Name: Doug Harnsberger
Location: Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Contribution: Club member, architect and architectural historian, author of report nominating John Muir Memorial Shelter in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to the National Register of Historic Places

What is the Muir Shelter? It's an octagonal granite structure at 11,975-foot elevation in Muir Pass, built by the Sierra Club in 1930 under the leadership of then-director Will Colby [founder of the Club's High Trips] to commemorate John Muir. It was designed by Henry Gutterson, a prominent Berkeley architect, in the tradition of the trulli of southern Italy. It's well above treeline in a forbidding moonscape of rock. Inside, you look up and see finely arranged corbeled stonework rising to the top of the cone-shaped roof. It's beautifully crafted and intended to survive the ages. 

How did you find out about it? I wandered up to the hut two years ago while hiking the John Muir Trail with my kids and struck up a conversation with two rangers doing restoration work. They told me the hut had never been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. Efforts to do so had stalled in the 1980s. So I went to work.

What does a nomination entail? You need documentation of all [the site's] important connections and relationships, why it's unusual, and why we should care about it. In this case, those questions are easy to answer. It was built to honor John Muir, and funded by George Frederick Schwarz, a Sierra Clubber and career employee of the Forest Service. The Club dedicated the shelter in 1933.

What are the chances it will be accepted? There is very little chance it won't be accepted. There are so many associations to the history of the Sierra Club, the John Muir Trail, and John Muir himself. We hope to have a dedication sometime in 2015. 

Does a National Register listing offer additional protection? It's an honorific—recognition by the National Park Service—that brings no special funding. But structures listed on the National Register get first priority in the Park Service budget. In 1982 there was discussion of tearing down the hut because the roof was leaking and marmots were invading the interior. The park plugged the chimney with stone and mortar, which as a preservation architect I don't agree with. It's easy to keep ground animals out with a steel screen, which allows the structure to breathe.

Can anyone go to the hut? It's always open as an emergency shelter for hikers caught in storms, but overnight camping and fires aren't allowed. 

You're based outside Philadelphia. What are your ties to the Sierra Nevada? I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied architecture at UC Berkeley. The grandeur of the Sierra and my experiences being in the mountains is something I hold dearly.