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Special Collections Hours:
Mon - Fri:
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sat-Sun: Closed
The Finding Aid and Index to the John Muir Paper includes a complete inventory and correspondence index.
There are nearly 7,000 letters to and from Muir from the late 1850s to his death in 1914. He had over 3,000 correspondents including many well-known national and California figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, John Burroughs, Asa Gray, Helen Hunt Jackson, Charles Keeler, and William Keith. A complete index of the correspondence is available online.
While in the field, Muir kept detailed journals in which he recorded his observations on plants, rock formations, wildlife, glaciers, and other aspects of nature. Sketches often accompanied his observations. There are 84 surviving journals covering the years 1867 to 1913. Digitized John Muir Journals
Muir made numerous notes and drafts in preparation for his published works. This group of material contains Muir's original manuscripts of his writings and consists of 485 separate items, including drafts of books and articles, preliminary and unpublished works, notebooks, and miscellaneous notes.
In addition to the sketches in Muir's field journals, the collection contains approximately 300 loose drawings and sketches by Muir. Digitized John Muir Drawings
Muir collected photographs of nature, family, and friends. The collection has approximately 3000 photographs taken from 1854 to 1914. Some representative photographers whose work is in the collection are Edward S. Curtis, George Fiske, Theodore Lukens, Charles F. Lummis, Eadweard Muybridge, Charles R. Savage, Charles H. Sawyer, and Isaac Taber. Digitized photographs of John Muir
There are 38 maps in the collection including maps of Yosemite National Park, Tulare, Tuolumne, and Merced Counties, and Oregon and Washington States, dating from 1873 to 1930.
The memorabilia collection of 350 items includes honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and the World's Congress Auxiliary. Also included are Muir's marriage certificate, documents relating to his citizenship, his passport, a publishing agreement, invitations, ticket books, scraps, receipts, business cards, poems, a lock of his father's hair, a herbarium list, an example of oriental leaf art, and a plant specimen collected in Australia.
In 1980 John Muir Hanna, a grandson of John Muir, deposited two scrapbooks. They are a rich resource of information, containing numerous Muir articles, and reports of lectures and events previously unknown. In 1988 David Hanna, great-grandson of John Muir, donated another scrapbook, much of which is devoted to Alaska.
Poems, drawings, reminiscences, and manuscripts by friends and associates of Muir and Muir's family are among the 29 items in this collection, dating from 1873 to 1942.
