America’s national forests have lost the greatest inside champion they’ve ever had.

This is the second part of a two-part tribute to Dave Foreman, who recently shuffled off this mortal coil. Part 1 recounted Dave’s contribution to stopping the infamous Bald Mountain Road, a dagger into the heart of the Kalmiopsis wildlands in southwestern Oregon. Part 2 is my take on Dave’s unique contributions to the conservation and restoration of nature.

This is the first part of a two-part tribute to Dave Foreman, who recently shuffled off this mortal coil. Part 1 recounts Dave’s contribution to stopping the infamous Bald Mountain Road, a dagger into the heart of the Kalmiopsis wildlands in southwestern Oregon. Part 2 is my take on Dave’s unique contributions to the conservation and restoration of nature.

This is the second of two Public Lands Blog posts on the most consequential Oregonian yet to serve in the United States Senate. In Part 1, we looked at his role in enabling the destruction of Oregon forests. In Part 2, we look at his complicated legacy.

This is the first of two Public Lands Blog posts on the most consequential Oregonian yet to serve in the United States Senate. In Part 1, we look at his role in enabling the destruction of Oregon forests. In Part 2, we will examine his complicated legacy. While Oregon’s Mark Hatfield was a great US senator, it was not because of his record on the conservation of nature.

If not for the Cold War (1945–1991), there might well have been a national park in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. In his brief time among us, Simons was instrumental in the establishment of North Cascades National Park in Washington and was just turning his focus to the establishment of a Cascade Volcanic National Park in Oregon.

Familiar to many modern-day Oregonians as C.E.S. Wood, “Ces” was a poet, author, anarchist, lawyer (who defended Margaret Sanger against obscenity charges for selling the booklet “Family Planning” in Portland and also collected a $1 million [~$26 million in today’s dollars.]

Given Oregon’s historically close ties to the timber industry, it is hard to imagine that a U.S. senator from Oregon could be a co-sponsor of the original legislation that became the Wilderness Act of 1964.

Republican legislator, lawyer, chief justice, granger, sportsman, conservationist, explorer, and scholar John B. Waldo read and quoted Thoreau, Shakespeare, Emerson, Aurelius, Goethe, and Wordsworth. He made twenty-seven summer sojourns in Oregon’s Cascades.