Brock Evans’ passion for environmental protection turned into a more than fifty-year career. Evans played a leading role in the designation of many National Wildernesses in the West.
Evans was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1937. He fell in love with the great outdoors and the West while working a summer job in Glacier National Park.
After serving in the Marine Corps and finishing his law degree he relocated to Seattle. He took up mountain climbing. Soon, he realized that the ancient forests he loved were being clearcut.
Outraged, he joined the Sierra Club. Before long that organization hired him as its Northwest director. Then, the Sierra Club asked him to move to Washington D.C. There he lobbied governmental officials. His motto: “Endless pressure, endlessly applied.”
Evans went on to work as an executive for the National Audubon Society and the Endangered Species Coalition. He wasn’t afraid to join the front lines of environmental protests. In 1995 he was arrested in the Siskiyou National Forest for objecting to the Sugarloaf timber sale.
See the Brock Evans papers at UW’s American Heritage Center to learn more.