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Edmond Meany

Edmond Meany, Photo courtesy University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections

1862-1935

  • University professor, mountaineer, legislator, and conservationist.
  • Professor Meany was a popular history professor and lecturer in forestry who taught at the University of Washington from 1897 to 1932 and is known by many as "the father of the university." Today a major building on the UW Seattle campus is named for him: Meany Hall for the Performing Arts.
  • Meany was President of the Mountaineers, a Washington based mountaineering club founded in 1906. Meany became president in 1908 and was urged by friends to remain as President "like John Muir of the Sierra Club" which he did until 1935.
  • Meany met Muir in Seattle just prior to Muir's departure for Alaska with the Harriman party in 1899 and corresponded with him from time to time. Meany was inspired by Muir's writings and was "grateful for my share of your life and your work." Meany and the Mountaineers supported Muir and the Sierra Club's efforts to protect Hetch-Hetchy.
  • Meany was active in many efforts to protect the parks and forests of the northwest. Among them was in the campaign to establish, in 1921, Moran State Park, the first state park in Washington, which was donated by his colleague Robert Moran, another Northwest conservationist influenced by John Muir.
  • Meany edited a collection of essays on Mount Rainier: Mount Rainier: A Record of Exploration, (New York: Macmillan, 1916).
  • For a recent biography of Edmond Meany, see Seattle's Historian and Promoter: The Life of Edmond Stephen Meany by George A. Frykman (Washington State University Press, 1999) .
Photo courtesy of the Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries



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