Murie Ranch

In 1945 Olaus and Mardy Murie, with Olaus's half-brother Adolph and his wife, Louise, bought a small dude ranch beside the Snake just west of Moose and made it home. That same year Olaus became director of the Wilderness Society, and the ranch became a headquarters for its work, the porch crowded with scientists, writers and conservationists who came to argue about what wild country was for. Olaus, a field biologist and painter, and Adolph, best known for his studies of wolves, helped turn wildlife science toward whole systems rather than single species. Olaus's studio cabin still stands.

What they argued for ended up in law. Olaus and Mardy's campaign helped protect what became the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the society's long effort produced the Wilderness Act of 1964, which defined wilderness as land untrammeled by man. Olaus did not see it; he died in 1963, the year before it passed. Mardy kept working from the ranch for four more decades, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 and was still living here when she died in 2003.

The ranch was made a National Historic Landmark in 2006, and since 2015 it has been a campus of Teton Science Schools, which leads tours of the cabins and still holds talks on Mardy's porch.