John Muir - A History

John Muir (1838-1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, conservationist, and founder of the environmentalist group the Sierra Club. Muir was the third of eight children of an extremely religious family. They emigrated to Wisconsin when Muir was 11 years old in part because his father found the Church of Scotland not to be strict enough. Though the religious fanaticism was not inherited by the adult John Muir, his world view did have a highly spiritual nature. While he never had much formal schooling, John Muir did teach himself how to read and write and at age 22 was admitted into the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Though he never graduated, it was here he first learned botany, chemistry and other sciences which would be the foundation for much of his writings. After leaving school he lost his eyesight for a few months due to a workplace accident. After regaining his sight he vowed to spend his life doing what he truly wanted to do, which was the study of plants and the natural world.

By 1868 Muir had moved to California and built himself a small cabin in Yosemite. He often took multi-day trips into the backcountry with nothing more than a book and a blanket, and soon became a respected authority and guide on the area. One of his findings was that Yosemite Valley was formed by glaciers and not by a giant earthquake, as was believed at the time.

As his reputation grew, so did his influence in the political world and his writings were able to influence congress enough to make part of Yosemite a national park. Soon after, Muir and other respected alpine lovers formed the Sierra Club with Muir being the president. The club took on the fight to keep Yosemite wild and to increase the boundaries of the federally controlled section of the park. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt visited Yosemite with Muir acting both as a guide and an advocate of protecting that valley. Muir had no problem convincing the President that the area needed to be managed by the federal government and for the government to take action to preserve the wild areas of the United States.

The Sierra Club also fought against the damming of the beautiful Hetch Hetchy Valley. Proponents of the dam wanted to create a reservoir which would supply water the the San Francisco Bay Area. Though the citizens of San Francisco voted in favor of the dam in local elections, Muir and the Sierra club were able postpone the dam for years. In the end the Hetch Hetchy project went ahead. The result was four dams, five major reservoirs, a hydroelectric power plant, sixty miles of tunnel and over a hundred miles of pipeline. 89 men died in the construction of the project. Though the Sierra Club was unable to stop the dams, seeing the destruction of the valley prompted others to get involved in future environmental issues. The dam remains controversial to this day.

Muir traveled to and advocated for other natural areas of the United States. His writings helped bring attention and protection to California's Sequoia and King's Canyon national parks, Alaska's Glacier Bay, Washington's Mount Rainier, and the Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

In 1878 Muir left the wilderness, married and moved to a 2,600-acre fruit ranch in Martinez, California. He spent the last 24 years of his life there raising his two daughters and applying his love of plants to his fruit trees. He returned to Yosemite and other wilderness areas periodically. During his lifetime he published over 300 articles and 12 books, reaching a wide audience and influencing the way people view the natural world. The Sierra Club continues to be one of the most influential environmental groups in the United States with over a million members.

John Muir's 1882 Martinez Victorian home and 335 acres of his ranch have been preserved and are now known as the John Muir National Historic Site. Martinez, California is around 30 miles east of San Francisco. The site is open seven days a week, from 10am to 5pm and there is no entrance fee. Guided Tours of the first floor of the Muir home are available to the general public daily at 2 pm.

John Muir is the namesake for many things; From hospitals and schools to beaches and glaciers. In the guidelines for the U.S. Geological Survey on naming mountains and lakes after individuals, it gives Muir as the example of someone who has had so many things named for him already that they would not be likely to approve any further such commemorations. Maybe most appropriately, there is the The John Muir Trail, a long-distance trail in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, spanning 338.6 km. This trail passes through much of the wilderness that John Muir explored and wrote about. Around 260 km of this is along the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs between Mexico and Canada.