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John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes John Muir Papers
1-1-1971 John Muir Writes a Letter From 'Grangerville,' Tulare County. John Muir
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Recommended Citation Muir, John, "John Muir Writes a Letter From 'Grangerville,' Tulare County." (1971). John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes. 500. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/500
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the John Muir Papers at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. - .~- LOS TULARES NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION LOS TULARES . .TULARE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY U. S. POSTAGE Number 88 January, 1971 BOX 948 Special issue printed as a keepsake on the occasion of Lindsay, California 93247 · PAID LINDSAY, CA. 93247 William f. Kimes speaking to the Society January 16, 1971. PERMIT NO. 99 Interested people are invited to join the Society. Write to TULARE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
-, c~ - Box 295 Visalia, California 93277 Rodney Homer, President -·------·------784-3015 271 E. Gibbon Avenue, Porterville, Ca. 93257 Miss Annie R. Mitchell, Secretary ------·------732-0773 701 Watson Avenue, Visalia, Ca. 93277 Harold G,. -Schutt, Editor, los Tulares ------562-3102 Box 948, Lindsay, Ca. 93247 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED
Pc;~ri of Muir's "Range .of light"." The Great Western Divide from Mora Rock. Picture, Courtesy Sequoia Notional Park.
A sketch made by John Muir in Kings Canyon. Part of a group by a Big Tree, probably in the Maripooa Grove. Courtesy of Sequoia National Park. President Theodore Roosevelt and Muir camped for several days in the Yosemite country. Picture, courtesy of Sierra Club. JOHN MUIR WRITES A LETTER FROM a new species of wild animal. My first specimen of saturated for a distance of 200 yards or more on NOTES "GRANGERVILLE". TULARE COUNTY the perpendicular animal were a hearty, jovial com~ either sides of the branch ditches. making it wholly 1. " .... the first people I met were a company pany of lumbermen. redolent of pine gum, and as unnecessary to overflow the fields. But so simple a of lumbermen, fragrant rosiny fellows, redolent of 1 By William F. Kimes wholly unconventional as saw~logs . My next were method is not applicable everywhere. The soil of pine~gum and balsam. The faces of the older speci~ The first writing of John Muir appeared in the found in a long string of dusty teamsters haulinH these Grangeville fields, and of a considerable portion mens were furrowed like the bark on the logs they Boston Record in 1865-a letter describing his find~ lumber from the pines to the plains. These formed of the plain between them and the foothills, is com~ were rolling and about as brown. A little of every~ ing the rare Calypso Borealis in Canada. Six years two well marked varieties, with distinguishing char~ posed of a fine sandy loam, deposited by King's river thing in the woods was sticking to them and their later Mrs. Ezra S. Carr sent several of his letters acteristics derived chiefly from the animals they floods in nearly level sheets like leaves of a book. But trousers instead of wearing thin were evidently grow~ written from the Yosemite Valley to the New York drove, the one equine, the other bovine, both of which the greater portion of the soils of the Sacramento. ing thicker and stronger with age, qaining concen~ Tribune. In 1874 Muir became a regular contribu~ gave forcible illustration of the Scripture, "Dust thou San Joaquin and Tulare valleys are of an entirely tric rincrs of rosin ·and sawdust like the annual wood tor to the San Francisco Bulletin, the first letter be~ art." At the base of the range I discovered a Rocky different origin, and the particles of which they are rings of trees." composed are put together in quite another way from ing dated October 29, 1874. This type of writing Mountain adventurer ,. whose free wild life was patent 2. "In no part of California had I ever before those of the river deltas, so that to irrigate them it is continued until June 29, 1889 including letters not in every line and sign of his countenance, and a cou~ seen a happy farmer." only relating to the Sierra Nevada, but to Alaska as pie of bearish bear hunters, who lived and moved found necessary to spread out the water in a sheet and had their bein$J in bears. over the entire surface. 3. "Inquiring (in a haphazard way) how they well. There were at least eighty~eight letters, all to were getting along, they seemed so eager to t,ell all the San Francisco Bulletin with the exception of JOLLY FARMERS THE NEW AGRICULTURE their good luck (at once) that their words ··came some four or five to papers in Portaqe, Wisconsin; Lastly, out here in the smooth Tulare levels I With reference to irrigation, all the lands of forth in a hasty choking rush and rumble like boul~ · Sacramento and San Francisco. California. found a group of gentle grangers, that, taken all _in these valleys may be regarded as belonging to two ders from a narrow~throated gorge in a flood." The letters wrEre written, if not on the spot, ~t all, are the most radiant and joyful set of farmers I distinct classes-the first comprehending all that are 4. ''For the last twenty years we have been least from notes taken as Muir traveled. In most have yet met in California. 2 Every specimen is bright being degraded by atmospheric weathering; the sec~ playing at farming here like we were playing at cards, instances Muir qave the date the letter was written. with smiles, and challenges congratulation like house ond all that are being elevated by deposition of fresh hoping for wet seasons and just steadily drying up The date of publication was several days later de: bound prospectors who have "struck it rich." Most soil from extraordinary river floods. The so~called like scaly horned toads, keeping on speculating and pending upon the accessibility of a post office, steam~ California farmers are afflicted with dry rot, which hog wallow lands belong . to the first, all the river gambling on the clouds and the rain ....." ship service and kindred postal problems. 3 bottom to the second, each requiring different meth~ makes these thrifty fellows all the more remarkable. 5. "But just at the last when we were dried out, Many of the letters published in the San Fran~ It is now autumn, but their fields are yet full of ods of irrigation. But farmers are coming to life, ex~ periments are being made, and the problems connect"' dead broke, gone to the dogs, we .Pad just enough cisco Bulletin were later revised and expanded into spring. The generous soil seems· unwilling to rest, of last gasp and kick left in us to see that . all 'we articles for magazines. Irt turn magazine articles and continues to pour forth its benefactions more lav~ ed with watering of every kind of soil, are being per~ wanted.was water so we got together in the desper