Who wants the wilderness to look like a park? Its chief charm will be gone.Īnd now comes notice of the sale of 56,000 acres of the Superior National Forest known as the Kawishiwi working circle, the cut to last ten years, when another cut will be sold, and so on until the entire forest has been cut over. The power companies claim the same thing, that by cleaning up the shorelines they will make a hitherto sterile area look like a park.

Whoever heard of improving on Nature? A dead stem in place is beautiful, so is a windfall-tangled shoreline. And where will be the charm of the country once the axe of the lumber jack has gone in there? The service claims that it can improve certain areas, that by cleaning up some places that the looks of the country will be improved. Shall the wilderness, the last of its kind on the continent, go the way of most of our other wild places? It will in twenty years look like any other logged-over area, promises of the Forest Service to observe cutting laws and shorelines. There are a number of other areas out west, for instance, that can be secured, but only one lake region such as we have here. Granted, the companies should have a right to keep going. What the lumber companies oppose is the idea that they cannot go ahead and make a wholesale slashing like they used to in the old days. True, it will prevent wholesale slaughter of the timber of the area, and that is as it should be. Local interests in this region think that the bill will stifle all industrial expansion and development. In this form it will limit all power development and contain the cutting of all trees along the waterways, leaving a 400-foot level.Īll ardent Waltonians and those who want to see the Superior Forest kept in its natural condition should get behind it now. This bill in its original form is the bill the real lovers of the forest want. Now, as the Shipstead Nolan Bill, it is again proposed to introduce it without the qualifying amendment, as it originally was. Last session of Congress the Shipstead Newton bill was introduced, amended, and dropped until this session. The Superior National Forest is doomed unless drastic measures are taken at once.

New resorts have gone in, and where a few years ago was a virgin wilderness the signs of civilization are creeping in. During the past few years a power company has dammed up the Kawishiwi River basin and proposes to extend its interest. Only through the ready intervention of the League was the road business stopped, but not before great damage had been done. During the last three years two roads have been put into it, tapping some of the most attractive areas. Are we going to sacrifice it to the ogre of commercialism?Īlready great inroads have been made. It is the last area of its kind in the country. Nowhere else can you find them close together enough to make what is known as a canoe country, and nowhere else is there so much beauty concentrated in one spot as here. Nowhere else can such beautiful lakes be found. Here as all know is the last great wilderness area of its kind on the continent. Shall industry, or the wilderness, survive? Is the Superior National Forest of more importance as a timber-producing area than as one of recreation? Are the lakes and streams and the timbered shores of more value as camp sites than as spillways for logs? Is it right that a private concern, the North West lumber company of Cloquet, should have the privilege of robbing the American people of their heritage, the wilderness area of Superior National Forest? What follows, then, is the complete statement, altered only in my corrections of Sigurd’s spelling and punctuation. And Olson’s gut sentiment against any kind of logging in the wilderness is obvious throughout his statement. The thirty-year-old teacher and canoe outfitter calls for Superior National Forest to be taken from the Forest Service and given to the National Park Service, which at the time was so touchy a subject that most conservationists did not broach the idea. Yet it is an important document, because it is the earliest surviving record of Olson’s wilderness activism. I say “draft,” because it was not titled, was riddled with typos, and was written almost entirely in one paragraph. It is unclear, however, whether he wrote the following as notes for a speech, or as a draft of an editorial for the league’s magazine. Olson directed his statement to members of the Izaak Walton League of America, which at the time was very active in fighting for the canoe country wilderness.

It was the first time Congress had passed a law specifically to preserve wilderness. The Shipstead-Nolan Act was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on July 10, 1930. Sigurd wrote the following sometime in 1929, during the debate over a bill that would forbid altering water levels and would ban shoreline logging on federal land in the canoe country of Superior National Forest.

Lets play cultures northland