John Muir Writings

• Selected Passages
• Articles
• Books
• Further Information

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Selected Passages by John Muir

• “Man’s Place in the Universe", originally published in Muir’s A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)
• “Mountain Thoughts", written by John Muir during the 1870s, collected by Linnie Marsh Wolfe in John of the Mountains (1938)
• "Damming Hetch Hetchy", excerpt from Muir’s Unpublished Journals, c. 1913 (Sierra Club California)
• "The Calypso Borealis" excerpted from The Life and Letters of John Muir - Muir’s moving account of his long search for, and final discovery of a rare woodland flower. This was his first published writing
• “The Earthquake”, from Our National Parks (1901) - Muir revels in an earthquake in Yosemite, just as he does any other storm!
• “Mount Ritter” from The Mountains of California (1894) - A mountain-climbing classic
• The Water-Ouzel, Chapter 13 of The Mountains of California (1894). - One of the finest animal biographies ever written
• “Wild Wool” from Steep Trails (1918) - Muir’s reflections on why animals are not made “for man.”
• A Wind Storm in the Forests - Chapter 10 of The Mountains of California by John Muir (1894). - Muir’s exciting adventure atop a Douglas fir during a wind-storm

Articles by John Muir

• “American Forests”, Atlantic Monthly, No. 80, August 1897. (Muir revised this article as chapter 10 of Our National Parks) (University of Virginia)
• "Edward Taylor Parsons,” Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 4, January, 1915
• “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park,” by John Muir, The Century Magazine, September 1890
• "The Hetch Hetchy Valley,” by John Muir, Boston Weekly Transcript, March 25, 1873. (Muir’s first essay about Hetch Hetchy - quite different from other Hetch Hetchy writings.)
• “The Hetch-Hetchy Valley,” by John Muir, Sierra Club Bulletin January, 1908. (Later revised and included as Chapter 16 of Muir’s 1912 book, The Yosemite.)
• Victorians and Meadowlarks: Two Muir Letters Rediscovered (John Muir Exhibit)
• A Letter from John Muir to S. Hall Young, May 31, 1910 (John Muir Exhibit)
• Mount Shasta and John Muir , his writings from the Mount Shasta Collection at College of the Siskiyous Library:
  • Modoc Memories (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 28 Dec. 1874), Notes from Shasta (1877), Salmon Breeding (1874), Shasta Bees (1874), Shasta Game (1874), Shasta in Winter (1874), Snow-Storm on Mt. Shasta (1877), and Mount Shasta (from Chapter 10, Picturesque California) (1888).
• “Reminiscences of Joseph LeConte,” by John Muir, The University of California Magazine (September 1901)
• The National Parks and Forest Reservations by John Muir (Proceedings of the Meeting of the Sierra Club Held November 23, 1895.) Published in Sierra Club Bulletin, 1896
• Save the Redwoods by John Muir, Sierra Club Bulletin (Volume XI Number 1, January 1920)
• “A Rival of the Yosemite; The Cañon of the South Fork of Kings River, California,” by John Muir, The Century Magazine, November 1891
• “Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta", by John Muir, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1877 September (with illustrations)
• “The Treasures of the Yosemite,” by John Muir, The Century Magazine, August 1890
• Victorians and Meadowlarks: Two Muir Letters Rediscovered
• “Yosemite Glaciers,” by John Muir, New York Tribune, December 5, 1871
• “Yosemite in Winter,” by John Muir, New York Tribune, May 7, 1872
• “Yosemite in Spring,” by John Muir, New York Tribune, December 5, 1872

Books by John Muir

• Studies in the Sierra (1950 reprint of serials from 1874)
• Picturesque California (1888-1890)
• The Mountains of California (1894)
• Our National Parks (1901)
• Stickeen
  • “Stickeen: An Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier" — the 1915 (shorter) version
  • “Stickeen: The Story of a Dog” — the 1909 (longer) version, with annotations
• My First Summer in the Sierra (1911)
  • As first published in the The Atlantic Monthly in 1911.
• Edward Henry Harriman (1911)
• The Yosemite (1912) The complete text of this book arranged by chapter
• The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913)
• Letters to a Friend (1915)
• Travels in Alaska (1915)
• A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916) The complete text of this book arranged by chapter
• The Cruise of the Corwin (1917)
• Steep Trails (1919)
• The Life and Letters of John Muir by William Frederic Badè (1924) - The full text of this two-volume book contains thousands of Muir’s letters and previously unpublished writings, along with Badè’s biography.
• John of the Mountains (1938) letters edited by Linnie Marsh Wolfe. Will be posted online when it enters the public domain Jan. 1, 2034.

Further Information

• For further information on on the life of John Muir, please see the Sierra Club’s John Muir Exhibit, created by Harold Wood, Harvey Chinn, Dan Anderson, and others.
• For further historical books and photographs on Yosemite, See the Yosemite Online Library.