ENVIRONMENTAL TIMELINE
1838
John Muir born in Scotland.
1854
Walden published by Henry David Thoreau.
“In Wildness is the preservation of the world,”
he wrote.
1906
June 11 – Congress takes Yosemite Park back
from California (which it had given to the state
in 1864) and converts it to a national park.
1914
Dec. 24 – John Muir dies.
1907
May 25 – Rachel Carson born. Biologist and
author became a leading figure in the environmental movement before her death in 1964.
1892
June 4 – Sierra Club founded by John Muir,
Robert Underwood Johnson and William Colby
“to do something for the wilderness and make
the mountains glad.”
1903
March 14 – President Theodore Roosevelt
creates first National Bird Preserve, (the begining of the Wildlife Refuge system), on Pelican Island, Florida. In all, by 1909 the Roosevelt administration creates 42 million acres
of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges
and 18 areas of “special interest,” including
the Grand Canyon.
John Muir writes “The Tuolumne Yosemite in
Danger” in Outlook magazine describing his
opposition to the Hetch Hetchy dam. The
dam would bring water from Yosemite national
park to San Francisco.
1913
Hetch Hetchy dam construction in
Yosemite National Park approved by Congress – a major defeat for John Muir, who dies
on Christmas Eve the next year.
1944
Soil Conservation Society formed by Hugh
Bennett.
1945
July – U.S. conducts the world’s first atomic bomb
test, called “Trinity”, at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
California legislature authorizes $10,000 to
start planning and construction of the John
Muir Trail.
Yosemite Park founded in California
Nov 11 – First of the Dust Bowl storms begin
in the Midwest. Margaret Bourke-White writes
in The Nation:
By coincidence I was in the same parts
1915
1864
1933
1916
President Woodrow Wilson creates the National Park System through the Organic Act
of 1916, designed to “conserve the scenery
and the natural and historic objects [and] leave
them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future
generations.” (Note: Teddy Roosevelt is often
cited as the father of the park system, but his
contribution was the National Wildlife Refuge
System, begun in 1903.)
of the country where last year I photographed the drought, As short a time as
eight months ago there was an attitude of
false optimism. “Things will get better,” the
farmers would say. “We’re not as hard hit
as other states. The government will help
out. This can’t go on.” But this year there
is an atmosphere of utter hopelessness.
( “Dust Changes America,” The Nation
May 22 1935 )
June 10 – US Federal Power Act authorizes
federal hydroelectric projects and begins a set of
massive North American construction projects
such as the Hoover Dam.
Feb. 12 – Leading atomic scientists argue
against secrecy and for international arms
supervision. During the premier of her talk
show, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
brings together Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, David Lilienthal, Hans Bethe and
others for a discussion of the problems of the
nuclear age. Einstein states that “radioactive
poisoning of the atmosphere and hence annihilation of any life on earth has been brought
within the range of technical possibilities.”
1952
Rachel Carson publishes The Sea Around Us.
August – U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1953
President Dwight Eisenhower proposes the “Atoms-for-Peace” Program, an international agency to develop peaceful nuclear technologies.
1955
Congress passes Air Pollution Control Act,
a forerunner of the Clean Air Act of 1963 and
subsequent legislation.
November 29 – EBR-I reactor in Arco, Idaho
melts down during a coolant flow test.
1956
Congress passes Water Pollution Control Act.
Echo Park dam proposal defeated in Congress. The dam turned into a nationwide
controversy early in the decade. The Sierra
Club and other conservationist groups helped
forge a compromise that eliminated the Echo
Park dam which would have covered an area in
southern Utah that subsequently became Dinosaur National Park.
The term “greenhouse effect” is coined by
Glen Thomas Trewartha, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, in his book An Introduction to Weather and
Climate.
Rachel Carson writes Under the Sea-Wind,
Oxford University Press, a naturalist’s picture
of ocean life. Carson would become famous
in 1952 for The Sea Around Us and in 1962
for Silent Spring, which warned against overuse of pesticides.
1943
Los Alamos National Laboratory founded in
the New Mexico mountains.
1946
Nuclear reactor accident kills scientist at Los
Alamos National Labs, NM.
1946-48
Bikini and Eniwetok nuclear tests in South
Pacific, Marshall Islands atolls.
U.S. Bureau of Land Management established.
1949
August – The Soviet Union tests its first atomic
bomb.
1957
Eugene Odum publishes Fundamentals of
Ecology. In the 1940s and 1950s,”ecology” was
not yet defined as a separate field of study and
Fundamentals would remain the only textbook in
the field for more than ten years.
1954
March – First U.S. Hydrogen bomb test.
Sept. 17 – “Too Cheap to Meter” – Adm. Lewis
L. Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission, predicts: “Our children will enjoy in
their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” to be supplied by “atomic furnaces.”
1960
June 12 – Fermi Nuclear Reactor stopped,
then restarted. Responding to safety concerns from unions and the public, a federal
court halts construction of the Laguna Beach,
Michigan Fermi Nuclear Power plant 30 miles
southwest of Detroit; but U.S. Supreme Court
allows it to restart. In 1966, a loss of coolant causes a nearly catastrophic accident and
forces permanent closure of one reactor unit.
1961
Bay Area citizens, alarmed by the fact that between 1850 and 1960 an average of four square
miles of the Bay were being filled-in each year,
form the Save San Francisco Bay Association, now called Save the Bay. It was the first
successful launch of a regional campaign to
protect an urban natural resource.
PG&E announces that the power plant
intended for Bodega Bay will be nuclear.
1937
1941
1920
1950
First full-scale U.S. nuclear power plant goes into
service at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.
1958
May 23 — PG & E President Norman R.
Sutherland, confirms that the utility is conducting preliminary negotiations for a site on which
to build a “steam-electric generating plant” on
the Sonoma coast.