BY GEORGE WENDT
We need more fighters like Martin Litton.
We all have the opportunity to experience the Grand Canyon, in no small part because of one man’s vision and his refusal to compromise. Without Martin’s will and determination to protect it from proposed dams in the 1960s, the Grand Canyon could have faced the same fate as Glen Canyon just upstream. Martin knew this better than anyone, and he successfully made the case that the Grand Canyon was worth saving. In fact, it was his fiery speech that convinced David Brower and the Sierra Club to wage an all-out war against the two dams—and win.
“Nature has its rights,” Martin once said. “It has a right to be here untrammeled, unfettered. Man doesn’t have to screw everything up...”