Margaret Murie

Margaret E. Murie, a conservationist and an author who helped preserve millions of acres of unspoiled land in Alaska and across the United States by encouraging the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the passage of the Wilderness Act, died Sunday at her ranch in Moose, Wyo. She was 101.

A longtime official of the Wilderness Society, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation ' s highest civilian honor, by President Clinton in 1998.

Mrs. Murie, who was known as Mardy, grew up in a log cabin in Alaska, an experience that she wrote about in her autobiography, " Two in the Far North. "

Published in 1962 and still in print, the book describes the winter night when she was 14 and Fairbanks caught fire, prompting her father and other men to burn the town ' s bacon supply as fuel to keep the steam-powered water pump running; her late-winter dogsled trips over thawing rivers; how, in 1924, she became the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska; and her marriage later that year, in a 3 a.m. sunrise ceremony, to Olaus Murie, a biologist for the Biological Survey, the forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

" Two in the Far North " also recounts the couple ' s honeymoon, a 500-mile caribou research expedition by dogsled, as well as a later river journey taken with their infant son, Martin, strapped to their canoe.

Although Mrs. Murie (pronounced MYUR-ee) and her husband moved to Wyoming in the 1930s to study elk migrations, they never lost their focus on Alaska and returned there often.

After traveling in the Brooks Range above the Arctic Circle in the summer of 1956, they began a campaign to set aside parts of the area as a wildlife refuge.

Four years later, President Eisenhower designated 8 million acres as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; President Carter more than doubled the protected area in 1980.

The Muries extended their preservation campaign in the early 1960s by lobbying Congress in behalf of the Wilderness Act, legislation intended to prevent development on designated lands nationwide. Mrs. Murie continued her support after her husband ' s death in 1963. She was invited to the White House by President Johnson to attend the signing of the act.

Mrs. Murie received numerous other honors for her support of conservation and the protection of the environment, including the 1980 Audubon Medal and the 1983 John Muir Award from the Sierra Club.

Born Margaret Elizabeth Thomas on Aug. 18, 1902, in Seattle, she moved to Alaska with her family when she was 9.

In addition to her autobiography, she wrote two other books, " Island Between, " published in 1977, and " Wapiti Wilderness, " published in 1966 with her husband as co-author.

Their Wyoming home, the Murie Ranch, was declared a National Historic District in 1997 and today is the headquarters of the Murie Center, an educational center dedicated to conservation.

Mrs. Murie is survived by her sister, Louise Murie-MacLeod, of Jackson, Wyo., the wife of Olaus ' brother Adolph, who was a National Park Service biologist and an author; two sons, Martin, of North Bangor, N.Y., and Donald, of Palm Springs; a daughter, Joanne Miller, of Brookline, Mass.; nine grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.