Margaret Murie

Memoirist

Birthday August 18, 1902

Birth Sign Leo

Birthplace Seattle, WA

DEATH DATE Oct 19, 2003 (101)

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About

Known as the Grandmother of the Conservation Movement, she helped pass the Wilderness Act and create the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She published a 1962 memoir, Two in the Far North, and was the subject of a documentary film called Arctic Dance.

Before Fame

She started campaigning to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1956, recruiting a supreme court justice to persuade President Eisenhower to close the land off to development.

Trivia

She received both the Audubon Medal and the John Muir Award.

Family Life

She was born in Seattle, Washington and moved with her family to Alaska at the age of five. she married Olaus Murie, a fellow naturalist and conservationist.

Associated With

She spent her honeymoon studying caribou with her husband on the Koyukuk River in Alaska. This same river inspired John Denver's ballad, A Song for All Over.