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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] John Muir Biography MUIR, John (1838–1914). An American explorer and naturalist, born at Dunbar, Scotland, April 21, 1838. He studied at the Dunbar Grammar School and then, having come to the United States, at the University of Wisconsin. After four years he began to explore the less-known portions of the North American continent, devoting his attention particularly to the western coast and to Alaska, where the Muir Glacier (q.v.) is named for its discoverer. In 1878 he visited the Arctic Regions on the U.S.S. Corwin in search of the De Long expedition; in 1899 became a member of the Harriman expedition to Alaska; and subsequently traveled in Russia, Siberia, Manchuria, India, Australia, and New Zealand (1903–04), in South America (1911), and in Africa (1912). John Muir preceded the "conservation movement" many years in his earnest advocacy of the preservation of American forests and the establishment of national parks and reservations, especially in the Sierras, with which his name will always be identified. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received honorary degrees from the universities of Wisconsin and California and from Yale. Muir died at Los Angeles, Dec. 24, 1914. He published: The Mountains of California (1894; enlarged ed., 1911); Our National Parks (1901; enlarged ed., 1909); Stickeen (1909); My First Summer in the Sierra (1911); The Yosemite (1912); Story of my Boyhood and Youth (1913); and nearly 150 magazine and newspaper articles on natural history. He also edited Picturesque California. After his death appeared (1915) Letters to a Friend and Unpublished Prose and Letters, containing a practically complete work on Alaska. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 392-393. |