Preservation, Conservation, and the Calaveras Big Trees
The 1899 collaboration of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot
In August 1899, John Muir learned of a threat to a glorious grove of California redwood trees and raced to the site to see what he could do to save them from slaughter. He brought two companions, paleontologist John C. Merriam and forester Gifford Pinchot.
Muir, then aged 61, wore an unruly gray beard and tattered clothing. He was already famous among naturalists for his poetic descriptions of wild adventures in the Sierra, and co-founding of the Sierra Club. He was well on his way to becoming America’s most revered natural philosopher.
And he was already familiar with the Calaveras Big Trees. He’d first visited in the 1870s, when he noted that “The flowery leafiness of this grove is one of its most charming characteristics. Lilies, violets, and trientales cover the ground along the bottom of the glen, and carpets of the blooming chamoebatia are outspread where the light falls free, forming a beautiful ground of color for the brown sequoia trunks.”
Redwood trees were a big deal to Muir, their sheer size suggesting the wonders of nature. Muir was always carrying on about mountains and trees and wildlife, but this grove was remarkably accessible. He believed that wandering in the Big Trees could restore city-dwellers’ souls. So now he wanted to make this journey with two younger companions he hoped to mentor.
Merriam, aged 30, had penetrating eyes and the beginnings of a bad combover. A professor at Berkeley, he had a particular interest in big trees, and would later co-found the Save the Redwoods League. Pinchot, tall and handsome but skinny, was about to celebrate his 34th birthday. A wealthy statesman, he oversaw a small forestry operation for the federal government.
This particular grove had been among the first discovered by white people. Its famed Discovery Tree had been cut down the very first year it was spotted, “because somebody wanted to dance upon the stump,” Muir fumed. Indeed the stump had been converted to a dancefloor anchoring a tourist site that Muir found a little crass.
However, tourism helped preserve trees in the privately-owned grove. Somewhat miraculously, most were still standing in 1899. The owner simply hadn’t wanted to cut them. But he was getting increasingly large offers to sell his land. Muir hoped that Merriam and especially Pinchot could help him find a buyer who would let the trees stand.
On August 8, the three men took a daylong train trip from San Francisco to the town of Sonora. The next day, in a surrey, they set out at 6:00 a.m. It was 34 miles uphill from Sonora to the grove, and Pinchot noted that their only stops were “to study sheep devastation.” Muir hated sheep, believing that overgrazing trashed the environment, frequently calling the beasts “hooved locusts.” He showed sheep devastation to anyone who would look.
They arrived in time to tour the Calaveras grove, eat supper there, and enjoy an evening campfire. They stayed at the owner’s hotel, which Pinchot found “admirable, and the whole place enchanting.” The next day they headed back to Sonora, with plenty more stops to study sheep devastation. The dust was “something awful,” Pinchot wrote. But Merriam and Muir told stories all the way: “Two wonderful men to travel with.”
The trip is little known today because they didn’t really accomplish their goal. Pinchot tried to get Congress interested in preserving the land, but without success. The following year, the grove’s owner announced a sale—Muir paid another visit. The new owner also wanted to preserve the trees, but he could never work out satisfactory negotiations to sell the land to the government. The threat of development hung over the grove for another 30 years until it became a California state park.
Nevertheless, I find the Muir-Pinchot-Merriam visit a remarkable natural story, for several reasons. First was the very idea that Muir and Pinchot were together. They’re often seen as avatars of conflicting environmental philosophies, preservation-versus-conservation. In real life they were affable rivals rather than enemies.
Second is them being together in 1899. An early Muir biographer asserted that they had argued bitterly at a Seattle hotel in 1897, with the implication that they never spoke kindly to each other again. But here they were companionable. Granted, Muir spent a lot of time lecturing about sheep grazing, and Pinchot’s reluctance to ban sheep from federal forests had been the subject of their alleged argument in Seattle. But here, Pinchot wrote that Muir presented “Some very interesting facts.” We can see that this was an ongoing friendly disagreement.
Third is what happened next. After returning to San Francisco, Pinchot toured a Marin County grove of trees known as Redwood Canyon. Today it’s part of Muir Woods National Monument, a preserve that Pinchot worked hard to set aside in 1907–08. Indeed, Pinchot—even more than Muir—soon helped secure the preservation of other landscapes, including California’s Big Basin redwoods, which became a state park in 1901, and Oregon’s Crater Lake, which became a national park in 1902. These efforts may well have grown from seeds planted at the Calaveras Big Trees.
Meanwhile, Muir’s subsequent writings showed Pinchot’s influence. His most famous line about the Calaveras Big Trees was, “No doubt these trees would make good lumber after passing through a sawmill, as George Washington after passing through the hands of a French cook would have made good food. But both for Washington and the tree[s]… higher uses have been found.”
It’s classic Muir: creative, witty, and pointed. But the notion of higher use is also classic Pinchot. Influenced by utilitarian philosophy, Pinchot’s catchphrase was that forests should be managed for “the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time.” Each piece of land, and each tree, had a “highest use”—as habitat or timber or sheep forage. Pinchot understood that others might disagree with him about the highest use of any given piece of land. That’s why he and Muir were debating sheep. But his innovative approach gave useful discipline to these arguments.
Muir clearly also valued that approach and discipline. We admire his creative metaphor, comparing George Washington to redwood tree. But by comparing Washington to utilitarian philosophy, he was also taking a creative turn in his growing appreciation for his rival Pinchot.
Discussion:
The Muir-Pinchot relationship was the subject of my book Natural Rivals. But I didn’t have room to tell the Calaveras story, as its themes were echoed in their other encounters.
I quote Muir from Picturesque California, chapter 4 and from “Save the Redwoods” in the Sierra Club Bulletin of January, 1920. I quote Pinchot from The Conservation Diaries of Gifford Pinchot, p. 97.
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