John Muir

#OTD in 1903, after roughly fourteen thousand miles, two dozen states and territories, and more than nine weeks of speeches delivered from the back of a presidential train, Theodore Roosevelt came home. The Western Tour had taken him from Washington west to Yellowstone, from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, from the Grand Canyon to Yosemite, and back across the southern half of the country. He had ridden through the Mariposa Grove with John Muir and slept under the giant sequoias. He had stood on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and asked Americans to leave it as it was. He had spoken in the Salt Lake Tabernacle about water and reservoirs and forests. He had spoken to thousands more in towns most presidents had never visited. By the time he climbed off the train in Washington, more Americans had seen a sitting president in person than at almost any earlier point in the country's history. What he carried back was a sharpened conservation conviction — formed partly under the trees with Muir, partly looking across the canyons, partly hearing Westerners describe what was at stake when public lands went unprotected. Within three years he would sign the Antiquities Act. Within seven, he would have protected more than 230 million acres. It started with a train. #OTD #OnThisDay #TheodoreRoosevelt #Conservation #PublicLands #DareGreatly