A visionary in the truest sense of the word, Marshall set an unprecedented course for wilderness preservation in the United States that few have surpassed. His ideas and dreams continue to be realized long after his death at the young age of 38 in 1939. He was the principal founder of The Wilderness Society, was among the first to suggest that large tracts of Alaska be preserved, shaped the U.S. Forest Service's policy on wilderness designation and management, and wrote passionately on all aspects of conservation and preservation.

With a doctorate in forestry, Marshall was well-acquainted with the logic of scientific argument and the economic underpinnings of federal forest policies. Yet he spoke from the heart. He was not an armchair explorer but a man of limitless energy who believed he would have been more at home during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, when there were adventures and never-ending expanses around every bend. He regularly made 30- and 40-mile-long (and longer) day hikes, preferred tennis shoes to heavy hiking boots, and loved to map unknown regions. He personally underwrote a new government map of U.S. roadless areas, then surveyed many of the 46 areas himself.

The wilderness brought him and others who shared his love for nature a certain joy that no other manifestation of beauty or art could match. He spoke for his contemporaries of similar mind when he wrote that "To us the enjoyment of solitude, complete independence, and the beauty of undefiled panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness."

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Robert Marshall was born on January 2, 1901, in New York City to Louis and Florence Marshall. The son of German immigrants, his father was a prominent lawyer, an active conservationist, and a leader in the Jewish community. Young Bob was educated in the city but spent the 21 summers of his youth at Knollwood, his family's summer home on Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Here he and his brothers, George and James, learned to use a compass and map, and between 1918 and 1924 Bob and George climbed 42 of the 46 Adirondack peaks above 4,000 feet, then later climbed the remaining four. (On July 15, 1932, Marshall set a record of a different sort by climbing 14 Adirondack peaks within 19 hours, a feat that required a total ascent of 13,600 feet.)

Marshall had decided in his teens that he wanted to be a forester. "I love the woods and solitude," he wrote at the time. "I should hate to spend the greater part of my lifetime in a stuffy office or in a crowded city." By 1930, Marshall had earned three degrees, including a Ph.D. in forestry from John Hopkins University. In 1929 he took the first of several trips to the remote town of Wiseman, Alaska, beginning a long love affair with the Central Brooks Range in the Alaska wilds. He was one of the first persons to explore much of this range, especially the headwaters of the North Fork of the Koyukuk River. (Much of these lands are now protected in the Gates of the Arctic National Park.)

It thrilled Marshall to witness a landscape never before seen by any human. "Views from summits were deep spiritual experiences," his brother George wrote. "His joy was complete when, standing on some peak, never before climbed, he beheld the magnificence of a wild timeless world extending to the limit of sight filled with countless mountains and deep valleys previously unmapped, unnamed, and unknown."

A voracious outdoorsman, Marshall was also a prolific writer. (His book Arctic Village, chronicling his experiences while living with the Eskimos and whites in Wiseman between 1930 and 1931, was a 1933 best-seller.) Beginning during his years as a student and continuing through his tenure with the federal government (he was director of forestry for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs and later the head of recreation and lands for the Forest Service), Marshall's writings detailed the aesthetic value of wilderness to humankind and also pushed for public ownership. A strong socialist, Marshall believed that private interests would certainly destroy American's forests.

Marshall outlined his argument in support of wilderness lands in his article "The Problem of the Wilderness," which ran in Scientific Monthly in February 1930. Militant in his politics, he was equally uncompromising in his quest for an organization that would fight for wilderness preservation. His call in the article for a new conservation group was heeded in 1935, when Marshall, Benton MacKaye (the founder of the Appalachian Trail) and six other men formally founded The Wilderness Society. Marshall, who initially started The Society with a $1,000 gift, continued to keep it solvent and single-handedly steered its course with his ideas until his death almost five years later.

Marshall died of heart failure on an overnight train in November 1939. Independently wealthy, Marshall left one-quarter of his $1.5 million estate to The Society, assuring its existence and commitment to wilderness preservation for years to come. At first small by choice (Marshall refused to have any "straddlers"), the organization now has approximately 250,000 members and continues to carry out the visions of a man who dared to dream big.