• 1916 - First visit to Yosemite at the age of 14 prompted him to try and learn photography. He went to work for a photo-finisher and went back to Yosemite every year after that.
• 1919 - Custodian of the Sierra Club's Le Conte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite Valley .
• 1928 became the Sierra Club's official trip photographer.
• 1934-1971 Sierra Club Board of Directors
• 1936 - Travels with his photographs to Washington, D.C., to lobby the FDR administration to preserve Kings Canyon and the surrounding High Sierra. His pictures are instrumental in FDR designating Kings Canyon as a National Park.
• 1963 - Receives Sierra Club's John Muir award
• 1968 - Awarded the Conservation Service Award, the Interior Department's highest civilian honor.
• 1980- Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 1980 - The Ansel Adams Conservation Award was established by the Wilderness Club
• 1985 - Mount Ansel Adams, a 11,760-foot peak located at the head of the Lyell Fork of the Merced River named for him.

"In the history of American conservation, few have worked as long and as effectively to preserve wilderness and to articulate the "wilderness idea" as Ansel Adams."
Source: Wilderness Society from The Living Wilderness, March 1980, by Robert Turnage

Why was Ansel Adams revered by Americans as no other artist or conservationist has been? William Turnage explains: "More than any other influential American of his epoch, Adams believed in both the possibility and the probability of humankind living in harmony and balance with its environment."

Through early high-country experiences (1920's), Ansel became aware of aesthetic qualities in the wilderness that he had not anticipated. "I was climbing the long ridge west of Mt. Clark...I was suddenly arrested in the long crunching push up the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light ....I saw more clearly than I have ever seen before or since the minute detail of the grasses, the clusters of sand shifting in the wind, the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds streaming above the peaks. There area no words to convey the moods of those moments."

One spring day in 1927 he perched precariously on a cliff with his camera and the unwieldy photographic glass plates of the day. He hoped to capture an imposing perspective of the face of Half Dome, the snow-laden high country and a crystal-clear sky. Only two unexposed plates remained. With one he made a conventional exposure. Suddenly, he realized that he wanted an image with more emotional impact. "I knew so little about photography then, it was a miracle I got anything. But that was the first time I realized how the print was going to look--what I now call visualization--and was actually thinking about the emotional effect of the image...I began to visualize the black rock and deep sky. I really wanted to give it a monumental, dark quality. So I used the last plate I had with a No. 29-F red filter...and got this exciting picture."

A half-century later, "Monolith - the Face of Half Dome" remains one of Adams' most compelling studies. It bears clear witness to that "pointed awareness of the light" which he experienced on the ridge of Mt. Clark.
Click on pictures for more information.

Books:
Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, 1938 limited-edition classic that set the standard for fine art printing.
"This is the American Earth", Sierra Club (1960), which, with Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring, played a seminal role in launching the first broad-based citizen environmental movement.
The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (NYGS), by Ansel Adams, 1977
Yosemite and the Range of Light, by Ansel Adams, 1979
NYGS publishes Ansel Adams: Classic Images, 1986
Ansel Adams: Our National Parks, by William A. Turnage , Andrea G. Stillman

Links:
The Role of the Artist in the Environmental Movement at AnselAdams.com
Ansel Adams History - Sierra Club
Ansel Adams Photography - Yosemite Special Edition Photographs
Ansel Adams: A chronology
Ansel Adams Timeline
wikipedia
Slide Shows at AnselAdams.com: Classic Images, Yosemite Images, National Parks
Photos at temple.edu