John Muir

Naturalist, father of national park system.

Attended the University of Wisconsin (1863)

Muir Noll

John Muir's face is on the California quarter, but Wisconsinites consider Muir, an influential naturalist and conservationist, as one of their own. "Oh that glorious Wisconsin wilderness!" Muir wrote. "Everything seems new and pure in the very prime of spring when nature's pulses were beating highest and mysteriously keeping time with our own! Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, the animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together." Muir's father was a disciplinarian and worked his family hard. When they could get a break, Muir and his younger brother would roam the Wisconsin countryside. Muir also became an inventor, a carver of curious but practical mechanisms in wood. He made clocks and created a wondrous device that tipped him out of bed before dawn. In 1860, Muir took his inventions to the state fair at Madison, where he won admiration and prizes. He died in 1914.