The Life and Contributions of John Muir

This section features articles, essays, chronologies, books, an atlas, and other resources written by others about John Muir. See also our Bibliographic Resources and the Writings by John Muir.

Introducing John Muir

• John Muir: A Brief Biography (English)
  • Deutsch - German
  • Español - Spanish - Also in formatted PDF .
  • Français - French
  • Japaniizu - Japanese (JIS or EUC encoded)
  • Portuguese (Brazilian) - Off-site link
• Chronology of Important Events in the Life of John Muir (short)
• A Geography of John Muir - Muir traveled extensively in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and elsewhere in the world in search of the beauties of Nature. Also see below for a few articles about some of Muir's travels.

Off-Site links:

• Earthkeeper Hero: John Muir by Harold W. Wood, Jr. (Off-site link)
• John Muir, Earth-Planet Universe by Terraquest

Annotated Chronology

• Chronology of the Life and Legacy of John Muir - from his birth to the present day (1838-2004) This detailed chronology offers a year-by year timeline of Muir's life, followed by the ongoing - and increasing - interest in Muir down to the present. Many links will lead you to various fascinating parts of the John Muir Exhibit.

Scotland - Muir's Birthplace

• John Muir's Scottish Ancestry: Muir Clan or Gordon Clan? by Harold Wood
• "A New Muir Association Formed In Scotland"
• Dunbar John Muir Association - Home Page (off-site link)

Wisconsin Boyhood and Inventions

• "John Muir's Wisconsin Days" by Dave Leshuk
• "An Ingenious Whittler" - 1860 newspaper account of Muir's inventions at the Wisconsin State Fair
• John Muir by Jeanne C. Carr - From California Illustrated Magazine, vol. 2, pp. 88-94, June, 1892. Liberal quotations from Muir's letters to his mentor recount his life from Wisconsin to his earliest days in California.
• "College Friend Describes Muir's Mechanical Marvels" by Harvey Reid
• John Muir's Clocks - from Wisconsin Electronic Reader (offsite link)
• Engines of Our Ingenuity - No. 2422 John Muir - Text and radio program about Muir as an engineer. from the University of Houston's School of Engineering. A podcast and streaming audio of this episode is available.

Muir in Canada

• The Canadian Spirit of John Muir - conference presentation by Connie Bresnahan (Abstract)
• John Muir and His Canadian Friends by Bruce Cox (off-site link)
• How John Muir Got to Meaford by Scott Cameron (off-site link)

Muir in Yosemite

• In the Yosemite with John Muir by Clara Barrus
• In Yosemite with John Muir by President Theodore Roosevelt
• "John Muir and the 1872 Earthquake: Where was Eagle Rock?" by Ron Limbaugh
  • Eagle Rock Found! by by Gerald F. Wieczorek (2003 Update)
• "Muir's Early Indian Views: Another Look At My First Summer In The Sierra" by Ross Wakefield
• Following Muir's First Summer Route by John Fiske
• "On Early Yosemite Artists and Tourism"

Hetch Hetchy - Muir's Last Battle

• Can We Afford the Wilderness? by Ken Chowder
• The Ghosts of Hetch Hetchy by Gene Rose
• "Andrew Carnegie on John Muir" - Criticizing Muir for his Hetch Hetchy position
• Hetch Hetchy: Time to Redeem a Historic Mistake by Ron Good (Off-site link to the Sierra Club's Hetch Hetchy website)

Alaska - Exploring Glaciers

• Muir and Stickeen - an Aventure with a Dog on a Glacier
• A letter from John Muir to S. Hall Young, 1910 May 31
• Letters from Alaska by John Muir , edited by Robert Engberg and Bruce Merrrell, a review by Frank E. Buske
• "Nature and the Human Spirit: The Transformation of Henry Loomis" by Ronald H. Limbaugh

Botanical Studies

• "New Cache Of Muir Letters Discovered In England" by Ron Limbaugh
• "Reflections on a Redwood Snag" , by Ron Limbaugh

Family and Ranch Life

• Muir's wife Louie Strentzel Muir
• John Muir as Fellow Human Being by P.J. Ryan (June, 1974) (Off-site Link)
• "John Muir's Telephone Number", by Harold Wood
• John Muir National Historic Site (Off-site link)

Global Travels

• The Muir Family in Arizona by Lilian Whiting
• "John Muir in Oregon" , by Ronald Eber
• "John Muir in Russia, 1903" , by William H. Brennan
• "John Muir on Alaska Gold"
• "John Muir on California Agriculture"
• John Muir and William Bartram
• "John Muir's Photograph Collection" by Janene Ford
• "John Muir in the Amazon Basin" , by Laurel Bemis
• Muir, Michaux, And Gray On The Roan By Bob Fulcher - reprint from The Tennessee Conservationist, September-October, 1998, about Muir's 1898 botanical excursion to Roan Mountain
• Jeanne Carr on Shasta, by Jeanne C. Carr
• "John Muir and the Desert Connection" , by Peter Wild

Tributes

By those who knew him

• A visit to John Muir in his dorm room, ca. 1862, by Grace Sterling Linseley. Recollections of John Muir, 1935. .Original manuscript in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives (SC1912). (Off-site link)
• Camping with Burroughs and Muir by Clara Barrus (1914)
• With John o' the Birds and John o' the Mountains by Clara Barrus (1910)
• John Muir by Bailey Millard
• John Muir: An Appreciation by President Theodore Roosevelt
• Academic Honors Given John Muir in his Lifetime
• John Muir by John Swett
• John Muir- Address Delivered by Charles R. Van Hise upon the Occasion of the Unveiling of a Bronze Bust of John Muir by the Sculptor C. S. Pietro at the University of Wisconsin, - December 6, 1916 (offsite link).
• A Conversation with John Muir from World's Work [London, England] Nov. 1906 - a humorous Interview with John Muir covers his travels around the world and adventures on California's Mount Shasta, Arizona's Petrified Forest, and trips to see trees in Siberia, India, Ceylon, and Australia.
• "Reminiscences of John Muir" by Myra Honegger
• Glaciers in Alaska: An Enthusiastic Report of John Muir's Lecture at Vancouver by O.O. Howard (January 24, 1880)
• John Muir by Ernest Ingersoll (The Mentor, June 5, 1919)
• To the Memory of John Muir by C. Hart Merriam
• A Tribute to John Muir: Naturalist, Writer, and Man by George Hamlin Fitch
• A Parable of Sauntering by Albert W. Palmer - Including a conversation with John Muir showing how Muir hated "hiking" - both the word and the thing. (excerpted from The Mountain Trail and Its Message (1911) .
• Tributes from Those Who Knew Him - excerpts from essays below
• Complete book: Alaska Days with John Muir by S. Hall Young (1915) - available in various digital formats from archive.org
• Sierra Club Bulletin John Muir Memorial Number - Volume 10, Number 1, January 1916 (includes the following essays)
  • To Higher Sierras by William Frederic Badè
  • A Message and Appreciation by James Bryce
  • John Muir - President of the Sierra Club by William E. Colby
  • John Muir As I Knew Him by Robert Underwood Johnson
  • John Muir by David Starr Jordan
  • Recollections of John Muir by Charles Keeler
  • The Burial of John Muir by Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg
    [poetry]
  • Muir Lodge - An Appreciation by Mary Frances Kellogg
  • John Muir by Robert B. Marshall
    
  • John Muir by Enos Mills
  • An Appreciation by Harriet Monroe
  • Muir of the Mountains by Alexander McAdie
  • John Muir by Henry Fairfield Osborn
  • John Muir by Charles Sprague Sargent

Modern Tributes

• The First Environmentalist, John Muir by Dr. Jim Butler (offsite link)
• John Muir and the United States National Park System - a speech by former Sierra Club President Lawrence Downing
• John Muir by Lawrence Clark Powell - "If I were to choose a single Californian to occupy the Hall of Fame, it would be this tenacious Scot who became a Californian during the final forty-six years of his life."
• A Visit to John Muir's Wisconsin Farm by Bill Tweed
• Triumph For Man and Nature: The American Wilderness and John Muir:   Part 1 | Part 2
  by Shane Mahoney, in Bugle: The Journal of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
  (Vol. 22:3 May/June 2005 & Vol. 22:6 Nov/Dec. 2005 [Off-site links]

About Muir's Books and Articles

• John Muir and the Alaska Book by Marion Randall Parsons (1916)
• "Learning From the Laws of Nature: Nature as Salvation in the Early Works of John Muir" by Apple Gifford
• Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir , by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, a book review by Char Miller
• Northwest Passages: From the Pen of John Muir in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska , a book review

Conservation Legacy

• The Importance of John Muir
• "John Muir's Public Service" by William O. Douglas (excerpted from Muir of the Mountains)
• John Muir: The Living Spirit and Founder of the World Conservation Movement by Graham White (1996)
• John Muir: The Wilderness Journeys - the Introduction by Graham White (1996)
• "Victorians and Meadowlarks: Two Muir Letters Rediscovered"
• Muir Mania: A Legacy with Legs by Kit Stolz, Sierra Magazine, November-December, 2001) (off-site link)
• Muir Set the Pattern for Those Who Followed by Robert Michael Pyle
• John Muir and the 1906 Antiquities Act by David Blackburn (off-site link)
• Seventeen Years to Success: John Muir, William Gladstone Steel, and the Creation of Yosemite and Crater Lake National Parks By Stephen R. Mark, Historian, Crater Lake National Park, U.S. National Park Service
• John Muir's Defense of Wildlife by Richard Fleck
• John Muir on Caves by Jennifer Ong
• A Note on John Muir and the Appalachian Mountain Club by Richard Fleck (Muir's advocacy of preserving the White Mountains of New Hampshire).
• Letter to John Muir - To the Glory of Nature, John Muir, Eternity by Rex Burress

Muir's Philosophy

• John Muir: The Celebration of Wilderness by Richard F. Fleck
• Sermon: Easter People: John Muir by Rev. Virginia Pearson and Bill Hanna, John Muir's Great-Grandson
• "The Nature Mysticism of John Muir" by Larry Gates
• "John Muir's Menu" by J. Parker Huber, Sierra (Vol. 79, Issue 6, p. 66, Nov/Dec 1994.)
• God and John Muir: A Psychological Interpretation by Mark R. Stoll
• Baptized into Wilderness: A Christian Perspective on John Muir , a book review
• "Why climb mountains? John Muir and Clarence King at a historical crossroads of American mountain climbing" by Erica Goldman
• "John Muir and the Feminist Movement" , by Ronald H. Limbaugh
• Zen Buddhism in John Muir by Michelle L. Dwyer
• "John Muir and the Modern Passion for Nature" by Dr. Donald Worster, featured as the Lynn W. Day Distinguished Lectureship in Forest and Conservation History for 2004 (off-site link).
• Radical Transcendentalism: Emerson, Muir and the Experience of Nature by James Brannon
• Anywhere that's wild: It's spring in Yosemite and I can hear John Muir calling me -- time to head for the mountains by Gary Kamiya - Salon.com May 15, 2007 (off-site link)

Articles from other Sources

• John Muir Newsletter - University of the Pacific.
• The View from John Muir's Window - Newsletter of the John Muir Memorial Association (off-site link)
• Muir Laid to Rest Across the Bay - [Report of John Muir's Funeral] - San Francisco Chronicle - December 28, 1914
• New York Times Obituary of John Muir - December 25, 1914 (off-site link)

Digital Books or Book Chapters about John Muir

• The Life and Letters of John Muir, by William Frederic Badè (1924) - The full text of this two-volume book.
• Sierra Club Bulletin John Muir Memorial Number - Volume 10, Number 1, January 1916 - Most of this 133 page special issue is provided here.
• The Laird of Skyland: John Muir - excerpt from Heroes of To-day by Mary R. Parkman (New York: Century, 1917)
• Alaska Days with John Muir by S. Hall Young (1915) - available in various digital formats from archive.org

Other Resources

• Bibliographic Resources - the library is still the best resource for John Muir! Use our annotated bibliography, book reviews, book jacket summaries, and press releases to find the best books! Also check out the best bookstore for Muir books!
• Crossword Puzzles - Printable Puzzles involving Muir's life!
• Pictures - Historical Photographs, paintings, sketches of Muir
• Related Resources - Off-site links
• Writings by John Muir - Nearly all of Muir's books and many of his other writings are available online.
• 1996 John Muir Conference Abstracts of Papers - by University of the Pacific
• 2001 John Muir Conference Abstracts of Papers - by University of the Pacific (Off-site link)
• 2006 John Muir Conference - Abstracts of Papers- by University of the Pacific
• New California Hall of Fame

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