Bob Marshall (wilderness activist)

Bob Marshall (wilderness activist)

Robert Marshall was an American forester, writer and wilderness activist. He spearheaded the 1935 founding of the Wilderness Society in the United States. He died of heart failure at the age of 38 in 1939. Several areas and landmarks, including The Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and Mount Marshall in the Adirondacks, are named in his honor.

About Bob Marshall (wilderness activist) in brief

Summary Bob Marshall (wilderness activist)Robert Marshall was an American forester, writer and wilderness activist. He is best remembered as the person who spearheaded the 1935 founding of the Wilderness Society in the United States. Marshall became independently wealthy after the death of his father in 1929. He died of heart failure at the age of 38 in 1939. Several areas and landmarks, including The Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and Mount Marshall in the Adirondacks, have been named in his honor. The Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964 and protected some nine million acres of federal land from development, road building and motorized transportation. Today, Marshall is considered largely responsible for the wilderness preservation movement. He also supported socialism and civil liberties throughout his life. His father, Louis Marshall, was a noted wealthy constitutional lawyer, conservationist, and a champion of minority rights. His mother, Florence Marshall, devoted herself to her family, the education of young Jewish women, and the work of several Jewish welfare organizations. The family moved to Syracuse, New York, where Louis Marshall was active in the Jewish community. He was part of a national delegation that sought federal intervention on behalf of persecuted Russian Jews. In 1915, Marshall climbed the 3,352-foot Ampersand Mountain, alongside his brother George and friend Herb Clark, a boating guide and guide. The two brothers learned the arts of boating and boating through the post-Civil War Saranac Lake in New York State. In the 1930s, Marshall wrote a series of books about the woods, which he illustrated with photographs and filled with statistics.

In 1935, he was one of the principal founders of The Wilderness Society and personally provided most of the Society’s funding in its first years. In 1936, he helped gain passage of the wilderness Act of 1964, which legally defined wilderness areas of the U.S. and protected 9 million acres of federal lands from development and road building. In 1939, Marshall died ofHeart failure at age 38. He had started his outdoor career in 1925 as forester with the Forest Service. He later held two significant public appointed posts: chief of forestry in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from 1933 to 1937, and head of recreation management in the Forest Service, from 1937 to 1939, both during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His younger brother George later described the family’s visits to Knollwood, their summer camp on Lower SaranAC Lake in theAdirondack State Park, as a time when they “entered a world of freedom and informality, of living plants and spaces, of fresh greens and blue blues, of giant, slender pines and delicate pink twin deer, and tramps of boats and trampers” He was drawn to the outdoors as a young child; two of his childhood heroes were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who explored the Louisiana Purchase in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. After that, Marshall returned often on his own. He wrote numerous articles and books about his travels, including Arctic Village.