Wallace Everette Pratt

Wallace Pratt, a pioneering petroleum geologist, first visited the Guadalupe Mountains in 1921, and became deeply attached to the area, eventually acquiring 5632 acres there, including much of McKittrick Canyon. Beginning in 1959, Pratt began a series of gifts of land to the federal government to help create the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which opened in 1972.
Aside from his interest in habitat protection, Mr. Pratt was an advocate for responsible oil and gas production, including the wide spacing of wells and reductions in gas flaring. Also, in the mid-1920s, he worked with the geomorphologist Douglas Johnson in showing how underground fluid withdrawals (originally focused on oil and gas, but later to include groundwater) could cause land surface subsidence.