The towering waterfalls and granite walls of Yosemite Valley will reopen to visitors Tuesday and the giant sequoia trees of Mariposa Grove will open Monday, nearly three weeks after a massive wildfire shut down parts of the iconic national park during the peak summer season.

Much of the park has been off limits to the public since July 25 due to the Ferguson Fire, which has burned 95,544 acres on Yosemite’s western boundary over the past month. The stubborn fire has filled the picturesque park with fire engines and hazardous levels of thick smoke. But now the situation has improved, park officials announced Friday.

“We feel that it is safe to have visitors back in,” said Scott Gediman, a Yosemite park spokesman. “There has been a lot of tremendous firefighting done. The containment lines are in place and they are holding. Roads are in good shape.”

Starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, visitors will be able to access Yosemite Valley from El Portal Road (Highway 140), Big Oak Flat Road (Highway 120) or Tioga Road (Highway 120). Related Articles California fires: See how smoke is spreading across the West

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Reservations at Yosemite Valley hotels and campgrounds from Tuesday going forward will be honored, Gediman said. And all restaurants and stores will be re-opened. Only Wawona Hotel, also known as Big Trees Lodge, remains closed.

As of Friday afternoon, the Ferguson Fire, which began July 13, was 80 percent contained, up from 43 percent just two days earlier. Officials estimate the fire to be fully contained by Wednesday.

“Things are going really, really well,” said Cheyenne Warner, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Forest Service at the fire’s base camp near Wawona. “We’re winding down.”

Full containment of the fire is expected by Wednesday, she said.

Warner said that favorable weather conditions, including higher levels of humidity in recent days, have slowed the spread of the fire, which has mostly burned brush and timber in inaccessible areas of the Sierra National Forest and Stanislaus National Forest. The cause of the fire, which began near Savages Trading Post west of El Portal, remains under investigation.

Meanwhile, firefighters made progress on two of the other large blazes burning around the state. By mid-day Friday, the Carr Fire near Redding, which has burned 181,496 acres, killed eight people and destroyed 1,077 homes, was 51 percent contained.

Farther south, the Mendocino Complex Fire in Lake County was 60 percent contained. That blaze is 305,152 acres, the largest wildfire in recorded California history.

The most dangerous in the state Friday was the Holy Fire, burning in the hills of the Cleveland National Forest of Orange County, which was 18,137 acres and only 5 percent contained. It threatened thousands of homes while temperatures hit 97 degrees.

In Yosemite, although the Ferguson Fire drew international attention, only a few hundred acres actually burned inside the boundaries of Yosemite National Park, which spans 747,956 acres. Power and water systems continued to work in the park Friday afternoon, and no major facilities or features of the park were burned, Gediman said.

“We’re all ecstatic that the park is re-opening,” said Jonathan Farrington, executive director of the Yosemite Mariposa County Tourism Bureau.

The evacuations, road closings and conditions near Yosemite National Park resulted in an estimated loss of $300,000 per day for hotels and lodgings located in the Yosemite Valley and businesses outside the park, Farrington said.

Losses like these can cause a serious toll, especially on a county like Mariposa. “We do survive off of tourism,” said Amanda Crandall, who works in visitor services at the Mariposa Chamber of Commerce.

Farrington stressed that visitors shouldn’t wait to give Yosemite another chance this summer.

“We need you,” he said. “We need people to come back.”

Yosemite employees were able to return Wednesday. Residents of nearby communities, including Foresta and Yosemite West, also have been allowed to return home. On Friday, evacuation orders were lifted at Camp Mather, Berkeley Camp, Rush Creek Lodge, Evergreen Lodge, Spinning Wheel, Yosemite Lake, Thousand,Trails Campground, Sawmill Mountain, and Camp Tawonga.

But not everything is back to normal. Some of the park will remain closed Tuesday.

The Wawona Road (Highway 41) will remain closed from Wawona to Yosemite Valley for at least another week, park officials said, because firefighters are still working in the area, setting backfires and putting out stubborn hot spots.

And although smoke levels have dropped from last week, when air pollution levels were as bad in Yosemite Valley as in some of the most polluted cities in the world, some smoke remains.

“The smoke is definitely dissipating,” said Gediman. “Visitors are certainly going to see smoke in the air, but it is improving.”

The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias will reopen to the public a day earlier than Yosemite Valley, at 9 a.m. Monday. Visitors can access the Mariposa Grove through the park’s south entrance (Highway 41).

Glacier Point Road remains closed and is expected to open when Wawona Road (Highway 41) reopens. The Hetch Hetchy area remains closed due to smoke impacts but is expected to reopen soon, park officials said. Tioga Road and the high country, including Tuolumne Meadows, never closed.

Although the park has been closed as recently as this spring for two days due to flood risk, the current closures are the first time that Yosemite shut down due to fire in 28 years, since the A-Rock fire burned 17,700 acres and consumed several homes on the park’s western boundary at Foresta and El Portal.

“We’d like to express our sincere gratitude to the firefighters and incident command teams for their great efforts in suppressing the Ferguson Fire,” Yosemite Superintendent Michael Reynolds said in a statement. “We’d also like to express our gratitude and thanks to our gateway communities who tirelessly helped visitors to the area while they were being impacted by the fire. This is truly a historic and unprecedented event in park history, and we are thrilled to welcome back visitors to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove.”

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management announced it is reopening campgrounds along the Merced River, including McCabe Flat, Willow Placer and Railroad Flat campgrounds. The BLM Briceburg Visitor Center will reopen next Friday.

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Sign up for our Morning Report weekday newsletter. Staff Writer Anna-Sofia Lesiv contributed to this report.

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Bobcat fire containment more than doubles; federal investigators look at utility equipment as cause For updated 24-hour road and weather conditions for Yosemite National Park, call 209-372-0200, press 1 and press 1 again. Updated information is also available on the park’s website, www.nps.gov/yose, and on the Yosemite National Park Facebook page.

For the latest information on the Ferguson Fire, go to https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5927/.