Muir, John (1838–1914), naturalist and a founder of the environmental movement.John Muir was born near Edinburgh, Scotland. His family emigrated to America in 1849, settling on a farm in southeastern Wisconsin. After a grim childhood and adolescence, Muir in 1861 escaped to the state university at Madison, where he studied botany and geology. Years of travel through Canada and the United States followed. On a long hike in 1867 he intuited the central insight of his life: the need for human forbearance toward nature.
His initial encounter with
California's Yosemite Valley, in 1869, moved him profoundly; he was thereafter identified with Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Independent geological work on the valley's glacial origins led to his first published articles in the 1870s. After a hiatus for family and farming, he resumed writing and conservation work in 1889. Muir cofounded the
Sierra Club in 1892 and served as its president until his death.
In the intramural battles of the nascent
conservation movement, Muir led the amateur, preservationist wing, which fought both with and against the professional, utilitarian faction under Gifford Pinchot. Possessed of sparkling if verbose charm, Muir formed friendships with powerful men (such as Theodore
Roosevelt and the financier E.H.
Harriman), which proved useful to his causes. His passionate nature writings—in the tradition of Henry David
Thoreau and implicitly pantheistic—gained him wide attention and support. Muir's protracted final battle, to forestall the Hetch Hetchy reservoir within
Yosemite National Park, ended in a loss for the preservationists.
See also
Environmentalism;
Forests and Forestry;
Progressive Era;
West, The.
Bibliography
Stephen Fox , John Muir and His Legacy, 1981.
Michael P. Cohen , The Pathless Way, 1984.
Stephen Fox
