[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 188 (Thursday, December 8, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S8459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

                        REMEMBERING ELDEN HUGHES

 Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, last weekend California and the 
Nation lost one of our great environmental champions when Elden Hughes 
died at his desert home in Joshua Tree, CA, at age 80.
  As a longtime activist with the Sierra Club and former president of 
its Angeles Chapter, Elden led successful campaigns to protect 
California's wild rivers and preserve the historic Union Pacific 
Railroad depot in the desert town of Kelso, CA.
  But Elden Hughes is best known and fondly remembered as one of the 
tireless leaders of the long grassroots effort to enact the 1994 
California Desert Protection Act, which created a new national park in 
the Eastern Mojave Desert and established higher levels of protection 
for Death Valley, Joshua Tree, and other desert lands.
  Elden was born in 1931 in Whittier, CA, the son of cattle farmers 
from Modoc County. When he was 13, the family moved out of town and 
bought a ranch where Elden made enough money raising hogs to buy an old 
car and begin a lifetime of exploring California's wild places. After 
earning his way through college, he worked in the family plumbing 
supply business, which he then sold to become the executive vice 
president of a major computer service company.
  Elden's interest in river-running, spelunking, archaeology, nature 
photography, and the desert led him to join Sierra Club expeditions and 
gradually become involved in the club's conservation activities. In the 
early 1980s, he led a grassroots letter-writing campaign that convinced 
California Senator Pete Wilson to sponsor ``wild and scenic'' 
designation for a major stretch of the Tuolumne River. In the late 
1980s, Elden led the successful ``three rivers campaign'' that obtained 
wild and scenic designations for portions of the Kings, Kern, and 
Merced Rivers.
  Elden worked with Congressman Jerry Lewis to save the historic Kelso 
Depot, in what was then the Eastern Mojave National Scenic Area. 
Showing their usual flair and creativity, Elvin and his wife Patty 
galvanized public opinion on the depot issue by convincing Amtrak to 
run a special ``Desert Wind'' train from Los Angeles to Kelso, where 
Elden led the crowd in singing railroad songs.
  In 1986, as the new chair of the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter, Elden 
was invited to attend a press conference on the introduction of the 
first Desert Bill, authored by Senator Alan Cranston. He brought along 
some of his photos of the Mojave and was soon leading a group of 
amateur photographers on a 2-year project cataloguing the fragile 
beauty of this unique natural area.
  In 1990, Elden retired from business to become the west coast 
spokesman for the Desert Bill. He was a natural, and the media loved 
him. As Frank Wheat noted in his book ``California Desert Miracle,'' 
Elden was also ``knowledgeable, quotable, pleasant to be with, and 
willing to go to great lengths to show members of the press what the 
Desert Bill was intended to protect. Soon he was drawing reporters as a 
lamp draws moths.''
  Meanwhile, Elden and Patty had adopted a pair of abandoned pet 
tortoises and successfully bred a new family. When the babies were 5 
months old, Elden and Patty took them on a cross-country tour to raise 
media and public interest in protecting the desert tortoise. Over the 
years, they made nine trips to Washington, DC, to gain congressional 
support for the Desert Bill. Once, when an airline security guard told 
them they couldn't bring pet tortoises on the plane, Patty said, ``They 
aren't pets, they're lobbyists.''
  Finally, in 1994, Congress passed the California Desert Protection 
Act, and I was proud to cosponsor this bill with Senator Feinstein. 
Elden Hughes was instrumental in passing this landmark legislation. 
Today, the Mojave National Preserve and the Kelso Depot stand as 
monuments to this joyous, creative, and inexhaustible man who did so 
much to protect California's priceless natural heritage.
  On behalf of the people of California, who have benefitted so much 
from Elden's life work, I send my deepest gratitude and condolences to 
his wife Patty; his sons, Mark, Paul, and Charles; and his three 
grandchildren.

                          ____________________