The Wawona Tunnel is a highway

tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an ar ...

. It, and

Tunnel View Tunnel View is a scenic viewpoint on California State Route 41 in Yosemite National Park. Visitors have seen and documented the iconic and expansive views of Yosemite Valley from the overlook since its opening in 1933. The large viewpoint area ...

just beyond its east portal, were completed in 1933. Wawona Tunnel is named after the community of Wawona but its name origin is not known. A popular story claims Wawō'na was the Miwok word for "big tree", or for "hoot of the owl", a bird considered the sequoia trees' spiritual guardian.

Route

Wawona Tunnel was bored through solid

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

bedrock, and carries Wawona Road through a granite mountain on the south side of the

Merced River The Merced River (), in the central part of the U.S. state of California, is a -long tributary of the San Joaquin River flowing from the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada into the San Joaquin Valley. It is most well known for its swift and st ...

. It is located on one of the three main roads providing access to

Yosemite Valley Yosemite Valley ( ; ''Yosemite'', Miwok for "killer") is a U-shaped valley, glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada mountains of Central California. The valley is about long and deep, surroun ...

, the most visited section of the park. Wawona Road becomes

California State Route 41 State Route 41 (SR 41) is a state highway in California, connecting the Central Coast with the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada. Its western terminus is at the Cabrillo Highway ( SR 1) in Morro Bay, and its eastern terminus is at SR ...

on exiting the park. After passing through the tunnel, when leaving Yosemite Valley, Wawona Road continues to Chinquapin Junction with Glacier Point Road to Badger Pass ski area & Glacier Point, and reaches an elevation of above sea level.

Specifications

At long Wawona Tunnel is the longest highway tunnel in California.The

Tom Lantos Tunnels The Tom Lantos Tunnels are two tunnels located within the coastal promontory of Montara Mountain, on the San Francisco Peninsula in California, United States, created to allow rerouting California State Route 1, State Route 1 to avoid a portion of ...

Pacifica, California Pacifica ( es, Pacífica, meaning "Peaceful") is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay. Overview The City of Pacifica is spread along a stretch of coastal beaches and hi ...

are .8 Miles long; the

Caldecott Tunnel The Caldecott Tunnel is an east–west highway tunnel through the Berkeley Hills between Oakland and Orinda, California. Its four bores carry California State Route 24. Named after Thomas E. Caldecott, former mayor of Berkeley, it opened in 19 ...

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

is long. Both measured in their longest bores. A $1.5 million federal highway contract to repair the tunnel's ventilation and electrical systems, and a separate contract to upgrade visitor services at Tunnel View, was completed in 2008.

Scenery

The Wawona Tunnel features in a monochrome photograph by

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...

: ''From Wawona Tunnel, Winter, Yosemite, about 1935''.

References

External links

Driving through the Wawona Tunnel
YouTube

National Park Service
Photo of Department of Agriculture Survey Plaque
— ''dated 1936 and giving the tunnel's length as 4358.91 feet''.
Photo of ventilation fans
The Digital Ark Corporation
Wawona tunnel construction details (graphic)
Library of Congress records (fro
yosemitenews.info/forum

Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction
Professor Linda Flint McClelland, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 18 Nov 1997, {{ISBN, 978-0801855832 (Google Books) Transportation buildings and structures in Mariposa County, California Buildings and structures in Yosemite National Park History of Mariposa County, California Road tunnels in California 1933 establishments in California Tunnels completed in 1933 National Park Service rustic in Yosemite National Park

Route

Specifications

Scenery

See also

References

External links