Career
Done with military service, he returned to Iowa to marry his college sweetheart and attended the University of Michigan there earning a degree in law. In 1868 he and his bride sailed from New York for San Francisco, California. There he sought and received acceptance in a prestigious firm. In time he opened his own office. Loving the high places and magnificent countryside in California he made acquaintance with John Muir and other like minded people. Together they created the Sierra Club. In the beginning the club members met in Olney's office, he wrote its first charter and served as vice president to the organization.
In 1903 Olney became the 34th Mayor of Oakland, California where he had made his home serving one term to 1905. He held strong views that the California communities needed a secure water supply separate from independent suppliers. Time lead to the damming of a river in the Hetch Hetchy Valley which Olney supported and a bitter separation from his friends in and with the Sierra Club who staunchly opposed it. The deed was done and remains controversial to this day.
Read more about this topic: Warren Olney
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)