Under Mountain Shadows: Kay Kershaw, Lesbian Eco-Warrior of the Pacific Northwest

Kay Kershaw, a renowned conservationist and LGBTQ+ rights advocate, established a dude ranch in Washington state's Yakima County. With her first partner, Pat Kane, she fought against local encroachment by the U.S. Forest Service and timber industry, leading a campaign to save the ancient forests and ecosystem of Washington's Cascade Range. Kershaw's relationship with her later life-partner, Isabelle Lynn, was a contrast to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' own turbulent love life, which may have influenced his landmark judicial opinions in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973).

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 277 pages
Publication date: 30 April 2024
Publisher: McFarland & Co Inc

From her world-famous dude ranch in Washington state's Yakima County, Kay Kershaw exerted tremendous influence on conservation efforts in the Pacific Northwest and, tangentially, on LGBTQ+ rights in the United States. After gaining local renown in sports and aviation, she established the ranch at Goose Prairie with her first partner, Pat Kane—a fraught undertaking in a region closely associated with the John Birch Society. Operating under the guise of two spinsters, Kershaw and her later life-partner Isabelle Lynn guarded their privacy closely, but local encroachment by the U.S. Forest Service and the timber industry forced them into the public arena as environmentalists.

In partnership with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Kershaw and Lynn spearheaded a decades-long campaign to save the ancient forests and ecosystem of Washington's Cascade Range. In the process, Kay and Isabelle's devoted relationship proved a marked contrast to Justice Douglas' own turbulent love life, perhaps affecting his perception of the law and his precedent-setting judicial opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which provided the basis for major LGBTQ+ Supreme Court decisions in the twenty-first century as well as Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Dimension: 254 x 178 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781476693927