• 1927 - Univ. Georgia
• 1930 - Harvard Med Grad
• 1933 - Emergency room surgeon and epidemiologist in San Francisco
• 1939 - Joined the Sierra Club to take an organized burro trip into the Sierra Nevada
• 1947 - Married to author Peggy Elliott.
• 1948 - Successfully fought to increase the size of Mount Tamalpais State Park
• 1961-1964, 1967-1969 - 5 time Sierra Club President
• 1935-1985 Ran his own medical practice
• 1934-1975 Professor at Stanford Medical Schol
• 1972 Organized citizens, activists and politicians around a campaign to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
• 1995 - Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism
  
• 1999 - Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
  At the award President Clinton said of him, "He has saved more of our wilderness than any person alive."
• The Wayburn Wilderness House in Washington DC is named for him.

Photo by Will Rousch

While the Bay Area was his focus, the five-time Sierra Club president also strove to preserve wilderness nationwide. A San Francisco Chronicle profile marking his centennial birthday in 2006 credited him with saving 100 million acres of mountains, meadows and rivers in California and Alaska--a million acres per year of his life.

In the early 1970's he fought to create the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA).
When the National Park Service opposed Dr. Wayburn's plan for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, favoring the establishment of a much smaller park instead, Nixon's Secretary of the Interior, Rogers Morton was called upon to testify before the Senate Interior Committee. No great fan of environmentalists, Morton surprised everyone by supporting the Sierra Club's proposal in full. Morton told the shocked hearing: "The Park Service wants me to support their plan, but I went out there to the site with my friend Dr. Wayburn, and he convinced me otherwise."

One, daughter Cynthia Wayburn said. "He has hiked, walked or run almost every day of his life," she says. "Throughout his life he has exercised his mind equally, working as a physician through his 83rd year and as a conservationist up through 99 years of age--two simultaneous jobs for over 40 years."
Source: Marin Magazine

In his 2004 book, "Your Land and Mine: Evolution of a Conservationist," he explained why he spent so much of his life on environmental causes:

"Whenever we encroach on the natural world, we crop the boundaries of our own existence as humans, cut off our fields of solace and sensation. Vistas, textures, odors and sound fade and then disappear. In destroying wildness, we deny ourselves the full extent of what it means to be alive.''

According the 2006 Chronicle article:
Wayburn and Congresman Phil Burton, who died in 1983, became close friends.

The two were quite a contrast: big, brash Burton and slim, soft-spoken Wayburn, then a Republican.

"I offered to change the registration of my party. Phil said, 'Oh, no. I need you to introduce as my Republican constituent on the Capitol steps.' Later, I did change my registration, but not until after Phil died," Wayburn remembered.

Books:
"Your Land and Mine: Evolution of a Conservationist", by Edgar Wayburn, MD
An autobiography of a five-term president of the Sierra Club which focuses on his key conservation campaigns, including the Redwoods National Park and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, some of the most crucial of the twentieth century, and the fascinating cast of characters that populated them. It includes lively portraits of legislators such as Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Representative Phil Burton; land officials such as Interior Secretaries Stewart Udall and Rogers Morton.

Links:
Sierra Club:
  - Wayburn history
  - 2005 speech in Anchorage to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
  - Planet Newsletter Article
Wikipedia
heroism.org
"Edgar Wayburn: The Conserver" in Marin Magazine