To Ernest Oberholtzer, Jan. 28, 1931

Excerpts from Sigurd's second letter to the man who led the early battles to protect the Quetico-Superior wilderness. Sigurd refers in particular to his efforts to help protect the shorelines of Quetico Park lakes from logging. The Shipstead Bill that he mentions, which half a year earlier had been signed into law by President Roosevelt, outlawed shoreline logging and altering water levels over much of the American side of the canoe country.

....I have not been up through the region of the Quetico and Beaverhouse-Pickerel country for over two years but at the time I was up there operations as carried on were far from satisfactory. Since then they have worked southward into the country immediately north of the Indian village on Lac La Croix on Badwater, Wolseley and the country immediately east of and north of Sturgeon. Upon my return I will see as many of our guides as possible and find out what I can for you on operations since I was up. I have been more or less in touch with Superintendent Jamieson of the Quetico on the logging proposition and was assured by him this fall that stricter regulation would be made of the logging in the future and that a number of shorelines on certain lakes would be logged in accordance with standards outlined in the Shipstead Bill for the Superior National Forest.

You may be interested in knowing that through the activities of the Chicago Prairie Club whose camp we have made on the Canadian side of Basswood for the past two years the above-mentioned areas have been assured protection. At various times while they were up here I mentioned the logging of the Quetico. They immediately got in touch with the Ontario Commissioner of Lands and Forests and asked me to name the lakes of particular beauty which should be considered. I did this starting at Lac La Croix and working east along and above the boundary to Basswood hardly excepting any. I did not hear much after that outside of an occasional carbon of letters received from Canadian officials to the Prairie Club. Then when I met Mr. Jamieson last fall, he told me that in company with one of the Canadian commissioners he had made the trip along the boundary resulting in the agreement to preserve as far as possible the shorelines we had mentioned. That was good news to me, particularly inasmuch as I knew firsthand exactly what would happen if this section was logged the way the rest has been.

The above is very good on paper but what should be done is not to permit that country to be logged at all. You can't touch that country without taking something away from it that can never be replaced. And even though it were logged with the closest attention to restrictions in contract, unless conscientious men were on the job every minute of the day it would be almost impossible to enforce it. The only salvation of the country on both sides of the boundary is to make an international park out of it which would lie absolutely inviolate, a wilderness preserve for all time. I know the battle ahead to accomplish this but I am confident that it will come in time, though it will mean a vast amount of work to educate the public. I shall be more than glad to help in any way I can and if you will forward the form letters you mentioned, I will send them out with a personal note of my own....

Feel perfectly free to use my name or my correspondence at any time it can be of the slightest use to you. I am looking forward to meeting you personally and talking over the situation.

News of the concrete highway from Pigeon River to Ely is far from encouraging, another evidence that the only salvation of our border country is to make it a wilderness park set aside for all time as a recreation area not to be touched by a development-mad public.