<P> In 2016, The Trust for Public Land purchased Ackerson Meadow, a 400 - acre tract on the western edge of Yosemite National Park, for $2.3 million in order to preserve habitat and protect the area from development . Ackerson Meadow was originally included in the proposed 1890 park boundary but never acquired by the federal government . On September 7, 2016, the National Park Service accepted the donation of the land, making the meadow the largest addition to Yosemite since 1949 . </P> <P> Yosemite National Park is located in the central Sierra Nevada of California . Three wilderness areas are adjacent to Yosemite: the Ansel Adams Wilderness to the southeast, the Hoover Wilderness to the northeast, and the Emigrant Wilderness to the north . </P> <P> The 1,189 sq mi (3,080 km) park is roughly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island and contains thousands of lakes and ponds, 1,600 miles (2,600 km) of streams, 800 miles (1,300 km) of hiking trails, and 350 miles (560 km) of roads . Two federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers, the Merced and the Tuolumne, begin within Yosemite's borders and flow westward through the Sierra foothills, into the Central Valley of California . On average, about 4 million people visit the park each year, with most visitor use concentrated in the seven - square - mile (18 km) area of Yosemite Valley . </P> <P> Almost all of the landforms in the Yosemite area are cut from the granitic rock of the Sierra Nevada Batholith (a batholith is a large mass of intrusive igneous rock that formed deep below the surface). About 5% of the park's landforms (mostly in its eastern margin near Mount Dana) are metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks . These rocks are called roof pendants because they were once the roof of the underlying granitic rock . </P>

At 750 000 acres yosemite national park is about the size of what state