The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1913-02-25
Joaquin Miller Dies
At Ripe Age II
Poet Of Sierras Spent Last Hours at
California Home with Wife
and Daughter

San Francisco, Feb. 17.-Joaquin
Miller, the Poet of the Sierras, died
this afternoon at his home, the Heights
on the hills which overlook Berkeley.
Oakland and San Francisco Bay.
Death came as the result OF natural
decline in his physical powers. He
was in his seventy-second year, and
more than once in the past few years
his life had been despaired of. He
had never regained his old time vigor
after paralytic stroke he suffered
last fall.
The aged poet had been unconscious
for five days and confined to his bed
for more than six weeks. DIR. Stone,
the attendant physician, thought that
he would live until tomorrow, and
when the end came quietly at o'clock
this afternoon, only the poets wife and
his daughter Juanita were at his bed
side. The body will be burned on a
funeral pyre of stone which he built
with his own hands Near it are the
grave of his mother, VINO lived to be
more than 80 years old, and tomb of
rock which he erected to the memory
of Moses
Joaquin Miller's life was filled with
picturesque adventure. Born in the
Wabash district, Indiana, on Novem-
Der 10, 1841, he was taken by his par
ents in 1850 to Oregon. In his early
manhood he labored in the California
gold mines, and in 1855 he volunteered
for the filibustering expedition into
Nicaragua led by Walker.
In 1870 he went to the East, and
crossing to England, published in Lon
don his Songs of the Sierras," which
made him there literary lion notwith-
standing the fact that the same poems
had not been well received in this coun-
try. From New York, whittier he soon
returned, he went to Washington and
spent some years there in newspaper
work. Since 1887 he had made his
home in Oakland, although he visited
Alaska in the klondike days and was
while there correspondent Of the New
York Journal.
After all his wanderings he chose
California as the place in which to do
the literary work he had planned, some
of which never reached completion.
"A grander Greece" he called the
State, and said of it '.this is the art
atmosphere of the New World, and we
are its prophets" His habit was to
write in bed until noon. Then he ap-
peared, arrayed like cowboy, in fan
mel shirt, sombrero, high boots and
corduroy trousers
His place, where he entertained
many celebrities. consisted Of about
ten acres over which he scattered a
dozen small houses. One of these he
occupied, one served for his wife and
daughter, third was used as dining
room and others were placed at the
disposal OF visitors. It was his belief
that no two people ought to live under
the same roof
When Yone Noguchi, the japanese
poet, came to live with him he built
little addition to his own cottage and
dedicated to the visitor 1t was his
purpose to make his home, the Heights
refuge for feeble and INDECENT poets,
and all about it he planted with his
own hands thousands of pine and fir
trees, which form huge cross visible
from the valley miles away.
About a year ago the poet was taken
seriously i'll, and his wife, who had
been long separated from him, and his
daughter Juanita, who had been an
art student in New York, came TO help
care for him. He recovered slowly
and for the last two months was able
to walk about unaided One of his last
visitors was Mrs. Langley, an Eng
lishwoman, who went up to his home
and revived his recollections of the
great vogue he had experienced in
London twenty-five years ago.