Re-Tracing John Muir's Famous Walks

John Muir's 1868 Walk from San Francisco to Yosemite

Peter & Donna Thomas - Re-walking John Muir's 1868 Walk from San Francisco to Yosemite (2006) (off-site link)
Peter and Donna Thomas recently engaged in a project to document and retrace John Muir's first trip across California. On March 27, 1868, John Muir arrived in San Francisco from New York, by steamer. John Muir then chose to walk to Yosemite. Muir took the ferry to Oakland and walked via the Santa Clara Valley, over the Pacheco Pass, across the San Joaquin Valley to Snelling, and then up the foothills through Coulterville to arrive in Yosemite Valley around May 22. After finding that no Muir scholar or enthusiast had ever done this before, Peter and Donna Thomas set out to rewalk Muir's 1868 walk on April 2, 2006.
Alex McInturff - California Transect - (2009) (of-site link)
In 1868, when John Muir first arrived in San Francisco, he almost immediately crossed the Bay to Oakland and began walking to Yosemite. On April 6, 2009, Stanford University grad student Alex McInturff set off to retrace Muir's path across California. Alex is a master's student in the Earth Systems Program in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He has been researching the history of and current state of conservation in California.

John Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk to the Gulf of Mexico

Wil and Sarah Reding - Re-Walking Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk (2006) (Off-site link)
Wil Reding, an interpretive naturalist, has long dreamed of re-walking Muir's 1,000 mile walk. He and his wife Sarah plan to begin re-tracing Muir's steps from Kentucky to Florida in May, 2006.
Michael Muir's Horse Journey Re-Tracing Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk (2003) (off-site link)
Michael Muir, the great grandson of America's most famous naturalist, John Muir, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 15. He is a passionate believer in what people with disabilities can achieve. He uses Horse Journey to show by example that disability does not mean inability. In 2003, his Horse Journey followed the route taken by John Muir in his first great wilderness adventure, The Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf.
Robert Perkins, "Looking for John Muir" - film documentary (1996) (off-site link)
The film maker here passed up an excellent opportunity to explore what Muir's 1,000 Mile Walk to the Gulf may look like today, but instead provides little more than scenes of driving a sidecar motorcycle down truck-infested highways; visiting motels and hotels; and finding almost nothing of Muir left in the South. Because Perkins travels with a dog, he cannot even visit the one place Muir visited which is now a National Park - Mammoth Cave National Park. The only bright spot in this dismal documentary is the visit to Bonaventure Cemetery, which appears to be as beautiful today as when Muir slept there in October of 1867.
Dr. D. Bruce Means retraced Muir's 1,000 walk on the same dates as Muir (leaving Louisville Kentucky on September 2), but in 1984 rather than in 1867, using Muir's journals as a guide. He wrote about it on pages 212-214 (chapter 22 - "Okefenokee Alligators") of his book Stalking the Plumed Serpent and Other Adventures in Herpetology (Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Florida, 2008). Means was heartsick to discover that virtually none of Muir's wilderness remained along the route: "The deep, green sea of bossy oaks and virgin hardwood forests described by Muir were gone from Kentucky and Tennessee. 1 couldn't walk up 'the leafy banks of the Hiawassee ... with its surface broken to a thousand sparkling gems' because that 'most impressive mountain river' had long been drowned behind dams. And more than 90 percent of the vast Coastal Plain longleaf pine forest was clearcut and replaced with agriculture and sterile tree farms."
John Muir's Longest Walk: John Earl, a Photographer, Traces His Journey to Florida by John Earl, with Excerpts from Muir's A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. (1975)
Photographs of the route of the thousand-mile walk in March of 1973, starting at Cedar Key and retracing Muir's route backward so as to follow spring north. Earl sought out the few places that remain the way they were when Muir first saw them.

John Muir in California

John Muir: A Naturalist in Southern California by Elizabeth Pomeroy (2001)
Historical overview of Muir's frequent visits to the Los Angeles and Pasadena area include Places to Visit: Southland sites associated with Muir which can still be visited today.
Walking with Muir across Yosemite by Thomas R. Vale and Geraldine R. Vale - University of Wisconsin Press Release (offsite link) (1998)
Thomas and Geraldine Vale retrace Muir's path, based upon journal descriptions of his activities and experiences during his first summer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. From the foothills through Yosemite Valley and on up to the Tuolumne Meadows, the Vales follow the present roads and trails that crossed Muir's route, imagining his reaction to the landscape while reflecting on the natural world in both his time and ours.

John Muir Around the World

On the Trail of John Muir by Cherry Good (January 17, 2000)
In this book, each stage of Muir's life and development is set within the context of the places that were special, magical to him - the Canadian forests, the glaciers of Alaska, Arizona's Grand Canyon, and most important of all, the High Sierra of California, where the John Muir Trail now runs for over two hundred miles from Yosemite Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney. By following the directions and maps included in On the Trail, readers are able to participate in Muir's adventures on both sides of the Atlantic, to feel a part of Muir's world as they too experience the beauty of the wilderness and the need to preserve it.
"Around the World with John Muir"- Power Point presentation by Harold Wood. Frequently shown at LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite National Park.

Note: The John Muir Trail is a high-route along the crest of the Sierra between Yosemite and Mt. Whitney. Though it covers many of the places Muir visited, but it is not a precise re-creation of Muir's actual Sierra rambles. For more information, see

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