The Sierra Club and John Muir’s relationship with the Pacific Northwest (PNW) is longstanding. Muir (1838 – 1914) founded the Sierra Club and was America’s pioneer conservationist and outspoken advocate for the protection of forests, parks and wilderness. His interest in the forests and glaciers of the PNW Cascades began in 1879 with a brief stopover in Port Townsend on his way to Alaska. Upon his return, he gave three public lectures in Portland. Speaking to standing room only crowds about his Alaskan trip, he “talked of the youth of the world, the present morning of creation and the beginning of the work of the infinite.”
Muir returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1888, visiting the Puget Sound region, Snoqualmie Falls, climbed Mt. Rainer and then visited the Columbia Gorge, Multnomah Falls and Crater Lake. Essays about this trip can be found in his book “Steep Trails.” Mount Rainier was described as having the “richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral Elysium. However, he also noted the destruction occurring in the woods when he wrote that “the observer coming up the [Puget] Sound sees not nor hears anything of this fierce storm of steel that is devouring the forests” and recommended that in the Cascades “a park of moderate extent might be set apart and protected for public use forever.”
The Sierra Club entered Oregon’s forest wars in 1896, when the Oregon Congressional delegation tried to reduce the Cascade Forest Reserve. The Cascade Reserve (about four million acres) was established in 1893 along the crest of the Cascades from the Columbia River to Crater Lake. To defend it, the Sierra Club resolved to “unalterably” oppose the reduction of the Cascade Reserve or “any forest reservation.” This successful campaign protected what today remains the core of the national forest and wilderness areas in the Cascades and wilderness protection remains the Club’s central priority since that time. The Club and Muir were also instrumental in redesignating the Pacific Forest Reserve to establish Mount Rainier National Park between 1894 and 1899. Muir wrote “the icy dome needs none of man’s care, but unless the reserve is guarded, the flower bloom will soon be killed, and nothing of the forests will be left but black stump monuments.”
The Sierra Club began to grow in the Pacific Northwest after WWII. In 1953, twenty (20) of the Club’s eighty-seven (87) members in Oregon and Washington met at Patrick Goldsworthy’s home in Seattle to discuss the possibility of establishing a chapter. By September of 1954, the original PNW Chapter was established for Oregon and Washington with just 133 members. Soon it was expanded to cover Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia and Alberta Canada. Club members and leaders were centered in the Puget Sound and in Eugene Oregon areas. These two clusters of leaders focused on the protection of the Cascade’s wilderness and forests. In Seattle, Club leaders like Patrick Goldsworthy and John and Polly Dyer were instrumental in the establishment of the North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC) in 1957. Their sole focus was to protect the North Cascades wilderness. In Eugene, the faculty at the University of Oregon included many club leaders such as Karl and Ruth Onthank, Dick and Wynn Noyes and Sandy and Bert Tepfer who organized and established the Friends of the Three Sisters Wilderness to protect this Cascade region in 1954.
The Club’s first NW office was opened in Eugene in 1961 and staffed by Michael McCloskey (a recent graduate of the UO law school and Oregon native). Mike later became the Club’s overall conservation and executive director in San Francisco. The Eugene (now Many Rivers) Group formed in 1962 and was the first in either Oregon or Washington. The NW office moved to Seattle in 1967. There, Brock Evans took over and guided and motivated local conservation leaders in the seminal campaigns to establish the North Cascades National Park, block an open-pit copper mine on Miners Ridge in the Glacier Peak Wilderness and to Save French Pete and restore it to the Three Sisters Wilderness Area. Brock also helped to establish the Chapter’s Puget Sound/Seattle group in 1967 as well as the Washington and Oregon Environmental Councils shortly thereafter. The Portland area’s Columbia Group was started in 1968 followed by the Klamath Group in 1969, Mary’s Peak (Corvallis) and Mt. Jefferson (Salem) groups in 1971 and the Rogue group in Southern Oregon by 1972.
The PNW Chapter continued to grow and by 1974 had about 4000 members. It then established Oregon and Washington Councils to coordinate work in each state and prepare for the establishment of statewide Chapters. The Oregon and Washington Chapters were established in 1978. They have been a leader in a variety of local, state and national environmental issues. Since the mid 70’s, the key issues were establishing the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area to protect it from more dams, the “Dump Watt” petition campaign, blocking a pumice mine at Rock Mesa in the Three Sisters Wilderness, passing the 1984 Oregon and Washington Wilderness Acts, protecting the Columbia Gorge, establishing Chapter Political Action Committees (PAC) to endorse candidates for federal, state and local offices and an ongoing lobbying presence in Olympia and Salem. But wilderness and forestlands were always the two Chapter’s prime concern.
The early Club members in the PNW would be and are proud of the two Chapters’ continuing efforts to keep up the fight. It is just one more example of what our founder John Muir said in 1895 that “the battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is part of the eternal battle between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it.” He went on to say prophetically – “I trust, however, that our Club will not weary in this forest well-doing.”
From the small group of activists in Eugene and Seattle, the Sierra Club in the PNW has never wearied in this fight. Their continued enthusiasm and strength that they bring to the conservation “battle” is an inspiration. The Club’s PNW Chapters history is not found in books or newsletters but rather in the wilderness that remains and a cleaner environment equally available to all.
Ron Eber – Historian, Oregon Chapter (Chapter ExCom, Chair and Wilderness Coordinator 1978-1985)