Ynés Mexía

Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía, born on May 24, 1870 in Washington, D.C. Her father, Enrique Mexía, was a Mexican diplomat and her mother, Sarah R. Wilmer, born to a wealthy Baltimore family. 

[Image courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library]

The Yellowstone Act of 1872 initiated the creation of national parks and the idea that the federal government should set aside land for preservation and public use.

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

After her parents separated, Mexía, her sister, and their mother moved to Philadelphia. She attended different boarding schools in Toronto, Canada, and Emmitsburg, Maryland. Mexía had a very lonely childhood and being separated from her family isolated her even more. 

[Image courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library] 

After Mexía finished school, she received a letter from her father asking her to move to Mexico to help him care for his ranch in Tacubaya. While she had plans to enter a convent to become a nun, she was excited to be close to her father again, and moved  to Mexico, where she learned to manage his businesses. 

[Image courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library] 

John Muir, naturalist, conservationist, writer, and botanist, founded the Sierra Club on May 28, 1892. One of the first environmental conservation groups, it focused on preserving the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, including Yosemite National Park. 

[Image courtesy of National Parks Service]

After her father’s death, Mexía inherited his ranch and continued to manage it. 

[Image Courtesy of Library of Congress]

Mexía married Herman Laue, but he died after six years of marriage.

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Mexía married Augustin de Reygadas and they ran the Tacubaya ranch together. Mexía quickly became unhappy in her second marriage, which ended up taking a toll on her health and wellbeing.  

[Image courtesy of the California Historical Society, University of Southern California Libraries]

After suffering a mental and physical breakdown, her physician advised her to move to California to consult with Dr. Phillip King Brown, a highly respected psychiatrist and physician specializing in women’s health. Brown founded the Arequipa Sanatorium in Marin County, a space where patients would learn how to cure themselves by being in nature and practicing occupational therapy. 

[Image Courtesy of Pacific Coast Architecture Database]

Following the Yellowstone Act, other national parks were established, including Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Park. Each of these California parks were managed independently, and some were better managed than others due to limited funding and staff. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service, to integrate the management of U.S. parks under one agency. 

[Image courtesy of John Muir and the Sierra Club]

In 1917, Mexía joined the Sierra Club, where she participated in outings and hikes in Yosemite Park, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the Montgomery Woods, and became particularly interested in the plants and trees in these locations.  

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

The Gold Rush and migration towards the West created a high demand for timber. As technology improved, it became easier and cheaper to cut down  redwood trees, leading to large scale logging and the privatization of redwood forests by lumber companies. By the 1910s, deforestation of the redwoods became a big concern, inspiring a movement to save the redwoods. In 1918, the Save the Redwoods League was founded, dedicated to fundraising to purchase redwood groves for preservation. Between 1920 and 1928, the League purchased the groves that would later form the Redwood National Park. 

[Learn more about the redwoods at Save the Redwoods League Timeline.]  

In 1918, Mexía visited Montgomery Grove, where she was captivated by the redwood trees. She wrote to the organization, “I am heartily in sympathy with any effort to save these trees, and wish to inquire whether it is only trees in Humboldt County which are under consideration (to be saved) or groups throughout the State.” 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

At age 51, Mexía enrolled at University of California, Berkeley. Mexía participated in a university expedition led by Dr. E.D. Furlong, curator of paleontology, who introduced her to botany. After the trip, Mexía enrolled in botany classes, for the study of plants, including their properties and biochemical processes (Britannica). Botany consists of  collecting and classifying plants. In some cases, plants need to be dissected in order to classify them, which requires plants to be pressed and dried in the field. 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

After having the opportunity to collect plants in Mexico, Mexía decided to take additional courses at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. There she met prominent botanist, Alice Eastwood, who became her mentor and long-term friend. 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Mexía was born in Washington, D.C,, but she had given up her U.S. citizenship after moving and working in Mexico and marrying twice to Mexican citizens. 

[Image courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library]

In 1925, Mexía took a course on flowering plants at the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California, where she met Roxanna Stinchfield Ferris, Assistant Curator at Dudley Herbarium at Stanford University. Ferris and her husband were going on a collecting trip to Sinaloa and invited Mexía. Mexia in turn requested funding from Alice Eastwood to collect for the Academy of Sciences. Eastwood agreed to pay Mexía on a per specimen basis. 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

In 1926, Mexía obtained funds from herbariums and natural history institutes across the U.S.,  for her first solo collecting trip to Mexico. She traveled to Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, and into the Sierra Madre. On this trip, Mexía collected a total of 33,000 specimens.  

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Soon after her trip to Mexico, Mexia gained recognition as a collector, and the British Museum of Natural History funded her trip to Alaska’s Mt. McKinley National Park (now Denali National Park and Preserve). The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia also requested duplicates of her collection. On this trip, Mexía collected 6,100 specimens.  

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Mexía traveled to Chihuahua, Puebla, and Hidalgo where she collected 5,000 specimens.

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Mexía traveled to Brazil, where she started her expedition in Rio de Janeiro, then Vicosa, Diamantina, the state of Minas Geraes, traveling up the Amazon River and other river tributaries in the states of Para and Amazonas. Mexía then traveled to Peru, towards the upper Amazon and Santiago river valleys. She collected 65,000 specimens. After her trip to the Amazon, Mexía’s fame as a botanical collector spread. In San Francisco, she was often invited to give public talks about her trips, collection, and explorations. 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Mexía traveled to Ecuador where she collected 5,000 specimens of plants in the coastal plains and eastern Amazonian slope of the Andes, the northern highlands, and Colombia border. 

[Image courtesy of the C. V. Starr Virtual Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden]

Mexía started an expedition in Peru, where she travelled to Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and Cerro del Pasco. She then moved to southern Chile, including the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego. Mexía then traveled to Tucuman and Mendoza in Argentina. She ended in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. On this trip, she collected 13,000 specimens. 

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences] 

Mexía travelled to Southwestern Mexico including Oaxaca and Guerrero. Feeling ill by the end of April, she consulted a doctor in Mexico who recommended she return to the U.S. She cut her expedition short, having collected 13,000 specimens.

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

Within two weeks of her diagnosis, Mexía died of lung cancer. She included the Sierra Club and Save the Redwoods League in her will. Throughout her career as a botanist, she collected approximately 140,000 to 150,000 specimens, including over 500 new species of plants.  

[Image courtesy of California Academy of Sciences]

The Save the Redwoods League established the Ynes Mexia Memorial Grove at Montgomery Woods State Reserve in Mendocino County, California.