15. John Muir National Historic Site
The John Muir National Historic Site honors one of the founders and leading proponents of the National Park System, a co-founder of the Sierra Club, and the driving force behind the creation of several national parks and historic sites. John Muir was a business partner of his father-in-law, managing the latter’s fruit orchards, and a leading conservationist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The historic site consists of the house in which Muir resided and the nearby Mount Wanda Nature Preserve, which was named for one of Muir’s daughters. Muir wrote newspaper and magazine articles and numerous books extolling conservation of public lands while residing in the house.
Muir was one of the first and most vocal supporters of the drive to create Yosemite National Park through an act of Congress in 1890. In 1867 Muir walked from Kentucky to Florida, using no prepared path or trail, and instead sought the least traveled route he could find. He later documented the hike in a book he entitled A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. As a co-founder of the Sierra Club he was instrumental in the creation of what became America’s National Forests. He once camped in the open air with Theodore Roosevelt, an event which both men remembered as life changing. His mind was such that he memorized the entire New Testament and a large portion of the Old Testament as well. The John Muir National Historic Site is in Martinez, in the San Francisco area of California.