Then Roosevelt requested that he be given private time alone in a redwood grove for reverie. After all, he was in one of God’s great cathedrals, and he wanted to wander in solitude, listening only to the song sparrows and orange-crowned warblers in absolute allegiance with enchanted nature. Truly he was in a state of astonishment, looking upward as the elfin light beamed in between the sequoias. The trees had a dwarfing effect; a single redwood weighed about 3,000 tons. To Roosevelt they were priceless when standing tall and irrecoverable if fallen. As the president disappeared deeper into the forest his personal secretary, William Loeb, led a spontaneous community effort to remove all the commercialized signs that had desecrated the trees. When he returned from his hike, Roosevelt accepted the honor of having a redwood named after him. There was, however, a nonnegotiable condition: no sign reading “Roosevelt Tree” would ever be posted. He couldn’t stomach such an insult in his name. Everybody agreed to the terms, and that vaguely comforted the president. Still, he warned that thirsty timber jackals would someday come after the sequoias with industrial saws. Californians, he believed, had a patriotic obligation to defend them.
Following a conservation speech in San Jose, Roosevelt asked that more redwoods be added to the itinerary. He simply couldn’t see enough of these ancient sentinels. Each tree—some had a diameter of thirty feet—had its own wondrous personality. The redwoods dwarfed all the trees of the Catskills and the Adirondacks. While he was touring the Santa Cruz mountains, especially those near Boulder Creek and Felton, he started calling the redwoods “giants.” During the coming days he would meet fruit growers, ranchers, fishermen, and a woman from Watsonville who had thirty-four children. He spoke at Stanford University and in affluent Burlingame (commonly called “City of the Trees”). But all he could really talk about was the utter majesty of the Sequoia sempervirens, which John Steinbeck would later call “ambassadors from another time.” (Or, as Burroughs was fond of saying, they were “living joys, something to love.”92) It sickened Roosevelt to think that redwood raiders were clear-cutting these old-growth trees for house decks and unnecessary porches (redwood was a prized luxury wood because it didn’t rot). In a speech on May 13 at Stanford University, where the president of the university, David Starr Jordan, introduced him, Roosevelt gave a long address about Congress saving the wilderness heritage. The coastal hills and groves of California, Roosevelt said, needed increased permanent preservation by the federal government.
When Roosevelt arrived in San Francisco for a three-day visit, more than 200,000 people lined the streets to see him. They admired his courage on the battlefield, his reforming spirit, his pluck, his humor, and his ambition, and they were impressed by his national celebrity. San Francisco also held a parade in his honor, but the main event was a dedication of a monument to Admiral Dewey at Union Square. For this dedication, sleeping mats had been unrolled on the sidewalks so that women wouldn’t get their dresses dirty. Everyone waited for the president’s triumphant wave of the fist—a gesture he had adopted since his days of boxing at Harvard. The entire Bay Area seemed aroused by the event. Civil War veterans offered snappy salutes to Roosevelt as if he were the head of an old soldiers’ home—a position far more impressive to them than the presidency. In the most pugnacious speech of his western trip, delivered from a hastily constructed platform at the Mechanics’ Pavilion, Roosevelt declared that America’s destiny was on the Pacific Ocean. “Before I saw the Pacific slope I was an expansionist,” he said, “and after having seen it I fail to understand how—any man confident of his country’s greatness and glad that his country should challenge with proud confidence our mighty future—can be anything but an expansionist. In the century that is opening the commerce and the progress of the Pacific will be factors of incalculable moment in the history of the world.”93
And the Californians cheered: the oyster pirates from Oakland, the grape growers of Napa Valley, the lumbermen from Marin County, the ragtag orphans from North Beach, the horse breeders from the San Joaquin Valley, the naval officers stationed at the Presidio, the old-time rustics from Point de Reyes, the fishermen from Sausalito, the dandies from Nob Hill, the restaurateurs from Chinatown, the academics from Berkeley, the avocado growers from Fallbrook, the raisin pickers from Fresno, the eggheads from Menlo Park, the flower merchants from Ventura, the old-time miners from the Sierras, and the buffalo soldiers providing backup Secret Service duty, in addition to every state bureaucrat and politician able to walk. A few Rough Riders had ventured north from Arizona—using their veterans’ pensions for train fare—hoping to rekindle remembrance of and pride in the Spanish-American War. And nature helped Roosevelt out. The May inrush of Pacific breeze stimulated the rally like a tonic. Newspapers tried to capture the collective energy of the throng, which hummed with the force of a bass organ pipe from Union Square all the way down to Fisherman’s Wharf.
That May 13 in San Francisco marked the apogee of Roosevelt’s eventful days as president. All his nationalistic notions, it seemed, were pulled together into a credible narrative for the United States. To Roosevelt the main thrust of American history was western expansionism. The wars with Indians, redcoats, Mexicans, and Spaniards had been worth it. With the building of the Panama Canal the United States would have a two-ocean navy. With Hawaii and the Philippines the nation had steppingstone ports for the fabled China trade. America wasn’t going to be denied its economic empire. And California, he believed, was the gold star of empire. Of course, national politics was full of drum-beating American expansionists, imperialists, and proponents of manifest destiny. What was unique about President Roosevelt was his righteous insistence that Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the redwoods, Mount Olympus, the Painted Desert and so on were the rightful trophies of expansionism. As a conquering conservationist-preservationist he wanted them all saved. At a banquet at Cliff House, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Roosevelt vowed that the aboriginal American spirit toward the wilderness had to flourish in the twentieth century. Nature was the great replenisher for the American people. His spirit deeply inspired by the beauty of the West, Roosevelt was a rare instance of constructive hyper-Americanism, since his message was that your state has something far more valuable than gold: green forests, sour green glades, box canyons, high plateaus, granitescapes, and lookouts around every bend. When it came to nature preservation, Roosevelt gushed a positively progressive effect onto the collective American psyche.
It’s been said by modern environmentalists that Roosevelt had a conflict of loyalties in the West between pro-growth policies like the Reclamation Act and pro-preservation policies like saving the redwoods. This is true. Basically, he wanted to have it both ways. Starting with Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River near Phoenix, Arizona, virtually every major waterway in the West was altered by environmentally destructive engineering projects that T.R. OK’d. Roosevelt saw himself as the master preservationist but also beamed as a master builder. Save the Grand Canyon while building the Roosevelt Dam—that was his conservationist policy. To Roosevelt, conservation could be another form of conquest; development and protection working in harmony for an Edenic civilization. When push came to shove, economic growth often took precedence over his preservationism. He made his decisions case by case. Conservation as big business was regularly given precedence over conservation as protection—but there were many exceptions. Over the decades, this has made him something of a bogeyman to the Sierra Club types. Following President Dwight Eisenhower’s speech about the industrial-military complex in 1961, for example, Roosevelt’s Reclamation Service was denounced by anti-war enviromentalists like Dave Brower and Wallace Stesner as scientific capitalism run amok. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, historians lacerated Roosevelt for his imperialistic views, which they equated with the policies that had led to Vietnam. And, unlike John Wesley Powell, a generation of enviromental historians led by Donald Worster complained, Roosevelt liked big dams—big everything, including a big intrusive federal government.
&n
bsp; But the anti-Roosevelt critics went too far. President Lyndon Johnson’s entire “New Conservationism” of the 1960s was purposefully modeled on ideals T.R. had first propounded. And modern environmentalists were aware that Roosevelt had also liked big national forests: in 1908, for example, he created the Tongass National Forest, which stretched over 500 miles from north to south in Alaska and included more than 11,000 miles of rugged coastline (a figure equal to nearly 50 percent of the entire coastline of the lower forty-eight.) 94 As Roosevelt’s attitude toward the redwoods showed during this California trip, he was emotionally a forest preservationist while politically a utilitarian conservationist. It was the right combination for his times. But never for a moment did Roosevelt purposely seek to abuse the American West in any way. But such sincerity had its limits: Roosevelt lacked self-awareness regarding his very real contradiction, his insistence on bigness wrought on the western landscape. Yet, always, he wanted to create model cities surrounded by greenbelts of wilderness. He was a promoter of sustainability before the concept came into vogue during the Clinton era of the 1990s.
Journalists throughout California commented on how hard Roosevelt was working during his two-week statewide tour to inject conservation into the political bloodstream. The Los Angeles Times wrote of his “strenuosity,” and the Oakland Tribune called him a “drayhorse working every hour.”95 And although she was not involved in policy, the first lady did participate in tree (or at least shrubbery) preservation in the East. Edith Roosevelt was making news by objecting publicly when remodelers at the White House wanted to remove more than seventy bushes from the terrace. She had grown fond of the shrubbery and wanted it to stay put. Even when she was told that the bushes would be carefully removed and replanted in New Jersey, she insisted that they be left unmarred and unmoved.
VII
After shaking so many hands, Roosevelt needed an outdoor adventure in the Sierras. Shortly after midnight on May 15 he left San Francisco for Yosemite Valley with an honorary doctorate from the University of California–Berkeley in hand. Accompanying him was his delegation, which included the Sierra Club’s president, John Muir; Governor George C. Pardee of California; and Benjamin Wheeler, president of the University of California–Berkeley. The party enjoyed the scenic mountain ramparts en route, and then Roosevelt’s train stopped at Raymond, the railroad depot closest to Yosemite. Three previous U.S. presidents had visited Yosemite—James Garfield in 1875, Ulysses S. Grant in 1879, and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1885—but not while in office, so Roosevelt’s visit was a first. And instead of coming to the national park merely as a political gesture, Roosevelt planned to study Yosemite as a naturalist—hence Muir’s presence at his side. “Of course of all the people in the world,” Roosevelt said, “[Muir] was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite.” 96
Roosevelt and Muir, taking a buggy, headed straight for the “big tree” section—Mariposa Grove, where some of the oldest redwoods in California grew. A photograph was snapped of them driving through the rather touristy Wawona Tunnel Tree (a towering sequoia that fell in 1969). Mariposa Grove wasn’t yet officially part of Yosemite National Park in 1903 but Roosevelt hoped it might soon be. As the New York Times reported, Roosevelt and Muir arrived in Mariposa Grove on a bright, perfectly clear day, had lunch, and then wandered off together. Walking around the huge circumferences of the redwoods with Muir, staring upward more than 250 feet to see the top branches, Roosevelt was in his element.97 While studying the famous “Grizzly Giant,” the president blurted out, intensely, that this was “the greatest forest site” he had ever seen.98 The naturalist Henry Fairfield Osborn had said of Muir that he “wrote about trees as no one else in the whole history of trees, chiefly because he loved them as he loved men and women.”99 Now Roosevelt understood what Muir had been so rhapsodical about over many years. “There are the big trees, Mr. Roosevelt,” Muir excitedly said. “Mr. Muir,” Roosevelt said with a smile, “it is good to be with you.” 100
Muir had an ethereal quality and his erudition was simultaneously bold and profound. Roosevelt immediately admired him. Muir’s eyes were deep blue, his hair was ginger-reddish, and his attitude was life-affirming. While Roosevelt thought in terms of Americanism in nature, Muir thought about the planet in peril. He had even once titled a journal: “John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.” Having read all of Muir’s works, and realizing that the great naturalist had spent thirty years studying the trees, rocks, canyons, falls, and glaciers of Yosemite, Roosevelt felt like a student arriving at an academy. Furthermore, Merriam had advised Roosevelt to camp with his friend Muir; he predicted it would be one of the memorable moments of his life.101
Because no authoritative account was ever written of Roosevelt and Muir’s trip of 1903, it has been pieced together by varied sources over the years. Together, Roosevelt and Muir did explore the park for three days and two nights. Even though Roosevelt was officially booked at the Glacier Point Hotel, he instead camped with Muir in the great outdoors. They would drink in the fresh air, survey the ridgelines, and listen to each other’s voice echoing out over the Yosemity Valley. The U.S. Army oversaw the park and was extremely accommodating of Roosevelt’s needs. But Roosevelt wanted lots of privacy. Waving a captain and thirty cavalrymen away with a “God bless you,” Roosevelt made it clear that he wanted to be alone with Muir among the thickset trees and trailside brush. Only the guides Charlie Leidig and Archie Leanor and the U.S. Army climber Jacker Alder were allowed to untie the saddlehorn rope to be part of the presidential entourage when a hike was in order.102
The president treated Muir as his absolute equal throughout the Yosemite adventure. Roosevelt and Muir were both mavericks and shared a strong, rare bond: appreciation of nature. “[Muir] was emphatically a good citizen,” Roosevelt noted. “Not only are his books delightful, not only is he the author to whom all men turn when they think of the Sierras and northern glaciers, and the giant trees of the California slope, but he was also—what few nature lovers are—a man able to influence contemporary thought and action on the subjects to which he had devoted his life. He was a great factor in influencing the thought of California and the thought of the entire country so as to secure the preservation of those great natural phenomena—wonderful canyons, giant trees, slopes of flower-spangled hillsides—which make California a veritable Garden of the Lord.”103
Leaving Mariposa Grove, the Roosevelt party headed to Yosemite’s south entrance by carriage, through a handsome glen. As he got out of the carriage, Roosevelt asked for his valise—he didn’t like being separated from his personal belongings. When told that the Yosemite Park Commission had brought his baggage to a banquet lunch, he grew enraged. “Get it!,” he shouted. According to Muir the two words, barked with an authoritarian air, were like bullets being fired.104 Although reporters sometimes portrayed Muir as a misanthrope, he made friends quickly. There was never a moment of awkwardness with Roosevelt. Really, the only strange thing about Muir was that he had never once shaved in his life.105
On May 15 Roosevelt and Muir mounted horses and trotted off into the vast sequoia lands near the Sunset Tree. The strength and beauty of Yosemite were undeniable. Somehow, there was a summery fragrance in the air even though there was snow. Roosevelt praised the cinnamon-colored sequoias’ enduring beauty. Roosevelt recalled in An Autobiography, “The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music, at dawn.”106 That evening they built a campfire; continually feeding it wood, they talked until the fire drew down to coals. It was the most famous campfire ever in the annals of the conservation movement. Over the popping and crackling logs Roosevelt and Muir talked about forest good and slept soundly without a tent.
At sunrise on May 16 Roosevelt and Muir decided to forgo the day’s official itinerary and ride horseback by themselves
through the melting snow along an old Indian trail to Glacier Point. There is a marvelous photograph of Roosevelt and Muir standing on a ledgerock overlooking the valley, a respectable 3,200 feet high, with Yosemite Falls thundering at their backs. On close inspection, patches of diminishing snow are noticeable on the thawed ground. Roosevelt looks ready to draw a weapon; Muir is seemingly relaxed, hands behind his back. Over the decades this photograph has become an icon promoting American national parks, for the Sierra Club and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service alike. It has been reproduced on book jackets and in magazines. According to historian Donald Worster of the University of Kansas, Roosevelt and Muir had good reason to look so satisfied in each other’s august company. “They have just agreed that ownership of the much-abused valley below should revert to the federal government and become part of Yosemite Park,” he notes in an analysis of the photograph. “Politically, they have forged a formidable alliance on behalf of nature.”107
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