Wayburn National Park

NASA's Earth Observatory posts satellite imagery from around the world each week. In the latest batch is one of San Francisco's 75,000-acre Golden Gate National Recreation Area, described here as "one of the largest city parks in the world." Proudly, the Sierra Club can take some credit for the existence of that park. In particular, Dr. Edgar Wayburn, former five-time president of the Club, was instrumental in keeping developers at bay and getting the park established in 1972.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Harold Gilliam wrote an ode to Wayburn's efforts in an article called "The Quiet Conservationist."

Probably most of those hikers -- meandering along woodland trails through groves of redwoods and Douglas fir, admiring panoramas of the Bay Area from open hills, watching the surf explode on wave-carved cliffs -- take these privileges for granted and are totally unaware of the decades of toil, sweat, political battles and unflagging leadership that preserved those natural treasures from the bulldozers.

Chief among the unsung heroes of this immense Bay Area playground is the man who first envisioned it in the 1940s and worked for 30 years to bring it about -- Dr. Edgar Wayburn. The GGNRA might well be called Wayburn National Park.

Interested in learning more about Dr. Wayburn? His memoir, Your Land and Mine: Evolution of a Conservationist, is available from Sierra Club Books.