Blog Posts

1970 Clean Air Act passed, greatly expanding protection began by the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 and the first Clean Air Act of 1963.

1969 National Environmental Policy Act passed and Environmental Protection Agency created. In this, the first major U.S. environmental...

1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill — Oil from Union Oil’s offshore wells fouled beaches in Southern California and aroused public anger against...

1968

June, 1966 Sierra Club published full-page newspaper ads in the New York Times and Washington Post against building a dam that would...

1965 The Sierra Club brought suit to protect New York’s Storm King Mountain from a power project. The case established a precedent,...

1964 The Wilderness Act passed, establishing a process for permanently protecting some lands from development.

1962 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson published. The book alerted the general public to the dangers of pesticides, particularly the dangers...

1955 As a result of public pressure, the federal government dropped plans for a dam in Dinosaur National Monument. Building on the...

1952 David Brower became the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Under his leadership, the Club became America’s foremost...

1949 Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold published posthumously.

October, 1948 An atmospheric inversion in Donora held the town under a cloud of gas from the Donora Zinc Works. Twenty people died....

January, 1945 The Wilderness Society was founded. In the first issue of their magazine Living Wilderness, editor Robert Sterling Yard ...

1916 National Park Service founded with Stephen Mather as President

1915 California legislature authorized $10,000 to start planning and construction of the John Muir Trail

1913 Congress authorized the dam at Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park

March 15, 1910 The amazing Lakeview Gusher started spewing crude oil into the air of the San Joaquin Valley in California. Oil shot into...

1905 California legislature agreed to return Yosemite Valley to federal control

1903 Teddy Roosevelt visited Yosemite with Muir

1901 First Sierra Club outing (to Tuolomne Meadows)