To Ernest Oberholtzer, Dec. 26, 1930

Ernest Oberholtzer spearheaded the early battles to preserve the Quetico-Superior wilderness, and at the time of this letter was building support for his plan to create an international treaty that not only would protect what we know today as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park, but would zone the entire surrounding Rainy Lake watershed. This was Sigurd's first letter to Oberholtzer, the beginning of a working relationship that would last until Oberholtzer's death in 1977.

Dear Mr. Oberholtzer:

I was glad to receive your resolution and am enclosing it herewith. For a long time I have been following your work with more than passing interest and believe sincerely that what you are doing is a great thing. For the past 10 years I have been trying to do what little I could to stem the tide of exploitation that seems to be continually on the verge of wiping out our last wilderness, but as you know it has been an uphill fight.

I think the move to make an international park of the two areas concerned is the only solution to the problem. In that way only will it be possible to keep the Superior National and the Quetico from private development and subsequent ruin. I wish I could tell you personally of what is happening to the Quetico right now and what has been happening for the past 10 years. We on this side of the border have been laboring under the illusion that the Canadians have been setting us an example in conservation but during the many years I guided through that region I saw what was happening. Never will I forget the day now three years ago when I worked up the Quetico River against a million feet of logs coming down from Beaverhouse, Quetico, Batchewaung and Pickerel, logs that I had seen as trees and growing timber just a few short years before, then coming down as sawlogs to the mills. When I saw the destruction left in the wake of the Shevlin-Clark Co. of Minneapolis, shorelines stripped, islands denuded, backwaters from the driving dams flooding and killing everything, all rapids sluiced and portages made into unsightly tow roads, and worst of all saw their cruisers and camp builders working into the heart of the Quetico Preserve itself, I realized that the only thing that could save the country would be making it into a park and also that if any action was to be taken that it would have to be taken quickly or the last remnant would be gone.

The business we are in gives us the opportunity of meeting thousands of people from all over the United States and if you could only see the interest they have in the fight to preserve the wilderness you would be encouraged. No one has any idea how much that country is beginning to mean to the people of the middle west. During the days of my guiding particularly I had occasion to talk to many men and with no exception whatever, they were all of the same opinion that the country should be set aside as a recreational preserve and not as a timber preserve. They know that the wilderness with its growing timber has a value that cannot be computed in dollars and cents, something that perhaps they cannot explain, an intangible spiritual value that they can find nowhere else but in the wilds. With them it is a religion.

I have often talked the matter over with my neighbor Dr. Newgord and together we have thought through many issues brought up during meetings of the Izaak Walton League and the local commercial club. We know what you are up against through the little part that we have played here locally. However, there is this encouragement that sentiment is gradually growing and will continue to grow the more they become acquainted with what is happening.

I want to assure you of my unqualified support and the support of every guide in our outfit and if at any time we can be of any help whatever feel that we are back of you to a man.