This collection includes four interviews detailing Pat Williams’ focus on wilderness, wilderness areas, and land use during his time in the U.S. House of Representatives. The interviews were conducted by William D. Cunningham and Dale Johnson in May of 1997. Williams discusses serving on the Interior Committee and the Public Lands Subcommittee, his efforts to pass various wilderness bills, and his fight to defeat Secretary of Interior’s proposal to open the Bob Marshall Wilderness to oil exploration. He also briefly describes his childhood in Butte, Montana. The original interviews are held as Oral History collection OH 362 at Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.
This collection includes 4 interviews.
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Pat Williams Interview, June 12, 1997
Pat Williams
Pat Williams talks about his wilderness proposal for 1.7 million acres of national forest in Montana. He discusses Montanans’ views on wilderness and how water and wilderness are inextricably linked. Williams recalls defeating the Secretary of Interior’s proposal to open the Bob Marshall Wilderness in ... Read More
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Pat Williams Interview, May 12, 1997
Pat Williams
Pat Williams describes his early childhood in Butte, Montana and spending time with his maternal grandmother, an Irish immigrant who told him stories of her immigration to America. He discusses how living in Butte, Montana, shaped his political views due to Butte’s culture of political ... Read More
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Pat Williams Interview, May 12, 1997
Pat Williams
Pat Williams recalls key legislation—RARE II and Big Hole, the Rattlesnake Wilderness Bill, and the Lee Metcalf Wilderness Bill—and colleagues—Morris Udall, Phillip Burton, James “Jim” Wright, Max Baucus, and John Melcher—that he encountered in the U.S. House of Representatives during his almost 20-year tenure as ... Read More
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Pat Williams Interview, May 15, 1997
Pat Williams
Pat Williams talks about the public’s changing relationship with wilderness, and the correlation between that and various wilderness bills that were passed or failed to pass. He describes the evolution of the wise-use movement and its relationship to both conservation and extractive pressure groups to ... Read More