It covered over six million acres (24,000 km2) of the Sierra Nevada and was about four times the average area of typical California National Forests.

Originally it embraced parts of eight counties from Tuolumne on the north to Kern on the south and Mono and Inyo on the east.

Around the late 1700s, the Fresno River marked the area between the Southern Sierra Miwok and the Chukchansi Yokuts, with the Western Mono living near today's Bass Lake.

[2] The first timber sale on a California National Forest took place in the Sierra NF by the United States General Land Office in 1899.

The terrain includes rolling, oak-covered foothills, heavily forested middle elevation slopes and the tundra landscape of the High Sierra.

From there Sierra National Forest moves on to North Fork, then west to form a small finger towards Coarsegold.

There are numerous hiking opportunities in wilderness areas: Ansel Adams, John Muir, Dinkey Lakes, Kaiser, and Monarch.

It also includes the following Forest Service Offices; the High Sierra visitor information station near Mono Hot Springs on the Kaiser Pass Road, Eastwood visitor information center at Hwy 168 and Kaiser Pass Road at Huntington Lake, Dinkey Creek visitor information center on Dinkey Creek Road near the Dinkey Creek Campground, Supervisor's Office (an administrative Unit) contains the Sierra National Forest Supervisor's office (1600 Tollhouse Rd Clovis, California, 93611); the Yosemite Sierra Visitor Bureau (40343 Highway 41, Oakhurst, California 93644); and the Fresno Air Attack Base which is co-located with the Sierra National Forest Emergency Communications Center (2307 and 2309 N Clovis Ave, Fresno, California 93727) at Fresno Yosemite International Airport.

[4] The ecology of the National Forest is typical for the western side of the southern Sierra Nevada: distributions of species are largely governed by climate, which is strongly dependent on altitude.

[5] Some 383,000 acres (598 sq mi; 1,550 km2) of the forest are old growth, containing lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and red fir (Abies magnifica).

[8] In December 2022, Congressmembers Jackie Speier and Jerry McNerney introduced a bill that would establish Range of Light National Monument comprising the entirety of Sierra National Forest and the San Joaquin Gorge managed by the Bureau of Land Management.