Bob Marshall (wilderness Activist) - Later Efforts and Sudden Death

Later Efforts and Sudden Death

Marshall's last years were productive ones. By May 1937, he had taken charge of the Forest Service's Division of Recreation and Lands. Over the next two years, Marshall worked on two major initiatives: an effort to extend national forest recreational opportunities to people with lower incomes (as well as dismantling discriminatory barriers against minority groups), and a program to preserve more wilderness within the national forests. His biographer James Glover asserts that Marshall was probably the first high-level official to seriously fight discrimination in Forest Service recreational policies. During this time, Marshall continued to financially support The Wilderness Society, as well as various civil rights, labor, and socialist organizations.

During his last trip to Alaska (beginning in August 1938), which included further exploration of the Brooks Range, Marshall became a subject of interest for the Dies Committee, a House of Representatives committee investigating "un-American" activities. Named for its chairman, Martin Dies, the committee announced in The New York Times that eight federal officials (including Marshall) were contributing to communism because of their connections to such organizations as the Workers Alliance and the American League for Peace and Democracy. Marshall was too busy traveling to respond to the allegations: after leaving Alaska he spent time in Washington State, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and California. He visited Alaska for one last time the following year and made a tour of western national forests, addressing aspects of forest recreation. While he was in Washington state that September, two regulations (U-1 and U2) developed by Marshall's committee were signed; these "U-Regulations" protected wilderness and wild areas from road building, logging, hotels and similarly destructive activities. It also made their protected status more secure.

While on a midnight train from Washington, D.C. to New York City on November 11, 1939, Marshall died of apparent heart failure at the age of 38. His sudden death came as a shock because of his relatively young age and high level of physical activity, and he was greatly mourned by friends and relatives. His brother George said: "Bob's death shattered me and was the most traumatic event in my life." Marshall was interred at Salem Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn, beside his parents and sister Ruth.