PLANS PLACE JOHN MUIR'S BIRTHPLACE IN PERIL.(FRONT)(SCIENCE NOTEBOOK)(Column) From: Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI) | Date: July 12, 2001 | COPYRIGHT 2001 Capital Newspapers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Byline: Ron Seely

Whenever I walk up Bascom Hill I cannot help but think of the long ago days when the university was a small island of stone buildings in a green sea of trees and a young John Muir lived in a high corner room of North Hall.

Even then, in the days before the outbreak of the Civil War, Muir had his trademark beard. It was apparently as scraggly as it would later appear in photographs of Muir in the Sierras; one fellow student chided him, "If I ...