Sierra Club Founded: The Birth of Modern Environmentalism

John Muir had been arguing with anyone who would listen that America's wilderness was being destroyed. On May 28, 1892, he convinced 27 people to do something about it. They founded the Sierra Club in a San Francisco law office, elected Muir president, and created an organization that would define the American environmental movement for the next century. Muir had spent decades exploring and writing about the Sierra Nevada, particularly Yosemite Valley and its surrounding wilderness. His essays in magazines like The Century had attracted a national readership and made him the country's most famous advocate for wild places. But advocacy alone was not stopping the loggers, miners, and sheep ranchers who were steadily stripping the mountains. The Sierra Club's original mission was "to explore, enjoy, and render accessible the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast" and "to enlist the support and cooperation of the people and government in preserving the forests and other natural features of the Sierra Nevada." The founding members were scientists, professors, and professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area. The club's first major campaign was defending Yosemite National Park, created in 1890 but inadequately protected. Muir took President Theodore Roosevelt on a camping trip to Yosemite in 1903, and the president emerged from three nights under the sequoias ready to expand federal protection. The trip led directly to Yosemite Valley being incorporated into the national park. The club's greatest defeat, and its most galvanizing moment, was the Hetch Hetchy Dam fight. San Francisco wanted to dam a valley inside Yosemite for its water supply. Muir campaigned furiously against it, calling it "dam Hetch Hetchy as well as dam for water tanks." He lost. The dam was built. Muir died the following year, in 1914, reportedly heartbroken. Hetch Hetchy transformed the Sierra Club from a hiking society into a political organization. The loss taught environmentalists that enjoying nature was not enough; they had to fight for it in legislatures and courts. That lesson shaped every environmental battle that followed, from the Clean Air Act to the defense of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.