Interesting Facts About John Muir

"I wish I knew where I was going," wrote 29-year-old John Muir to a friend in 1867. A promising young inventor, Muir had decided to abandon civilization after nearly losing an eye in an accident. He slung a backpack across his shoulders and began what would be a lifelong trek through the American wilderness.

Muir wrote extensively about his journeys. His deep love of nature is evident in dozens of his popular magazine articles and books. Writing became Muir's vocation. In his essays, he urged that the nation's wilderness areas be preserved in a system of national parks and forests. Muir was largely responsible for the federal government's decision to establish Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park in California, his adopted home. Indeed, he is often referred to as the "father of our national parks." In 1880, Muir married Louisa Wanda Strentzel, the daughter of a local horticulturalist. The couple settled in Martinez, California, where they raised their two daughters. Many influential people of their time visited the Muir's modest pine cabin, including philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Muir later became a friend and camping companion of President Theodore Roosevelt. But the two nature lovers disagreed sharply over how the American wilderness should be "wisely used": for practical purposes such as logging, as Roosevelt argued; or left untouched, as Muir believed. Today, Muir's idea that nature should be enjoyed, not disturbed, is championed by the Sierra Club. Muir founded the environmentalist group in California in 1892.
 
Muir and the Sierra Club fought many battles to protect Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada. One of the earliest was the campaign to prevent the construction of a dam in the park's Hetch Hetchy Valley. The nationwide protest was unsuccessful. In 1913, Congress permitted the valley to be flooded as a reservoir for San Francisco. The following year, after a short illness, Muir died in Los Angeles while visiting his daughter Wanda.

But Muir's legacy continues. The Sierra Club has branches all across the United States. It publicizes conservation issues and lobbies for environmental legislation.

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