Margot Feuer, the last survivor of the trio of advocates who were responsible for the establishment of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, died June 16 of a stroke at her Los Angeles home overlooking Stone Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, her son Mark told the Los Angeles Times. She was 89, said the report.
After Feuer moved to the hills of Malibu in 1965, she was "catapulted into community action" by the threat of development in the surrounding Santa Monica Mountains, said The Times. The monumental proposals she faced included building a nuclear power plant in an isolated canyon and a freeway through Malibu Canyon, said the report.
"I looked around at what I was in the middle of, and I figured, gosh, the idea of a park is a beautiful idea," she had said, according to The Times.
Hundreds would join her in the movement to create a national park in Los Angeles, but only Feuer and two other activists would be recognized as "the founding mothers" of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which won federal approval in 1978, said The Times.
"We are indebted to Margot for her lifelong environmental activism and the important role she played in establishing the nation's largest urban national park," Lorenza Fong, acting superintendent of the recreation area, said in a statement to The Times.
Feuer's sisters in activism were Jill Swift, who built grass-roots awareness by organizing hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains, and Susan Nelson, who worked closely with then-Reps. Phillip Burton (D-San Francisco) and Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), according to The Times.
