This one is out of sequence, but recently we visited the Muir Woods National Monument. Muir Woods was established because banker—and later, Congressman—William Kent purchased 611 acres of redwood forest to preserve them. When a logging company threatened to use eminent domain to dam the area for its operation, Kent donated a portion of the land to the federal government, in 1907. The next year, President Teddy Roosevelt made it a national monument under the Antiquities Act. Kent asked that the park be named for naturalist John Muir, who was an advocate for the National Park system. (The federal government began designating national parks in 1872, even though the National Park Service wasn’t founded until 1916.)
Recently, someone figured out that these early environmentalists were problematic by today’s standards, and the NPS must have decided to get ahead of the story: the sign with the timeline of the park’s history has been updated to prominently feature some unsavory facts.
- First, we get the history of the indigenous people of the area, with the note that in 1861, “Congress removes Indian title to almost all land in California. This action strips Coast Miwok people of title to their ancestral lands, of which Muir Woods is a part.”
- Next, we learn that John Muir wrote about the indigenous people in racist terms. “This contributes to the idea that Indigenous people don’t belong in parks.”
- Then we learn that Gifford Pinchot, chief of what became the U.S. Forest Service, was a eugenicist. He applied his beliefs to the scientific care of the redwoods, but that’s because he already believed in human eugenics.
- Plus, the women’s club that advocated for California’s first state park and first redwood reserve, Big Basin, refused to admit minorities.
- Finally, William Kent was responsible for expanding state laws to prevent aliens from owning or leasing land. His “anti-Asian policy and rhetoric [laid] groundwork for Japanese mass incarceration during WWII.”
Enjoy the forest!
