Google Doodle Honors Yosemite Park, But It's Closed in Government Shutdown

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By Fran Berkman2013-10-01 14:35:29 UTC

It's a historic day for one of the most beautiful places on Earth, Yosemite National Park.

On this day in 1890, the government decided to "set apart certain tracts of land in the State of California as forest reservations," establishing the hallowed land as a national park. On the same day Google is honoring Yosemite's 123rd birthday with its doodle on the homepage, the park is closed because of the U.S. government shutdown.

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The shutdown began at 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday after the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate could not agree on a plan to keep the government funded beyond the end of the fiscal year. The two houses clashed over the controversial Affordable Care Act, better known as "Obamacare."

House Republicans continually tried to defund or at least delay the legislation as part of a new spending bill while the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to pass a spending bill that tinkers with Obamacare.

"The Affordable Care Act is moving forward," President Barack Obama said in a press conference on Monday. "That funding is already in place. You can't shut it down."

All national parks and monuments are closed due to the shutdown, which has forced about 800,000 federal employees to stop working until Congress can strike a deal for future funding.

Yosemite is not the only government entity to have a historic day snuffed out. On the 55th anniversary of the day it became operational, NASA is almost entirely nonoperational due to the shutdown, aside from mission control which remains open to support the astronauts serving on the space station.

Images: National Park Service, Google

Topics: google doodle, Government Shutdown, Politics, U.S., US & World, Yosemite