8vo. 3 folding maps, 32 full-page plates. Original pictorial dark green cloth stamped in gilt, light purple, and light blue (rubbing, minor wear to spine ends).

FIRST EDITION. John Muir began his exploration of the Yosemite Valley shortly after his move to San Francisco in 1868. Writing of the experience later, he said, "[I] was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower." He theorized that the valley had been sculpted by glaciers and not earthquakes, as was the popular theory at the time; his discovery of an alpine glacier beneath Merced Peak helped to legitimize his theories. In March 1872 a strong earthquake ripped through the valley, terrifying fellow settlers who still believed in the more accepted earthquake theories of the valley's creation. Muir began work on The Yosemite at the suggestion of writer, poet, diplomat and conservationist Robert Underwood Johnson, whose association with Muir inspired him to establish the Sierra Club in 1892 and who helped to write the bill established Yosemite as a national park.

[With:] Photo album with views of Yosemite National Park. Ca. 1910s. 38 black and white photographs, each approximately 5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in., mounted into photo album.