Jesse Emilo
Wil Rivers
229-6319
jremil01@stlawu.edu

Poster Presentation

Bob Marshall arguably influenced wilderness in a positive way more than any other person in history. His effect on wilderness and influence on humans derived from his experiences as a child, and continued to grow as his life progressed. He grew up in NYC, but his family had a camp on Lower Saranac Lake. As a boy he played sports and read the adventures of Lewis and Clark. As he reached his teens, he and his brother George started hiking with their family guide Herb Clark. Bob and George were the first people to climb the 46 Adirondack high peaks. His interest was growing rapidly in the outdoors. He started going on 40-mile hikes, and camping trips for days at a time. After high school, Bob attended Syracuse University where he majored in forestry. After Syracuse, Bob worked for the United States Forest Service. He took breaks from the Forest Service to attend Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities. Bob had once been to Alaska and wanted to return. After all, his boyhood dream was to explore wilderness just like Lewis and Clark. So he returned, and mapped over 15,000 acres of Alaska that had never been explored. Bob Marshall also co-found the Wilderness Society, which is now the backbone wilderness preservation.  Not only was he co-founder, he was the lone reason the Society stayed in business. He left nearly his entire estate to wilderness preservation when he passed away at the early age of 38 from unknown complications.