Creator
John Muir
Recipient
[Charles Sprague] Sargent
Transcription
[illegible] Martinez, August 10th 1909-
My dear Professor Sargent:
I'm very glad to get tidings of yourself & family. Your letter has just reached me as I've been away in the Sierra more than a month. Congratulations on Robeson's marriage engagement. What a magnificent couple, & magnificent home!
I'm brooding over some of my old note books hoping to get something worth while out of them, but my time these last eventful years has been so dismally broken. They have yielded but little -- My wife gone- Wanda my elder daughter married & away, - Helen my only other child on the Mohave Desert recovering from a 4th attack of pneumonia - I alone in the big house on the hill too busy & grateful to sulk or complain after the glorious free life I've enjoyed & doing
the best I can with a heart for any fate.
We are having a hard fight again a lot of San Francisco politicians & speculators who are trying to spil Yosemite National Park by damming & destroying the Hetch Hetchy Valley, a counterpart of Yosemite, for a reservoir. & excluding the public from more than half of the park whose waters drain into H.H. I wish you could help [me?] in this. Pinchot is doing all he can in this destructive work against us. All the national parks are in danger
By the way Yosemite Valley is in desperate need of a landscape architect to lay out roads & trails & thin out the undergrowth of young conifer You are the only one whose taste I could trust on so grand a job. Would you undertake it if offered? Remember me to all the family & believe me ever faithfully yours
John Muir
Location
Martinez [Calif.]
Date Original
1909 Aug 10
Source
Original letter dimensions unknown.
Recommended Citation
Muir, John, "Letter from John Muir to [Charles Sprague] Sargent, 1909 Aug 10." (1909). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 5838.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/5838
Resource Identifier
muir18_0648-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 18, Image 0648
Collection Identifier
Online finding aid for the microform version of the John Muir Correspondence http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0w1031nc
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html )
Owning Institution
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University Archives, Boston, Massachusetts. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Pages
2 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
