January 1956 (age 56)

For decades Sigurd had dreamed of owning a small cabin, and by the end of 1955 he had saved up just enough money to do something about it. When he heard that the owner of a large amount of undeveloped lakeshore property surrounding Sha Wa Nok Beach on the south arm of Burntside Lake had divided it into lots for sale, Sigurd bought six of them, totalling twenty-six acres. He and Elizabeth came into the possession of a small but pleasant strip of beach, a cove bordered with alder and willow, upland stands of second-growth birch and pine, and huge, lichen-covered boulders left behind when the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age ten thousand years ago. Most important, there was a glaciated, westward-facing greenstone point, fringed with weathered pines and partly covered with a patch of bearberry and juniper. From there he could see the wide-open spaces of Burntside Lake and some of its many islands, could feel the wind on his face, could watch sunsets and northern lights, and could hear gulls and loons and the wind in the trees.

January 1971 (age 71)

The bill to establish Voyageurs National Park made it through both houses of Congress by the end of 1970, although it took some personal lobbying by former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen and Sigurd Olson to shepherd it through the final stages in the Senate. On January 8, 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the act, and Minnesota had its national park. "I doubt very much if the Voyageurs National Park would have been established if it had not been for Sig," said Conrad Wirth, who was director of the National Park Service during the early years of the campaign. "He not only explained and recommended it, but followed his concept through to its establishment. Of course he had help, but he was the spirit behind it."