Montana Medicine Show: Bob Marshall

Welcome to the Montana Medicine Show. I'm Derrick strong. He was a legend in his own time a prodigious hiker Explorer of the earth's far corners best selling author millionaire socialist Ph.D. one of the most colorful figures in forest history. That's Roderick Nash's impression of environmentalists Bob Marshall in 1925 the forest service assigned Marshall to Missoula. There he explored Montana's back country on marathon 30 to 40 mile day hikes and witnessed firsthand the need to preserve the wilds martial concluded wilderness is melting away like some last snow bank on some south facing mountainside during a hot afternoon in June. Most Americans saw the land as merely a supplier of natural resources for MARSHALL It was much more he wrote in a world overrun by split second schedules. Physical certainty and men made super officiality. It is necessary to preserve a certain precious value of the timeless the mysterious and the primordial.

While the Forest Service chief of recreation and Lance Marshall added millions of acres to the nation's wilderness system in 1934 he helped found the Wilderness Society for the purpose of fighting off invasion of the wilderness. Marshall's convictions were strong but his heart weak. He died in 1939 at just 38 two years later the federal government created one of the first of its kind. Montana's million acre Bob Marshall wilderness area. From Kidd GLT studios. I'm Derek strong. Montana medicine show is supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the American people.