Note: This film is shown in the visitor center at the park. You may wait for your visit to view it in our theater.
A Glorious Journey" is a 20-minute introductory film which covers the story of Muir's life, with special emphasis on his life in Martinez, and his efforts for Yosemite National Park and Hetch Hetchy.IMPORTANT: To watch the video in higher definition, click play, then click on the monitor icon at the bottom right on the video player.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:23:13 Unknown A sun dappled day in Northern California. Two laughing girls. A doting father.
00:00:23:15 - 00:01:00:06 Unknown This home is the picture of Victorian convention. But life here was never routine. Instead, this loving family lived in the eye of a raging social storm. Stirring the waters was John Muir. The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong. From this home, John Muir changed the way a country viewed its wilderness.
00:01:00:08 - 00:01:26:09 Unknown Not a resource to be harvested, he argued, but a treasure to be preserved. His campaign for preservation bridged a lifetime, carrying John Muir across America on a glorious journey.
00:01:26:12 - 00:01:44:01 Unknown In 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago. Radiant with electric lights. It glows with the triumphs of the Industrial Revolution and the.
00:01:44:03 - 00:02:32:09 Unknown But half a continent away. At his home outside San Francisco, John Muir calls for a counter revolution. Muir is a man at once revered and despised. To those who want to protect America's wilderness. He's a visionary to those who want to exploit it. He's a threat. Muir makes his home amid such contradictions. From 1890 until his death in 1914, the future father of the environmental movement lives not in the woods but in a 10,000 square foot Italianate mansion surrounded not by sequoias but by groves of fruit trees.
00:02:32:11 - 00:02:58:05 Unknown Now nearing the end of his life, Muir reflects in the room of the house. That's his bridge. From the civilized world to the wild one. Muir calls it his scribble den. Here, in the early 1900s, the man known as America's great defender of wild places remembers and writes about the extraordinary journey of his life.
00:02:58:07 - 00:03:26:15 Unknown The Odyssey begins half a century earlier and half a continent away, as the first 40 niners set foot in California. John Muir's family sets foot in the new state of Wisconsin. The 11 year olds family has just emigrated from Dunbar, Scotland. Much of the backbreaking labor of homesteading falls under his young shoulders, shoulders that also bear his father's discipline.
00:03:26:17 - 00:03:42:10 Unknown What John calls the old Scotch fashion of whipping. But instead of the Iron fist, it is the soft caress of nature that shapes John Muir soul.
00:03:42:13 - 00:04:01:17 Unknown Here. Without knowing it, we were still at school. Every wild lesson, a love lesson. Not whipped but charmed into us all that glorious Wisconsin wilderness.
00:04:01:20 - 00:04:32:11 Unknown There is another force fueling John Muir's inner fire, forbidden by his stern father to study by day. He rises in the middle of the night to read. The lessons he learns here will stay with him his entire life. They form John Muir's inner map and will guide him through a lifetime of unexpected twists and turns.
00:04:32:13 - 00:05:10:23 Unknown 1867 Muir's journey takes him along an unlikely path the man who would one day rebel against the Industrial Revolution becomes a cog in its massive wheel. Muir, now 29 years old, has a mind for machines. Muir's inventions have some, calling him a genius. He begins putting his ideas to work at a carriage parts factory in Indiana. But in just a blink of an eye, Muir's life would profoundly change.
00:05:10:25 - 00:05:21:29 Unknown A metal file pierces his right cornea. He despairs to his mother. The eye is lost.
00:05:22:01 - 00:05:57:27 Unknown On doctor's orders, Muir sits in a darkened room for four weeks. His mind wandering to places he dreams of seeing, like the mythic Yosemite Valley, which he's read has cascades that batter the earth and trees that stretch to the sky and the eye, Muir thought was lost has, in fact, slowly healed. This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields.
00:05:57:29 - 00:06:06:27 Unknown God has to literally kill us sometimes to teach us lessons.
00:06:06:29 - 00:06:41:11 Unknown The would be Edison turns instead to reinventing himself. He chooses, in his own words, to be a tramp. For months, he drifts across America, a track he will one day memorialize in the book a 1000 mile walk to the Gulf. Seeking the road less traveled, Muir begins a life of wandering that will never really end and will eventually lead him to California to.
00:06:41:14 - 00:07:13:15 Unknown San Francisco, 1868. This is the California that John Muir first sets eyes on when I stopped one day in San Francisco and then inquired about the nearest way out of town. But where do I want to go? Asked the man to whom I had a plate for this important information. I to any place that is wild. I said.
00:07:13:18 - 00:07:25:05 Unknown The mountains are calling. He would later write. And in 1868 the restless Muir eagerly answered the call.
00:07:25:07 - 00:07:30:14 Unknown To the Sierra Nevada.
00:07:30:17 - 00:07:57:14 Unknown They glisten like a towering city of gold. Again John Muir is nearly blinded, this time by nature's glory. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada Snow Range, but the range of light.
00:07:57:17 - 00:08:16:27 Unknown But even this radiant view could not prepare Muir for what he was about to experience in the heart of the Sierra. The place that in many ways, John Muir would come to define would have an even greater effect on him. The.
00:08:16:29 - 00:08:39:22 Unknown In the brilliance of the Yosemite Valley. John Muir is reborn. After years of wandering, he puts down roots, living in this valley for four years.
00:08:39:24 - 00:08:59:17 Unknown His new life plays out against the backdrop of Half Dome and El Capitan, and. Muir fills endless journals with calculations, measurements, and awful descriptions of Yosemite.
00:08:59:20 - 00:09:44:16 Unknown No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life giving welcome to storms and calm alike, seemingly aware yet heedless of everything going on around them. His powers of observation and inventive mind crystallize in Yosemite in a way that would ultimately define him. In 1871, Muir pens the first of many published works on Yosemite, a story for the New York Tribune describing the valley's natural wonders.
00:09:44:18 - 00:10:22:12 Unknown It is a time when great thinkers are celebrities, and, like Emerson and Thoreau, John Muir's eloquence captures imaginations and readers. Then, just as his fame is growing, Muir's journey through life once again takes a surprising turn. The 1880s dawned to find John Muir not studying sequoias, but tending fruit trees, cultivating a new life in the Alhambra Valley near a small town called Martinez.
00:10:22:15 - 00:10:40:25 Unknown Reinventing himself again, this time as a rancher, husband and father. After more than 15 years in the wilderness, the solitude had become too much, even for John Muir.
00:10:40:28 - 00:11:17:06 Unknown His loneliness has led him here to the ranch of Doctor John Strand Song, a well known horticulturalist. He falls in love with struggles daughter Louisa, a classically trained pianist. They marry in 1880. Louis, as Muir fondly called her, would spend the rest of her life being a devoted wife and companion. Understanding the complex, Muir in a way that perhaps no one else ever would.
00:11:17:08 - 00:11:53:21 Unknown John and Louis live a mile from the stressful home. Built in 1882. The Victorian mansion features luxuries that seem to contradict everything. Muir stands for. One day, though, Muir will inherit this mansion and make it his own. For now, he is content to leave a smaller mark. Planting a tiny sequoia seedling gathered from the Sierra. Muir works doggedly in the Strepsils orchard.
00:11:53:23 - 00:12:24:29 Unknown But ten years I was engaged in fruit raising, giving land, planting vineyards and orchards, selling the fruit until I had more money than I thought I would ever need. While the orchards thrive, so too does his family. The Muir's have two daughters, Wanda and Helen, and a devoted dog sticking. Strolling with them through the Alhambra Valley is John Muir's special joy.
00:12:25:01 - 00:13:03:11 Unknown You in? But amid the elderberry and oak, John Muir again feels torn between two worlds. Though he loves his family, he dearly misses the wilderness. He is growing frail and irritable, what Louie calls low altitude sickness. Louie decides to take on management of the ranch. She encourages her husband to return to his true calling and to write about it.
00:13:03:14 - 00:13:15:16 Unknown In 1889, Muir once again returns to the Yosemite Valley. Years earlier, this view left him awestruck.
00:13:15:18 - 00:13:23:08 Unknown Now the same view leaves him devastated.
00:13:23:10 - 00:14:11:02 Unknown Yosemite and much of the Sierra are under siege. Ancient sequoias are harvested for lumber. A businessman even has plans to adjust the flow of Nevada Falls. Muir returns to Martinez and pens his outrage. Tinkering with the Yosemite waterworks would seem about the last branch of industry that even Yankee ingenuity would be likely to undertake. Perhaps we may yet hear of an appropriation to whitewash the face of El Capitan, or correct the curves of the domes.
00:14:11:04 - 00:14:21:11 Unknown Appearing in Century Magazine, a national publication. His words strike a passionate chord with many Americans.
00:14:21:13 - 00:14:59:02 Unknown In 1890, with the death of Doctor Stenzel, the Muir's move into the big house on the Hill, the family's new home becomes the unlikely center of an emerging environmental movement. A movement whose primary voice is that of John Muir. Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away. His writings are eloquent. But Muir struggles with every word. One eternal grind, he calls it.
00:14:59:04 - 00:15:29:27 Unknown But that grind reaps astonishing rewards from the scribbled and come words that begin to change the way Americans look at the wilderness. God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and the thousands streaming, leveling tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. Only Uncle Sam can do that.
00:15:30:00 - 00:16:02:00 Unknown Muir triumphs. In 1890, Congress set aside more than 1200 square miles of wilderness as Yosemite National Park. But the precious Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Sequoia Grove remain under California jurisdiction. Through Muir's advocacy, the Valley and the Grove are added to the park. In 1906. During the 1890s, while living at his Martinez home, Muir is at the zenith of his influence.
00:16:02:02 - 00:16:37:26 Unknown He is named the first president of the newly formed Sierra Club. Politicians seek his counsel, and in 1903 the president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, asks Muir personally to guide him through Yosemite. For four days, these kindred spirits walked the woods together. Neither suspecting they will soon be on a collision course over the future of this mountain wilderness.
00:16:37:29 - 00:16:56:29 Unknown Within Yosemite National Park. Glaciers sculpted a canyon so marvelous that Muir calls it one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples. The Hetch Hetchy Valley.
00:16:57:01 - 00:17:30:03 Unknown Hetch Hetchy represents a nation traveling two paths into the 20th century. One, pursued by John Muir and other like mines, leads to preservation. The other sees the resources of the wilderness as critical to a growing nation. They converge at Hetch Hetchy with dire consequences. In 1901, San Francisco politicians proposed damming this valley for drinking water.
00:17:30:06 - 00:17:52:13 Unknown The Hetch Hetchy is a battle that in many ways, newer will fight alone. Enemies in timber conspire against him. Friends shrink from the political controversy. Even Teddy Roosevelt turns his back.
00:17:52:16 - 00:18:09:18 Unknown At home in Martinez. His loneliness is compounded. Grown children have left the hall silent. And in 1905, his wife Louis passes away.
00:18:09:20 - 00:18:24:24 Unknown By 1913, the fate of Hetch Hetchy is sealed. Muir's precious mountain temple would be drowned under millions of gallons of water.
00:18:24:27 - 00:18:57:04 Unknown The decision to dam Hetch Hetchy slows John Muir spirit and his gate. In the dusky glow of the orchards. The sun is setting on a remarkable lifelong journey. And now that the fight is finished and my education as a politician and lobbyist is finished, I am almost finished myself.
00:18:57:06 - 00:19:18:25 Unknown On Christmas Eve 1914, at the age of 76, John Muir takes his last breath and quietly slips away on a new journey.
00:19:18:28 - 00:19:39:01 Unknown But John Muir's vision did not die. The crowning achievement of his life happened two years after his death. The damming of Hetch Hetchy mobilized many Americans to better protect our national parks.
00:19:39:04 - 00:20:18:03 Unknown In 1916, Congress created the National Park Service to preserve America's treasures for future generations, a mission so profoundly influenced by John Muir that he is called the father of the National Park Service. Building on John Muir's vision, the Park Service has grown to protect more than 83 million acres. These are all John Muir's legacy.
00:20:18:05 - 00:20:55:12 Unknown The John Muir A National Historic Site, stands as a reminder that a single voice can make a difference. That an idea like the sequoias seedling Muir planted over 100 years ago can grow tall with faith and time. Here at journey's end, John Muir changed the world with his words. I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till Sunday.
00:20:55:15 - 00:22:19:21 Unknown For going out, I found wasn't really going in.
Official park film for the John Muir National Historic Site.
John Muir Quotes: Audio
Here are 16 of John Muir's famous quotes, read in a native Scottish accent. All quotes are in one file and may be download for offline use in your car, home or classroom. The download button is on the right side of the player. A transcript is also provided at the bottom of the audio player.
John Muir Audio Quotes
Enjoy 16 of John Muir's famous quotes, in audio format. We can't claim that Muir recorded them, himself, but there's certainly a familiar Scottish accent.
You may download the file to your device or computer and listen to them offline.
1. "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." Our National Parks
2. "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness." Wilderness World of John Muir
3. "Civilization has not much to brag about. It drives its victims in flocks, repressing the growth of individuality." Son of the Wilderness
4. "I might have become a millionaire, but I chose to become a tramp!" Son of the Wilderness
5. "After a whole day in the woods, we are already immortal." John of the Mountains
6. "Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the mountains is going home." Steep Trails
7. "Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike." The Yosemite
8. "It's always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." John of the Mountains
9. "But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks." Steep Trails
10. "I have always befriended animals and have said many a good word for them. Even to the least-loved mosquitoes I gave many a meal, and told them to go in peace." John of the Mountains
11. "It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter." Letters to a Friend, July 26, 1868 (about Yosemite)
12. "Both ocean and sky are already about as rosy as possible the one with stars, the other with dulse, and foam, and wild light." Steep Trails
13. "It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when the sun gold is richest." Steep Trails (about the Grand Canyon)
14. "The sun shines not on us but in us." John of the Mountain
15. "The battle for conservation must go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong." Son of the Wilderness
16. "I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out I found, was really going in." John of the Mountains
Strentzel/Muir Gravesite Virtual Presentation
(April 21st, 2021) The National Park Service announces the site opening of the Strentzel-Muir gravesite following recent renovations. This will mark the first time in the park's history that regular access is available to the gravesite without being on a ranger led tour. Pedestrians and bicyclists can visit the gravesite Mondays through Fridays from 10:30AM to 4:30PM and on weekends by ranger led tour only as staffing allows. Please call the John Muir NHS Visitor Center at (925) 228-8860 for further information or visit the park website at www.nps.gov/jomu
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:02 Unknown Park superintendent Tom Leatherman wears a flat brimmed straw hat and park ranger uniform. He stands in an area shaded by trees. Behind him there is a metal gate that guards a small burial plot with visible headstones.
00:00:24:04 - 00:00:44:10 Unknown Welcome. My name is Tom Latham, and I'm the superintendent at John Muir National Historic Site. I'm here today at the transformer grave plot, among the stark orchards and trees that John Muir's father in law planted over 100 years ago along the Alhambra Creek and about a mile south of the visitor center on behalf of the National Park Service.
00:00:44:13 - 00:01:04:14 Unknown I am pleased to announce the opening of the transmitter grave site for visitation following site renovations. Among other things, we have a boundary fence. We have a accessible path that leads to the final resting place of writer and conservationist John Muir and members of his family.
00:01:04:16 - 00:01:22:13 Unknown The site is accessible Monday through Friday for walkers and bikers from 1030 to 430, and on weekends by Ranger led tours as staffing is available. Now let's learn a little bit more about the site history.
00:01:22:16 - 00:01:48:18 Unknown In this black and white photo, we see Doctor John struggle wearing a long, dark coat and hat. Standing on the land he purchased in the Alhambra Valley. Behind him you can see the orchards, farm buildings, a windmill, and the surrounding hillsides. Included on this 2600 acre property is the site that would become the family's final resting place, now protected within the John Muir National Historic Site.
00:01:48:21 - 00:02:10:27 Unknown The property provided hope for a better life and opportunities for growth. The remnants of the doctor's many horticultural endeavors are evident in the historic Pear Orchard, shown here in its current state, that still produces fruit. This black and white photo shows the Italianate Victorian mansion perched on an all, surrounded by the family orchard, with hills in the distance.
00:02:10:29 - 00:02:40:03 Unknown Those stencils built the mansion for themselves in 1882 after John Muir married their daughter Lily. They gifted their former home to the newlyweds and the family began to grow. In the following video, a pear blossom from Doctors Transpose Orchard is shown in focus, with the family gravesite in the background as the focus of the video shifts. You can now see the location where Doctor Streusel was laid to rest after his passing in 1890.
00:02:40:05 - 00:02:51:06 Unknown The years moved into the mansion to help manage the ranch and care for doctors from his wife. Louisiana.
00:02:51:09 - 00:03:20:13 Unknown Eventually, John Muir, his wife Louis, daughter Wanda, and other members of the family were also buried on the family plot, now preserved by the National Park Service. The site sits behind a metal gate and is nestled under the shade of the surrounding trees. The following chart shows the locations of the headstones and the names of the family members who have been laid to rest here.
00:03:20:15 - 00:03:50:24 Unknown The National Park Service acquired this historic parcel of land in the year 2000, and have been conducting Ranger led tours since 2017. Now park guests are welcome to visit the site on their own via walking or biking Monday through Friday between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.. Please note that there is no parking at the grave site, and on weekends it will only be accessible once a day via ranger led tours as stop in allows and during public visitation periods.
00:03:50:26 - 00:04:17:25 Unknown Please remember, flowers or other mementos may not be placed on the grave site. As Park Superintendent Tom Leatherman closes in style. We see him dressed in uniform with right arm resting against the stencil near gravesite post. Behind him we see the newly installed perimeter fence and various trees. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you learned a little bit more about the John Muir gravesite, and I hope you can join us soon.
00:04:17:27 - 00:04:34:22 Unknown For more information, please contact our visitor Center.
Descriptive Transcript
Video footage of a gravesite surrounded by a metal fence and trees. An older man in a ranger hat and uniform comes into view and speaks to the camera.
Tom Leatherman, Superintendent of the John Muir National Historic Site presents the site opening of the Strentzel/Muir Gravesite. This video was presented on April, 21st, 2021. Audio Description is built in to video narrative.
