About The Jean Smith Legacy Fund

The Jean Smith Legacy Fund honors Jean and the wild places she protected. Your donation sustains the organization she started over 30 years ago. This fund is ongoing—just like Jean's legacy—ensuring her work continues for generations.

In 1995, at a small Sierra Club retreat, Jean Smith—then 62 years old—gave a presentation about mapping roadless lands in Central Colorado. Soon after, she presented to a packed auditorium in Golden. That moment launched what would become Wild Connections.

For the next 30 years, Jean applied everything she'd learned from decades of international nonprofit work to build 'the little organization with outsized impact.' She trained over 100 volunteer mappers. She personally created maps for 48 BLM areas and produced the 190-page Conservationists' Wilderness Proposal for BLM Lands—the source document for Representative Diana DeGette's Wilderness bills introduced in every Congress since.

At 92, Jean was still leading. Still advocating. Still protecting the wildlands she loved.

The Jean Smith Legacy Fund honors this extraordinary journey by ensuring the organization Jean built—protecting 2.78 million acres with a working Board, skilled volunteers, and growing staff capacity—has the foundation to continue for the next 30 years.