John Muir - Guardian of the West

Born in Scotland in 1838, John Muir came to America in 1849 with his family to farm in Wisconsin's wilderness.  Although he had no formal education in Wisconsin, John read every book he could find.  His father was a stern taskmaster and would not allow John to read after chores in the evenings. Not to be dissuaded, John build a wooden clock and rigged an "early rising machine" that would raise his bed so he could find the time to read early in the day.

Muir enrolled in the University of Wisconsin  at the age of 22.  When he left, he wandered through the Midwest and Ohio Valley, studying plants.  He worked for a time in a wagon factory in Indianapolis until he injured his eye and decided that machinery work was not for him.  From Indiana he traveled on foot to the Gulf of Mexico, recording his observations on plants.

In 1868, Muir went to California where he spent six years exploring Yosemite.  He wandered through Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, sketching and recording the flora and fauna of what he found.

After marrying a California rancher's daughter, John set out to become an expert on horticulture.  In 1889 he enlisted one of the editors of Century Magazine to survey Yosemite Valley.  Together they observed what Muir had claimed - the forest's upland was being ruined by sheep (hoofed locust, he called them).  The land was stripped of all grass, causing spring floods and summer droughts.  The two men launched a campaign that resulted in Congress establishing Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in 1890.

In 1891 Muir's articles pressed Congress to pass the Forest Reserve Act which allowed the president to set aside timberlands.  Muir proposed the forest commission, and finally it became a reality in 1896 when Cleveland created 13 forest reserves to protect over 21 million acres.

Next time...Muir Declares War
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Today in Pioneer History: "On December 13, Joseph Reddeford Walker, one of the greatest trailblazing mountain men and the first Anglo-American to see Yosemite, is born in Tennessee.
For more on Walker - see earlier blog posts where we spent a year traveling with Joe across the U.S.  

Real Meat!

Captain Joseph Walker and his men began to follow Yosemite's valley rim westward along the ridge. Walker told his exhausted men that just beyond his telescope range lay the Pacific Ocean.  They discovered a well-used Indian trail going down the ridge to the west and following that path they found deer - the first real meat they have eaten since Salt Lake.  
 
The snow depth begin to decrease and they came to some green oak scrub where the hunters brought back 2 large deer and a black bear.  That night passed more cheerfully with full stomachs!

Next time...Giant Trees!

Eureka!

Leonard's journal of this period of the exploration is a moving account of men who were terrified they wouldn't get out alive from this "awfully sublime" place.  Day by day, they continued trying, calling on final reserves of strength, courage and cunning.  

They reached what we believe was Tuolumne Canyon and turned south, traveling

8-10 miles a day.  On October 20, 1833 they became the first white men to reach the brink and look down at Yosemite Valley.  Walker remembered it to the day he died and Leonard's account is next...

"Here we began to encounter in our path many small streams which would shoot out from under these high snow banks and after running a short distance in deep chasms which they have, through the ages, cut into the rocks, precipitate themselves from one lofty precipice to another, until they are exhausted in rain below.  Some of these precipices appeared to us to be more than a mile high.  Some men thought that if we could succeed in descending one of these precipices to the bottom we might thus work our way into the valley below - but making several attempts we found it untterly inpossible for a man to descend to say nothing of our horses."  

Next time - Real Meat!