March 1954 (age 54)

As president of the National Parks Association, Sigurd Olson got involved this month with a fight over a proposed highway along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland. Here's an excerpt from A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson:

Olson's involvement in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal issue began a few weeks after January 3, 1954, when the Washington Post editorialized in favor of the plan to build a highway along the historic canal and towpath. The existing highway between Cumberland, Md. and Washington, D.C. traveled up and down many ridges, and the newspaper joined those who called for a flat route that would be safer in the winter. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who had made public his attachment to nature in his 1950 book, Of Men and Mountains, responded with a letter to the editor in which he described the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal as "a place of retreat, a long stretch of quiet and peace at the Capitol's back door--a wilderness area where man can be alone with his thoughts, a sanctuary where he can commune with God and nature, a place not yet marred by the roar of wheels and the sound of horns." Douglas challenged the editorial's author to join him on a hike along the entire 185-mile stretch, and predicted the hike would change his opinion of the proposed highway.

Post editors Robert Estabrook and Merlo Pusey both accepted the challenge, and, along with Douglas, invited nearly three dozen others along, including Sigurd Olson and other representatives of major conservation groups. The thirty-seven hikers got underway in a snowstorm on March 20, 1954. It was a difficult trip, and only nine managed to make it on foot the entire distance from Cumberland to Washington.

Sigurd, to his embarassment, was not among those who earned the label of "The Immortal Nine." After about a hundred fifty miles his left ankle swelled badly, and he couldn't put on his boot. He spent the second last day of the expedition riding a horse at the front of the group, next to another rider dressed in a confederate officer's uniform and carrying a confederate flag. Two other riders followed. Unfortunately for Sigurd, at one point some horses in a field next to the canal galloped toward the riders, and his horse was crowded by the others right off the bank. He was thrown and bruised his left calf so badly that by evening he couldn't step on the leg. Even so, he completed the final eighteen miles the next day on foot, his left leg painfully stiffening every time he rested.

Despite his injuries, Sigurd enjoyed the trip immensely. "It was a wonderful experience all the way through, even though I had a little tough luck," he wrote to his family on March 28, the day after the hike ended. The hike had received tremendous publicity, with daily coverage by the three television networks, as well as the Washington Post and other newspapers. Reporters and photographers from Life and Time magazines also covered the expedition. Fifty thousand people gathered at Georgetown to greet the hikers at the end of the trip. Olson recounted how he became the "poet laureate" of the group, composing several verses every day of a humorous theme sung to the tune of the Old Canal Song. The first verse:

Oh the Old Potomac's rising
And the whiskey's runnin' short
And we hardly think we'll get a drink
'Til we get to Williamsport
'TIL WE GET TO WILLIAMSPORT

Every night around the campfire the group would sing the song, which reached a total of thirty-two verses. "NBC is having them run off," Olson wrote, "and Life and Time and the newspapers all wanted copies so they will appear in a number of places. The Justice was so tickled with them he was singing them all the time." [Justice Douglas is on the right side of the photo, singing the song with Sigurd. Photo by Abbie Rows, courtesy U.S. National Park Service.]

After the hike, Douglas established a "C & O Canal Committee," with Olson and six others--including Estabrook, who reversed the Post's stand--serving as members. Meeting in the Justice's chambers, the group hammered out a report that Douglas submitted to Interior Secretary Douglas McKay on April 22. The committee stopped the road, but continued to meet over the years to achieve official park status for the area. In January 1961 the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was designated a national monument.

Olson and Douglas became good friends. They hiked the C & O again on a reunion journey, and in 1958 hiked in Olympic National Park to protest salvage logging. They also canoed together in the Quetico-Superior. When Douglas celebrated his twentieth anniversary as a member of the Supreme Court in April 1959, Olson was one of forty-two invited guests on a list that included Lyndon Johnson, Clark Clifford, Abe Fortas, and one other conservationist--Harvey Broome, a founder of the Wilderness Society and a member of the C & O Canal Committee.

March 1968 (age 69)

Sigurd is finally well enough from his November heart attack to return home to Ely from Florida. He is involved in some letter-writing related to conservation matters, especially with the proposed Voyageurs National Park, which is running into opposition, but mostly he is trying to take it easy:

It seems good to be home again. Am feeling much better but am under strict orders to cut down on all activities, travel, deadlines, meetings and controversy and this with Elizabeth's help I am trying to do.