Sierra Club member Dean Norman started drawing Wally's Woods in 1990, after he retired as a greeting card cartoonist for Hallmark Cards and American Greetings. The cartoons are collected in a book and available for purchase. Norman got interested in the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1968, when his family canoed the Missouri River in Montana from Great Falls to Robinson Bridge. He later developed a television dramatic series about the expedition, but it was never produced.