The Camping Trip that Changed America

In honor of our National Parks



Rosenstock, Barb. The Camping Trip that Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks. Illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2012.

John Muir was well ahead of his time. It was 1903. Muir, an avid hiker and outdoorsman, already recognized the threat that growing land development was to the extraordinary landscapes he explored in the American west. He also recognized that President Theodore Roosevelt was something of an outdoors man as well, so he invited the President to join him on a camping trip to one of his favorite places. Just as Muir had hoped, Roosevelt was overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of the towering sequoias, majestic mountains, and massive glaciers he observed. Traveling on horseback and camping in the wilderness, the two men bonded over their love of the natural world and their recognition of the need to preserve the most spectacular parts of the nation's geographic heritage. Roosevelt's creation of the National Park system was the result. 

Illustrator Gerstein, who also illustrated The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, portrays the two very different characters - the rambunctious Roosevelt and the studious and steadfast Muir - amid the cathedral-like splendor of the land that would become Yosemite National Park.