Bob Marshall (wilderness Activist) - Forest Service and Alaska

Forest Service and Alaska

Marshall was intrigued by the idea of the Alaskan wilderness, but the Forest Service—where he worked from 1925 to 1928—was unable to accommodate his request for an immediate position there. Instead he was assigned to the Northern Rocky Mountain Experiment Station at Missoula, Montana in 1925. Marshall's research at the Experimental Station focused on the dynamics of forest regeneration after fires, but he was faced with the task of fighting an actual fire after a July storm started more than 150 fires in Idaho's Kaniksu National Forest. He was put in charge of supporting and provisioning one of the organized crews led by the Forest Service. As he later recalled, Marshall worked "18 to 20 hours a day as time-keeper, Chief of Commissary, Camp Boss, and Inspector of the fire line". Spending time with loggers and fire fighters, as well as witnessing the conditions under which they worked, Marshall learned vital lessons about labor issues and natural resource use. It was while at the Experimental Station that Marshall became interested in the unsafe conditions for many working Americans, and this was the origin of his liberal and socialist philosophies.

In 1929, Marshall was 28 years old and less than a year away from completing a PhD in plant pathology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland when he made his first trip to Alaska, visiting the upper Koyukuk River and the central Brooks Range. The scientific objective of the trip was to study tree growth at the northern timberline near the Arctic Divide. For his 15-month sojourn in the small town of Wiseman, Alaska, Marshall rented a one-room cabin next to the only roadhouse in the village and furnished it with books, records, a phonograph player, and a writing desk. He placed the desk so that he could sit by the cabin's single window and admire the view of the Koyukuk River and the range of steep, snow-covered mountains in the background. His travels engendered in him a great love for the central Brooks Range in the Alaskan wilderness. Marshall was one of the first to explore much of the range, especially the headwaters of the North fork of the Koyukuk River, where he bestowed the name "Gates of the Arctic" on a pair of mountains. On September 11, 1929, Marshall's father Louis died in Zürich, Switzerland at the age of 73. Because their mother had died of cancer in 1916, the four children inherited most of their father's estate, worth several million dollars. Although he became financially independent, Bob Marshall continued to work throughout his life.

Marshall received his PhD in 1930, under the supervision of Dr. Burton E. Livingston at the Johns Hopkins Laboratory of Plant Physiology. Marshall's doctoral dissertation was titled "An Experimental Study of the Water Relations of Seedling Conifers with Special Reference to Wilting". In February 1930, his essay "The Problem of the Wilderness" was published; a celebrated defense of wilderness preservation, the essay expanded themes developed in his earlier article, "The Wilderness as a Minority Right". Though rejected by four other magazines before it was published in The Scientific Monthly, the essay has became one of Marshall's most important works. He argued that wilderness was worth saving not only because of its unique aesthetic qualities, but because of its ability to provide visitors with a chance for adventure. Marshall went on to state: "There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness." The article became a much-quoted call to action and is today considered seminal by wilderness historians.

In July 1930, Marshall and his brother George climbed nine Adirondack High Peaks in one day, setting a new record. In August, Marshall returned to Alaska. He planned to explore the Brooks Range to pursue more tree research, and he also wanted to make a study of Arctic frontier civilization in Wiseman. He called the village, which was 200 miles north of Fairbanks, "the happiest civilization of which I have knowledge." Befriending a number of the area's inhabitants, he meticulously recorded thousands of hours of conversation with them. He persuaded a number of villagers, most of whom were single males, to take intelligence tests, and even developed statistics on all aspects of the villagers' lives, from their financial resources to their diets to their sexual habits. He spent 12-1/2 months—from late August 1930 to early September 1931—exploring and collecting data. The book that resulted from these excursions (and his previous trip to Alaska) was 1933's best-selling Literary Guild selection, Arctic Village. It was hailed as an important work of sociology because of its focus on lifestyle in the wilderness. Marshall shared the royalties from the book with the residents of Wiseman.