The Harold Gilliam Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting, given by The Bay Institute, is named in his honor.
Gilliam was born in Los Angeles and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA and a master's in economics from UC Berkeley; he later studied under Wallace Stegner at the Stanford Writing Program.
[1][2][3] San Francisco Bay, his first book, was on The New York Times bestseller list for 19 weeks.
[4] Gilliam was one of the first environmentalist journalists, and helped mobilize public opinion to save many features of the San Francisco Bay Area.
[2][3][5] In the 1960s, through an article and personal contacts, he helped achieve a Marin County ordinance forestalling the bulldozing of archaeological sites.