John Muir visited Florida twice in his lifetime. Since then, a number of places, and even a landmark tree commemorate him in Florida.

Accounts of Muir in Florida

• Shaping a Naturalist Icon; John Muir and Florida – The Florida Historical Society
• “John Muir Comes to Florida, Almost Dies, and Leaves Transformed” by Amanda Hagood in Journal of Florida Studies, Volume 1, Issue 9, 2021 (off-site PDF)
• James B. Hunt, Restless Fires: Young John Muir’s Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf in 1867-68 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012).
• John Muir’s Longest Walk: John Earl, a Photographer, Traces His Journey to Florida by John Earl, with Excerpts from Muir’s A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. (1975)
  Photographs of the route of the thousand-mile walk in March of 1973, starting at Cedar Key and retracing Muir’s route backward so as to follow spring north. Earl sought out the few places that remain the way they were when Muir first saw them.
• In November of 2017, the Sierra Club Florida Chapter held a two-day “Cedar Key Climate Conference & John Muir 150th Anniversary Trek Tribute.” The John Muir – related presentations included: “John Muir in Florida” Merald Clark of Gainesville; Lime Key” by Amy Gernhardt, Executive Director, Cedar Key Historical Society; “Sarah Hodgson Property” by Andrea Dennison who recounted her own detective story tracking and identifying the giant oak where John Muir’s health was restored by Sarah Hodgson; Muir’s 1867 Illness: Typhomalaria” by Dr. Rob Norman; Re-Dedication of John Muir Historical Marker by Florida Chapter Sierra Club; and “Deuteronomy Clark’s Memories of Muir.”
  • For an illustrated summary of this conference, see:  Marking 150 Years, Sierra Club Celebrates Founder John Muir’s Thousand-Mile Walk to an Ever Rising Gulf by Jon Ullman (Dec, 13, 2017 (PDF)
• John Muir in Florida by Merald Clark, Presentation made at the Cedar Key Florida 100th anniversary of John Muir celebration and climate change conference hosted by the Tampa chapter of the Sierra Club on 11 November 2017.  (YouTube Video)
  

Places Commemorating John Muir Today:

• Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce – Visitor Information (offsite link)
• Cedar Key Commemorative John Muir Plaque

  

  • John Muir Historical Marker (off-site link to John Muir Exhibit)
  • John Muir at Cedar Key – (off-site link to Historical Marker Database)
• Corkscriew Swamp Sanctuary – Landmark Cypress #2 “”Muir”
• Orlando – Epcot – The American Adventure– “Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir”
  YouTube video of Epcot – The American Adventure – Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir -video by Mark Brieve showing an excerpt from the show as presented on April 5, 2016.
  This is a brief excerpt of the Audio-Animatronics stage show of American history, portrying the famous meeting of John Muir with President Theodore Roosevelt in Yosemite.

• Yulee – John Muir Ecological Park – Located near Fernandina Beach and Jacksonville, in Nassau County. The park anchors the abandoned railbed that Muir walked across Florida on, still visibly raised above the surrounding wetlands and low woods. It is the hoped that some day this small park will be the beginning of a system of bike and multiuse trails through the Nassau County.
• John Muir’s Walk on the Florida Railroad – Historical Marker erected in 2017 by the East Nassau Stewardship District – read the inscription. (offsite link)

  

John Muir’s Writings about Florida:

• Man’s Place in the Universe by John Muir
  (Muir’s epiphany in Florida where he concluded that nature was valuable for its own sake.)
• Through Florida Swamps and Forests – From A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir
• Cedar Keys – From A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf by John Muir.
• Marquesas Keys – 30 miles west of Key West, Florida. Muir visited this group of atolls with botanist Charles Sprague Sargent in November, 1898. He observed palms, mangroves, sand fleas, mosquitoes, and fiddler-crabs. These islands today are part of the Key West National Wildlife Refuge.
• Straits of Florida – Muir wrote, “The water here is very transparent and of a delightfully pure color, as different from ordinary dull-colored water as town smoke from mountain air. I could see the bottom as distinctly as one sees the ground in riding over it, and it appeared strange that our vessel should be upborne in such a liquid as this and did not run aground where the bottom seemed so near.” Source: University of the Pacific Scholarly Commons.

One dramatic occurrence was the finding of Mrs. Hodgson, who had nursed him back to health on his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf. The incident is told in the following excerpt from a letter to his wife under date of November 21, 1898:

The day before yesterday we stopped at Palatka on the famous St. Johns River, where I saw the most magnificent magnolias, some four feet in diameter and one hundred feet high, also the largest and most beautiful hickories and oaks. From there we went to Cedar Keys. Of course I inquired for the Hodgsons, at whose house I lay sick so long. Mr. Hodgson died long ago, also the eldest son, with whom I used to go boating, but Mrs. Hodgson and the rest of the family, two boys and three girls, are alive and well, and I saw them all to-day, except one of the boys. I found them at Archer, where I stopped four hours on my way from Cedar Keys. Mrs. Hodgson and the two eldest girls remembered me well. The house was pointed out to me, and I found the good old lady who nursed me in the garden. I asked her if she knew me. She answered no, and asked my name. I said Muir. “John Muir?” she almost screamed. “My California John Muir? My California John?” I said, “Why, yes, I promised to come back and visit you in about twenty-five years, and though a little late I’ve come.” I stopped to dinner and we talked over old times in grand style, you may be sure.