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Kings Canyon National Park
Sierra Nevada canyon country and home of the Nation's Christmas Tree
John Muir called the canyon of the South Fork of the Kings River a rival to Yosemite, and its granite walls drop more than a mile from the high country to the valley floor at Cedar Grove. The Kings River falls more than 13,000 feet (3,960 m) from the Sierra crest to the foothills, and the park reaches up to North Palisade, 14,248 feet (4,343 m) high, across a backcountry that is almost entirely designated wilderness. A single road, the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway, descends into the canyon and ends at Roads End.
The park grew from General Grant National Park, created in 1890 to save a grove of giant sequoias. Its namesake tree, the General Grant, is the second-largest tree in the world by volume and was named the Nation's Christmas Tree in 1926. Congress created Kings Canyon National Park around the old park in 1940 and added Cedar Grove and Tehipite Valley in 1965, ending plans for dams there. Since 1943 it has been managed jointly with Sequoia National Park. The Western Mono (Monache) people traded and traveled across these mountains for generations.