New visitors’ area opening in April at Yosemite Falls

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – A $13.5 million facelift of a visitors’ area at the base of Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America, is complete.

The project, which took 10 years from planning to completion, was almost entirely funded by private donations and ranks as the most significant renovation in Yosemite National Park since floods tore through Yosemite Valley in 1997.

The newly renovated site will be dedicated in April.

“People are going to look at a largely pristine setting,” said Bob Hansen, president of the Yosemite Fund, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco that provided most of the funding for the project. “They won’t know that what was there was an eyesore just a few years ago.”