John Muir

John Muir was born in Scotland in 1838 and grew up on a Wisconsin farm, then walked, climbed and wrote his way into the Sierra Nevada. His articles and books made millions of readers care about Yosemite, his campaign helped make it a national park, and he co-founded the Sierra Club. He lost his last great fight, to stop a dam flooding Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley.

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt came to Yosemite and camped out with him, a trip that helped the park's cause in Washington. Our Yosemite walk opens and closes with his words about the valley walls, sculptured into domes and gables, spires and battlements. Read them at the Exploration Center, then look up: in late summer the falls may be quiet, but the walls he described are exactly as he saw them.