Image ID: LC-USZ62-52000, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

John Muir at Hetch Hetchy, California. (Image courtesy of the University of the Pacific Library.)

President Teddy Roosevelt invited Muir on a camping trip in Yosemite in 1903. They spent three days exploring wilderness and waterfalls, and one night five inches of snow fell. That trip inspired Roosevelt to eventually set aside 230 million acres of public land, including five national parks and 18 national monuments. (Image ID: LC-USZ62-8672, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

This 1964 stamp is one of two postage stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate Muir's life. (Image courtesy of Smithsonian Institute’s National Postal Museum.)

Muir's unremitting devotion to preserving Yosemite National Park was memorialized on the 2005 California commemorative quarter. (Image courtesy of the U.S. Mint.)

Nature’s Evangelist

Beneath a black locust tree on the brow of Bascom Hill, near North Hall, UW student Milton Griswold BA1863, MA1866 gave a classmate an impromptu botany lesson on a spring day in 1863.

Griswold plucked a branch from the tree and told comrade John Muir about the similarities between the locust flower and that of the pea family. His words struck a spark of discovery that set the course of conservation history.

“This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying into the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm,” the Scottish-born, Marquette County–raised Muir wrote.A clever inventor who devised a bed that turned him out onto the floor of his dormitory room at an appointed hour each morning, Muir found himself gathering specimens around Madison’s lakes and studying them at night.

He left the university without a degree in 1863 and later embarked on a 1,000-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico and eventually to Alaska. In California’s Yosemite Valley, he was called “John of the Mountains.”

He worked to preserve Western forests and advocated legislation establishing Yosemite as a national park in 1890. He championed Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and became known as the “Father of the National Parks.”

Stamps and coins bear his likeness; natural areas bear his name; even a small planet is named for him. UW–Madison honors him with Muir Knoll, overlooking Lake Mendota.

Though his fame was secured out West and through prolific writings, Muir remained fond of campus. He recalled departing Madison:

“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, and avalanches; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.”

“From the top of a hill on the north side of Lake Mendota, I gained a last, wistful, lingering view of the beautiful University grounds and buildings where I spent so many hungry and happy and hopeful days. There, with streaming eyes, I bade my blessed Alma Mater farewell. But I was only leaving one University for another — the University of the Wilderness.”