Yosemite Valley Visitor Center - Mission 66

Yosemite Archives Slide Collection

As suburbs became commonplace in post-war American communities, shopping centers became familiar features of everyday life. National Park Service Director Conrad Wirth and his chief architect, Thomas Vint, adapted the “one-stop shopping” concept for park planning. One outcome of this new approach to park planning included the visitor center. While visitor centers are common today, in the 1950s, this building type was a whole new idea.

Before Mission 66, park visitors would visit the park’s museum if they needed information. These museums, including Yosemite’s historic Rustic-era museum, weren’t equipped to handle visitor needs and were overwhelmed by high levels of visitation.

The new visitor center would provide centrally located orientation and interpretation to visitors. Like other parks, Yosemite’s visitor center is located within the park village alongside other services such as restrooms and concessions. During Mission 66, the visitor center and other new buildings made Yosemite Village a hub of “one-stop shopping” for visitor activity, much like the newly popular concept of suburban shopping centers.

 

Yosemite Archives Slide Collection

The original Yosemite Valley Visitor Center, completed in 1967, included an information desk, exhibits, and retail space in its primary building. Attached buildings included two multi-purpose auditoriums surrounding a small plaza. The building is constructed such that visitors walking the plaza and entering the Visitor Center enjoy grand views of Upper Yosemite Fall, Lost Arrow Spire, Indian Canyon, and surrounding granite cliffs.

The low, wide front elevation of the Visitor Center, as well as several accent walls on the interior and exterior, feature stones from the Merced River embedded into concrete slabs. These natural, local design details harmonize both visually and ideologically with nearby Rustic buildings. The auditoriums behind the main visitor center are larger, plain structures not easily visible from the main visitor plaza spaces. The inconspicuous nature of these large structures speaks to the care taken during site planning.

At the time of construction, parking for the visitor center was just in front of the building. The National Park Service modified this area in 1981, by converting the original parking area the pedestrian plaza in use today.

While the auditoriums (one of which is now designated a theater) and Yosemite Conservancy bookstore are still in use, visitor information operations moved out of the visitor center building and into to the Yosemite Valley Welcome Center in 2023. The Yosemite Valley Welcome Center is in the south wing of the Village Store complex, another Mission 66 construction.