The Full Story
John Muir was born in East Lothian, Scotland in 1838. He emigrated to America at eleven. When a factory accident nearly blinded him in 1867, he resolved to spend the rest of his life looking at the natural world. He walked a thousand miles from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico. He sailed to California. He walked into Yosemite.
He lived there for years in a simple cabin. Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him among the sequoias. He started writing: articles in the great American magazines, read by millions. In 1890, Congress created Yosemite National Park, after years of campaigning by Muir in the American press. In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt came to Yosemite. They camped together for three nights under the open sky. Muir talked. Roosevelt listened. Roosevelt went on to protect around 230 million acres of public land, including some 150 million acres of forest, create 5 new national parks, and establish 18 national monuments, among them the Grand Canyon. All of it traces back to a boy from Dunbar who never lost his Scottish accent.
Why This Matters
Every national park on earth is descended from an idea that had to be fought for before anyone would accept it: the idea that some landscapes should be kept intact rather than developed. That idea had one of its greatest modern advocates in a Scottish immigrant to America. The Sierra Club still exists. It is one of the largest environmental organisations in the world. American conservation as a movement effectively begins with John Muir.
Key Facts
- ⚠Correction: the video says Roosevelt protected 148 million acres and established 16 national monuments, and that Emerson offered Muir a teaching post at Harvard. The standard figures are around 230 million acres of public land protected, around 150 million acres of forests, 5 national parks and 18 national monuments; and the Harvard anecdote could not be verified, so this page records only Emerson's visit.