• Examine and evaluate first person accounts of initial encounters with Yosemite and efforts to preserve it.

• Understand the impact that personal narrative and art work have had in the creation and continued preservation of the nation's national parks.

• Examine some of the issues involved in protecting and managing Yosemite and other national parks.

• Analyze issues related to the long term management of one of the nation's parks.

Era 4 - Expansion and Reform

Standard 1B - Understand federal and state Indian policy and the strategies for survival forged by Native Americans. 

Era 6 - Development of the Industrial United States -

Standard 1D - Explain the origins of environmentalism and the conservation movement in the late 19th century.

Standard 2C - Describe how regional artists and writers portrayed American life in this period.

Historical Thinking - Standard 2 - Historical Comprehension

C. Identify the central question(s) the historical narrative addresses.

F. Appreciate historical perspectives.

A. Compare and contrast differing sets of ideas.

F. Compare competing historical narratives.

A. Identify issues and problems in the past.

F. Evaluate the implementation of a decision.

Theme III: People, Places, and Environment

Standard D - The student estimates distance, calculates scale, and distinguishes other geographic relationships such as population density and spatial distribution patterns.

Standard E - The student locates and describes varying landforms and geographic features, such as mountains, plateaus, islands, rain forests, deserts, and oceans, and explain their relationships within the ecosystem.

Standard G - The student describes how people create places that reflect cultural values and ideals as they build neighborhoods, parks, shopping centers, and the like

Standard H - The student examines, interprets, and analyzes physical and cultural patterns and their interactions, such as land use, settlement patterns, cultural transmission of customs and ideas, and ecosystem changes.

Standard I - The student describes ways that historical events have been influenced by, and have influenced physical and human geographic factors in local, regional, national, and global settings.

Standard K - The student proposes, compares, and evaluates alternative uses of land and resources in communities, regions, nations, and the world.

Theme VI: Power, Authority, and Governance

Standard C - The student analyzes and explains ideas and governmental mechanisms to meet needs and wants of citizens, regulate territory, manage conflict, and establish order and security.

Theme X: Civic Ideals, and Practices

Standard C - The student locates, accesses, analyzes, organizes, and applies information about selected public issues - recognizing and explaining multiple points of view.

Standard D - The student practices forms of civic discussion and participation consistent with the ideals of citizens in a democratic republic.