William and Elizabeth Kent: The Couple Who Saved Muir Woods

William Kent and Elizabeth Thacher Kent have been prominent figures in Marin County for more than a century — best known for saving the redwoods of Muir Woods.

A visitor in Muir Woods, date unknown. NPS photo

The couple

William's father, Albert Kent, came from a prosperous Connecticut farming family, went to Yale, and built a fortune in business and real estate. The family moved to Marin County in 1871, where young William came to love the beauty of the Golden Gate.

At Yale, William met Elizabeth Thacher, daughter of a Latin professor there and great-granddaughter of Founding Father Roger Sherman; her family was secure and well connected. They had five sons and two daughters, and 10 grandchildren, and lived in Chicago, where William ran his father's businesses and entered local politics.

Buying Redwood Canyon

In 1903, with the family's fortune hit by an economic depression, the Kents visited family in Marin. A friend took them to Redwood Canyon and urged them to buy the grove, as much of the land around was being stripped for timber. Though hesitant at first, they bought all 611 acres for $45,000 — "the lowest possible price… for preservation and not for exploitation."

Saving it for the nation

In 1907 a local company wanted to log the forest and dam the creek for a reservoir, arguing that storing water mattered more than the trees or tourism. William turned to Gifford Pinchot, whom President Theodore Roosevelt had made head of the new Forest Service, offering to donate the grove to the federal government.

Pinchot brought the fight to Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act, and in December 1908 the President accepted 295 acres as Muir Woods National Monument. Rather than his own family's name, Kent asked that it honor his friend, the conservationist John Muir.

Two names on the deed

Few mentioned it then, but Elizabeth was co-owner of Redwood Canyon, and William's full partner in business, philanthropy and civic life.

The Kents were political as well as conservationists — in very different ways:

• William Kent served in Congress, where he fought to exclude Chinese and Japanese immigrants from the country.
• Elizabeth Thacher Kent was in many ways the bolder figure, risking arrest in the fight for women's suffrage.

More: women's history in the national parks.

Sources

Based on "The Kent Family and Conservation," National Park Service, Muir Woods National Monument and Golden Gate National Recreation Area; a work of the United States government in the public domain.