| Stately Pleasure Dome | |
|---|---|
 Stately Pleasure Dome from the South | |
| Highest point | |
| Elevation | 9,065 ± 20 ft (2,763.0 ± 6.1 m) NAVD 88 [1] |
| Prominence | 0 ft (0 m) [1] |
| Parent peak | Polly Dome |
| Coordinates | 37°50′19″N119°27′28″W / 37.83861°N 119.45778°W Coordinates: 37°50′19″N119°27′28″W / 37.83861°N 119.45778°W [2] |
| Geography | |
  Stately Pleasure Dome Location of Stately Pleasure Dome in California  Stately Pleasure Dome Stately Pleasure Dome (the US) | |
| Location | Yosemite National Park, Tuolumne County, California, U.S. |
| Parent range | Sierra Nevada |
| Topo map | USGS Tenaya Lake |
Stately Pleasure Dome is the unofficial name for the prominent south-southwestern portion of Polly Dome, a granite dome on the northwest side of Tenaya Lake and Tioga Road in the Yosemite high country. Stately Pleasure Dome consists of glaciated and exfoliated granite rock that rises steeply 900 feet (270 m) from the lake shore; the very steep east side of the dome is popular with rock climbers, who gave the dome its name.
Polly Dome is a prominent granite dome rising 1,640 feet (500 m) above the northwest side of Tenaya Lake and Tioga Road in the Yosemite high country. The dome, more than 3 kilometers long, is a substantially intact mass of granitic rock that has withstood heavy glaciation and exfoliation. Forest clings to the less-steep parts of its north and west slopes. The southwest end of Polly Dome consists of the Stately Pleasure Dome, 740 feet (230 m) lower than Polly Dome, but rising very steeply 900 feet (270 m) from the shore of the lake. Polly Dome's summit has unobstructed views east to the Cathedral Range, north over Tuolumne Meadows to the Sierra crest, northwest over the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and southwest to Half Dome.
Granite domes are domical hills composed of granite with bare rock exposed over most of the surface. Generally, domical features such as these are known as bornhardts. Bornhardts can form in any type of plutonic rock but are typically composed of granite and granitic gneiss. As granitic plutons cool kilometers below the earth’s surface, minerals in the rock crystallize under uniform confining pressure. Erosion brings the rock closer to earth’s surface and the pressure from above the rock decreases; as a result the rock fractures. These fractures are known as exfoliation joints, or sheet fractures, and form in onionlike patterns that are parallel to the land surface. These sheets of rock peel off the exposed surface and in certain conditions develop domical structures. Additional theories on the origin of granite domes involve scarp-retreat and tectonic uplift.
Tenaya Lake is an alpine lake in Yosemite National Park, located between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows. The surface of Tenaya Lake has an elevation of 8,150 feet (2,484 m). The lake basin was formed by glacial action, which left a backdrop of light granite rocks, whose beauty was known to the Native Americans. Today, Tenaya Lake is easily accessible by State Route 120 and is a popular lake for water activities.
The name presumably comes from the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American transcendentalism.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
(emphasis added) [2]
