Margaret Murie
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Margaret "Mardy" Thomas Murie (August 18, 1902 – October 19, 2003) was the enabling force behind the passage of the Wilderness Act in the United States and the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She was known as the "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement".
Mardy Murie was born in Seattle, Washington in 1902 and then moved to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1911. Murie was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska in 1924.
Mardy met her husband, U.S. Biological Survey field biologist Olaus Murie, in 1921. They were married in Anvik, Alaska in August of 1924, and then embarked on a honeymoon on Alaska's Koyukuk River and a dogsled trip through the Brooks Range. In 1926, Mardy took a trip up the Old Crow River with her husband and toddler child Martin. This was an epic adventure that had Olaus Murie and a companion poling and frogging their boat up river for 250 miles after their motor broke down. The populations of waterfowl they searched for were never found.
Mardy and Olaus moved to Jackson, Wyoming in 1927 and raised three children there. In 1946 they purchased the STS dude ranch in Moose, Wyoming and set up housekeeping in a cabin built by the Nelson Brothers in 1937. Mardy lived in that cabin until her death in 2003.
Due to the efforts of the Muries (as leaders of the Wilderness Society), the U.S. Government protected the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1960. The Murie Sheenjek Expedition of 1956 was an important event in the initial moves to establish the Refuge. Mardy Murie also worked with others to hatch the idea of the Wilderness Act, which was passed by the United States Congress in 1964. The Wilderness Act protected millions of acres of wilderness across the country. She was also instrumental in the Passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Act of 1980.
Bill Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mardy Murie in 1998, for her work in protecting wilderness areas.
Mardy Murie was also an author, who wrote about her Alaska and Wyoming adventures in books such as Two in the Far North and Wapiti Wilderness. The film Arctic Dance chronicles her extraordinary life.
Mardy Murie died in her log cabin on October 19, 2003.
