Sigurd Olson and the Wilderness Act: 1956 and 1957

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Wilderness Preservation Act in 1964, creating the nation's wilderness preservation system, it was the end of an eight-year struggle to turn the legislation into law. For Sigurd Olson, the hardest part came at the beginning, and again at the end. In 1956 and 1957, as the bill was taking shape, Sigurd was one of a number of leading conservationists playing an active role in determining what the bill said and also in how to make their case to Congress and to the public. Sigurd also happened to live next to one of the key wildernesses mentioned in the Act: the Superior National Forest Roadless Areas, which are known today as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The BWCA was the only large wilderness that had a long and recent history of economic use. Much of it had been logged over in the early part of the century, and many of the stands of pine that grew along the shores of its major lakes had been planted by the resort owners who moved in after the logging days. This made for a number of intense conflicts between those who wanted to maintain or, in some cases, increase, the more intense forms of resource use such as logging, waterpower development, mining, and the resort economy with its dependence on outboard motors and float planes; and those who believed that preserving some large, wild places where people could get away from the sights and sounds of modern life for a while was vital for the human spirit. Because of these battles, the wilderness in Superior National Forest set precendents for wilderness nationwide almost every step of the way from the early 1920s, when Sigurd Olson moved to Ely, through the 1950s. His role in these battles, especially his leadership in the late-1940s fight to ban planes from flying into the wilderness, propelled him to the top ranks of the national conservation movement, and also made him a lightning rod in the small town of Ely, which depended increasingly on tourism for its livelihood as the iron mining industry slowly withered.

The narrative below is an excerpt from A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson. It describes Sigurd Olson's role during the first two formative years of the wilderness bill debate, and the difficulties he faced not only living in a town where there was strong public opposition to the bill, but also from the people who paid his salary. Sigurd's primary source of income was through the Izaak Walton League of America, where he served as wilderness ecologist. The money was raised, however, by the leaders of the Quetico-Superior Council and the President's Quetico-Superior Committee, and, while Frank Hubachek and Charles Kelly supported the idea of preserving wilderness nationwide, they were very concerned that controversy over the wilderness bill could lead to big problems in the Superior National Forest Roadless Areas. Another complicating factor was that the bill's lead sponsor in the Senate was Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, who was happy to work for wilderness preservation but who didn't want political fallout in northern Minnesota that could cost him his job. So Sigurd's role in 1956 and 1957 was a difficult one personally and professionally, as he tried to ensure that a draft of the bill could be written that would satisfy enough of the local people as well as Hubachek and Kelly, Senator Humphrey, and other national wilderness preservation leaders such as Howard Zahniser, the executive secretary of the Wilderness Society and the primary writer of the bill.

Here's the excerpt:

Congressional protection of wilderness had long been discussed by conservationists, many of whom believed that federal land management agencies had neither the will nor the ability to stand up to the logging, mining and recreation industries. But the time did not seem ripe to introduce such a bill until 1956, when the successful Dinosaur National Monument campaign gave conservationists new strength and a sense of broad public support. Howard Zahniser, the executive secretary of the Wilderness Society (shown at left), drafted a bill and enlisted comments from leading conservationists. He also began seeking congressional sponsors, including Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey. At the end of March 1956, Humphrey asked Olson for his opinion of the bill. On April 3, Olson advised the senator to sponsor it:

I have worked closely with Howard Zahniser and others for some time on this measure and feel that in view of the mounting pressures of population, commercialization, and industrial expansion, that the only way to assure future generations that there will be any wilderness left for them to enjoy is to give such areas congressional sanction now....I feel strongly that this is the last chance to preserve the wilderness on this continent, for we are on the verge of an era where the pressures to destroy or change it will become greater than anything we have ever experienced. (Click here to see full letter.)

Humphrey (shown at left) had joined the Senate in 1949, during the final stages of the conservation campaign to establish the airspace reservation over Superior National Forest's roadless areas. Olson first met him at the end of April that year, and thought right away that the former Minneapolis mayor would be quite helpful to Quetico-Superior proponents. "Later on we can use him to good advantage," Olson wrote to Charles Kelly on May 2, 1949. "He is a climber and wants national publicity and fast." During the following months Olson began establishing a working relationship with Humphrey that progressed over the years from cordial to friendly, even warm. Olson's commitment to the wilderness bill was one of the factors that led Humphrey to introduce it in the Senate during the spring of 1956.

Not all conservationists supported the bill. Devereux Butcher and Olaus Murie (shown at right with Sigurd in 1953), for example, feared disaster for the national park system. They worried that if the Park Service were forced to divide the parks into wilderness and non-wilderness zones, development-minded directors (surely Conrad Wirth and Mission 66 weighed in their thinking) would have a free hand in the non-wilderness zones. No sooner had Olson written to Humphrey than he began receiving letters from conservationists urging him to backtrack.

One of these came from Arthur Carhart, a former Forest Service landscape architect who was one of the first to convince his agency to preserve remnants of the national forests for wilderness recreation. In 1919 he persuaded the Forest Service to keep cabins and roads away from the shoreline of Trapper's Lake in Colorado, and in 1922 he wrote a management plan for Superior National Forest that emphasized canoe-based recreation. The Superior plan was largely ignored, however; it called for a motorboat trunk line connecting a string of rustic hotels along the international border, and for a series of chalets along two canoe routes, neither of which the agency wished to do. Carhart left the Forest Service at the end of 1922 but remained active in wilderness issues, and occasionally corresponded with Olson. On May 9, 1956, he told Olson that the wilderness bill was sure to backfire in the West, giving ranchers and other resource users even more power. He also thought that forest managers should have more, not less, management latitude. "On my part," he told Olson,

I feel strongly that no more mandatory uses should be fixed in the national forests than timber production and watershed protection as they now exist. All others should remain permissive and administratively flexible. I hope you may keep this movement from precipitating the trouble I see may flare if it does result in a bill in Congress.

Frank Hubachek (shown at right) also was concerned about the bill, not so much for its broad goals and provisions, but for the political ramifications relating to the Quetico-Superior program. His most immediate concern was the fate of an appropriation bill before Congress, which would give the Forest Service two million dollars to buy out private inholdings in the roadless areas. On April 6 he told Olson that, at the very least, the wilderness bill should be delayed until after the Superior National Forest appropriation bill passed. (To see Hubachek's letter and Sigurd's response, click here.)

Olson contacted Zahniser and arranged a postponement of the wilderness bill. On June 7, after Congress had authorized the two million dollars for Superior National Forest, Humphrey introduced the wilderness bill in the Senate; in July, Pennsylvania Rep. John Saylor introduced it in the House.

The first legislative hearings were not held until 1957, and it was then that Olson's real troubles began. On April 22, two months before the hearings began in Washington, Hubachek told Olson and Charles Kelly he still thought the bill was a bad idea that would backfire, and he wanted the President's Quetico-Superior Committee to keep out of the debate. "Likewise," he added, "I urge that all of us who are personally identified with the Q-S program as such, stay out of the lists. I hope we can let other knights in shining armor carry on this particular joust. I know this will hurt and possibly aggravate Sig but that's the way I feel just the same." (To see Hubachek's full letter and Sigurd's response, excerpted below, click here.)

Sigurd did not want to be put in the position of choosing between the wilderness bill and his professional relationship with the Quetico-Superior program, and he responded to Hubachek on April 27, trying to make clear his predicament: "As far as my personal role is concerned, being wilderness ecologist of the [Izaak Walton] League, a member of the Wilderness Society Council, and having identified myself with the cause of wilderness preservation generally, I cannot refuse to lend my support as I have done in the past."

Hubachek appreciated Olson's difficult balancing act, and moderated his stand on May 6, saying, "When your position must be expressed, you have no alternative but to favor the measure and I do not counsel or request that you remain in hiding on matters of this kind.

But I do very strongly counsel (almost request) that you stay out of the fight just as much as you possibly can and still preserve your conscientious convictions and your technical standing....Please, Sig, try to withhold your punches and stay as far out of this fight as you can until we have made much more progress on the Q-S program.

But Olson soon was drawn right into the middle of the fight, with no choice but to respond. The fight involved his hometown neighbors, and they weren't withholding their punches.

Word of the wilderness bill had only recently reached Ely. Many people were upset that their own Senator Humphrey would sponsor such a bill without first consulting or even informing them. It was a particularly bad time for such a surprise; the Chandler South Mine had announced it was closing, leaving this mining city with two working mines where once half a dozen had thrived. Residents were worried that the wilderness bill would weaken their economy even more, by striking at their healthiest industry, tourism. But no community leaders had seen the bill or knew its details.

The undercurrent of worry exploded into anger and wild charges at a banquet in Ely on July 10. A local lawyer told the group that he had written to Humphrey asking for information about the bill, but had received no response. A banker then stood to say he had written to Rep. John Blatnik and to the state's other senator, Edward Thye, but had received only evasive replies. Soon the banquet hall was buzzing with rumors that the bill would condemn local resorts, ban outboard motors, and even expand the roadless areas to include lakes and woods and homes right on the edge of town. The rumors quickly spread, and the weekly Ely Miner voiced outrage in its next issue. Publisher Fred Childers called Humphrey a "Brutus or Judas," and asked residents to write the senator in protest. "Again we wonder if the senator will listen to the voice of his constituents," Childers wrote, "or is he subject to pressure groups operating under the cloak of conservation." Childers said Humphrey needed to visit Ely as soon as the current session of Congress was over, and hear the concerns of those who lived and worked next to the wilderness.

Humphrey was not going to let the publisher get the upper hand. "This fellow Childers is a reactionary editor in Ely," he wrote to one of his staff. "He hates my guts, and he has been after me for years. He feels he has a good issue now, so I want to take him on--head on--so let's give it to him." Humphrey also refused to visit the area. "I am not going to come to Ely when the session is over in order to be abused," he wrote on July 20. "There are a handful of people in that city that seem to feel that I am their mortal enemy....I repeat, there are a few resort owners who have been determined and stubborn and have refused to cooperate with the will of the Congress and the Government. I cannot compromise with them."

Childers kept up the attacks, denouncing the wilderness bill in front page editorials. He charged that the bill would turn Ely into a "ghost town," and said, "The curtailment of our three basic industries--mining, lumbering and tourist business--without hope of replacement leaves no other alternative....Who wants to take the risk of investment with the hard work it entails in a town that offers NO POTENTIAL for a reasonable return?"

It was a difficult time for the Olsons. People stopped talking and turned away when Sigurd or Elizabeth entered a gathering. Ely Chamber of Commerce Secretary Stan Pechaver expressed this sense of disownment in a letter to Humphrey: "Sig Olson (of Ely, we're sorry to say), is not a member of any organization active in local affairs....He does not speak for any of our organizations." Even the Olsons' First Presbyterian Church turned a cold shoulder. The minister supported Sigurd and asked Elizabeth if he could post a quote from Olson's writings, but he said the congregation's governing board would not let Olson's name be attached to the quote. Elizabeth refused to accept the restriction. "Anything that happens up here I get blamed for," Sigurd wrote to a friend. (For several letters from this time period, click here.)

Robert Olson, looking back on the opposition that his parents faced in Ely, said, "I don't know how they stood it, myself." Yvonne agreed, adding, "Dad took it professionally--but Mom took it all personally. Mom would get personally angry at individuals."

Elizabeth also came to her husband's defense, without letting him know. On August 3, 1957, while staying at her childhood home in Seeley, Wis., she sent Zahniser clippings from the Miner to show "how rough the going is." She criticized Zahniser for not including Ely residents in the discussions leading to the bill (in her defensive frame of mind it apparently didn't occur to her that her husband, even more than Zahniser, should have thought of this) and said hearings needed to be held in the area, not just in Washington, D.C. "Sig is in the soup now," she said.

When Elizabeth wrote to Zahniser, Sigurd also was away from home, the farthest north he had ever been. He and the Voyageurs spent July 20 to August 9 paddling canoes for four hundred miles along the top of Saskatchewan, following a route from Reindeer Lake to Lake Athabasca explored by David Thompson in 1796. (Read about his expedition here.)While camped on Reindeer Lake early in the trip, Olson joked in his notebook about undertaking such a rugged expedition at the age of 58. "I have lived backward. I should have done this or so I thought in my youth and now at last I am doing it and am satisfied." But he also thought it might be his last expedition, and a couple of times wrote that his mind often was elsewhere, thinking of the wilderness bill and his writing, among other things. And of his wife. "I think of Elizabeth...and our remaining years together and how much I love her and how much she means to me. All--everything is E."

While the Olsons were gone, another event escalated the tension in Ely. For several years residents had been excited about the possible development of a new mine by International Nickel Co. Test drilling along the Kawishiwi River near town had shown a potentially large deposit of low-grade copper and nickel sulfides, and the company had applied for a one hundred-year mining lease on eight thousand acres of land at the edge of the wilderness. On August 8, the Miner reported that the U.S. Department of the Interior refused to approve the lease. Childers blamed the decision on the wilderness bill, and on conservationist pressure to stall development until passage of the wilderness bill outlawed it.

In reality, the decision had nothing to do with the wilderness bill. It did, however, have a lot to do with Sigurd Olson and his relationship with a new Secretary of the Interior. Fred Seaton (shown at right) had replaced Douglas McKay in the election year of 1956, as the Eisenhower Administration scrambled to improve the public's perception of its resource management policies. Seaton, owner of a chain of newspapers in the Midwest, had been serving as White House liaison to the Interior Department, and had developed a reputation for tact and moderation. "It does us no good whatever at the polls to cry 'Socialism' every time a measure is offered to combat or correct an evil," he said. As Interior Secretary he performed admirably at balancing competing interests, and the news media reported on the "new look" in the department, saying Seaton's leadership meant "goodbye giveaway."

Olson, who had had little contact with McKay, met with Seaton several times during the secretary's first few months in office. Sigurd reported that Seaton was a "fine chap" who "will not repeat the mistakes of McKay." Over the next couple of years the two became friends, and Olson assumed an important role as a consultant to the Interior Department and to the National Park Service. His first official ties to the department were established in May 1957; Seaton created an advisory committee on fish and wildlife, and appointed Olson as one of its seven members.

When Olson asked Seaton to deny a mining permit to International Nickel Co., explaining the dangers to the canoe country wilderness should mining occur, the request carried a lot of weight. Olson undoubtedly played the most important role in bringing the issue to Seaton's attention and in convincing Seaton that mining should not be allowed along the Kawishiwi River. At the same time, however, the ultimate decision was relatively easy for Seaton. As he explained to Olson after investigating the matter, International Nickel was in no hurry to develop the deposit; the company had discovered more important reserves in Canada and Cuba, and had a huge stockpile of nickel. Seaton said the company was content, however, to let northeastern Minnesotans believe that Hubert Humphrey, the wilderness bill, and conservationists such as Olson, were responsible for the denial.

When Sigurd arrived back in Ely from his expedition with the Voyageurs, the story about the permit denial had just been published and a new round of acrimony had begun. "Welcome back from the wilds of Canada, my friend," Humphrey wrote. "I am sure that the temperature around Ely has been somewhat warmer than you found in the Canadian wilds!" The senator added a handwritten postscript: "I need your help!" (To see this and related letters, including the one excerpted below, click here.)

Olson told Humphrey on August 14 that fighting "the hysterical outcries" would not be easy. "The statement that people could lose their homes in Ely should the bill go through is actually believed by many people," he wrote. "It will take time to repair the damage that has been done. Eventually the truth will prevail."

The task was made even more difficult on September 5, when the Miner published an article about the wilderness bill that accused Olson of "openly and vigorously advocating the prohibition of the use of outboard motors," and claimed that he had "made the boast and prediction that he will effectuate such a ban to follow the airplane ban effectuated by Presidential Order."

The Miner had distorted the truth. On August 20, Olson had told members of the Lutheran Men's Club, "I feel personally that it would not be too much to consider setting aside some of the interior lakes for canoe use only, allowing the use as now of motors on the larger waters adjacent to the resort areas." But he made a point of telling the group that the wilderness bill specifically allowed motorboat use to continue in the canoe country. What he told the Ely group also was consistent with what he had told Howard Zahniser three years earlier. "The Quetico-Superior Committee," Olson wrote on May 28, 1954, "has never taken a stand against outboard motors because we have decided to wait and see what public use is made of them. You can only fight one battle at a time. It may be that public opinion will demand their elimination if it gets too bad. Time will tell."

Olson responded to the Miner's charges on September 10, calling the accusation that he was working to eliminate outboard motors "an absolute falsehood." "The bill states specifically," he continued, "that present regulations and established uses will not be changed in this area. In its application to this region the Superior National Forest is specifically exempted. Canoeists and resort people may use outboards as they always have." (Read Olson's letter here.)

Olson's comments clearly were intended to apply to the wilderness bill before Congress, not as a promise that Congress would never in the future consider different legislation that might curtail outboard motors in the canoe country. It is a measure of the hostility Olson's name generated among some of the people in Ely that this letter would still be cited nearly forty years later (and more than a decade after his death) as evidence that he had lied. By the 1990s, of course, much of the outboard motor use had been prohibited. But the changes were the result of an act of Congress passed in 1978, twenty-one years after Olson wrote his letter to the Miner. By that time public opinion, as Olson had written to Zahniser in 1954, demanded the change.

At the time Olson wrote his letter to the Miner, he also was editing the latest draft of the wilderness bill, making comments in red pencil. Others worked on the same manuscript: David Brower made suggestions on the draft in green pencil, and Zahniser used a lead pencil to make minor editorial changes. Zahniser also wrote on the draft in blue ink, to direct the attention of Olson and of George Marshall to ideas he wanted them to consider.

Olson said the bill's major problem was its legalistic prose. "As it reads even a crack corporation lawyer cannot understand it," he told Zahniser on September 17. This made it possible for the already skeptical Ely residents to misinterpret the bill in a variety of ways. Olson wanted Zahniser to make it crystal clear that: "1. Outboard motors will not be banned; 2. Other uses will be continued; 3. The government will not seize private properties on well-developed lakes outside the roadless areas and in such towns as Ely. It sounds ridiculous but this is being said." Sigurd also said Zahniser should eliminate the bill's creation of a national wilderness preservation council, which many people feared would give conservationists control over federal management decisions relating to wilderness. (To see this letter, click here and scroll down.)

Zahniser was not yet willing to give up the council; a few years later, when it became clear that its elimination was necessary for the bill to make it through Congress, he would change his mind. He did, however, write a special provision for the Superior Roadless Areas. It went through several revisions, with key input from Olson, Charles Kelly, and Humphrey, but the purpose was to assure northeastern Minnesotans that the canoe country would be managed according to regulations established by the Secretary of Agriculture, "in accordance," as the final draft stated, "with the general purpose of maintaining, without unnecessary restrictions on other uses, including that of timber, the primitive character of the area, particularly in the vicinity of lakes, streams, and portages." At Humphrey's insistence, the following sentence was added: "Provided, That nothing in this Act shall preclude the continuance within the area of any already established use of motorboats." (To see the bill with revisions penciled in, click here.)

From Olson's point of view, the new language was not a compromise, but merely an explicit statement of the bill's original intent. Even so, it was an immense help to him as he met with the heads of Ely organizations on September 26, 1957. Olson explained the bill, passed a draft of it around the room, and asked the community leaders to send suggestions to Humphrey. Later, he felt the air had been cleared. "I may be wrong in my hunch," he wrote to Zahniser the next day, "but I feel today that we are over the hump." Still, he realized that much of the furor could have been avoided if the proper groundwork had been performed:

Much has been made of the fact that the Ely people were not kept informed and that is a fault of mine and ours generally. In the future let's try to remedy this not only in this area but in others....Local groups like to feel they are part of the big picture, would like to have a hand in the development of ideas, resent bitterly coming in the back door. Time and again mention was made of the need of local opinion to influence national polices that might affect them. Hard to do I know, but let's give it serious thought. (To see this letter, and responses from Zahniser and Humphrey, click here.)

Hubert Humphrey, who received a copy of Olson's letter to Zahniser, wrote back on October 2. "You are doing a wonderful job of getting across the true provisions of this bill to the people of the Ely area," he said. Humphrey also agreed with Olson's diagnosis of their mistakes: "You are a hundred percent correct in saying that much of our trouble is a direct result from our lack of ground work in the local area. Keep up the great work Sig, and let me know if there is anything I should be doing."