Domesticity, Tourism, and the National Parks in Muir's Late Writings

Feather River Inn

In this paper, I argue that the development of Muir's conception of what a "park" should be, and his success at making that idea a reality, rested on the interaction of nineteenth-century notions of domesticity with twentieth-century notions of tourism. Many critics and biographers of Muir have observed a general shift in his priorities over time, away from an emphasis on the experience of the solitary observer in nature and toward a more lenient understanding of the experience of other humans in the world, both as residents of domestic space and tourists in the wilderness. This paper contributes to recent discussions of the domestic in Muir's writing by Michael Smith, Robert Dorman, and Steven Holmes in its argument that Muir's late writings about Yosemite were not an attempt to camouflage his true beliefs but were rather a reflection of the domesticating influence exerted by both his audience and his family. In particular, I argue that, following his marriage to Louie Strenzel in 1880 and during the years he spent with her and their daughters in Martinez, Muir gradually came to value the domestic--and its touristic counterpart--as an essential element in the preservation of nature through the national parks.