Resources for Retracing John Muir's 1869 First Summer in the Sierra

This World Wide Web page written by Dan Styer;
http://www.oberlin.edu/physics/dstyer/Muir/FirstSummerResources.html;
17 March 2020.

Historical Maps

Map of the Yosemite Valley by C. King and J.T. Gardner, 1865. (From Yosemite Guide-Book by Joshia D. Whitney, 1870 edition).

Map of a portion of the Sierra Nevada adjacent to the Yosemite Valley by Charles F. Hoffmann and J.T. Gardner, 1863-1867. (From The Yosemite Book by Joshia D. Whitney, 1869 edition).

Topographical Map of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity by George M. Wheeler, 1878-1879.

Early Topographic Quads of California.

Historical Guidebooks

The Yo-Semite Valley, chapter four of Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California by James M. Hutchings (1862).

The Yosemite Book, by Josiah D. Whitney (1869).

Persons Mentioned

Professor James D. Butler.

General Benjamin Alvord, a military man and a mathematician.

Modern Retracers

Following Muir's First Summer Route by John Fiske. (Reprinted from the John Muir Newsletter volume 5, number 1, Winter 1994-95.)

Retracing work of an anonymous Japanese Muir enthusiast. Translated into English. (Includes photos of the presumed altar boulder, visited by Muir on 14 June 1869.)

Walking with Muir across Yosemite by Thomas R. Vale and Geraldine R. Vale.

The Mossy Boulder by Sharon Giacomazzi. (Visit to the altar boulder in 1997.)

Searching for the lost Mono Trail.

A Word of Warning

Close readers of My First Summer in the Sierra must keep in mind, as Steven J. Holmes has emphasized [see "Rethinking Muir's First Summer in Yosemite" in Sally M. Miller, editor, John Muir in Historical Perspective (Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 1999) and "Appendix A: The Journal of the 'First Summer' " in The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1999) pages 253-259] that Muir's 1869 journal has been lost. The 1911 book was based on Muir's 1887 rewriting of (and modification of) that 1869 journal. This explains how on July 11, when Muir encounters his first evidence of glaciation, he can present with confidence a unified theory of glaciation throughout the Sierra.

Unfortunately, Holmes himself obscures two facts: first that Muir's summer 1869 trip was his second trip to the Sierra (the first being in May and June of 1868); second that most of the summer 1869 trip was in the high Sierra, not in Yosemite Valley.