But I was corrected by two astute rangers, Kelsey Lahr and Joan McCandless, that Yosemite is actually about 25%-30% smaller, a little too small to be called, "nearly the size of Rhode Island."
The data:
Land Mass of Yosemite: 747,956 acres (or 1,169 square miles)http://www.nps.gov/yose/parkmgmt/statistics.htm
Rhode Island covers 1,545 square miles
http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/ri_geography.htm
HOWEVER! However, if you exclude the area of Narragansett Bay, the land mass of Rhode Island is 1,045 square miles. So maybe I was right!
Yosemite is not alone when it comes to hazy (or lazy) comparisons. Here is a link to Slate Online that explains why Rhode Island is often the object of fuzzy math.
http://www.slate.com/id/2090806/
I was lazy and didn't bother doing the math myself, I only sourced the NY Times ( http://travel.nytimes.com/frommers/travel/guides/north-america/united-states/california/yosemite-national-park/frm_yosemite-n_1088010001.html ) and the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/travel/destinations/yosemite/ ) and the Washington Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400442.html ) and the National Geographic (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0501/feature5/online_extra.html ) and of course, our employer, the NPS ( http://www.nps.gov/yose/parkmgmt/statistics.htm )
Maybe this issue seems trivial or trifling... a tempest in a teapot. But I'll bet the teapot is at least the size of Rhode Island!