Bob Marshall
Every year, thousands of hikers, horseback riders, campers, and other outdoor enthusiasts come to northwest Montana to experience a place revered the world over for its lakes, rivers, peaks, and valleys carefully preserved in 1.5 million acres of wilderness. Made up of the Bob Marshall, Scapegoat, and Great Bear Wilderness areas, this almost mythical swath of untouched land is known to many as simply "the Bob," named after the renowned conservationist who carefully laid out plans for it. Bob Marshall never saw the completion of his wilderness area. Yet, his name and strong promotion of wilderness preservation remain a driving force for conservation today.
Born January 12, 1901, Robert Marshall was the third of four children. His activist parents, Louis and Florence Marshall, were most well-known for their support of Jewish civil rights, support that grew to include Catholics, Indians, Japanese, African Americans, and socialists.
Quiet as a child, Marshall developed an endearing sense of humor. He was an avid sports fan and highly imaginative. Young Marshall maintained average grade but read many books besides those required in school. The romanticism of the wilderness appealed to the boy living in the metropolis of New York. He spent much of his time studying the history of the Adirondacks and the Lewis and Clark journals. His first trip to his family's cabin in Saranac Lake Village (known as Knollwood) at six months old began nearly 26 years of summers there. His mother was somewhat old-fashioned in her child-rearing ideals. After she died of cancer when he was 15, Marshall had more liberty to widen his scope of discovery. His shyness slowly faded. He made more forays into the deeper rough country with skilled mountaineers, often friends of his father. Marshall set his sights on attending forestry school early on.
After graduating from Ethical Culture School in 1919 and taking a year at Stanford University, Marshall entered the New York State College of Forestry. Shy and almost painfully withdrawn, he kept near-perfect grades. Eventually this intelligence attracted his classmates. Marshall climbed all of the 42 Adirondack peaks above 4,000 feet in 1921. He was accepted as an honorary member of two forest societies as a junior and the next year, served as class secretary and an editor for the yearbook. Marshall earned the nickname "Pond Seeker" as he inventoried and rated lakes and ponds in the Cranberry Lake Region. After a very successful student career at the Forestry School, Marshall graduated 4th out of his 1924 class of 59 students. He scored the highest in the nation on his civil service test for foresters.
Marshall enjoyed being at the River Forest Equipment Station in Washington after graduation if only to be near an area where Lewis and Clark had traveled. But his relationship with his superior, Leo A. Isaac, was no dream. Reassigned to Richard McArdle, a member of the Forest Service, Marshall's sense of humor made up for his cooking, and he won over many coworkers. But by the end of the summer of 1924, Marshall picked up and headed back East, eyes on a Master of Forestry from Harvard. There, he discovered a correlation between decreased tree growth and election years and started the 46ers Club, a group dedicated to climbing all 46 Adirondack peaks measuring 4,000 feet or more. Years later, on July 15, 1932, Marshall set a record of a different sort by climbing 14 Adirondack peaks within 19 hours, a feat that required a total ascent of 13,600 feet.
Degree in hand, Marshall left Harvard in 1925 for the Northern Rocky Mountain Forest Experiment Station in Montana to research after-fire forest reproduction. Well-liked and respected, he was involved in almost every aspect of running the station, including preparing meals and organizing transportation. But after mission four months of work due to a bad stomach ulcer, he was told he needed more practical field experience before pursuing a doctorate degree. Marshall ended up at the Priest River branch of the Station where the food was healthier and the atmosphere proved helpful. After three years' more experience–ranging from how to play dead when chased by a grizzly bear to writing on the technical activity of plants to documenting the actions, conversations, profanity, and eating habits of loggers–Marshall headed east again, this time for John Hopkins University.
Working arduously toward his Ph.D. from 1928 to 1930, Marshall managed not only to attain his degree but also stay connected to the outdoors and write one of his most important articles. "The Problem of the Wilderness," published by Scientific Monthly in February 1930, stated that the wilderness was one of the most beautiful places available to the people–a strong group of citizens should unite to preserve it. Five years later, near the proposed Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, Marshall and four colleagues would set in motion the creation of such a group. The Wilderness Society, still in operation today, ultimately owes its founding to Marshall and eight others.
But in 1931, with the article that spawned The Wilderness Society out in the world, Marshall explored the Alaskan wilderness for over a year. He befriended many Koyukuk townspeople in Wiseman, Alaska and used these relationships as the basis for his book Arctic Village. It was hard for Marshall to leave the serenity of the arctic. But back to Baltimore Bob went. The publication of Arctic Village brought Marshall a then-tidy sum of $3,600. He sent half the profits to the Koyukuk natives and reserved money for their future generations.
The availability of information on the effects of deforestation in 1931 angered Marshall. It was deplorable, unacceptable. And so, after writing a series of letters to open the eyes of the public, he wrote a book on the need for forest reform, which catapulted him into the position of Federal Head of the Division of Forestry and Grazing in 1933. A long bout of illness kept Marshall laid up for months before assuming the new position. Illness bothered Marshall sporadically his entire life. This latest round included hepatitis. Sickness couldn't keep Marshall from his work for long, however, and he held the position of Head of Forestry and Grazing as well as Directory of the Indian Forest Service simultaneously. Perhaps this work ethic contributed to the single life he led.
Marshall saw how the customs and freedoms of Native Americans had been stripped away and, as Director of the Indian Forest Service, fought continuously to assure the Native Americans a level of equality all Americans should enjoy. He stressed the spiritual and aesthetic values of wilderness for all people. Many of the 1935-1937 administration's concessions were a result of Marshall's virulent fight to aid the Native Americans during the most delicate years of the struggle. His vision for the recreation areas of national parks included every race, sex, religion, and creed. Marshall even proposed subsidized travel, so families with less expendable income could experience the beauty of the wilderness.
Marshall's wilderness ideals refined from 1933 to 1937. Even more of a driving force behind the wilderness movement, he wrote numerous articles and associated with some of the most respected wilderness figures of his time. Yet, not everyone agreed with him, and the constant tension may have caught up to him all at once. His hospitalization in 1937 was never truly resolved; doctors proposed either sun stroke or food poisoning. Letters he wrote are said to be blunt and rude during this time, a rough one for Marshall. His love interest, Georgia Engelhard, refused his offer of marriage. Resorts sprung up where he'd tried to keep the wilderness pristine and open to visitors for years to come. To Marshall, they represented a plethora of problems: not only were they a potential hazard to the environment, they directly conflicted with his civil rights views by banning minorities.
Perhaps all this contributed to his 1938 return to Alaska. This trip was pivotal for Marshall, and the people of the area grew to appreciate him even more–many of northern Alaska's natural beauties bear Marshall's name. This year before his death, Marshall traveled throughout the West, especially Washington and Alaska. His prominence in the Forest Service grew rapidly. Friendships he'd fostered while climbing through the ranks of the Forest Service helped propel the Wilderness Act forward, though its passage into law wouldn't occur until 1964, years after his death. His friendships with men like Aldo Leopold, Benton MacKaye, and Harvey Broome set a strong foundation for the Wilderness Society, and his work protected thousands of acres of wild lands. This shy young man had grown into one of the most powerful conservation forces in his time. His death came as a shock to those who knew him. How could Marshall, a fighter, meet such an early demise?
On November 11, 1939 while on an overnight ride from Washington D.C. to New York, Marshall died at age 39. The official cause was thought to be myelogenous leukemia and coronary arteriosclerosis–heart failure. Marshall, independently wealthy, left part of his large estate to The Wilderness Society.
His service to the environment will be treasured for years to come in the form of "the Bob" and through his contributions to education and civil rights. Some of Marshall's most famous words are prophetic: "As society becomes more and more mechanized, it will be more and more difficult for many people to stand the nervous strain, the high pressure, and the drabness of their lives. To escape these abominations, constantly growing numbers will seek the primitive for the finest features of life." Marshall saw the world's speedy evolution and, though his own life was short, understood the value of long-lasting preservation.
Books
The People's Forests (1933)
Arctic Village (1933)
Arctic Wilderness (1956)
Quotes
"I love the woods and solitude. I should hate to spend the greater part of my lifetime in a stuffy office or in a crowded city."
"For me, and for thousands with similar inclinations, the most important passion of life is the overpowering desire to escape periodically from the clutches of a mechanistic civilization. To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness."
"Swift or smooth, broad as the Hudson or narrow enough to scrape your gunwales, every river is a world of its own, unique in pattern and personality. Each mile on a river will take you further from home than a hundred miles on a road."
"The preservation of a few samples of undeveloped territory is one of the most clamant issues before us today. Just a few more years of hesitation and the only trace of that wilderness which has exerted such a fundamental influence in molding American character will lie in the musty pages of pioneer books ... To avoid this catastrophe demands immediate action."
"It seems distinctly an understatement to hold that each all-day visitor to the forest derives as much pleasure form it as he would derive from a 2-hour motion-picture show. I have estimated that in the United States approximately 250 million man-days a year are devoted to forest recreation. If the admission price to a movie averages 25 cents, this gives the annual American forest recreation a value of $62,500,000. This is the minimum that people probably would pay for the privilege of using the forest if the price were asked. The incidental fact that people have to pay for admission to the movies and do not usually have to pay for admission to the forests does not mean that the outdoor recreation is any less valuable."
"Although huge sums of money are involved in any basis of calculation, the most important values of forest recreation are not susceptible of measurement in monetary terms. They are concerned with such intangible considerations as inspiration, aesthetic enjoyment, and a gain in understanding."
"Finally, there are those whose chief purpose in visiting the forests is simply an escape from civilization. These people want to rest from the endless chain of mechanization and artificiality which bounds their lives. In the forest they temporarily abandon a routine to which they cannot become wholly reconciled, and return to that nature in which hundreds of generations of their ancestors were reared."
"Any one who has stood upon a lofty summit and gazed over an inchoate tangle of deep canyons and cragged mountains, of sunlit lakelets and black expanses of forest, has become aware of a certain giddy sensation that there are no distances, no measures, simply unrelated matter rising and falling without any analogy to the banal geometry of breadth, thickness, and height."
"A third peculiarity about the forest is that it exhibits a dynamic beauty. A Beethoven symphony or a poem of Shelley, a landscape by Corot or a Gothic cathedral, once it is finished becomes virtually static. But the wilderness is in constant flux. A seed germinates, and a stunted seedling battles for decades against the dense shade of the virgin forest. Then some ancient tree blows down and the long-suppressed plant suddenly enters into the full vigor of delayed youth, grows rapidly from sapling to maturity, declines into the conky senility of many centuries, dropping millions of seeds to start a new forest upon the rotting debris of its own ancestors, and eventually topples over to admit the sunlight which ripens another woodland generation."
References
Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation.
Glover, James M. (1986). A Wilderness Original: The Life of Bob Marshall. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers.
The Wilderness Society
Wilmking, M. and Ibendorf, J. (2004). An Early Tree-Line Experiment by a Wilderness Advocate: Bob Marshall's Legacy in the Brooks Range, Alaska. Arctic. 57(1), 106-113.