Stewart Udall served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, leading advocacy and politics of conservation and environmental protection in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He was, by all accounts, one of the most significant Interior Secretaries in American history, sharing that status with Harold Ickes, Secretary in the FDR administrations. While very different in background, temperament, and style, both men were masterful politicians who saw their role as stewards of American public lands, and we enjoy many legacies of their work today.

In Stewart Udall: Steward of the Land, Thomas G. Smith profiles a man of great ambition, ability, and accomplishment often frustrated that he could not do more. Udall, a westerner from the Mormon country of Utah and Arizona, sought to help the presidents he served stand with Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt as great conservation presidents. He aspired to serve JFK as Gifford Pinchot had served Theodore as confidant and conservation adviser. JFK praised his work but would not let him into his inner circle. After JFK’s assassination, Udall worked more closely with Johnson until he became alienated from him by his disenchantment with Vietnam War policy. Yet Udall kept his eye on conservation goals, and achieved many of them.

Udall grew up in the small Arizona town of St. John. His father was a prominent jurist and LDS leader in St. John and throughout Arizona, and while Stewart embraced the values of his community and religion, as a college student and Mormon missionary he developed a thoughtful independence. After some college and his Mormon mission, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, ultimately flying fifty combat missions in WWII as a gunner on a B-24. When the war ended, he returned to college for a law degree and opened a law practice, caught the political bug, and was elected to congress in 1954.

Assigned to the House Interior Committee, Udall found himself in the fight over water for the Southwest, an issue that would occupy him throughout his political career. Conservationists were fighting proposed dams in Dinosaur National Monument and beginning their campaign for a wilderness act. Smith nicely summarizes the dilemma Udall faced. He “was drawn to the preservationist surge, but not at the expense of his political base of western reclamation.” The Colorado River Storage Project, Central Arizona Project and dams proposed in Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon region were all issues that tested Udall in many ways, and Smith explains in some detail how Udall navigated his way through them to end up Interior Secretary and a leading conservationist.

Udall led a successful campaign to deliver Arizona’s delegate votes to JFK’s nomination at the Democratic convention and was rewarded with his appointment as Secretary of the Interior. In this role, his responsibility and perspective had to be more national than as an Arizona congressman, and he would need to broaden his view of conservation, which up to this point had been more utilitarian than preservationist.

Just as Robert Frost wanted Kennedy to be more Irish than Harvard, conservation leaders hoped that Udall would be more preservationist than reclamationist. The new secretary, wrote Frank Masland, chair of the National Park System Advisory Board, is “a realist and recognizes that he has reclamation on his hands as well as conservation. I think, if anything, he tends to lean toward the purest side of conservation, but the showdown, of course, will come when reclamation and conservation collide head on and he has to make up his mind.

That showdown would come, but not for a while.

President Kennedy and Secretary Udall supported environmental protection and wilderness preservation but, according to Smith, “mainly pursued a traditional agenda that stressed the efficient use of natural resources.”  In Udall’s view, Kennedy was not bold enough in his approach to conservation. Udall wanted to push aggressively for a wilderness bill and Canyonlands National Park and for a more ecological approach to management of public lands, but Kennedy had lots of other things on his plate and was more cautious regarding conservation and other issues important to Udall like civil rights. Udall scribbled private notes during meetings, often critical of the president, but kept his opinions to himself as he would again later when serving Johnson, convinced that voicing them would jeopardize his ambitious conservation agenda.

Udall’s carping private comments may have stemmed from his inner conflicts about the conservation movement. He seemed torn between the traditional progressive position which was human centered, and the emerging postwar perspective, that was Earth oriented. The former sought to balance both resource development and preservation. The latter downplayed development – especially dam building – and emphasized wilderness preservation, environmental protection, and the interconnectedness of the natural world. Udall had difficulty straddling the two positions.

But straddle them he did, contributing significantly to emergence of the “Earth oriented” perspective while supporting developments like the Central Arizona Project.

Smith’s greatest achievement in this book is his portrayal of Udall as a key figure in a pivotal period in American conservation history. Udall was not always successful. He was not always happy in his role or with the presidents he served, nor effective politically and administratively. At times, he did not seem to have the courage of his convictions, as in his opposition to the Vietnam War. Of this, Smith writes, “Like Hubert Humphrey and other presidential advisors whom he criticized, Udall became an enabler by not speaking out.” Udall “feared the loss of standing with Johnson and the end of his effectiveness as an advocate for his environmental programs.” He “believed that the surest way to sustain the environmental movement and other Great Society programs was to reach a negotiated settlement of the costly war and to reelect President Johnson.” Johnson did not run for reelection, and Udall left office with him, but the environmental programs he had helped grow gained momentum and persisted. The Wilderness Act, which he had helped pass, resulted in a significant National Wilderness Preservation System. No dams backed water into Grand Canyon National Monument. His public support of Rachel Carson was instrumental in the emergence of environmentalism. National parks were established at Canyonlands, Redwoods, and North Cascades. His legacy grew after he left office.

Smith does not gloss over Udall’s limitations. He presents Udall as a flawed politician and leader who didn’t always pursue the right path. Yet what emerges from this very scholarly work is a portrait of a man of strong convictions who cared deeply about his country, its natural resources and public lands, and its people. In this last regard, after he left Interior he spent decades in his legal practice as advocate for downwinders and others, especially Native American uranium miners damaged by America’s nuclear program. He was not very successful in this work but paved the way to some justice that came after his litigation ended. Udall was a crusader who lost many battles but profoundly influenced the course of struggles for environmental protection and justice.

In June 2010, President Obama signed a bill naming the Interior building the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building.

“Stewart Udall’s name on the Department of Interior Building will not only honor a great man,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in a September dedication ceremony, “but will serve as a challenge to all who enter to uphold his legacy and commitment to protecting America’s natural treasures and resources.”

In light of events in 2017, Thomas Smith’s biography is certainly timely in its focus on the critically important but relatively low national profile of the office of Secretary of the Interior and on one of its most consequential leaders.