July 1951 (age 52)

The second issue of North Country magazine came out in the summer of 1951. It was better designed and contained a wider group of contributors, including several Canadians and a Wisconsin woman who was married to a Menominee Indian and wrote about Indian culture. By then the magazine had three thousand subscribers in three dozen states and eight countries, and Sigurd wanted to assume the major editorial responsibilities. But the magazine never came out again. Publishing a high-quality color magazine was expensive, and, while publisher Grant Halladay had put together an impressive list of subscribers on short notice, he had generated almost no advertising revenue. The second issue contained no ads at all, and Sigurd, who had no share in the magazine's ownership and who had been donating his services to help the magazine get on its feet, loaned Halladay two thousand dollars to cover production costs. But Halladay failed to get sufficient funds for future issues, and North Country folded. Sigurd never got his money back and was embarrassed to have been associated with the magazine.

For more on this magazine and Sigurd Olson's role in it, click here. You can read the full story of the magazine, and you can read the seven articles that Sigurd contributed to its two issues.

July 1966 (age 67)

Sigurd left Ely on July 15 for Alaska's McKinley National Park (now Denali), where he studied wolf-caribou relationships and park boundary issues. The notes he prepared for the Interior Department advocated significant expansion of the park:

Aesthetically the big mountain needs a scenic buffer to give it significance both north and south. The Mountain alone is not enough. If wilderness values are to be protected then the boundaries must be enlarged....It was with considerable shock that we all realized that the south boundary almost missed Denali itself by a scant four miles, that south of it lie a vast complex of lesser mountains, glaciers with their rivers, finally foothills, a magnificent foreground for the great mountain itself. It is imperative that this area be included from the standpoint of scenic preservation and this had best be done by direct transfer from BLM to the National Park Service. This can be done by executive order or proclamation.

The opportunity is now. The area to the north can be given protection through a tripartite agreement with BLM, the State of Alaska and the National Park Service, a carefully worked out arrangement that cannot be upset by future administrators. Again the opportunity is now before developmenets and intrusions make it difficult or impossible.