John Muir National Historic Site
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| John Muir National Historic Site | |
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| Location: | San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA |
| Nearest city: | Martinez, California |
| Coordinates: | |
| Area: | 345 acres (1.4 km²) |
| Established: | August 31, 1964 |
| Total Visitation: | 28,166 (in 2005) |
| Governing body: | National Park Service |
The John Muir National Historic Site, located in Martinez, California, preserves the 14-room mansion where the naturalist and writer John Muir lived, as well as a nearby 325-acre tract of oak woodland and grassland historically owned by the Muir family. The main site is on the edge of town, in the shadow of California State Route 4, also known as the "John Muir Parkway". The mansion was built in 1883 by Dr. John Strentzel, Muir's father-in-law, with whom Muir went into partnership, managing his 2600-acre fruit ranch.
Muir (and his wife) moved into the house in 1890, and he lived there until his death in 1914. While living here, Muir realized many of his greatest accomplishments, co-founding and serving as the first president the Sierra Club in the wake of his battle to prevent Yosemite National Park's Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed, playing a prominent role in the creation of several national parks, writing hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and several books expounding on the virtues of conservation and the natural world, and laying the foundations for the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. The home contains Muir’s “scribble den,” as he called his study, and his original desk, where he wrote about many of the ideas that are the bedrock of the modern conservation movement. The Muir house became a National Historic Site in 1964, and in 1992, the nearby Mt. Wanda nature preserve was added to the Site. The house is also California Historical Landmark #312 [1].
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