[1] The glacier is named after Scottish-born naturalist John Muir,[1] who traveled around the area and wrote about it, generating interest in the local environment and in its preservation.

Later, he collected and edited these installments in a book, Travels in Alaska, published in 1915, the year after he died.

[2] In 1794, the explorer Captain George Vancouver found that most of Glacier Bay was covered by an enormous ice sheet, some 1,200 meters (3,900 ft) in places.

Ocean water has filled the valley replacing the ice and creating Muir Inlet.

By 2004, the Muir Glacier had retreated further inland, and its terminus was no longer visible in the photograph.