From his efforts to protect California's wild lands—including the state's majestic redwoods and its dynamic coastline—to his novel ideas about the educational and inspirational value of wilderness that continue to provoke debates to this day, this first biography of John C. Merriam (1869-1945) tells the story of the prominent paleontologist who became a visionary in the American conservation movement.

Stephen R. Mark is a historian with the National Park Service as well as Adjunct Professor of History at the Oregon Institute of Technology. He is the author of Floating in the Stream of Time: An Administrative History of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (1996).