Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded in 1892, in San Francisco, by preservationist John Muir. A product of the progressive movement, it was one of the first large-scale environmental preservation organizations in the world. It has lobbied for policies to promote sustainable energy and mitigate global warming, as well as opposing the use of coal, hydropower, and nuclear power. Its political endorsements generally favor liberal and progressive candidates in elections.
In addition to political advocacy, the Sierra Club organizes outdoor recreation activities, and has historically been a notable organization for mountaineering and rock climbing in the United States. Members of the Sierra Club pioneered the Yosemite Decimal System of climbing, and were responsible for a substantial amount of the early development of climbing. Much of this activity occurred in the group's namesake, the Sierra Nevada. The Sierra Club operates only in the United States and holds the legal status of 501 nonprofit social welfare organization. Sierra Club Canada is a separate entity.
Overview
The Sierra Club's stated mission is "To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources; To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives."The Sierra Club is governed by a 15-member board of directors. Each year, five directors are elected to three-year terms, and all club members are eligible to vote. A president is elected annually by the Board from among its members. The executive director runs the day-to-day operations of the group. Michael Brune, formerly of Rainforest Action Network, served as the organization's executive director from 2010. Brune succeeded Carl Pope. Pope stepped down amid discontent that the group had strayed from its core principles.
In January 2023, former NAACP president Ben Jealous became the organization's new executive director, making him the first African American to fulfill the role. Jealous's tenure was marked by significant internal strife, including repeated restructures and layoffs that sparked tension with staff, unions, and stakeholders. Allegations of unfair labor practices and union-busting were filed against both Jealous and the Sierra Club, contributing to growing discontent within the organization. In the spring of 2024, Progressive Workers Union, which represents over 50% of Sierra Club staff, conducted a vote of no confidence in Jealous's leadership.
In April 2025, Robert D. Bullard, widely regarded as the father of environmental justice, publicly requested that the Sierra Club remove his name from its Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award, citing unmet promises and a failure to protect the predominantly Black Shiloh community. His statement intensified criticism of Jealous's leadership, after Jealous was reported to have referred to Bullard and community members as "snakes" in response to public criticism. Bullard subsequently called for a vote of no confidence in Jealous. Multiple no-confidence votes from staff, volunteers, and chapters further underscored organizational unrest. In July 2025, Jealous took a leave of absence from his role at the Sierra Club. On August 11, 2025, the Sierra Club board "unanimously voted to terminate Mr. Jealous' employment with the Sierra Club for cause following extensive evaluation of his conduct." In September 2025, Loren Blackford was named as the group's new executive director.
The Sierra Club is organized on both a national and state level with chapters named for the 50 states and two U.S. territories California is the lone state to have numerous chapters named for California counties. The club chapters allow for regional groups and committees, some of which have many thousands of members. These chapters further allow for special interest sections, committees, and task forces on a single issue with some kind of geography involved. While much activity is coordinated at a local level, the club is a unified organization; decisions made at the national level take precedence, including the removal and creation of chapters, as well as recruiting and removing members.
The club is known for engaging in two main activities: promoting and guiding outdoor recreational activities, which is done throughout the United States but primarily in California, and political activism to promote environmental causes. Described as one of the United States' "leading environmental organizations", the Sierra Club makes endorsements of individual candidates for elected office.
History
Founding
Journalist Robert Underwood Johnson had worked with John Muir on the successful campaign to create a large Yosemite National Park surrounding the much smaller state park which had been created in 1864. This campaign succeeded in 1890. As early as 1889, Johnson had encouraged Muir to form an "association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, and preliminary meetings were held to plan the group. Others involved in the early planning included artist William Keith, Willis Linn Jepson, Warren Olney, Willard Drake Johnson, Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan.In May 1892, the young botany professor, Willis Linn Jepson from the University of California, Berkeley, helped Muir and attorney Warren Olney launch the new organization modeled after the eastern Appalachian Mountain Club. The charter members of the Sierra Club elected Muir president, an office he held until his death in 1914. The early Sierra Club favored the needs of white members to the exclusion of people of color, and Muir and some of his associates, such as Joseph LeConte, David Starr Jordan, and Henry Fairfield Osborn were closely related to the early eugenics movement in the United States.
The first goals of the club included establishing Glacier and Mount Rainier national parks, convincing the California legislature to give Yosemite Valley to the U.S. federal government, and preserving coastal redwood forests of California.
Muir escorted President Theodore Roosevelt through Yosemite in 1903, and two years later the California legislature ceded Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the federal government. The Sierra Club won its first lobbying victory with the creation of the country's second national park, after Yellowstone in 1872.
Environmental action over the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
In the first decade of the 1900s, the Sierra Club became embroiled in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir battle that divided preservationists from "resource management" conservationists. In the late 19th century, the city of San Francisco was rapidly outgrowing its limited water supply, which depended on intermittent local springs and streams. In 1890, San Francisco mayor James D. Phelan proposed to build a dam and aqueduct on the Tuolumne River, one of the largest southern Sierra rivers, as a way to increase and stabilize the city's water supply.Gifford Pinchot, a progressive supporter of public utilities and head of the US Forest Service, which then had jurisdiction over the national parks, supported the creation of the Hetch Hetchy dam. Muir appealed to his friend U.S. President Roosevelt, who would not commit himself against the dam, given its popularity with the people of San Francisco. Muir and attorney William Edward Colby began a national campaign against the dam, attracting the support of many eastern conservationists. With the 1912 election of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who carried San Francisco, supporters of the dam had a friend in the White House.
The bill to dam Hetch Hetchy passed Congress in 1913, and so the Sierra Club lost its first major battle. In retaliation, the club supported creation of the National Park Service in 1916, to remove the parks from Forest Service oversight. Stephen Mather, a Club member from Chicago and an opponent of the Hetch Hetchy dam, became the first National Park Service director.
1920s–1940s
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Sierra Club functioned as a social and recreational society, conducting outings, maintaining trails and building huts and lodges in the Sierra. Preservation campaigns included a several-year effort to enlarge Sequoia National Park and over three decades of work to protect and then preserve Kings Canyon National Park. Historian Stephen Fox notes, "In the 1930s most of the three thousand members were middle-aged Republicans."The New Deal brought many conservationists to the Democratic Party, and many Democrats entered the ranks of conservationists. Leading the generation of Young Turks who revitalized the Sierra Club after World War II were attorneys Richard Leonard and Bestor Robinson, nature photographer Ansel Adams, and David Brower.
Adams sponsored Brower for membership in the club, and he was appointed to the editorial board of the Sierra Club Bulletin. After World War II Brower returned to his job with the University of California Press, and began editing the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946.
National reach
In 1950, the Sierra Club had some 7,000 members, mostly on the West Coast. That year the Atlantic chapter became the first formed outside California. An active volunteer board of directors ran the organization, assisted by a small clerical staff. Brower was appointed the first executive director in 1952, and the club began to catch up with major conservation organizations such as the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, The Wilderness Society, and Izaak Walton League, which had long had professional staff.The Sierra Club secured its national reputation in the battle against the Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, which had been announced by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1950. Brower led the fight, marshaling support from other conservation groups. Brower's background in publishing proved decisive; with the help of publisher Alfred Knopf, This Is Dinosaur was rushed into press. Invoking the specter of Hetch Hetchy, conservationists effectively lobbied Congress, which deleted the Echo Park dam from the Colorado River project as approved in 1955. Recognition of the Sierra Club's role in the Echo Park dam victory boosted membership from 10,000 in 1956 to 15,000 in 1960.
The Sierra Club was now truly a national conservation organization, and preservationists took the offensive with wilderness proposals. The club's Biennial Wilderness Conferences, launched in 1949 in concert with The Wilderness Society, became an important force in the campaign that secured passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, marking the first time that public lands were permanently protected from development. Grand Teton National Park and Olympic National Park were also enlarged at the Sierra Club's urging.