A Trans-California Ramble:

Re-walking John Muir's 1868 trip from San Francisco to Yosemite

April 2 — May 14, 2006

Peter and Donna Thomas have been engaged in a project to document and retrace John Muir's first trip across California. On March 27, 1868, John Muir arrived from New York, by steamer, to California. He was thirty, had recently completed walking from Indiana to Florida, and wanted to see Yosemite. From San Francisco, the typical traveler took a ferry to Stockton and then completed the trip by stage and horse. John Muir chose to walk. Muir took the ferry to Oakland and walked via the Santa Clara Valley, over the Pacheco Pass, across the San Joaquin Valley to Snelling, and then up the foothills through Coulterville to arrive in Yosemite Valley around May 22.

After finding that no Muir scholar or enthusiast had ever done this before, Peter and Donna Thomas set out to re-walk Muir's 1868 walk. The first step was to determine Muir's route. Much of this work was done in 2005-6. The second step was to plot their own route. The Thomases found that most of the roads Muir walked are now major highways. But, they also found that there were urban trails, parks and pathways running parallel to Muir's route, so they took as their challenge to link these together into a SF - Yosemite walking route that went as much as possible through nature and off the main roads. Their walk across California in Muir's footsteps was about 300 miles, and they successfully completed the 33 day trip in April - May of 2006.

While on this trip they were inspired to create a guide book. They wanted others to follow Muir's footsteps using this route they had pioneered on the Trans-California Ramble. Realizing that most people would not be able to take 30 days to follow the complete route, and because there were some places where the only option for travel was to use very busy (and not very safe for walking) roads, they divided the trip into 7 sections, each a trip that could be done over a long weekend. In the spring of 2007-8 they traveled the complete route again, verifying the directions and logistics, and composing the guide book.

The guide book, to be titled, "The Muir Ramble Route: San Francisco to Yosemite in the Footsteps of John Muir", will be published in late summer or fall 2009 by Poetic Matrix Press. If you will be interested in obtaining a copy of the guide book please send us an email.

Peter and Donna Thomas have also made a hard cover photo books with over 150 photographs that are organized by region to to coordinate with the story of the trip included on this web site. Click here for more information.

April 2, 2009
Exciting new news:
Alex McInturff, a Stanford Graduate student, is walking from San Francsico to Yosemite following Muir's footsteps and much of our Muir Ramble Route. Alex came up with the idea of following John Muir's footsteps earlier this year, found our website and contacted us. We gave him the manuscript for our book, with the directions for following Muir's route across California, and he will be the first person to walk our Muir Ramble Route. You can follow his trip on his web site:
http://muirwalk.blogspot.com
You can also read about Alex McInturff and his bon-voyage in an article from the San Jose Mercury News:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12074370?source=email

 

Newspaper articles about Peter and Donna Thomas's walks across California:

Article in the Union Democrat, Monday February 7. 2008

Front Page Article in the SF Chronicle, June 4, 2007

Article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, March 30, 2006

Article in the San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 2006

The Chronicle article with more photos

Article in the Oakland Tribune, April 7, 2006

Article in the The Delhi Express, April, 2006

Article in the Modesto Bee, April 27, 2006

Article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday May 14, 2006

Article in the Gilroy Dispatch, April 21, 2007

Article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Monday June 4, 2007