The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [472]
Three Arch Rocks became—even more than Crater Lake—a symbol of Oregon’s pristine beauty. The largest of the surf-pounded mounds was officially named Finley Rock and is home to the largest colony of tufted puffins in the state. Tourists come to view the puffins with binoculars from Oceanside Beach and Cape Meares on the mainland. But no trespassing is allowed at the sanctuary. And from May 1 to September 15 no boats are allowed within 500 feet of the mounds.115
Early on, some critics of Roosevelt’s reservations at Klamath basin said that only a lunatic would have the audacity to declare Oregon’s tule land a breeding grounds for birds. As their argument went, this wasn’t Mount Rainier or Crater Lake but a swamp splotched with bird excrement! Other critics said that Roosevelt’s penchant for bird-watching was warped, occultism. Scoffing at such thinking, Roosevelt said that preserving the Pacific coast’s wildlife was democratic in spirit. There was nothing warped about protecting canvasback and white pelicans. In fact, he wanted to protect endangered birds all over American territory, from the eskimo curlews in Alaska to the whooping cranes in Michigan to parrots in Puerto Rico. That some fellow Americans couldn’t understand the inherent morality of species survival was troubling to Roosevelt. But so what? Before leaving the White House he planned to create even more than the twenty-five bird sanctuaries of 1903 to 1908. It was as if he had found in wildlife protection his autumnal passion. And he had Grover Cleveland’s famous “midnight reserves” to use as a presidential precedent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE PRESERVATIONIST REVOLUTION OF 1908
I
Old John Muir could barely believe the stunning news. On January 9, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an unexpected proclamation designating a wondrous 295-acre strand of coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) as the Muir Woods National Monument in northern California.1 It was a magnificent tribute to the self-described “poetico-trampo-geologist.”2 Situated across the Golden Gate Bridge near Mill Valley in Marin County, Muir Woods was an ideal forest to honor the “sage of the Sierras.” The giant trees along Redwood Creek, each casting a hulking shadow on its way skyward, seemed a trenchant retort to the unchecked capitalism of the gilded age. Sunlight filtered down to create a living silence in the forest. This fine uncut coastal redwood strand had been donated to the federal government by William Kent, a wealthy disciple of Muir’s, originally from Chicago, who had purchased it in 1905 for $45,000.3 A businessman, philanthropist, and amateur naturalist (who would later be a congressman from California), Kent couldn’t stomach lumbermen clear-cutting the shoulder of Mount Tamalpais for a “few dirty dollars” and criminally depriving “millions of their birthright.”4
Muir Woods was really something special. Eternity was somehow present in the delicate greenery of the redwood foliage, and the thick fog of the Pacific dripped into the forest offering moisture year-round. In fall, ladybugs swarmed Redwood Creek, and the big-leaf maples turned yellow. During the winter months, steelhead and silver salmon migrated up the creek to spawn. Sweet berries ripened in the springtime meadows, interspersed with a dazzling display of purple and pink wildflowers. In the Bohemian and Cathedral groves, visitors could see sequoias more than 250 feet high and fourteen feet in diameter.* Many were 2,000 years old or more. Because the rather slender redwoods had little resin, they were insect-resistant. They had survived windthrows, wildfires, and the march of progress. And although the coastal redwood trees were always the main year-round attraction at Muir Woods, the site wouldn’t have been complete without its stands of Douglas fir, tanbark