Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.”
–John Muir

How does one write about a national park that is so vast that 90 percent of it is accessible only by foot or horseback? I suppose the best way is to start with the 10 percent where the majority of people visit, where they can enjoy spectacular scenery from walking paths or their cars.

Pioneer naturalist John Muir called California’s Sierra Nevada the “Range of Light.” Here, you’ll find 1,350 square miles of grandeur in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. You’ll also find smaller crowds than at Yosemite to the north.

I call the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks my “extended back yard” as I live on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Sierra Nevada range stretches over 400 miles north and south and approximately 70 miles east and west. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are located in the southern end of the Sierra Nevada, between California’s Central Valley on the west side and the Owens Valley desert on the east.

A Brief History Of The Parks

On September 25, 1890, Sequoia became the nation’s second-oldest national park and California’s first national park. Days later, Congress tripled the size of Sequoia and created General Grant National Park to protect all the sequoia trees from logging to keep the pristine beauty of the land. Sequoia National Park expanded again in 1926 to include Kern Canyon and Mount Whitney.

In the late