By Cynthia Houng Visit Cynthia's website.
Those who know John Muir largely through his writings on the Sierras and on Yosemite will be surprised to learn that Muir spent the final years of his life in a 3-story Victorian mansion in Martinez, California.
Northwestern View, c. 1914, John Muir National Historic Site
The 3-story Victorian mansion, showing the rose bushes and small ornamental trees that surrounded the house. The canary palms that flank the front door were much smaller in Muir's day. They are almost as tall as the house now.
A small town on the edge of the Carquinez Strait, Martinez provides easy access, via the Sacramento River Delta, to both the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay. During the Gold Rush, Martinez became a center for shipping and for agriculture. Though the first settlers planted wheat on the fertile floodplains, by the late 19th century, most of the land around Martinez had been given over to fruits, nuts, and vineyards. The area supplied San Francisco with fresh produce, and later, with the advent of refrigerated boxcars, it supplied the East as well.
Muir's father-in-law, Dr. John T. Strenzel, held a large and prosperous orchard just outside of the city limits. Strenzel grew apples, cherries, pears, olives, and other fruits. From 1880 until Strentzel's death in 1890, Muir and his wife, Louise (known as "Louie" to her husband and family) lived about a mile from the Strentzel House and helped manage the ranch. After Strentzel's death, Muir moved into the main house, a classic Victorian mansion with gabled roofs and a working bell tower. Muir would occupy this house until his death in 1914.
At the Strentzel ranch, Muir's interest in botany paid off. Under Muir's watch, the ranch flourished, and he became a wealthy man. Muir and his father-in-law both experimented widely with new cultivars. To one side of the house stands a small grove of Santa Rosa plums, the groundbreaking cultivar introduced by Luther Burbank in 1906.
