William Gladstone Steel

1854-1934

William Gladstone Steel was one of the most active mountaineers and advocates for national parks and forest conservation in the Pacific Northwest, best known as the father of Crater Lake National Park and the founder of the Mazamas.

Besides efforts to protect the forests, Steel founded the Oregon Alpine Club in 1887, the first known mountaineering club in the west. Upon its demise, he would later found the Mazamas in 1894 together with another friend of Muir's, L.L. Hawkins.

Steel almost single-handedly led the campaign to establish and protect the Cascade Forest Reserve as well as Crater Lake National Park. He was also involved in early explorations of the Olympic Mountains and the protection of the forest wilderness around Mount Rainier. Steel and Muir worked together on these conservation efforts. He sent a copy of his book: The Mountains of Oregon to Muir which includes information about the early efforts of the Oregon Alpine Club to explore the Oregon Cascades and Crater Lake.

For more about Steel, and a chronology of his life, see Seventeen Years to Success: John Muir, William Gladstone Steel, and the Creation of Yosemite and Crater Lake National Parks By Stephen R. Mark, Historian, Crater Lake National Park, U.S. National Park Service