Wilderness activist Susan Tixier died on October 8, 2015 at the age of 73. Tixier founded the group Great Old Broads for Wilderness in 1989 after Utah Senator Orrin Hatch claimed that elderly people can not access wilderness areas without roads. As Tixier wrote on her blog, “Several of us took umbrage and decided the honorable senator from Utah, as well as others in Congress, should hear from some Great Old Broads for Wilderness about how we felt about roads in wild places.”
Nowadays Great Old Broads is a national organization that engages and ignites the activism of elders to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands.