MOOSE, Wyo. — The history of the Murie Ranch in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) is more than a success story for wilderness conservation; it’s a legendary love story for not one but two couples.

Mardy met Olaus in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1921. Mardy was a college student home for the summer and Olaus was a biologist “with the bluest eyes,” as Mardy wrote in her memoir “Two in the Far North.” They spent the next few years exchanging love letters while Mardy became the first woman to graduate from University of Alaska and Olaus studied caribou in northern Alaska. 

“You sometimes hear about people who were made for each other, who struck gold, who married that one in a zillion person who’s perfect for you, and they had that.”

Docent Dan

In 1924, Mardy traveled by boat to the remote town of Anvik to marry Olaus. They got married at 3 a.m. in a chapel beside the river, and their wedding cake was topped with a miniature snow-covered cabin. 

The couple moved with children to Jackson Hole in 1927 so Olaus could direct field studies of threatened elk herds for what became known as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Mardy gave birth to their third child there, but she didn’t let that deter her from following Olaus into the wilderness and his field camps. She and their children would sleep in tents along with him.

“She wanted to be part of his life,” former Murie Ranch historian and docent fondly known as Docent Dan told Buckrail. “She really wanted to be a partner to him.”

The love story doesn’t end there. Mardy’s sister Louise and Olaus’ brother Adolph, a biologist for the National Park Service (NPS), were still in Alaska and would visit each other, and they eventually fell in love, too. They moved to Jackson Hole to help Olaus and Mardy purchase a dude ranch in 1945, where the couples and their five children made a home together and a basecamp for conservation in the mountains. Olaus described their ranch as “the heart of American wilderness.”

The Muries were instrumental in ensuring protection for wild species and supporting the passage of the Wilderness Act. The Act defined wilderness as a place “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.”

“Their deep love of nature and natural place, and their commitment to discourse, are all things that are important to our community,” Josh Kleyman, chief philanthropy officer at Teton Science School (TSS), shared.

After Olaus passed away in 1963, Mardy dedicated the rest of her life to finishing the work they’d started together and honoring Olaus’ vision. Eventually she returned to Alaska to work on further conservation efforts and worked on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which set aside 104 million acres of land in Alaska and doubled the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Mardy eventually received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, which is the highest civilian honor in the United States.

“They knew each other so well they could finish each other’s sentences,” Dan told Buckrail. “You sometimes hear about people who were made for each other, who struck gold, who married that one in a zillion person who’s perfect for you, and they had that.”

The Murie Ranch is a designated National Historic Landmark and a campus for TSS.

Buckrail runs this story annually.