John Muir Biography

John Muir (born April 21, 1838, Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland – died December 24, 1914, Los Angeles, California, US) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and advocate of American forest conservation, who founded Was largely responsible for Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park, located in California. He and other conservationists founded the Sierra Club in 1892.John Muir had many titles: he was a farmer, inventor, naturalist, explorer, author, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and conservationist. He is often referred to as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of National Parks”. He was a notable figure in the conservationist and conservationist movement of the 1920s, which aimed to protect ecosystems and the natural environment from man-made damage. By the time he died in 1914, he had become an inspiration for the conservation of wild areas.

also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of National Parks“, was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early pioneer of wilderness conservation in the United States. Was a lawyer . His books, letters, and essays describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a leading American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted much of his time to his wife and the preservation of western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness conservation in The Century Magazine, “Treasures of Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park”; It helped push the US Congress to pass a bill to establish Yosemite National Park in 1890.

His books, letters, and essays describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a leading American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted much of his time to his wife and the preservation of western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness conservation in The Century Magazine, “Treasures of Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park”; It helped push the US Congress to pass a bill to establish Yosemite National Park in 1890.

Early Life

Childhood in Scotland

Photograph of John Muir’s birthplace in Dunbar, Scotland
Muir was born in the small house on the left. His father purchased the adjacent building in 1842 and made it his family home.
John Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, in a three-story stone building that is now preserved as a museum. He was the third of eight children of Daniel Muir and Ann Gilery; Their other children were Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary (twins), and the American-born Joanna. His earliest memories were of taking short walks with his grandfather at the age of three. In his autobiography, he describes his childhood hobbies, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles from the Wars of Scottish Independence or by wrestling on the playground, and looking for birds’ nests. in (apparently to outdo their peers as they compared who knows where the most nests are located). Author Amy Marquis wrote but that the young Muir was a “restless soul” and was particularly “prone to being whipped”. As a young boy, Muir became fascinated with the East Lothian landscape, and spent much time walking on the local coastline and countryside. It was during this time that he became interested in natural history and the works of the Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson.Although he spent most of his life in America, Muir never forgot his roots in Scotland. He had a strong connection with his birthplace and Scottish identity throughout his life and was often heard talking about his childhood spent in the countryside of East Lothian. He greatly admired the works of Thomas Carlyle and the poetry of Robert Burns; He was known to carry a collection of Burns’s poems during his travels in the American forests. He returned to Scotland in 1893 on a visit, where he met one of his Dunbar schoolmates and visited places of his youth that were imprinted on his memory. He never lost his Scottish accent since he was already 11 years old when he and his family moved to America.

Early Life and Travels

John Muir at Muir Woods National Monument

John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and advocate of American forest conservation, sitting on a rock in Muir Woods National Monument, California, US (circa May 29, 1912).Muir moved with his family from Scotland to a farm near Portage, Wisconsin in 1849. In 1860 he traveled the short distance south to Madison, where he later attended the University of Wisconsin until 1863. After leaving Madison, Muir worked on mechanical inventions, but in 1867, when he nearly lost an eye in an industrial accident, he abandoned that career and devoted himself to nature. He walked from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, keeping a journal as he went, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (published posthumously in 1916). In 1868 he went to Yosemite Valley in California.

Immigration to USA

In 1849, Muir’s family immigrated to the United States and started a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Stephen Fox reports that Muir’s father found the Church of Scotland insufficiently strict in belief and practice, leading him to immigrate and join a congregation of the Campbellite Restoration Movement, called the Disciples of Christ.   By the age of 11 years, young Muir had learned to recite the entire New Testament and most of the Old Testament “by heart and with a sore body“. In maturity, Muir may have changed his Orthodox beliefs, while remaining a deeply spiritual man.
Entrance to Fountain Lake Farm near Portage, Wisconsin
When he was 22, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own expenses for several years. There, under a huge black locust tree next to North Hall, Muir took his first botany lessons. A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the Grand Grasshopper is a member of the pea family, which is related to the pea plant. Fifty years later, naturalist Muir described that day in his autobiography. “This fine text enthralled me and made me fly into the woods and meadows in wild excitement”.  As a freshman, Muir studied chemistry with Professor Ezra Carr and his wife Jean; They became lifelong friends and Muir developed an enduring interest in chemistry and science. Records show that his class status was that of “irregular gentleman” and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later excursions.

Role in conservation and preservation

John Muir, photographed circa May 29, 1912

As early as 1876, Muir had urged the federal government to adopt a forest conservation policy. He became a central figure in the debate over land use, advocating land conservation primarily through articles published in popular magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Century Magazine, and Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (now Harper’s Magazine). Although common ground was initially found in the ideas of forest conservation, Gifford Pinchot, U.S. A pioneer of forestry and conservation, Muir’s views eventually diverged. Whereas Pinchot supported sustainable use of resources within national forests, Muir believed that national parks and forests should be protected in their entirety, which meant restricting their resources to industrial interests. should go. Although the Sequoia and Yosemite national parks were established in 1890, representing a victory for environmental protection, the debate between Pinchot’s utilitarian approach to forestry and Muir’s conservationist approach was still not over.

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley
US President Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist John Muir at Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California, US
On May 28, 1892, Muir founded the Sierra Club, an organization dedicated to protecting the environment. He served as its first president, a position he held until his death in 1914. The Sierra Club Bulletin, a publication for members of the organization, provided an important outlet for Muir, helping him raise awareness of environmental issues through his writing.As early as 1897, US President Grover Cleveland designated 13 national forests to be protected from commercial exploitation. However, business interests prompted Congress to postpone taking effect of that measure. Muir’s writings ultimately influenced public opinion as well as congressional opinion in favor of national forest reservations. Muir largely influenced the conservation program that was started by President Theodore Roosevelt, who accompanied Muir on a camping trip to the Yosemite area in 1903. In 1908 the government created Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, and in 1964 his home in Martinez, California was declared a National Historic Landmark. Muir’s work was also influential in the establishment of Mount Rainier National Park (1899) in Washington State and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona (1919).

Permanent Contribution

John Muir at Muir Woods National Monument

John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and advocate of American forest conservation, stands near a tree in Muir Woods National Monument, California, US (circa 1902).
Muir’s lasting contributions to the conservation and preservation of America’s forests have been far-reaching. His belief that wilderness areas should be federally protected as national parks has given generations of American citizens and tourists the opportunity to appreciate America’s landscapes as they exist in the absence of human industrial impact . Muir’s writings continue to serve as a source of inspiration for naturalists and conservationists in the United States and around the world. The Mountains of California (1894), Our National Parks (1901), and Yosemite (1912), as well as posthumously published books, including Travels in Alaska (1915), A Thousand-Mile Walk (1916), and The Cruise of the Corwin: The Journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881, including In Search of De Long and Genet (1917), remain important works in the stock of literature on America’s natural history.

Explorer of Nature California

Yosemite Experience

After settling in San Francisco, Muir immediately set out on a week-long trip to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir wrote that “he became overwhelmed by the landscape, climbing down steep cliffs to get a closer look at the waterfalls, screaming and shouting at the views, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower. Were staying.” He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a cowboy for a season. He climbed several mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount Dana, and hiked an old trail from Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.

Muir built a small cabin along the banks of Yosemite Creek,  designing it so that one corner of the room faced a side of the stream so he could enjoy the sound of running water. He lived in the cabin for two years and wrote about this period in his book First Summer in the Sierra (1911). Muir’s biographer, Frederick Turner, notes Muir’s journal entry on his first visit to the valley and writes that his description “shine off the page with the authentic power of a conversion experience”.

Friendship

Naturalist author John Talmadge writes that during these years in Yosemite, Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, had no career prospects and had “periods of suffering.” He married Louisa Strentzel in 1880. He went into business with his father-in-law for 10 years and managed orchards on the family’s 2600-acre farm in Martinez, California. John and Louisa had two daughters, Wanda Muir Hanna and Helen Muir Funk. He was nourished by the natural environment and by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the same life Muir was living at the time. On excursions into the backcountry of Yosemite, he traveled alone. As the years passed, he became “a permanent figure in the valley”, based on his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling. For this he started being respected. Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting Muir.

Muir maintained a close friendship with California landscape painter William Keith for 38 years. They were both born in the same year in Scotland and shared the same love for the mountains of California. [citation needed]

In 1871, after Muir had lived in Yosemite for three years, Emerson, accompanied by several friends and family, visited Yosemite during a tour of the western United States.   The two men met, and according to Talmage, “Emerson was overjoyed to find at the end of his career the prophet-naturalist to whom he had long called… and for Muir, Emerson’s visit was like the laying on of hands. Was.” Emerson spent a day with Muir, and he offered him a teaching position at Harvard, which Muir declined. Muir later wrote, “I never for a moment thought of giving up God’s big show for a mere professorship!”

Hetch Hetchy Dam Controversy

Hetch Hetchy Valley

As population growth continued in San Francisco, political pressure increased to build a dam to use the Tuolumne River as a water reservoir. Muir passionately opposed building a dam on Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy to be as stunning as Yosemite Valley. [75] :249–62  Muir, the Sierra Club, and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against submerging the valley. Muir wrote a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to cancel the project. Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, suspended Interior Department approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. After years of national debate, Taft’s successor Woodrow Wilson wrote to his friend Vernon Kellogg on December 19, 1913, “It is hard to bear the loss of the Sierra Park Valley [Hetch Hetchy]. The destruction of the charming groves and gardens, which throughout It’s the best in California, touches my heart.”

Park Development and use

Trappers may have entered Yosemite Valley in the 1830s, and a miner named William Penn Abrams reportedly accessed Inspiration Point (near the valley entrance) in 1849. The valley certainly became known around the world when a California state militia force chased away marauding Native Americans in 1851. Settlers soon arrived, including entrepreneurs who provided lodging for visitors who arrived on horseback or on foot over rough, steep trails. Interest in Yosemite was fueled by the dissemination of lithographs and photographs of drawings and paintings by artists such as Thomas Hill and Carleton E. Watkins. Concerns over the degradation of the natural environment by this influx of people led the federal government to seek to preserve Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove, which it accomplished by authorizing the establishment of a state park there in 1864.

Map of Yosemite Valley (circa 1900), Yosemite National Park, east-central California, US, from Encyclopædia Britannica, 10th edition.

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley
US President Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist John Muir at Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California, US
Wagon roads were completed to the park’s northern and southern borders in the mid-1870s, and by 1885 approximately 3,000 visitors were coming to the park annually. In 1890 – primarily due to the efforts of naturalist John Muir and author and magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson – the U.S. Congress set aside the land surrounding the state park as Yosemite National Park. Muir continued to urge the federal government to acquire all of the park lands, and at his invitation he ran for president. Theodore Roosevelt visited him in Yosemite in 1903. Finally, in 1906, the state park lands were merged into the national park. Later other pieces of land were added until the park reached its current size. In 1907

National Forest

National forest, in the United States, is any of several forest areas set aside under federal supervision for the purpose of conserving water, timber, wildlife, fish, and other renewable resources and providing recreational areas for the public. National forests are administered by the state Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture. By the 21st century, they had grown to 156 and covered a total area of ​​about 300,000 square miles (about 770,000 square km) in 40 states and Puerto Rico. These are managed according to the principle of multiple use, whereby various resources – including water, timber and grasslands – are used to serve the interests of the nation without depleting the greater productive potential of the land.

Sierra Club

American Conservation Group

John Muir at Muir Woods National Monument
John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and advocate of American forest conservation, stands near a tree in Muir Woods National Monument, California, US (circa 1902).
The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by some Californians who wanted to sponsor wilderness outings in the “mountainous regions of the Pacific Coast.” John Muir was its first president (1892–1914) and soon He also involved the club in political action to advance nature conservation. Among its first successes was the club’s defeat of efforts to limit the size of Yosemite National Park, which was transferred from state to federal control in 1905.

Ansel Adams: The Tetons and the Snake River

The Teton and the Snake River, by Ansel Adams, 1942.

In the early 20th century the club built trails and park buildings, opposed dam building and grazing on some public lands, and supported the establishment of the National Park Service (1916) and the California State Park Commission (1927). Landscape photographer Ansel Adams was an active member of this group, popularizing club-related work through his nature images.

Although much of its early work was focused in California and the West, after the middle of the century the Sierra Club expanded its efforts nationally, opening an office in Washington, DC in 1963. The club enjoyed many conservation successes in the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes, the Florida Everglades, and the wilds of Alaska and was encouraged by federal legislation creating the Wilderness Act (1964), the Environmental Protection Agency (1970), and the Clean Air Act (1977). The club also ran international campaigns related to overpopulation, international trade and global climate change.

The US national forests began in 1891 as a system of forest reserves, the establishment of which was urged by Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz. President Theodore Roosevelt created the Forest Service in 1905 and established additional forest reserves. In 1907 the name of the forest reserve was changed to National Forest.

Mount Rainier National Park

National Park, Washington, United States

Mount Rainier National Park, scenic region of the Cascade Range in west-central Washington, U.S., located about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Tacoma and about 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument Is. The park was created in 1899 to preserve Mount Rainier, a dormant volcano 14,410 feet (4,392 m) high, and the surrounding area. It is spread over 369 square miles (957 square km).

Mount Rainier, Washington.

Mount Rainier
Christine Falls, Paradise area, south slope of Mount Rainier, west-central Washington.

Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier covered with snow in winter, west-central Washington, US
Mount Rainier’s summit is composed of ice and there are about two dozen named glaciers and several smaller patches of permanent ice and snow around the summit area. The largest of these is the Emmons Glacier on the northeast face. The climate of the park is cool montane, with hot summers and cold winters; Altitude affects temperature significantly. The park area receives large amounts of rainfall annually, especially on the western slopes of Mount Rainier. Most of it falls as snow in winter and at higher altitudes; Snow can fall at any time of the year in the summit area. Winter snowfall totals on the mountain are considerable: the ranger station in the Paradise area on the south slope has recorded some of the highest annual snowfall in the world.

Personal Life

John Muir with his wife (Louisa Wanda Stranzl) and children Wanda and Helen, circa 1888
In 1878, when he was nearing the age of 40, Muir’s friends “put pressure on him to return to society”. Soon after returning to the Oakland area, he was introduced by Jean Car to Louisa Stranzl, a prominent physician and horticulturist with a 2,600-acre (11 km 2 ) fruit orchard in Martinez, California, northeast of Oakland. She was the daughter of. In 1880, after returning from a trip to Alaska, Muir and Stranzl married. John Muir went into partnership with his father-in-law John Stranzl, and for ten years directed most of his energies into the management of this large fruit farm. Although Muir was a loyal, devoted husband and father of two daughters, “his heart remained wild“, writes Marquis.

The house and part of the farm are now the John Muir National Historic Site. Additionally, the WHC Folsom House, where Muir worked as a printer, is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Death

Muir died of pneumonia at the age of 76 on December 24, 1914, at the California Hospital in Los Angeles [80]. He went to Daggett, California, to see his daughter, Helen Muir Funk. His grandson, Ross Hanna, survived until 2014, when he died at the age of 91.

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