Yosemite National Park is world-famous, attracting 4 million visitors each year. This book describes the continuing fraught contest at Yosemite between preservation and commercialism. It does so by highlighting important historic milestones, including the collaboration in 1903 between President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir to protect Yosemite Valley. In more contemporary times, the author describes a riot in Yosemite that forever changed law enforcement in national parks, a harrowing wintertime search-and-rescue in avalanche conditions for a young boy trapped in a crashed airplane, and the visit to the park by Queen Elizabeth II of England and her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of York. Referencing his own personal stewardship experiences at the park, the author calls on the public never to take an icon like Yosemite for granted, but, instead, to be ever watchful of its protection as a publically-owned national treasure.