John Muir Helps Found the Sierra Club

On 28 May 1892, a gathering at attorney Warren Olney's San Francisco law office brought together preservationist John Muir, Olney and a group of Berkeley and Stanford professors to form the Sierra Club. The concept of an organized group dedicated to protecting the Sierra Nevada had been urged as early as 1889 by journalist Robert Underwood Johnson, who collaborated with Muir in the campaign that secured the creation of Yosemite National Park around an older state grant in 1890. Modeled on the Appalachian Mountain Club, the new association elected Muir as its inaugural president, a position he retained until his death in 1914.

The young club quickly took up legislative goals, pushing for federal national parks at Mount Rainier and Glacier, urging the protection of coastal redwoods, and seeking to transfer Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove from California state oversight back to the federal government. Muir escorted President Theodore Roosevelt through Yosemite in 1903, helping pave the way for California to yield Yosemite Valley two years later. These preservation campaigns sat alongside a rich recreational culture that started in the Sierra Nevada, where the club organized trail building, high-country outings, and mountaineering trips that later shaped the development of American rock climbing.