This is the candid and compelling new biography of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive and influential scholars. The legendary "Great God beyond the Sierras”, Carl Otwin Sauer is America's most famed geographer, an inspiration to both conservators and poets, yet no book-length biography of him has existed until now. To Pass On a Good Earth reveals the rare qualities of mind and heart that made Sauer one of America's most treasured intellectual pioneers.