Olaus Murie (1889-1963)

In 1888, Joachim Murie and Marie Frimanslund moved from Yavick, Norway to Moorhead, Minnesota and married almost immediately. Together with Marie’s brother, Henrick, they purchased a homestead. Their first child, Olaus, was born on March 1, 1889. Marie gave birth to five more children, including Martin (1891) and Adolph (1899). In 1895, Joachim died at the age of thirty-seven likely due to tuberculosis. In April of 1899, Marie married Ed Winstrom, a Swedish bartender in Moorhead. Unfortunately, Ed died from tuberculosis two months into their marriage, but Adolph was already conceived. In 1909, the family also adopted a girl named Clara. To help with family finances, they cut grass for their neighbors, worked for local gardeners, and hunted and fished alongside the Red River. Olaus and Adolph both attribute this time of camping, hunting, fishing, and canoe-making to stimulating their fascination with the natural world. [1]

Olaus graduated from Moorhead High School in 1908. That fall, he enrolled in Fargo College, a private college near current-day Island Park. He only stayed for his freshman year before transferring to Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. Olaus transferred because of Arthur Bean, a biology professor who mentored Olaus.  When Bean moved to Pacific University, he offered Olaus a research assistant position there, so Olaus followed. In 1912, Olaus graduated with his bachelor's degree in zoology. He immediately joined the Oregon Fish and Game Commission as a Conservation Officer and stayed in that position until 1914. [2]

Olaus joined trips sponsored by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to James and Hudson Bays as an ornithologist in 1914 and 1915. In 1917, he went on another expedition with the Carnegie Museum to the Labrador Peninsula. During this trip, Olaus traveled 700 miles by canoe, studying animals and collecting materials for research. For Olaus, this was a wilderness apprenticeship; with this, he was able to learn about cataloguing and collecting specimens. During World War I, he worked as a balloon observer, but resumed his field work afterwards. [3]

In 1920, Olaus was hired by the U.S. Biological Survey (the predecessor to the Fish and Wildlife Service) to study caribou in Alaska. On this trip, he grew to love Alaska, a place to which he would return repeatedly. In the summer of 1921, Olaus met Margaret “Mardy” Thomas. Mardy was visiting Fairbanks during a break from studying at Simmons College. By the time they both left Alaska, they promised to keep in touch. As Olaus was preparing for an upcoming research trip, he asked his younger brother, Martin, to join him. Unfortunately, Martin grew ill and died in 1922.  So instead of Martin, Adolph joined Olaus in 1922 as his apprentice. They spent five months studying on Mount McKinley (now known as Denali). By the summer of 1923, Mardy had grown close to Olaus so both she and her mother went to visit the Muries near Mount McKinley during their research. Olaus then returned to D.C., and Mardy resumed her education, having transferred to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. On June 13, 1924, Mardy became the first student to graduate from the newly founded institution with a bachelor's degree in business. Soon after, on August 19, 1924, Mardy and Olaus traveled to Anvik, Alaska to get married. A chapel service was held at 3 a.m., and immediately afterwards, the couple departed on their dogsled honeymoon for Koyukuk River. During this time, Olaus also collected specimens. [4]

In 1925, the couple’s first child, Martin, was born.  In 1927, Olaus received his master’s degree from the University of Michigan and then was relocated by the U.S. Biological Survey to Jackson Hole, Wyoming at the base of the Tetons. This became the home for Olaus, Mardy, Adolph, and Weezy (Adolph’s wife Louise). Marie and Clara joined them in 1930. While in Wyoming, they studied the effect of coyotes on the elk population. [5]

By 1932, Olaus and Mardy had three children: Martin, Joanne, and Donald, and lived in the “Pumpkin House.” It was called this due to its color and the fact it looked like a pumpkin at certain angles. During the 1930s, Olaus continued his work with the U.S. Biological Survey.  From 1936 to 1937, he returned to Alaska for another expedition.  In 1937, he accepted a seat on the council of the newly formed Wilderness Society.  In 1939, Olaus went on to study antelope in Northwestern Nevada for the U.S. Biological Survey accompanied by his family. [6]

Olaus and Mardy were looking to return to Jackson Hole and in 1945 purchased a ranch which they named the Murie Ranch. This was also the year that Olaus left his job with the U.S. Biological Survey to work as the director of the Wilderness Society, a position he would hold until his death. During this time, he also advocated for the National Park Service. He lobbied against the construction of large federal dams in Glacier National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. In 1948-1949, Olaus, along with Mardy and son Donald, went to New Zealand to study wapiti (elk) at Fiordland National Park under a Fulbright scholarship. [7]

In 1951, Olaus received an award from the Wildlife Society for his outstanding ecological publications. He received the Aldo Leopold Memorial Medal in 1952. In 1954, he received another award called the “Cornelius Amory Pugsley Bronze Medal” from the American Scenic and History Preservation Society. Additionally, he received the Conservation Award of the American Forestry Association in 1954. [8]

In 1954, Olaus was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He spent fifteen months at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver, Colorado undergoing treatment.  Having recovered by the summer of 1956, both Olaus and Adolph went on an outing to the Last Lake Sheenjek River in the Brooks Range along with graduate students. [9]

Mardy and Olaus returned to their ranch in the summer of 1957.  Olaus was then diagnosed with melanoma. He immediately underwent surgery and bounced back, resuming TWS (The Wilderness Society) meetings. In 1958, the couple traveled to Norway to visit Olaus’s relatives and then to Finland for an ornithological conference. [10]

In 1959, Olaus was awarded the Audubon Medal from the National Audubon Society. IN 1961, Olaus joined his brother Adolph at Mount McKinley National Park. Together, they researched grizzly bears there. In the summer of 1962 Olaus again fell ill but recovered. In 1963 he returned to Mount McKinley one last time to study the wolves there for the National Park Service. His research at Mount McKinley was the last field research that Olaus conducted, as he passed away on October 21, 1963. [11]

Author: Jay Kirkland

Footnotes:

[1] Mark Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers: The Murie Brothers of Moorhead and their Passion for Nature,” YouTube video, 1:18:27. Posted by “Historical & Cultural Society of Clay County” May 1, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SLACl2VFV4&ab_channel=HCSCC

[2] Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; James M. Glover, “Sweet Days of a Naturalist: Olaus Murie in Alaska, 1920-26,” Forest & Conservation History 36, no. 3 (1992): 133, https://doi.org/10.2307/3983796; “The Murie Legacy,” Teton Science Schools, accessed September 29, 2021. https://www.tetonscience.org/locations/murie-ranch/the-murie-legacy/.   

[3] Glover, “Sweet Days”; Olaus Murie, Journeys to the Far North (Palo Alto, CA: American West Publishing Co., 1973), 247.

[4] Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; Bonnie Kreps and Charles Craighead, Arctic Dance: the Mardy Murie Story, (Moose, WY: Craighead Environmental Research Institute, 2001), 34.

[5] Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 247.

[6] Harvey, “Moorhead’s Wild Murie Brothers”; Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 247; Olaus Murie, “Man Looking at Nature,” Discourse: A Review of the Liberal Arts 5, no. 1. (1962): 37; Greg Kendrick, “Olaus J. Murie,” National Park Service: The First 75 Years, National Park Service, revised March 27, 2017, https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/sontag/murie.htm.

[7] Kreps and Craighead, Arctic Dance, 75-77;  Kendrick, “Olaus J. Murie”; Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 248; Murie, “Man Looking at Nature,” 44.

[8] Olaus Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 249.

[9] Kreps and Craighead, Arctic Dance, 83; Olaus Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 248.

[10] Kreps and Craighead, Arctic Dance, 85.

[11] Olaus Murie, Journeys to the Far North, 249; Kreps and Craighead, Arctic Dance, 88, 91.