Gon at University Es an Index to The

INDEX TO THE SIERRA CLUB BUL IN "" -'19% VOLUMES 35-61 i Y. t COMPILED BY ED B. BRA GON AT UNIVERSITY ES AN INDEX TO THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN 1950-1976 Volumes 35-61 Compiled by Edward Brooks Brazee Bibliographic Series Number 16 Corvallis Oregon State University Press 1978 CONTENTS Foreword ..............................v Preface ..............................ix Abbreviations .........................x Authors ...............................1 Subjects .............................15 Book and Journal Reviews .............39 iii FOREWORD David Brower, writing a prefatory note to the Sierra Club Bulletin Index, hoped "an editor fifty-seven years hence" would be as fortunate as he.That was in 1952...for an index which covered from volume 1, 1893, through volume 34, 1949, compiled by two differentpersons (working separately and unknown to each other, as it turned out!).Now, 26 years later (not fifty-seven) Ed Brazee, a reference librarian at Oregon State University, accomplished a more difficult task alone in compilingthis index to the years 1950-1976. A dynamic 26 years,this,during which the environmental movement and the Club moved from swaddling clothes to the maturity of Earth Day, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the FirstWorld Conference on the Human Environment inStockholm. The earlier indexers had to en- compass 7,000 pages of text and 1,700plates. Brazee, with less than half the span of years to index, scanned 7,800 pages, including at least 2,500photographs,cartoons, graphs, and maps. The number of pages does not begin to tell thestory,however.Far more significant was the changing nature of the Club itself and the greater complexity of the conservation issues to which the elected Board and membership directed their attention in the Fifties and Sixties. Take the growth in membership, for example. In 1950 the Club had 6,772 members, 96% of whom lived in the Golden State. The Club was overwhelmingly a California-based organization, often parochial in its outlook, although its membership had increased 37 times over the 183 charter members of 1892. By the end of September 1976,however,165,248 members were enrolled, more than half out- side California, including 2,351 in foreign countries. In 1950 there were seven chapters, all in California; by 1976 there were 49 chapters (only 12/ in California) and more than 250 local groups.Parochialism was dead! Since 1901 the Club has conducted wilderness outings for its members, another example of change. Twelve mountain trips were listed in the 1950 outings announcement--three high trips, two base camps, four burro packs, one saddle trip, and two knapsack excursions--all but one in Cali- fornia's Sierra Nevada range. Eight hundred persons were to be accommodated on the 1950 trips. By the time of the 1976 announcement, outings had expanded to 283 total trips of at least 18 various types, including 7 in Alaska, 5 in Hawaii, 23 in foreign countries, 25 in the spring months, 27 as service projects such as trail maintenance and litter clean-up, and 18 as"educational"outings, some of which were available for college credit. Of these 283 outings, only 86 (30%) were in California. More than 5,000 members were introduced to wild and scenic lands in 1976. The 26 years between 1950 and 1976 are marked by great stress and strain as the Club struggled to divest itself of a purely Californiaimage. (The first non-California chapter was established late in 1950 on the Atlantic coast.) In these years an Executive Director was hired and fired; staff grew from a few volunteers to over 100 paid employeesin a dozenoffices around the country; the budget rose from $42 thousand to over $6 million. But it is in the volume and growing complexity of conservation issues, the intensity of the environmental campaigns, that the major story of change unfolds as reflected in the Bulletin and the official minutes of the Board of Directors. Change came swiftly in the 1950s when the Bureau of Reclamation submitted detailed plans for water storage in the Upper Colorado Basin. Included was a major dam at Echo Park -- deep in the heart of Dinosaur National Monument. Was this to be another Hetch Hetchy? The Club decided that protecting the integrity of the National Park System was paramount and launched an all-out battle to defeat this dam. David Brower was hired as the first full-time Executive Director in December 1952, and following the announcement by Douglas McKay, Secretary of the Interior, that he would recommend the building of the Echo Park dam, the Club not only published a book on Dinosaur by the talented Stanford English ProfessorWallace Stegnerbut produced two color films, Wilderness River Trail and Two Yosemites, to publicize the park values and apply the lessons of Hetch Hetchy to Dinosaur. v When the Dinosaur controversy concluded in 1956 with victory for the Club and its allies, no longer could the Club be called parochial or strictly California-based.By this time a second non- California chapter had been created in the Pacific Northwest and by the end of the decade a third was formed around the GreatLakes. Membership sharply escalated after 1954, doubtless accelerated by the nation-wide publicity for this and other successes, spiraling to 15,000 in 1960 and shooting upward to 113,000 in 1970, a 653% increase in ten years. While Dinosaur was the most dramatic and certainly for the future of the Club the most significant campaign of the Fifties, many other conservation battles crowded the Club agenda -- tramway proposals at Mt. San Jacinto and Yosemite; the severance of 56,000 forested acres from the Three Sisters Primitive Area in Oregon; proposals for new dams in the Grand Canyon; a road construction program in the national forests which threatened to wipe out millions of acres of defacto wilderness; ten long years of hard campaigning to final victory for the Wilderness Actof 1964; environmental destruction of over-engineered scenic highways in national parks, particularly the Tioga in Yosemite and the proposed cross-park road in the GreatSmokies. By September 1963 the Board of Directors realized that the Club would have to setconservation priorities if it was not to waste its limited resources. Five were selected: saving the Grand Canyon, establishing a Redwoods National Park, preserving the North Cascades, implementing the Wilderness Act, and rounding out the National Park System. Some of these priorities are still being vigorously pursued today. In 1967 a sixth was added: the preservation of millions of acres ofwild lands in Alaska as parks, wilderness, and wildlife refuges. (This is the Club's top priority in the second session of the 95th Congress as this is being written.) While scenic resources and federal/state landuse issuescontinued to dominate the conservation agenda of the Club during the Sixties, there was a gradual awakening to other important environmental problems. The Bulletin not infrequently played a leadership role. For instance, the April 1959 Bulletin carried amajor article on the relation of population explosion to conservation six years before the Directors established official Club policy on thiscontroversial question. Bodega Head and theverycontroversial Diablo Canyon sites for proposed nuclear power plants along theCalifornia coast occupied many hours of Directors' time in the mid-1960s (with thelatter even ending in a Club-wide referendum). Yet a definitive stand opposing "the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process" was. not taken until 1974. The Club began tackling problems related to urban life and growth in the mid-1960s,culminating in a "general urban amenities" policy in 1966 relating to the environmental qualityof settled areas. Then, when environmental consciousness reached its zenith as the Sixtiesfaded into the Seventies, the Club responded with a rash of general environmental policies tomatch its new-found national responsibilities: an Environmental Bill of Rights (1969); endorsement of abill banning the sale of new automobiles powered by internal combustionenginesafter 1975 (1969); corporate reform and responsibility (1970); recognition of international concerns and establishmentof a standing Committee on International Conservation (1971); general energy policy(1972); principles of land use planning (1973); general wildlife policy(1974); air pollution (1974); agricultural policy (1976); and several specialized energy policies -- solar, geothermal, andcoal (1976). All of these subjects and many more were represented in the pages ofthe Bulletin. No account of the Club's history covered by this index would becomplete without mentioning two foundation-shaking events which threatened(but did not disrupt) its good work. On June 10, 1966 the Internal Revenue Service served notice on the Club thatit would no longer extend advance assurance of deductibility for financial contributionsto the Club because of its advertisements appearing the previous day in the New York Times and theWashington Post. This meant potential loss of large bequests and donations at a time when such tax deductibilityseemed essential. To vi this day the Club has not regained a favorable tax status, but many in the Club haveseen this as a blessing in disguise enabling the Club to be politicallyactive without fear of recrimination or reprisal. Then, in December 1969, after many monthsof sometimes bitter in-fighting, David Brower was fired as Executive Director, to be replaced by Michael McCloskey, formerNorthwest Conservation Representative of the Club and graduate of the University of Oregon LawSchool. Strangely,Brower's departure triggered a renewed vigor among Club leaders whowere determined not to lose ground in their quest for a quality environment. That the Club did not falter at this traumatic juncture in its history isa tribute to the strong and effective volunteer leadership nurtured by its unique grass roots structure. From this episode forward the Clubappears to drop the last shreds of its parochialism and to embrace (though not without some misgivings) itsfull responsibility as a national (some would insist, international) conservation organization.

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