In the 1950s, Harriet Hunt Burgess persevered in the face of daunting obstacles and took extraordinary risks to conserve hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the American West. Without Burgess, places like the Lake Tahoe region and the California coast would be much different today. From Grand Canyon to Hearst Ranch is the story of her struggle, but it is also the story of author Elizabeth Austin’s search to find Burgess and tell her more personal story. Austin searches beyond documents and interviews, traveling in Burgess’s wake and, in the case of the Grand Canyon, taking a life-changing rafting trip through its depths.
Austin has interwoven her journey through the Grand Canyon and Harriet’s experiences there with explorations of her early life and five of her most significant and representative conservation achievements as the founder of the American Land Conservancy.