This Is What The First Earth Day Looked Like

T​he environment wasn't in great shape in the late 1960s. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn't exist. Neither did the Clean Air Act nor the Clean Water Act. According to the EPA, before the 1970s, there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms in effect to protect the environment. Factories pumped toxic smoke into the atmosphere and dumped toxic sludge into nearby streams to the detriment of public health and nearby wildlife, with little to no legal repercussions.

Senator Gaylord Nelson, a junior senator from Wisconsin, concerned about the state of the environment, created Earth Day as a way to bring awareness to issue. He was inspired by the student anti-war protests, as well as the aftermath of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, which spilled roughly 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Santa Barbara Channel.

By the end of 1970, thanks largely to the first Earth Day, the U.S. created the EPA and passed other environmental laws including the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Clean Air Act. Two years later, Congress passed the Clear Water Act, and soon after that, the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. Millions of people have been spared disease and death by these laws and they have also protected hundreds of animals from extinction, EarthDay.Org reports.

Photos in the slideshow above show what that first Earth Day looked like. Click through for a journey back in time to April 22, 1970.

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