) in a roughly east-west direction, with an average width of about 1 mile (1.6 km). More than half a dozen creeks tumble from hanging valleys at the top of granite cliffs that can rise 3000Ã?4000 feet (900Ã?1200 m) above the valley floor, which itself is 4000 ft (1200 m) above sea level.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.