John Muir, Forest Preservation, and the Pinchot-Muir Split

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International Society of Tropical Foresters

Contents

1 John Muir, Forest Preservation, and the Pinchot-Muir Split

1.1 Conservation Roots

1.2 Controversies over Forest Reserves

1.3 Muir and Pinchot Paths Diverge

1.4 Conclusion

1.5 Further Reading

John Muir, Forest Preservation, and the Pinchot-Muir Split

Barry Walden Walsh

The naturalist John Muir (1838–1914), born in Scotland and raised in the United States on a Wisconsin farm, was renowned as “Muir of the Mountains” for his writings on the Pacific Coast ranges, especially the Sierra Nevada. In 1892, he founded the Sierra Club to preserve the forests of the Sierras, and his wilderness philosophy would inspire the modern environmental movement. Muir differed, however, with the no-tree-shall-be-taken preservationists, such as his mentor, Charles Sprague Sargent, dendrologist and first director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. In contrast, Muir acknowledged the merits of forestry in preserving forest cover.

Conservation Roots

As a young man, Muir took courses at the University of Wisconsin, taught school, invented machinery, and found work in sawmills in the Midwest, in Canada during the Civil War, and in Florida, after the war. When malaria derailed his plan to follow in the footsteps of explorer Alexander von Humboldt in South America, Muir made his way to Yosemite Valley in the Sierras. There he herded sheep, managed a sawmill, and made solitary studies of the flora, fauna, and geology of the mountains. Applying the glacial theory of Swiss scientist, Jean Louis Agassiz, Muir concluded that glaciers were instrumental in carving out Yosemite Valley, contrary to the thinking of California geologists at the time. His discovery of a live glacier at Yosemite helped convince them. His articles on the Sierras began to appear in popular magazines, and in 1871, he was visited at Yosemite by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose transcendental philosophy affected him greatly.

In 1879, Muir’s interest in glaciers took him to Alaska, where his explorations by canoe resulted in Muir Glacier being named for him. The following year, he married Louie Wanda Strentzel, the daughter of a retired physician-experimental horticulturist in Martinez, California. Muir settled down on the 2,600-acre Strentzel ranch but continued his field studies, writings, and lobbying to have the Yosemite area proclaimed a national park. In 1890, the U.S. Congress created the Yosemite National Park encircling Yosemite Valley (then a state park). It would take 16 more years of lobbying by Muir and his publisher at Century Magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, before national park status was extended to Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia.

On June 4, 1892, Muir and 26 other persons signed papers creating the Sierra Club “to explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast; to publish authentic information concerning them; and to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and the government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada Mountains”. Muir was elected Sierra Club president, an office he held until his death, 22 years later. The Sierra Club grew and prospered to become a leading environmental advocacy group.

Controversies over Forest Reserves

In 1894, The Century Magazine invited comments by forest movement leaders on a plan proposed by Professor Sargent to have the U.S. Army administer the forest reserves. Among the invited authors were John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. Muir favored Army patrols in the forests, while Pinchot called for a corps of professional foresters. Differences between the two surfaced early on. The following year, Muir acknowledged the merits of forestry in his Century article, “A Plan to Save the Forests: Forest Preservation by Military Control” (Muir 1895).

In 1896, the National Academy of Sciences named a National Forest Commission, with Professor Sargent as chairman, and Pinchot as secretary, to inspect public forestlands in the West and suggest new reserves. John Muir accompanied the Commission and wrote an article on the tour for the Atlantic Monthly endorsing forestry: “…it is impossible, in the nature of things, to stop at preservation. The forests must be, and will be, not only preserved, but used; and the experience of all civilized countries that have faced and solved the question shows that, over and above all expenses of management under trained officers, the forests, like perennial fountains, may be made to yield a sure harvest of timber, while at the same time, all their far-reaching beneficent uses may be maintained unimpaired….” (Muir 1897).

That same year, Muir and Pinchot publicly aired their differences regarding sheep grazing on forest reserves. Pinchot, then Confidential Forest Agent for the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, was examining new forest reserves suspended by Congress. While Pinchot saw room for properly managed grazing, Muir condemned sheep as “hoofed locusts”.

Although Muir criticized wilderness development, he had developers among his associates. In 1899, Muir traveled with E.H. Harriman, owner of the Union Pacific Railroad, on a scientific expedition to Alaska. The preservationist and the railroad tycoon became friends, and Muir would deliver and publish a eulogy of Harriman.

Muir and Pinchot Paths Diverge

By 1901, it looked like Muir and Pinchot had made peace, when Muir wrote President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) recommending that management of the forest reserves be vested in a Bureau of Forestry under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Pinchot had become chief of the small USDA Division of Forestry and was seeking its elevation to Bureau status and the transfer of the forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to his management. In 1903, Pinchot’s Division became a Bureau. That same year, at the President’s request, TR and Muir camped out for three nights at Yosemite, where Muir torched a dead pine and made his case for federal preservation of wilderness areas. The President eventually responded by persuading Congress to create five new national parks and to pass the Monuments and Antiquities Act in 1905, which led him to proclaim and preserve the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and 21 other national monuments before the end of his presidency.

During the Roosevelt administration, Pinchot continued to advocate utilitarian use of federal lands, while Muir grew more concerned with preserving parks, especially national parks. Tension between Muir and Pinchot intensified in 1908, when Professor Sargent and John Muir were not invited to a widely publicized Governors Conference on Conservation called by TR, orchestrated by Pinchot, and held at the White House. Pinchot was said to have explained that “There was no room” for Sargent and Muir (Marsh 1945). In response, the Sierra Club sent an open letter to “the President of the United States and the Governors of the States Assembled in Conference.” Signed by John Muir and eight Board members on letterhead listing Gifford Pinchot as an honorary vice president, the letter warned against administering “our scenic resources in such a way that comparatively private gain results in universal public loss.” (Holway 1965).

The final break between Muir and Pinchot came over the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley, the sister valley of Yosemite, and Muir’s favorite wilderness spot in the Sierras. Muir’s 1912 book, The Yosemite, presented the case against the dam: “…the Phelans, Pinchots and their hirelings will not thrive forever….These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” (Muir 1912).

Pinchot presented the case for the dam when he appeared as a star witness in 1913 Congressional hearings on legislation that authorized construction of the dam to provide drinking water and hydropower for San Francisco. Pinchot testified: “I think that the men who assert that it is better to leave a piece of natural scenery in its natural condition have rather the better of the argument, and I believe that if we had nothing else to consider then the delight of the few men and women who would yearly go to Hetch Hetchy Valley, then it should be left in its natural condition. But the considerations on the other side of the question, to my mind, are simply overwhelming.” (U.S. Congress 1913). The loss of the Hetch Hetchy valley was a crushing blow to Muir. It deepened the split between Muir and Pinchot and planted the seeds of the modern environmental movement.

Conclusion

In retrospect, Muir has had rather the better of the argument. The Hetch Hetchy debate tarnished Gifford Pinchot’s reputation as a conservation hero, while John Muir continues to be honored as the prototypical wilderness and environmental advocate. Sites named for him include John Muir Country Park and John Muir Way in Scotland; Muir Glacier in Alaska; John Muir Trails in California, Tennessee, and Wisconsin; also in California, the John Muir Wilderness, Mount Muir, Muir’s Peak, and Muir Woods. In addition, Muir’s name and likeness appear on the 2005 California Commemorative quarter.

Meanwhile, the Hetch Hetchy dam remains controversial with periodic calls for its removal and restoration of Muir’s beloved Hetch Hetchy Valley, forests and all. Since San Francisco has yet to find a way to replace the crucial water supplies, the dam remains.

John Muir, Forest Preservation, and the Pinchot-Muir Split

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