This website explores the life of a gifted artist who left behind a great legacy of work. Virginia touched many lives in positive ways. Memorial collections of her work exist at Western Illinois University and the Illinois State Museum.
A Midwestern Legacy


click photos to enlarge
"Virginia S. Eifert, a complex and energetic naturalist, author, and artist of Springfield, Illinois, was born on January 23, 1911.
In a life that lasted only fifty-five years, she produced eighteen volumes of nature writing, cultural history, and biography, along with hundreds of articles on natural history subjects.
Long before she died in 1966, she had become the most popular and articulate writer on the natural world of Illinois in the state's history, as well as one of the more well-known nature writers in America."
from The Legacy of Virginia S. Eifert 1981, John E. Hallwas - Western Illinois University
Virginia teaching at 'The Clearing" in Door County Wisconsin, 1960's.


Front Ridge of the Rockies, 1960's
"Virginia Eifert's work was a strong political effort toward conservancy and the power of her voice is persuasive even today. Many decades of exploring the natural world and sharing her discoveries with her reading public, Eifert's hope for a nationwide conservation effort is understandable. She had dedicated her life to observing the natural world and educating others about the wilderness she loved: the great rivers and forests of the Midwest, its plants and wild creatures. Her wide-ranging knowledge of botany, ornithology, geology, and American history, reflected in the many essays, articles, and books she published, established her as an authority on its natural landscape. "
"Above all, her persistent commitment to a national awareness of preservation and respect for wildlife and wild places must be recognized as a significant contribution to the natural history of America. "
(from , Celebrating the Land. Women's Nature Writings, 1850; 1991, Karen Knowles, 1992)
"I stand by the river and I know that it has been here yesterday and will be here tomorrow and that therefore, since I am part of its pattern today, I also belong to all its yesterdays and will be part of all its tomorrows. This is a kind of earthly immortality, a kinship with rivers and hills and rocks, with all things and all creatures that have ever lived or ever will live or have their being on the earth. It is my assurance of an orderly continuity in the great design of the universe."
Virginia S. Eifert
Go to LarryEifert.com IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTICE: all work on this website, all photos, paintings, sketches and most stories are copyrighted by Virginia S. Eifert's family. Please contact us for user rights by email. We are providing this resource to honor Virginia. Do not abuse her Legacy!