JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS CA-132 National Historic Site HALS CA-132 4202 Alhambra Avenue Martinez Contra Costa County

WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA

HISTORIC AMERICAN LANDSCAPES SURVEY National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW Washington, DC 20240-0001 HISTORIC AMERICAN LANDSCAPES SURVEY

JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE (John Muir Home)

HALS NO. CA-132

Location: 4202 Alhambra Avenue, Martinez, Contra Costa County, California

John Muir National Historic Site, National Park Service

37.991292, -122.131352 (Center of house, Google Earth, WGS84)

Significance: The John Muir National Historic Site is significant as the site of the earliest settlements in Contra Costa County and as the place where the renowned Scottish-American naturalist and preservationist, John Muir, composed his writings from his journals of experiences traveling the wilderness. The Martinez Adobe on the western edge of the site is California Registered Historical Landmark No. 511. The House on the knoll was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1962.

Description: The nine acre site that the Strentzel House (Muir Home) and Martinez Adobe occupy are accessible via the Visitor Center on Alhambra Blvd, off of HWY 4. The National Park Service maintains this site as well as the 326 acre Mt. Wanda. Mt. Wanda is a nature preserve and has hiking trails the trailhead of which is located near Franklin Canyon Road.

The site has a number of orchards and a vineyard. As one enters the site, the peach orchard is the first orchard encountered. On the eastern side of the house on the knoll is an apple orchard. To the west of the house is a plum orchard, the vineyard, and beyond the creek bridge there is a pear orchard followed by an apricot orchard and an orange orchard. Beyond the orange orchard and south of the adobe is a lemon grove, this area is set back from the Main farm road, in this area there are nut trees, walnut and pecan. The Park Service replanted the orchards and vineyard to create a sense of what the fruit ranch once looked like.

In addition to the orchards and vineyard, there are many trees and shrubs. The most famous of these trees is the Giant Sequoia planted by Muir as a sapling. He brought it down from the high country after one of his journeys. It resides on the western side of the house across from the carriage house.

The entry of the house is framed by two mature California Fan Palms (Washingtonia filafera), the only palm that is native to the state. Following the path to the left, or the eastern side of the house, is a Morning Cypress (Cupressus Funebris). Continuing on there is a Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) and the shade of an Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana), which is old and very mature at the JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 2

south eastern edge of the house. To the right of the path and next to the house is a Canary Island Palm (Phoenix canariensis), which appears as a young palm in some of the historic photographs of the house. The western side of the house is ringed with nine Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) and one apple tree (Malus domestica) at the rear of the porch. Back at the front of the house in the middle of the turn-around is a California bay laurel (Umbellularia californica).

There is a cache of natives growing on the site. A small stand of Redwoods grow near the southern border of the property line next to Franklin Creek. Some toyon grow along the Main farm road where fig trees used to be. Where this road now terminates, some California Buckeye have been added. In between stands a single surviving old fig tree. Along the western border of the property and the run of the creek, some Coast live oaks thrive. There are some Golden Poppies on the grounds too.

Pomegranate bushes grow randomly around the lower areas of the knoll. There is another pair of California Fan Palms that embrace a trio of olive trees at the first rise on the path to the house. There is a bench and a slightly picturesque Canary Island Palm at this spot.

The property had changed hands five times since John Muir passed away, the Sax family being the last to have custody. Their intention was to renovate and restore the old Victorian structure that had sat vacant for many years. In the end it proved too costly and the Park Service acquired it in 1964.

History: The Ohlone Indians lived in this region. A sub group called the Karkin lived in this part of the Bay. The name is also spelled Carquin, hence . The first Spanish who explored this part of the were soldiers. They were out of provisions and had to forage for food, but found none here. They called the valley “Canada Del Hambre”, the Valley of Hunger.

Don Ygnacio Martinez was born in Mexico City and was a Spanish Officer who served at the Presidios’ of San Diego and Santa Barbara from 1799-1819. Eventually he would become the Commandant of the Presidio of (1822-1831) and the fourth Alcalde (Mayor) of Yerba Buena (San Francisco) in 1837. In 1823 he petitioned for a grant of land from California’s first Mexican Governor Luis Antonio Arguello and was given title to a tract of land known as Pinole y Canada del Hambre. In accordance with Mexican law he proceeded to build a home and homes of adobe two and one-half miles from . He moved his family there in 1836 naming his home Nuestra Senora De La Merced. Don Ygnacio lost his title papers and no record to support his claim was found. He had again to petition in 1837 to Governor Alvarado who made him a four square league grant of Rancho El Pinole in 1842. Don Ygnacio’s family was amongst the earliest settlers in Contra Costa County. A Colonel William M. Smith married his daughter Susana and established the town site of Martinez on JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 3

120 acres. Another son-in-law, Samuel Tennent married his daughter Rafaela and built a house in what is now Pinole. His second son Vicente inherited the portion of Rancho El Pinole that the John Muir Historic Site now occupies. Vicente built the adobe dwelling that occupies the western edge of the site in 1849. He sold the adobe to Edward Franklin on October 6th 1858(this is for whom Franklin Canyon is named). Franklin sold the property to Dr. John Strentzel in 1875, Muir’s future father-in-law.

Dr. John Strentzel was of Polish decent; he came from a well to do family and went to school with sons of officials and nobility. In 1830 he became involved with a failed attempt to overthrow the Russian domination of Poland, was forced into exile and moved to Hungary. While in Hungary he gained practical training in horticulture and viticulture and formal training in medicine at the University of Pesth (Budapest), Hungary, receiving a degree in 1839. He immigrated to America in 1840, moved west to Texas, settled there where he met and married Louisiana Erwin, a native of Tennessee, in 1843. In 1847 their first child was born, a daughter, Louie Wanda, and following her, a son, John in 1848. Dr. Strentzel accepted a post as medical adviser to an expedition heading west in 1849, one of many heading to the gold fields of California. The Strentzels settled and took up farming in the Central Valley along the Merced River. After losing the farm to a flood Dr. Strentzel bought 20 acres of land south of the town of Martinez in 1853. The valley was still called “Hambre” at that time and Mrs. Strentzel thought it was a horrible name and renamed it Alhambra. Here Dr. Strentzel started to use his knowledge of horticulture and viticulture to begin experimenting with a wide variety of grapes, fruit and nut trees, and ornamental plantings. As his fortunes increased over the years and demand for his produce grew, he bought additional land and planted large vineyards that included Muscat, Zinfandel and Tokay grapes. His fruit tree orchards included orange, peach, fig, apple, apricot, mulberry, and pear. In spite of his success his only son John contracted diphtheria and passed away in 1857. Their only remaining child, Louie, received all their attention. She was totally devoted to her parents; learning and helping them run their large and thriving business. Dr. Strentzel was an authority on California horticulture and also gave college lectures on agriculture. He was busy organizing the Alhambra Grange at about the time he first met Muir at the home of their mutual friends, the Carrs.

John Muir was a Scotsman, born in Dunbar Scotland on April 21, 1838. He immigrated to the United States in 1849 with his father Daniel, younger brother David, and older sister Sarah. They eventually settled in Wisconsin. After building a cabin on their farm Daniel Muir sent for the rest of the family to come join them.

John in his younger days was an inventor, and created an early-rising machine that he took to the State Fair in Madison to exhibit. It had a timer of that could be set to tip the bed and deposit the sleeper on the floor. He was awarded $15 for JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 4

the inventions he exhibited, but more important he came into contact with the Carrs who would become life-long friends. He started to attend the University of Wisconsin, learning geology with Dr. Ezra Carr while developing an interest in botany.

As the Civil War was raging in 1864, John decided to go to Canada. His main interest at this time was botany. His mother Anne, worried her sons might be drafted, had sent him a letter asking him to keep his brother Danny in Canada. John and Danny both were hired by the Trout and Jay company that manufactured wooden tools in Trout Hollow. John appreciated its location on the Big Head River right in the midst of some of the most wonderful forests. John was able to improve the process and produce twice as many wooden rakes as before in the same amount of time using the same number of workers. For one particularly large order, the owners approached John to design new equipment to increase the factory’s output, promising him half the profits if he could fill the order. John worked on a number of improvements, and soon all the broom handles and half the rakes were finished. While they were stored at the mill waiting to be shipped, fire destroyed the mill, and John was not paid.

John managed to get some money together and headed back to the United States. He stopped at Indianapolis, Indiana because there were so many beautiful forests nearby. He found a job there with a carriage company, Osgood, Smith & Company. While using a small file to repair a belt the file leapt out of his hand and into his right eye. The first doctor who examined him told him that he had lost the use of his left eye. Professor Catherine Merrill heard about the accident and came to see John. She sent for an eye specialist who examined John and assured him that he would be able to see again if he simply rested his eyes in a dark room.

About a month after the accident, John ventured into the woods. When he returned he had no doubts about what he wanted to do. “God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons,” he wrote. He quit his job even though he had been offered the position of foreman with higher pay and returned to Wisconsin to see his family. At home he and his father argued constantly. Daniel Muir did not think botany and geology were worthwhile pursuits.

John left Wisconsin and set off hoping to be “another Humboldt.” This was the beginning of his “Thousand Mile Walk” that eventually ended in Florida. He was twenty-nine years old. At the end of this journey he had planned to go to Cuba and then book passage to South America. At this junction the boat to Cuba would not be leaving for two weeks, so he took a job at a sawmill with a Mr. Hodgson. One day while working at the mill John came down with a fever and nearly died. Mr. and Mrs. Hodgson took him into their home and nursed him back to health just in time for him to catch the boat to Cuba. While waiting for passage to South America he read a newspaper announcement of a ship leaving JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 5

New York and going to California. Suddenly he changed direction, booked passage to New York and then to California. He arrived in San Francisco March 27, 1868 and was about to discover his greatest inspiration, Yosemite.

From San Francisco John took the ferry across the Bay to Oakland. Guiding himself with his compass, he began hiking up into the Santa Clara Mountains, then on to the Central Valley. He followed the Merced River into the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite. He spent ten days in Yosemite Valley before making his way back to the farmland of the Central Valley. He took on several jobs here from helping bring in a harvest to shearing sheep and even taming wild horses. By autumn he found a new job and a new friend. Pat Delaney was a former priest and miner who owned his own ranch. John worked on his ranch for awhile and then got a job herding sheep for a man called Smoky Jack for five months. Delaney, who wanted to encourage Muir’s studies, then offered him a job supervising his sheepherder, Billy, who would take the sheep into the Sierra Nevada during the hot weather in June 1869.

Late in 1869 Muir went to work for a man named Hutchings who had been running a hotel in Yosemite Valley. During this time many people of notoriety visited him on the urgings of Jeanie Carr. Among those was Joseph Le Conte, professor at the University of California who arrived with nine of his students. Muir also interacted with Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and writer; William Keith, the artist with whom Muir would enjoy a close, rewarding friendship until his passing in 1911; and Asa Gray, a botanist from Harvard University whom Muir had been writing and exchanging plant samples for some time. All of these people encouraged John to put his ideas about glaciers into writing. Finally, he submitted an article to the New York Tribune and was surprised when they accepted it and paid him for it.

Muir came down from the Sierra and took up lodging with friends, the McChesney’s, in Oakland to compose a series of articles titled Studies in the Sierra for the Overland Monthly, a publication started by Brett Harte. The first one appeared in May 1874, the final installment in January 1875. He was first introduced to the Strentzels during this period at a chance meeting at their mutual friends’ home, the Carrs. He did not take up their offer to visit them at their ranch in Martinez until three years later. In January 1876, he gave his first public lecture, a talk on glaciers and forests to the Literary Institute of Sacramento. In February that same year wrote his first essay on forest conservation titled “God’s First Temples: How Shall We Preserve Our Forests?” appeared in the Sacramento Record-Union.

In the summer of 1877 John was returning to the Bay Area from the Shasta region when he decided to take up the offer the Strentzels had made several years earlier. They became friends and were in an active correspondence. Soon, the first stages of a courtship between Louie and John started to blossom and JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 6

John proposed. Muir had made previous plans for a sea voyage north which might take him as far as Alaska. Terms were discussed, a sort of prenuptial agreement, and Louie accepted. And John was on his way for his first trip to Alaska, it was July 1879.

Muir was not reunited with his betrothed until mid-February 1880. A wedding date was set, April 14, and Dr. Strentzel got the son he had always wanted with his son-in-law. John was about to start a new career as a fruit rancher and assist his father-in-law in managing a large ranch that was now 2600 acres.

Muir made his second trip to Alaska in 1880. On this expedition they were accompanied by a small black dog named Stickeen who was immortalized in a book that was first published in 1909. When he had returned from this second exploration, he found out he was about to become a father. He worked very hard after this news but his health began to suffer.

Muir made his third Alaska trip in the fall of 1881. After this trip, he became actively involved in managing the ranch. He had full rein on its operation, and it began to produce as it never had before. John concentrated on cash crops and made a great deal of money. Their second child, Helen, was born in January 1886.

In 1889, Robert Underwood Johnson approached Muir to write for Century. Muir’s literary career had been dormant for the last decade. His journals and notes lay in piles around his study. He eventually wrote several articles for Century. They became the ground work for federal intervention to save Yosemite. At this time Yosemite was managed by the state of California and its’ Commissioners were negligent in its care. The first article appeared in August 1890, titled “Treasures of the Yosemite”. In the next issue an article titled “Features of the Proposed ” contained a map of the proposed new boundaries. The map Muir drew and sent to Johnson became the basis of the final bill (H.R. 12187) introduced in the fall of 1890. It effectively increased the boundaries of Yosemite, but left its management to the state. It would not become part of the national park until 1905 when President Theodore Roosevelt would sign the measure.

At the end of October 1890 Dr. Strentzel passed away. John and Louie moved into the house on the knoll so Louie could take better care of her mother. John called on his brother-in-law John Reid to come help manage the ranch. Six months later he came with Muir’s sister Margaret. A year later his brother David had fallen on hard times, his business in Portage had gone bankrupt. The people he owed were angry, so John went to Portage to calm everyone down. He promised the people in Portage that if they would allow David to leave with him to go to California they would all be paid what he owed them. Muir offered his brother part of the ranch to farm and they would share the profits. David JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 7

eventually paid back all the money he owed.

Robert Underwood Johnson, a persuasive lobbyist, had played an important part in the passage of H.R. 12187. His work and connections in New York and Washington were wide and varied. After the passage of the bill Muir realized he had allies. He himself was a committed loner in his work. Coming out in the wider world under Johnson’s prodding, he found that people were banding together in corporations, trusts, unions, splinter parties, and special-interest groups to advance their interests or protect them. An informal network of hikers and university intellectuals had begun talking of organization in the wake of the Yosemite victory, but the prime movers were Robert Underwood Johnson, a San Francisco attorney, Warren Olney, and Muir. Johnson first suggested some sort of Yosemite defense league, and Olney gladly lent his services to the framing of the articles of incorporation. Muir gave his prestige and enthusiastic support to this club.

The first organizational meeting convened in Olney’s offices at the end of May 1892 and the association had its name, the . On June 4 twenty-seven men signed its articles of incorporation. Muir was the unanimous choice for president with Olney as first vice president.

Muir’s first book, The Mountains of California was published in 1894. Robert Underwood Johnson gave him some help with it, but the most help came from Louie. He would write for several hours then read to her what he had written and she would offer suggestions before he continued writing. In it he talked about ecology, the relationship between living things and their surroundings. Between August 1897 and September 1901 the Atlantic Monthly published ten articles by Muir. Later he made them into a book titled Our National Parks, published in 1901 it was dedicated to Charles Sprague Sargent, chairman of the National Forestry Commission, on which Muir had served.

Edward Henry Harriman was a wealthy owner of railroads and shipping lines who organized a voyage to Alaska and Siberia and invited leading scientists, artists, and photographers to join his party. It was known as the 1899 Harriman Expedition. Muir was invited, being an expert on glaciers. From this experience he made many new friends, including Harriman himself. When they reached Taylor Bay the expedition discovered a new fjord and five new glaciers. Muir named the fjord and one of the glaciers after the expedition’s host.

Muir had been planning a world tour with his friend Charles Sprague Sargent when he received a letter from Robert Underwood Johnson stating that President Theodore Roosevelt wanted Muir to guide him through Yosemite. To put it in Roosevelt’s words, “I do not want anyone with me but you, and I want to drop politics absolutely for four days, and just be out in the open with you.” Around mid-May of 1903 Muir and Roosevelt took off to the backcountry of Yosemite, JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 8

accompanied by two rangers and a cook who made themselves as inconspicuous as possible. When Roosevelt returned to Washington he directed his secretary of the interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, to take steps to extend the Sierra reserve all the way to Mount Shasta.

By the end of May Muir was free to go with the Sargents. E.H. Harriman, a warm friend to Muir since the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, generously assisted in the planning, arranging special accommodations and free passes on his steamship lines. When he returned on May 27, 1904 his girls were there to greet him as the ship arrived in San Francisco.

Muir’s daughter Helen had become sick again and on the advice of the doctor took her to the desert where she could recover. In May of 1905, John and Wanda accompanied Helen to Adamana, Arizona where they took up residence at the Forest Hotel. They had not been there very long when a telegram from home on June 24 told him he must return immediately as Louie was gravely ill. Muir and Wanda hurried to Martinez, leaving Helen behind. Louie had been diagnosed with lung cancer. There was nothing that could be done. Louie passed away on August 6, and was buried on the ranch next to her parents. It was a stunning blow to John and he could do nothing but return with Wanda to the Arizona desert and Helen. She had been his rock, his stable home base, she knew how to balance her husband’s needs with those of the family, and now she was gone. Roosevelt had written him now, urging him to get out into the mountains and forests. For much of the autumn he was too dazed and broken to take old comforts. This place where they were living was run by a couple who gave guided tours of the Petrified Forest six miles south of it.

Muir had been urged by admirers to tell the story of his life, but he had always put it aside. In the late summer of 1908 Harriman asked John to visit the Harriman lodge on Klamath Lake, Oregon to start on the project. At first he refused, then recanted and joined Harriman there. Once Harriman had gotten Muir to the Pelican Bay Lodge he sicced his personal secretary on him with instructions to follow him everywhere and take down whatever he said. The result was a large, amazingly coherent mass of reminiscences interspersed with asides. Thomas Price typed up the material and sent it to Muir, and in typical Muir fashion, he did nothing with it.

Muir went back to his old and worn notebooks of his first summer in the high Sierra and without significant revision published them as My First Summer in the Sierras in 1911. Then he gathered a manageable bundle of Yosemite notes and published these as The Yosemite two years later.

It was late December and John told Wanda he wanted to go south to Daggett to see Helen and his new grandson. Helen was now living with her husband and children on a ranch at the edge of the Mojave Desert at Daggett. By the time he JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 9

got to the ranch it was clear he was not well. In the morning he walked out in the desert with Helen taking an old comfort being in the cold clean air. That evening arising from the fireside he staggered and was helped to bed. The local physician came and pronounced it pneumonia. Dr. George L. Cole was summoned to Daggett and made an even graver diagnosis, double pneumonia. Cole thought it worth the risk to move the patient to a hospital where he could supervise treatment. The California Hospital in Los Angeles was eighty miles southwest and that journey would be by train. Muir made the trip and was admitted at 11:45 p.m. December 23rd. The next morning he was rallying, and in the early hours of Christmas Eve he seemed to be steadily improving, talking with Dr. Cole and the nurse. There was a sudden reversal of the morning’s gains, he was left alone for a moment, and then gone.

Muir had taken the unfinished Alaska manuscript with him when he came to Daggett to work on further revisions left undone. It was published after his passing in basically the form he had left it in. When his close friend Keith had died, three years earlier, he had wondered aloud whether the brittle leaves that clung to boughs felt lonely when they saw their fellows fall. He had seen too closely how life sprang eternally from death to doubt there was some kind of survival beyond the grave. He had written it someplace, on an undated scrap of paper: This grand show is eternal; it is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Sources: An Autobiography of John Muir, Edited and Introduced by Stephen Brennan; published 2014, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, New York

Shadows on the Hills, William Mero; published 2011, Liberty Quill Publishing

John Muir House (and Martinez Adobe) National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, NRIS #66000083. Recorded by Charles W. Snell. October 15, 1966.

John Muir Rediscovering America, Frederick Turner; First published in 1985 by Viking Penguin Inc. as Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours

John Muir Pioneers in Change, Eden Force; published 1990, Silver Burdett Press, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Ranchos of California; Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranchos_of_California

Cultural Landscape Report for John Muir National Historic Site, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Brookline, MA 02445; 2004 Existing Conditions JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 10

Historic American Building Survey, National Park Service, Western Office, Division of Design and Construction, San Francisco, California; Written Historical and Descriptive Data; HABS No. CAL-1890

Mexican Ranchos of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties (1860); map, Oakland History Room, Main Library

The Vicente Martinez Adobe-Plaque dedicated April 17, 1956 by Contra Costa Historical Society

Andy Marker, Park Ranger-John Muir National Historic Site, oral presentations and assistance plant identification

Heather Hill, Park Ranger-John Muir National Historic Site, assistance with plant identification

Historian: Fred Rachman Oakland, California Northern California HALS

July 30, 2016

2016 HALS Challenge Entry: Documenting National Register Listed Landscapes JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 11

Historic image courtesy of John Muir NHS, JOMU 1729, public domain.

JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 12

Muir’s Scribble Den (F. Rachman, July 2016)

Windmill and Well (F. Rachman, February 2016)

JOHN MUIR NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE HALS NO. CA-132 PAGE 13

Giant Sequoia planted by John Muir (F. Rachman, March 2016)

Deodar cedar (F. Rachman, July 2016)