The St. Croix-Namekagon Rivers

As consultant to Stewart Udall in the 1960s, Sigurd Olson was active in identifying and promoting the preservation of a number of wild rivers, including the Allagash in Maine, the Suwannee in Georgia and Florida, the Missouri River in Montana and the Current and Eleven Point rivers in Missouri. Closer to home, he worked to protect the St. Croix and Namekagon rivers. On May 2, 1964, Sigurd traveled to Marathon County Center in Wausau, Wis., and gave the following talk to the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. The proposed national wild rivers system that he describes in this speech became reality in 1968, when Congress passed the Wild Rivers Act.

One thing in this speech makes no sense. Sigurd says, "In July, I followed the Gods River and the Hays down the fur trade route from the north end of Lake Winnipeg to Old York Factory on Hudson Bay." But he took the trip in July 1964, two months after he gave this speech. (The photo at left was taken at the end of that trip. For Sigurd's journal of the Hudson Bay, trip, click here.) What could explain this? One possibility is that I'm wrong about dating this speech in May. The transcript I used does not give a specific date, just the year. However, I found other documentation saying that he spoke to the Academy on May 2 in Wausau, as explained above. Furthermore, in the speech, describing his experience on the Namekagon River just the day before, he says, "The white throats weren't back yet but the chickadees were giving their mating calls and a flock of red winged blackbirds were in a tall tree. " This clearly indicates he is speaking in the spring, not some time after his Hudson Bay trip.

There are two other possibilities. Since I copied the text from a transcript of his speech rather from his own speech notes, it is possible that Sigurd actually said something like "In July I'll follow the Gods River...etc.," and the person transcribing the talk misunderstood. The other possibility is that Sigurd accidentally used the past tense instead of the future tense, following along with the tense he had used in the five previous sentences. I think this is most likely the explanation, but we may never know for sure. If any more evidence turns up I'll post it here.

I want to thank you, Dr. Ihde, and all those who during the past months have sent me material on the St. Croix-Namekagon complex, which I read with great interest and profit. It would be presumptuous to add to it, so I will merely speak from my own personal experience and draw a few general conclusions. I have been intrigued by the papers which preceded mine—a wonderful background for the river proposals this panel is considering. I feel happy to be asked to be a member of this panel because I've had a love affair with wild rivers most of my life.

I tried to fly in yesterday but the weather didn't permit my landing, so I came down on a bus from Ashland coming through country which at one time I knew very well. I thought of my early Wisconsin experience and how it would apply to what I'm going to say this morning.

I thought of a little creek which so far as I know has no name even today, where I caught my first brook trout, somewhere out of the Phillips-Prentice area which I came through last night. I wasn't more than seven or eight when I caught that little trout, a tender age, but catching that trout and seeing a wild little creek affected my life. That's where my love affair started.

The last few days I've been in Hayward, which is close to the headwaters of the Namekagon. Living at Ashland for a while and Hayward, I became familiar with the country Ernest Swift described so vividly. In my memory are strange names such as the Chippanazee Creek, Big Brook, Branch Brook, the Mosquito, the Ounce, the Tobitik, not Totogatik as it is on the map, but Tobitik, countless little streams and tributaries of the upper Namekagon. Those streams are woven into my life and they have colored my whole attitude toward wild rivers. I fished the Namekagon fifty years ago when it was full of brook trout before the browns came in and when it was unusual to catch a Northern or a bass.

I made a sixteen-day canoe trip once from the Kettle River at Sandstone, Minnesota, down to the St. Croix and down the St. Croix to Stillwater and beyond. I'll never forget that trip. There were no portages on the rivers in those days, and I ran the famous Kettle Rapids—six miles of white water—with no chance of getting out, and I broke quite a few ribs in my old canoe in the process.

While at the University of Wisconsin, I spent a summer [note: 1919] on the Wisconsin Geological Survey under Mr. Bean, who was state geologist at that time. Our headquarters were Stanley and Danbury. I surveyed the Yellow River at that time, waded all the way from its beginning to where it joins the St. Croix, got to know it and its tributaries well. Since then my love of rivers has carried me into many strange places. I have followed the great Canadian rivers from the International Border up to the Arctic Coast, rivers with such names as the Churchill, the Athabasca, the Great Bear, the Slave, wild and inaccessible even today. In July, I followed the Gods River and the Hays down the fur trade route from the north end of Lake Winnipeg to Old York Factory on Hudson Bay. My involvement with rivers has been a lifetime affair. Wherever there's water, I have a penchant for getting into a canoe to explore them. Just a year ago I made a canoe trip down the Suwanee River from the Bib Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia down to the sea. The year before that I made a trip down the Lewis and Clark section of the Missouri, [and I have] known the Allagash in Maine. Last year, I followed the Namekagon from the headwaters to Hayward, a sentimental journey for me.

These trips have given me a feeling for wild rivers, a sense of their importance. Rivers were the first highways of America—first the Indians, then the French and American fur traders, finally the loggers and the settlers. Rivers are woven into our lives. Many here today can trace river travel in the history of their families

The first highways of America—paths of exploration, trade and development; now we're looking at rivers to see if they have other values. The very fact that the first morning of this important meeting of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters is devoted to the preservation of wild rivers is significant.

Yesterday morning I walked down to the banks of the Namekagon. Mrs. Olson's old home is on its banks between Hayward and Cable. I had brushed out a trail down to the river some years ago, a lovely trail, paralleling a little creek rising in a swamp and following the river for probably half a mile. It was a misty morning. I stood down there by the river and listened and looked. It hadn't changed much in fifty years. The water was fast and high and flecked with foam from rapids above. There was constant movement. The birds were singing. The white throats weren't back yet but the chickadees were giving their mating calls and a flock of red winged blackbirds were in a tall tree. Then I heard a mallard coming down the river, a greenhead. It lit in the river in front of me; I was hidden behind a big cedar root. Soon it was joined by two others and then there were three greenheads there. They paddled around in the river and watched the foam, picked up an occasional bit of food (I couldn't tell what), dove, swam upstream and down for about an hour. Standing by the river, watching these mallards, listening to the flow of the water, I thought: the old Namekagon epitomizes the interest and the love of people for all wild rivers. Here was the same silence I had known as a boy. Across from where I stood were two old cedars. I used to catch a trout there once in awhile, a real brook trout. There was movement and aliveness and silence. I could hear cars occasionally on Highway 63 but the sound ebbed and flowed. Most of the time was the feeling of wilderness that the Namekagon used to have. I thought to myself as I stood there, and this part of the Namekagon is not included in the study, how wonderful it would be if others could come back as I had done fifty years or so to hear and see what I saw.

Walking back to the house I took a different trail, wound up on a road, and there was a sign: River Front Properties for Sale. The Namekagon, the Wolf, the Chippewa, the Flambeau, and the St. Croix are disappearing before our eyes. The rivers are not disappearing, but their wild quality is changing fast.

I am glad that the St. Croix-Namekagon complex has been given me to talk about this morning. The St. Croix boundary line between Wisconsin and Minnesota was a suitable subject because I've lived part of my life in northern Wisconsin and part in Minnesota, so I am qualified, I think, to speak for the project. The river has the same kind of history that other rivers have. It's a large river, larger than most being considered, about sixty-five hundred square miles, roughly five million acres for the watershed. It too was once a famous highway for the Indians. It had Indian villages, battle grounds between the Sioux and the Chippewa, and early fur trading posts. During the logging era, when five and one half billion feet of logs were sorted in the Stillwater area, it was a great highway. From the standpoint of size and significance this complex is worth considering.

Just how the Interior Department study teams arrived at their conclusions I do not know, but I know they started out with six hundred and fifty potential streams. After a great deal of research, many meetings and parings, they cut this vast number down to sixty-four, and this sixty-four eventually to twelve. The St. Croix is a large river, has important history, and is still untamed enough to qualify as a wild river.

I have a great deal of respect for the study teams and the work they are carrying on. The more I study the material that has already come out, tentative ideas, surveys, and suggestions, the more I am impressed with the tremendous amount of research going into these projects. Here is a challenge never faced before in the preservation of wild country. Trying to figure out the ownership pattern of a national park, a national recreation area, or an historic area is simple compared to what these teams face in their study of rivers. Here are no solid blocks of land, but long ribbons along the rivers which may be from one hundred to two hundred miles in length. Here they face different kinds of cooperation—federal, state, county, with a complex of private ownership that's sometimes baffling, legal complexities which will take all the ingenuity, brains and analytical ability the study teams possess.

The twelve national rivers were chosen because of their proximity to great populations and their recreational potential, as well as beauty and charm. There are many other factors going into their choices for the kinds of rivers picked for this first study. I merely want to say to these teams: do not underestimate the importance of your studies. Those of us who know, recognize the tremendous difficulties you're faced with. If you come up with fairly firm conclusions by the end of the year, which is your hope, remember that you are laying the groundwork for a new system to be called "The Wild Rivers of America," something different than has ever been done before.

"The Wild Rivers of America" is a challenging concept. I'll never forget when Secretary Udall came into office. He had a big map of America laid out before him, had marked in red dozens of rivers, most of them the headwaters of huge drainage systems. He said, "I hope the day will come when we can save a few of these rivers in a wild or wilderness condition, when the American people will realize that some rivers are more important from the standpoint of aesthetics and recreational use than as sources for power and water storage. We'll have to move fast because these opportunities are disappearing."

In the Department of the Interior, with its various agencies—the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Reclamation, and others, and with the cooperation of the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, there has finally come into being a definite determined program to save some of these rivers while there is still time. I hope that the twelve which are now being studied in depth will be increased shortly to maybe twenty or thirty. I hope those that the federal government is not studying will be studied by the states, the counties, and local governments.

I hope the day will come when such beautiful rivers as the Wolf, if it does not fill the criteria for national designation, will somehow have woven around it a protective design. Back in the thirties [note: summer of 1936] I made a survey for the Bureau of Indian Affairs of all the Lake States' reservations, spent considerable time on the Wolf and had a delightful assignment to also fish the Evergreen which up to that time was denied to white people. You can imagine how difficult it was for me, being an old trout fisherman, to go into the Evergreen with an Indian friend with the express purpose of seeing what was there.

It's hard to make comparisons, difficult to compare one river with another. They're all different and worthwhile. An encouraging thing about this wild rivers movement is that studies are being made by men as conscientious as any I've ever known—men who have an emotional involvement in rivers as I have. If these men didn't have a deep feeling for rivers, if they didn't wear their hearts on their sleeves so to speak in the work they're doing, their work would not be significant. Joseph Wood Krutch of Arizona said once, "Conservation without love is a meaningless activity." I am sure all of you embrace that philosophy whether it's the wild rivers program or any of the many facets which may be discussed here today. All conservation is the same, and all conservation work done by people such as you and the organization you represent, is done for love and the deep feeling you have for the land, and your environment—not only rivers, but forests and swamps and fields, the total human environment we're trying to save. Wild river studies are part of this pattern.

An old Greek philosopher said, "Life is a gift of Nature, but a beautiful life is a gift of wisdom." How right he was. A beautiful life is a gift of wisdom. What we're trying to do in this wild river study is to gain wisdom, wisdom on how to cope with all the technical problems confronting such preservation. In order to have wisdom we must have knowledge, studies in depth that have to do with the physical terrain through which a river flows, the kind of stream it is, the kind of water, ownership patterns, legal complications, federal, state and county divisions, the complexities of zoning, purchase of easements, and other facets that are part of the overall effort.

I want to sound a few precautions regarding rivers. let's never try to balance the economic potential of wild rivers against the dollars and cents of economic statistics so easily available. I've always felt in any of these struggles that to talk of aesthetics, intangible values and the spiritual, the emotional impact on people, with the complex of the dollar sign, is a losing battle. We cannot ignore the dollar sign, but let's not try to make any wilderness reservations justify themselves from the standpoint of economy alone.

Secondly, I would say the important thing in protecting rivers is to save the streamsides by the creation of inviolate strips along them. How wide they should be depends on the terrain itself. A river shorn of its trees is a changed river, a river logged to its banks, a different ecology from what it was before.

Thirdly, let us not overdevelop these priceless rivers. As I stood by the Namekagon yesterday, alone in the mist watching those mallards and listening to the birds, I thought of what maximum recreation use could do to a river like that. I thought of thousands of canoeists coming down the Namekagon, not only canoeists but boats with uptilted motors, and I thought, "Why stress this matter of maximum use? Why not face up to the real issue, the preserving of something wild for its own sake, for the days when our population will be three hundred million instead of one hundred and ninety?" We must look to the future—not the next decade, but a future of fifty, one hundred years, or a thousand.

I was delighted to see you at this meeting, Senator Nelson. I thought I'd said good-bye this morning but evidently the planes are not flying. I want to compliment you for your vision, for the leadership Wisconsin took in its fifty million dollar natural resource fund. I must also tell you that due to our jealousy regarding the lead Wisconsin took, we did the same thing in Minnesota. You set an example which is being followed all over the United States.

I couldn't be here last night to see the Brandywine film which I viewed some time back, but I did want to hear the speaker again; nor did I make it to see the Apostle Island films because my planes weren't flying either. I saw the film in Washington and was impressed. Living at Ashland I knew the Apostle Islands, once was storm bound there on a little sand spit of Long island for several days with nothing to eat. I know the Kaukaugan sloughs and the Chequamegon sloughs at the end of the bay. It would be a wonderful thing if the dream of providing protection for this unusually historic complex of islands, rivers, and sloughs would come into being.

I don't think any of us still face up to the fact that time is running out, that we're faced with a population and industrial expansion which will destroy many of these things we're talking about unless we move now. That's why this meeting is important. There is an urgency that cannot be avoided. The day is going to come when any place of wilderness will be so precious to our people that even to go there and look is enough without having to paddle down it, swim or water ski, or catch fish. The important thing is to save places with wilderness quality to which the people of the future can repair for their spiritual well being.

I remember Justice Douglas on our C & O Canal hike of ten years ago when we walked one hundred eighty miles from Cumberland to Washington. He and I were on a radio program one night when he said, "We establish sanctuaries for deer and ducks and fish and all sorts of creatures, but what we really need to do is establish sanctuaries for men."