The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Murie Timeline

1889 - Olaus Johann Murie is born on March 1st; the Smithsonian Annual Report decries the bison's extermination.

1901 - President Roosevelt creates the first federally protected wildlife refuge: Pelican Island, in Florida.

1902 - Margaret (Mardy) Thomas is born on August 18th.

1905 - The first national conservation group, the Audubon Society, is founded.

1906 - Congress passes the American Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to establish protected wild lands.

1916 - Congress passes the National Park Service Act to protect scenic wild lands, partly in response to public outcry to the 1913 approval of Hetch Hetchy dam being built in Yosemite National Park.

1914 - Olaus Murie spends two years in the Canadian Arctic collecting birds for the Carnegie Museum.

1920 - Government biologist Olaus Murie takes part in six-year caribou study in the Alaska Territory.

1923 - Leaded gasoline goes on sale in Ohio. President Harding creates twenty-three-million acre Petroleum Reserve (eighty miles west of today's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) to provide emergency oil supplies for the military.

1924 - Congress passes a weakened Oil Pollution Act, which prohibits spilling oil within three miles of shore, but does not prohibit spills from refineries.

1935 - The Wilderness Society is created by Aldo Leopold and Arthur Carhardt to protect wilderness areas.

1937 - The term “greenhouse effect” is first coined in Glen Trewartha's An Introduction to Weather and Climate.

1938 - Bob Marshall proposes that Congress protect all of Alaska north of the Yukon River.

1946 - Olaus Murie quits the U.S. Biological Survey and becomes the director of the Wilderness Society; the Survey is renamed Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS, administrator of national wildlife refuges).

1953 - Park Service planner George Collins reconnoiters Alaska for inclusion in a series of parks or wildlife sanctuaries and recommends that Olaus spearhead the protection of the northeast corner of the territory.

1956 - Congress defeats Echo Park dam in Colorado ; conservationist movement gains new headway. Muries lead biologists during survey of proposed Arctic National Wildlife Range (ANWR).

1957 - Oil discovered and exploited in south-central Alaska , in Kenai Moose Range (wildlife refuge).

1959 - Alaska proclaimed by President Eisenhower after decades of failed statehood bills. Olaus Murie receives Audubon Medal for his conservation achievements (Mardy receives it 1979).

1960 - Secretary of the Interior Seaton creates 9-million-acre ANWR by Public Land Order. ANWR lacks “wilderness” protection.

1961 - Secretary of the Interior Udall blocks the Alaska delegation's attempts to overturn ANWR.

1963 - Olaus Murie dies of cancer on October 21.

1964 - President Johnson signs the Wilderness Act, creating 9 million new acres of protected lands in the Lower 48 and studying other wild lands throughout the U.S. for potential inclusion.

1968 - Oil discovered in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 60 miles west of latter-day ANWR.

1971 - Congress passes Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA); indigenous Alaskans receive 44 million acres, including 96,000 on ANWR, of Alaskan wilderness. Section 17(d) (2) of ANSCA instructs Secretary of Interior to preserve more Alaska wild lands (see ANILCA below).

1975 - Mardy Murie appointed member of Alaskan task force identifying protected wild lands.

1977 - First Arctic oil down the completed Alaskan Pipeline on June 20; explosion kills a man.

1978 - Morris Udall Wilderness Bill proposed to protect ANWR's coastal plain.

1980 - President Carter signs Alaskan National Interest Lands Claims Act (ANILCA) through the 1906 Antiquities Act, and Section 17(d) (2) of ANSCA - 103 million new refuges and parks are created, renaming ANWR's “range” to “ refuge,” increasing it to 19.6 million acres and preserving 8 million as “wilderness” under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Section 1002 of ANILCA directs Congress to study oil drilling on ANWR's 1.5 million acre coastal plain.

1987 - First of many oil leasing scenarios and bills proposed for ANWR's 1002 coastal plain.

1989 - Oil spill devastates AK's Prince William Sound, squelching latest bill to lease ANWR 1002 lands.

1998 - Mardy Murie awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.

2003 - Mardy Murie dies, 101 years old.