Kirishima Town:International relations:Sonora city of Aerial photographing

The Sister City Pact with the City of Sonora	Mayor Sonora greeting	Details of Kirishima and Sonora Sister City Pact
Introduction to Sonora	Sonora city of Aerial photographing	Yosemite National Park

●Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park, established in 1890 in the eastern part of California in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, has an area of 310000 hectares, or about 1.5 times the size of Tokyo.

Even within America's national park system, Yosemite is renowned for its beauty, and attracts 4 million visitors annually. The park was underwater some 400 million years ago, and it's rock formations were the result of subsequent glacial movements that produced the stunning scenery, as well as the growing lands for the giant sequoia redwoods found in Mariposa Grove, which have captivated so many.

Furthermore, after the foundation had been laid by its birth as a national park, the movement to protect its natural resources continued, and it has been designated a National World Heritage Site.

Yosemite National Park

　 There is a story from the gold rush days of an effort to suppress the area's Native Americans, in which the Mariposa Brigade was dispatched to Yosemite Valley. When they reached Inspiration Point, which affords a view of the spectacular scenery, the soldiers, thinking they perhaps stood at the gates of heaven, laid their weapons down.