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Home , Voyageurs National Park

Interview with Professor Frederick Witzig

Interviewed by Margaret Robertson Historical Society

Interviewed on February 23, 1987,ath the University of Minnesota-Duluth campus

Fred Witzig - FW M. Robertson - MR

MR: Are you a native of Minnesota? Project FW: No, I'm not.

MR: You grew up where? History FW: I grew up in Illinois and studied geography at the University of Illinois. Then I got my first full-time job -- a temporary one year appointment --Oral at UMD which turned out to be a career. I've been here thirty-three years now at Duluth, and so I fell in love with the natural things up here -- especially in northeastern Minnesota. So beingSociety interested in Park was logical step. Issues MR: How did you become interested in Voyageurs in particular and at what point in the process did you become involved? Historical FW: I saw something in the newspaper about Voyageurs Park. The Service had done a study (this would be in the early sixties -- maybe 1963 or 1964), and there was an announcement in the newspaper that a meeting would be held at the YMCA in Duluth for those that might be interested in learning more about Voyageurs National Park. That's when I became interestedEnvironmental in it -- after listening to the then superintendent of the Grand Portage National MonumentMinnesota who spoke that evening and also listening to several other people who had an interest. I think one person from the state division of parks was also there. That night there was an opportunity to put your name down on a mailing list. That's really where it all started. Eventually then within a year or so the Voyageurs National Park Association was formed. Then a little bit later, a Citizen's Committee for Voyageurs NationalMinnesota Park was established, and Dave Zentner and I were the co-chair for the Duluth chapter.

MR: Was there a lot of interest in Duluth for the park? I know there's a lot of activity in the Twin Cities.

FW: There was a lot of interest in the park, but it was generally negative at that time. People who would be vocal about their support were very, very few in number. A lot of

individuals I think were for the park, but did not wish to speak out and would privately say that they liked what was going on, but they -- for a variety or reasons -- couldn't say very much. I was always sorry to hear that sort of thing, but some people would actually have been disadvantaged in their jobs had they been open supporters of the park.

MR: Was it a very politicized issue here in Duluth?

FW: I don't think it was political in the sense of Democrat and Republican. Not at all. In fact I think if anything the Voyageurs National Park was probably pushed harder by Republicans if you want to look at that. I don't think that's quite fair, but if you did chose it up that way I think you would find that some very prominent Republicans in Minnesota really put the park over. Notably Elmer Andersen, but there were many others.Project I think probably in the mid- sixties it was maybe environmentalists versus the other types with a more economic orientation. I don't think it was political in the traditional sense.

MR: What were some of the arguments you heard against the parkHistory at that time?

FW: I think the one that you heard most often was that thisOral was simply another ploy on that part of the federal government to take over land. It was a land grant. They were going to lock it up. Many people who made those comments were absolutelySociety certain that this was merely an extension of the Area. That was really the most common objection to the park. You would hear that, "ThereIssues is already plenty of federal land in Minnesota -- we don't need more. Why should we spend tax money to buy private lands to establish a national park?" That kind of thing. That was really the most frequent. For some they were being just visceral in their own positionHistorical to that. That's not uncommon. I mean that's not uncommon in Minnesota history certainly, and in the west it's very common. It springs from a nineteenth century attitude that the government really has no business being involved in owning and managing land. The tradition has been for the government to divest itself of property -- to give it to the people and allow it to be developed economically in the so- called traditional way.Environmental So I think people were dredging that up. Others had had experiences -- probably personalMinnesota experiences -- with government involvement and interference and red tape. That was certainly the most common reference.

MR: Do you think some of the bad feelings about what had happened in the Boundary Waters spilled over on the Voyageurs park proposal? Minnesota FW: I think that was true. I think that held back the establishment of the park. In fact during the sixties -- probably the last half of the sixties -- then Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman made a decision that the Boundary Waters no-cut area would be extended. He took the advice of his committees and made that decision. That was right about the time that we were trying to promote the park. So that certainly didn't help our cause. People always had that association -- that this was an extension, that it was going to be the same kind of thing. We will be closed out, we won't have access to it in the way that we have now, and so on. If

we were pushed when we made talks or visits with people concerning the park, we were always told to be very careful to note the differences between the management policies of the with Voyageurs as opposed to a wilderness management policy which the Forest Service was using in the BWCA.

MR: Was there a misunderstanding about what the Park Service did versus what the Forest Service did? They are really two agencies that are often on opposing sides. Was there a misconception about that?

FW: Yes, I don't believe that the public saw that. I don't believe that the general public saw Park Service and Forest Service as being very different. They are very different in their management philosophies. Their mission is different -- absolutely. But I don'tProject think the general public really picks up on that. I don't think they really understand those differences. They are not really very subtle differences, but I don't think people bother with that. But certainly within the agencies there's a very, very clear cut distinction between what they're up to. The Forest Service and the Park Service went over their differencesHistory through polite memos and some not quite so polite over a period of three or four years. But the public was really not aware of that -- I think -- of the inter-agency squabbles.Oral The public couldn't have been because this was all done through inter-departmental communications. I think some of the more knowledgeable people in the border country and especiallySociety in the Falls knew clearly the distinction between the single-use management of the Park Service and the multiple-use management of the Forest Service.Issues But the people who could articulate those contrasts were relatively few in number, I think. I don't know that the public at large ever debated this. Basically when people hear about a national park, they are sympathetic. Not that they've been to parks so much, but the nationalHistorical parks like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite have a nice ring to them. The Park Service has an excellent reputation for managing those. So I don't think that people ever had it in for the Park Service. A few did, but I don't think so. I think many people thought, "Hey, we ought to have a park." I think the further away you got from Duluth and northeastern Minnesota, the more support the park had. I'm sure that's theEnvironmental case. Minnesota MR: It was less threatening to people in the Twin Cities than for people in Duluth.

FW: In this area the media never supported the park. In fairness to them though, they never really crusaded against it either -- except the newspaper. I think the newspaper editorialized againstMinnesota the park.

MR: The Duluth paper?

FW: Right. The television people were sort of neutral. They would report the results of opinion polls, but unfortunately they never came out in strong support of the park. Normally when we heard about the park it was the "controversial Voyageurs National Park." In fact, you still can pick that up. "Another controversy in Voyageurs National Park." I would say

for at least six years before the park was established, and for a decade or more later -- I guess even to the present time -- you pick up some controversies about Voyageurs National Park. But I think that the controversy is going to end. I think when the visitor's center is there and people begin to see what the Park Service does with a resource like that -- the interpretation of the natural resources and the cultural resources of that area -- they're going to change their mind. They're going to find out about the things in this area that they never dreamed existed here. They're going to have a better understanding of cultural and natural features than they have ever had before--even people who live right on the edge of the park. I hope we're going to cross that point now and that we're going to see more favorable publicity about the park and perhaps then the old animosities will gradually fade away. They will see it as an educational advantage, as a recreational advantage, and they will see it as an economic force too, which I think is going to be much more important. Project

MR: Do you think then that unlike the Boundary Waters, with its unending controversy, that the Voyageurs will become more universally popular? History FW: I don't think you'll find that kind of acrimony up there with Voyageurs Park because the management is more liberal in the first place. You don'tOral have to be a canoeist. You can use the area pretty much the way you used it before, except for hunting. That's one clear distinction between the old practice and the park. But I thinkSociety people are amazed when they go there that you can camp almost anywhere. They're going to have to put in some regulations. The Park Service will have to haveIssues regulations as the crowd grows -- as more and more people come -- more and more restrictions in terms of the use of the camp site, time limits. The kinds of things that people are accustomed to in other places in the United States. But I don't think -- at least I hope so --Historical but I can't see anything in the future that would be anywhere near as divisive as the BWCA. Managing wilderness areas is really a tough assignment. Whether here or whether it's in Idaho or in Montana -- wherever you have wilderness areas -- you have very, very strong opinions. I think that the Park Service will not be without its problems with its neighbors and with people who wish to use it in certain ways. But I don'tEnvironmental think it will ever come to the kinds of things that you read about with the BWCA. Minnesota

MR: What was the mood like in International Falls originally and how has that changed in terms of support of the park?

FW:Minnesota The people at the Falls really were never -- at the time the park was being debated -- in support of the park. I'm sure if you took a poll, it would have been the majority opposed, but not vehement in the same way that you find opposition at Ely, for example. International Falls is not the same thing as Ely, but there were some very, very strong opponents to the park up there. Always I felt in International Falls there was a far more civil kind of disagreement. There were some terribly embarrassing situations up there though that were nasty, but they involve only a few people, so I would draw the distinction between the Falls and Ely. I would say that the Falls people initially did not support the park. More of them do

now because they've had some losses in the wood products industry up there, and they look at the park now differently. They look at it again exactly as Governor Elmer Andersen said they would. He told them that it would be an economic advantage to have a national park at the edge of their community, and those economic benefits will happen. The impact will be more dramatic than people realized at the time. So more and more people in the Falls area will support the park because of the advantages to the economy, as opposed to the enviromental benefits cited at the time the park was established. I don't think that Falls people were too interested in that. [Both chuckle] They were looking at logging. After all, they had the mills in the community and so it was a little bit hard to see how this could be an important economic force when they were going to shut off the peninsula for logging -- although most of it hadn't been logged. Project MR: You talk about some of the advantages that Elmer Andersen had discussed in the literature that was distributed at that time. Was the park over-promoted, therefore raising expectations beyond what could reasonably be achieved? History FW: In fairness I think yes -- I think it was -- but it wasn't a form of dishonesty. It was based on what had happened in other places when parks Oralwere established. Great things happened in terms of tourism in other states, and it was assumed that those same things would happen in this area. A lot of the numbers that were bandiedSociety around were not Elmer Andersen's, but were produced by the Park Service -- out of some of the studies they had done in other locations. The numbers weren'tIssues just brought out of the thin air, but some people were quite eloquent in their arguments for the park, and perhaps enlarged unintentionally upon those figures. But they made those arguments in good faith, I think. I believe that in retrospect we could not have knownHistorical how slowly the economic benefits would come to this area. The park has not been an economic force in that area. It absolutely hasn't. Progress has been very slow. But there are some reasons why it's been slow. The reasons relate in part to the fact that before the park could be established, it had to receive the authorization which was the Congressional act. And before that could occur, the state had to make sure it hadEnvironmental turned over all the land to the federal government. That was not accomplished until 1975, soMinnesota here you have something in limbo. You couldn't put forth the park rules and enforce them until 1975. It was a very awkward period for the people who were in the Park Service and were supposed to get the park groomed and set the stage for the final establishment of the park. It was very awkward for them. In fact, it was an extreme hardship on some of them. They took a lot of abuse. But the delays were probably inevitable becauseMinnesota of the way the legislation was written. During the time in those early years after the park was authorized by the Congress, the National Park Service moved the administration of the Voyageurs National Park project from Omaha to the eastern district. I've forgotten now where the headquarters for that was, but it's out on the east coast somewhere. Now then we had people who were supposed to be working with the Park Service and knowledgeable about Voyageurs National Park, and they were suddenly given something which they had no experience with. Even the Omaha people had never really worked on a national park project until they got a hold of Voyageurs Park. They had only worked with one other park before,

the Dunes National Park in northern Indiana, so they had limited experience. I think there's some bureaucratic problems. There were some problems that were inherent in the legislation that caused this thing to move very slowly. The funding was always subject to the final approval of the Bureau of the Budget, and in trying to reduce the deficit throughout the government, they would ask the Park Service or the Interior Department to make percentage cuts down the line. So the land acquisition funds weren't there. You understand that it was never a calculated thing to "do in" Voyageurs National Park -- at least, I don't think so. I have never found any evidence of that. I'm sure that if we read the press on other parks around the country, we'd find that they were just as upset because they didn't get their funding as we were here at Voyageurs. So I think you could put together a number of good and very valid reasons -- none of them malicious in any way -- that held the park back. But it made it very difficult for the superintendent and for his staff to work in an Projectenvironment like that.

MR: Because people are asking, "What's happening?" History FW: Right. There it is. They go by people, wearing their uniforms in downtown International Falls, and they're almost symbolic of somethingOral that really hasn't proved out to be quite what everybody said it would. People misunderstood maps of the park, the boundaries, and the administrative procedures and policies. SomeSociety people thought you could still hunt and said they were lied to because now you can't hunt. That was never an issue. In fact I remember the hunting issue in 1969 whenIssues they had the subcommittee hearings of the park in International Falls. The chairman of the subcommittee was a Congressman Taylor from North Carolina. Several people had gone up to make their statements and mentioning hunting. He interrupted the proceedings and heHistorical said, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's have one thing clearly understood. If you want a national park, there will be no hunting. Let's not have any misunderstanding." So in spite of what I thought was a rather dramatic statement right at the outset at the first congressional hearings, people still had some notion they could hunt. I suppose part of that misunderstanding related to Congressman Blatnik and his efforts to try to get a huntingEnvironmental provision in the park. Governor LeVander also tried for a similar provision. They wanted to getMinnesota some exemptions to the authorization, but the Park Service was adamant that you can't have a national park and still permit hunting.. If you want hunting, maybe we should have a lakeshore recreation area, but not a national park. So I think that there were some problems linked to the legislation, to the bureaucracy of the Park Service, to the funding problems, and to public misunderstanding. In any case, it was very, very,Minnesota painfully slow. The Congress then had passed the Wilderness Bill which required a wilderness assessment. That took another team to come up here and do it. You see it all takes time. You always have to have public hearings. That's almost another year to run through the gambit of preparing for the public hearings, holding the public hearings, taking testimony, keeping the ledger open so that people can add to it. Then you have another year -- you see? And it just went on and on like this. But I have the hopes now that we're over that now. I think Voyageurs Park took longer than most parks. I think that's why some people got upset. They would ask, "When is this going to end?" and "When are we ever

going to see the benefits of the park?"

MR: Perhaps some of the problems were originally minimized in an effort to present a united front to Congress. The park's supporters wanted to be able to say, "Minnesota really does want this park."

FW: Yes. This is my opinion. If I was the congressman on the Insular Affairs or Recreation subcommittees in Washington, and I looked at the information about supporting organizations for the national park in the state of Minnesota I would be amazed at how they were able to sign up so many. It was just overwhelming support for the park if you just simply total up the number of service clubs, communities, and labor groups which supported the park. But it was the vocal minority in northeastern Minnesota Projectthat a lot of people heard. Especially if you lived up there, you kept hearing that. But apart from that minority, a congressman making a decision would probably say, "Well, there's plenty of support for the park" and would not have any trouble voting for the legislation. I think that when you live up here it's a little different. You go to Hinckley andHistory beyond, people even today don't know very much about the industries up here. They don't know very much about forestry, they don't know about mining, and so on. NortheasternOral Minnesotans are in an environment up here which is not all that well understood outside. It's easier to support a park if you live in Willmar, because it doesn't involved your Societyland. People in northeastern Minnesota felt, "Well sure, it easy for the service clubs and other organizations to support this when they don't have to deal with traditionsIssues and a way of life which are suddenly set aside. Outside of this area, there was a lot of support, and that was due to the just amazing organizational structure of the Voyageurs Park Association and the Citizens Committee for Voyageurs National Park which Rita ShemeshHistorical put together. She had also worked on the taconite amendment. It was a marvelous experience to work with people who were competent and really honest and sincere about a cause for which they could really receive no compensation whatsoever.

MR: Was there any rivalryEnvironmental between the two groups? Minnesota FW: No, I don't know of any. In fact, even though I've been associated with them, I can hardly see the difference.

MR: It's very confusing. Minnesota FW: Yes, it is. As you do your research, you should try to figure it out yourself. I think the Voyageurs National Park Association involved people from all over the United States. It was obviously originating in Minnesota, but Charles Lindbergh for example, was a member. And I was just looking at some things yesterday before preparing for this interview, and I saw where someone else -- a very prominent person -- joined the Voyageurs National Park Association. Now I can't think of the name after having

read it. But there were people outside of Minnesota who belonged to that. I think the Citizens Committee allowed people to belong to something that had a tag of "Citizens Committee". It was more of a grassroots organization and could be utilized at the time that you were trying to establish the park, because it was Citizens Committee for Voyageurs National Park. Once the park is established then the parent organization -- if maybe you want to look at it that way (the VNPA) -- could continue to monitor events in the park. I don't see any rivalry there. I don't think people in the organizations themselves know the distinction. They knew they belonged to one or the other. I don't think people had carrying cards, but they wanted to be identified, if in no other way but in a list of people supporting this cause.

MR: There seems to be actually an overlap if you look at of the membershipProject -- some who belonged to both.

FW: Yes, the same people. That's right. History MR: Do you think some of the confusion over whether the Crane Lake area was going to be included prompted some hard feelings? Oral

FW: I was surprised to learn about the Crane Lake issue. I learnedSociety about it originally 1968 as a person working for the park. But through my research, I have learned that the Crane Lake issue was an inter-agency controversy inIssues the early sixties which never got into the public realm. But my research has shown that the concept that Crane Lake would be an excellent area to include in the park was published in-house by the Park Service in 1962, 1963, and 1964, and they wanted to include thatHistorical in their original proposal. Because of resistance on the part of the Forest Service, they backed off, so that all of the publicity about Voyageurs National Park billed it as the "Voyageurs National Park on the Kabetogama Peninsula." Some people finally learned how to spell Kabetogama after all this time. That's the way it was sold. We were instructed that while lobbying for the park, Crane Lake should never be mentioned. ItEnvironmental was first brought up in a very public way in the fall of 1967. Some of us thought, "Well, now surelyMinnesota this will scu ttle the park. If they wanted to do it in, this is it." Some wondered if it was a ploy by the opposition -- the enemy -- somehow. When you look back and you look through the documents you find that it was considered to be a logical unit in terms of its physical arrangements, its connections -- it extends from the Boundary Waters up to International Falls and to . It was just a logical part of it. But Minnesotathe fact that the Forest Service managed that area caused it to be removed from the park proposal, of course. As I say we were instructed not to mention Crane Lake, because we were supporting the Voyageurs Park on the Kabetogama. I think a lot of people -- maybe even Governor Andersen himself -- felt that it would never go through with the Crane Lake and that we should stay with the proposal for the Kabetogama. We stayed out of it. Everybody stayed out of it except the Congress. [Chuckles] Even the Park Service backed off and would not -- by virtue of their agreements with the Agriculture Department -- do anything. It was Congress that put it back in again.

MR: So first it was an inter-agency dispute and then it remained a background issue which no one wanted to touch?

FW: Right. Then it was finally added. Even though I have tried to identify myself as somewhat of an expert on the Crane Lake issue, there are still some gaps in there that maybe your interviewing will solve. I'm convinced in my mind -- and maybe I could be proved wrong -- that the research that was done by Governor LeVander's committee -- and Roger Williams, who is still with the planning agency, was really the person who did most of the research and the writing on that report -- showed that the original Park Service proposal was correct. Crane Lake should be included. The work of Jim Oberstar, then an aide to Mr. Blatnik, was also important. I think that Mr. Oberstar was really Projectrather more familiar with the project -- as you would expect -- because of Mr. Blatnik's many other responsibilities. Perhaps Oberstar, working with some of their own people at the state level, realized the logic of Crane Lake inclusion. That if you left it out to be included later, it would never be included later. You wouldn't want to go back andHistory bring up all of the old sore points again in another decade. It just wouldn't go over. This was the time. From an administrative standpoint it made a lot of sense. Also, if Oralyou really want to look at the historical underpinnings of Crane Lake, you go back to the Quetico-Superior Committee because they saw this as one major recreational quarter stretchingSociety all the way from the northwest angle to Pigeon River. To leave gaps and administrative holes in it would have to been most unfortunate. Sig Olson was very strongIssues on including it. Although even Sig Olson in order to get a park would have said, "Hey, we'll wait a while." That's why I say it was so important that Blatnik put it in. Blatnik made a very good, compelling argument for the inclusion of Crane Lake at the first subcommitteeHistorical hearing in 1969. I think he was absolutely correct in that. That's the prettiest part of Voyageurs National Park -- the Crane Lake area -- in my opinion. It's the most attractive part of the whole section.

MR: Do you think John Blatnik gets a bad rap? He was definitely in the middle of things and some people thinkEnvironmental he didn't support the park strongly enough, and others feel he should never have supported it at all.Minnesota

FW: He sure got a bad rap from the people who were opposed to it, and some of them were his very close personal friends. So there was a cost there to him in that sense. I don't think he ever lost a lot of votes on it because he used to win big -- I don't know what his margins were,Minnesota but he made maybe sixty, seventy, seventy-five percent of the vote up here. But he would always run scared. I visited with him in Washington a little less than two years ago during my research on the park. He told me -- and he said this publicly many times while this was still jelling -- that he wanted to be absolutely certain that most of the people in his district supported the park. He wanted to be assured of that. He wasn't going to introduce a bill in which he had some lack of confidence. He wanted them to prove to him that this was a good thing. He always knew that there would be those who were absolutely and adamantly opposed to it. Many of those people, of course, still hold it against him and were rather

uncharitable when he first introduced the bill. They publicly condemned him for supposedly going back on his word and all sorts of things, which I don't think he did. There's another part of this though that you learn when you start reading through this material. The Park Service -- again not on purpose, but because of mixed signals within the Park Service bureaucracy did not keep Mr. Blatnik well informed of their progress. That really bothered him, I think. This was documented in some of the memos, in some of the records, and in some of the interviews that I've read with Park Service personnel. They say that was a mistake early on. Later they worked very well with his office and in fact, they worked very closely with Oberstar in putting this all together. But I think there was a time when they didn't contact the Congressman frequently enough about changes and about progress -- or the lack of it --and so he was often left to hear some things from other sources that turned out to be true, but he wasn't the first to hear them. I think he was upset by that.Project

MR: So the Park Service damaged its own cause a little bit in the beginning?

FW: Yes, and that may have been due to the inexperience of theHistory Omaha district, because most of the national parks are located and managed from the western part of the United States. But I am sure if you check with some of his peopleOral in Washington, they might tell you that there was some lack of communication on the part of the Park Service. Society MR: What about the opposition of Boise Cascade? Did that have a lot of effect on the park? Issues FW: I think it did. I if Boise Cascade had not taken over that mill up there -- the Minnesota & Ontario Company -- things would have gone a lot more smoothly. I think the M&O officials up there -- those people who were localsHistorical and with whom you could work -- may not have ever been enthusiastic about the park, but they were quite willing to make some trades or to consider some trades. Because I think they saw themselves as coming out pretty well on trading peninsula land for some forest land outside the park. It would have all gone along more smoothly had Boise not taken that company over. Boise Cascade really was trumpeting the timberEnvironmental industry's philosophy at the time: "don't give in another inch to the park people, to the environmentalistsMinnesota (they were confronting these people constantly in the west) and let's hold the line." I think there was a word that went out to hold the line. Then there was the proof that Boise Cascade had some interests through one of their subsidiaries in private development -- resort land on the west end of the peninsula.

MR:Minnesota I've heard that. Do you think in a more practical analysis the park might not have been such a bad thing for them? They would have gotten some good trades along the way.

FW: I think so. They were also concerned about federal lands. That's what they say at least. They threw the biggest curve at the National Park Service -- by the admission of many Park Service people -- when they proposed seriously -- in all of their literature and their communications -- that the park be established in another location, alongside of the Boundary Waters. That was a hard one to deal with for the Park Service. I don't quite

understand why they felt that way, but I've talked with Park Service personnel who have confirmed that. The Boise proposal was that there already was federal land available, why not create a park where there's access? The Crane Lake area -- incidentally -- would have been included in that. Boise promoted that heavily, and even the county did as well. At one time Mr. Blatnik even considered a bill that would involve only the east half of Kabetogama. Park opponents talked about state parks, county parks, and all sorts of alternatives. I don't know whether Boise was behind all of that. I'm sure they were certainly supportive of anything that would embarrass the agencies, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for delaying tactics at that time. I don't know whether you could say that Boise set the park timetable back six months or eight months or one month. Certainly they weren't helpful. I think had they not taken over the Minnesota & Ontario, we would have had much faster action on the park. Project

MR: Do you think the Park Service ever considered the Boise proposal seriously?

FW: I don't think so. I never found evidence of that. After all, theyHistory were not about to get into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. That's another agency, you see. It's under the Forest Service. [Chuckles] They had no interest in that at all. Oral

MR: So why did the Boise proposal cause confusion among SocietyPark Service people?

FW: Because of the argument that you wouldIssues not have to pick up private land, that you could just use federal land. This would knock out one of the opposition's arguments. What Boise was saying was, "Well, you keep picking up private land, when here you've got federal land available. If you want a park so badly,Historical it's a beautiful area. It probably is prettier than Kabetogama. After all, Kabetogama is logged over and isn't very pretty in the interior." I don't know. As I said earlier, I am not so sure why this proposal caused such problems. They did finally field the question obviously, but it should not have been such a hurdle. I know that had the Park Service backed off and said, "We'll support something over there", everything would haveEnvironmental come crashing down because I don't think the committees would ever have supported a park Minnesotaother than in the location at Kabetogama. That was their commitment, and any other location was unthinkable. Elmer Andersen was absolutely adamant on that. He saw that proposal for what it was, which was simply a diversionary tactic to throw us off. It wasn't a serious proposal. It couldn't be. There's no access over there in the same way that there is to Kabetogama. People would not be able to get to the park.Minnesota There were all sorts of things wrong with the Boise plan.

MR: In talking about what happened after the park was established, there was a great deal of controversy concerning the Citizens Committee for Voyageurs National Park and Irv Anderson. For example, the House tried to zero out their budget a number of times.

FW: The Citizens Committee for Voyageurs National Park was certainly not helpful. They will argue to the death that their intent was to be helpful, but if you look through their

minutes or any of the proceedings of that committee -- to the extent that one can find the documents in an easy, open fashion -- I don't think you'd find that they were supportive at all. I read through some of the minutes of that committee. I know Governor Andersen, Willard Munger, a board member from Duluth, and Dick Jones, also from Duluth, had some embarrassing moments. They were downright abusive to Governor Andersen in some of the things that were said at those meetings. The committee was stacked. It could be nothing more than an embarrassment. The Park Service was forced to respond to their questions, so it was embarrassing to them. Even finally people in International Falls grew tired of the whole, weary business. I think you can tell, from the difficulties the committee had in receiving its funding every biennium, the concerns on the part of some people. After all, it was what Mr. Munger called the "Harassment Committee". He referred to it that way right in committee hearings. Project

MR: Do you think that created some bad feeling about the park downstate? That people confused this committee with some of the more worthy goals of the original supporters? History FW: I think anyone in Minneapolis would have to be confused by a committee that carried that name. And then by what the Voyageurs National ParkOral Association was talking about and what the Park Service might be talking about. Surely it was confusing. The state was providing money -- Mr. Munger would say this -- through taxSociety dollars to support a committee that was harassing a federal agency and trying to delay its work which was properly legislated and mandated into law. InvariablyIssues the things that came out of the committee were almost always referred to as "controversial issues". The committee should have been certainly involved in where things go, what access you would have. Also, what are the policies of the Park Service? There areHistorical many legitim ate questions that the Park Service invites in all of their installations around the country. But this was not quite in the same vein. So I don't think it's a force at all now. I don't know really how much money they have. As I say I think everybody's kind of grown weary of it up here. Mr. Anderson was defeated. I don't know that that was the main factor for his defeat. I think there are some local issues there thatEnvironmental we don't know about. I don't believe that even his successor is necessarily very high on theMinnesota Voyageurs Park. I don't think he's really saying very much in opposition to it. The state senator up there is certainly not -- I think -- all that friendly for it. He may have had difficulty in the leadership position in the state legislature over the park issue. Some people were very much opposed to seeing him become a speaker of the house because of his stance here on environmental issues and especially the park. Minnesota MR: I think that you agree then that created some confusion and hard feelings about the park?

FW: Yes. Absolutely. It was confusing. It hampered the Park Service in their ability to implement some of the policies. There are some very constructive proposals however that were made by that committee. Park Service -- I think -- had to defend some things. Probably it's good to have questions raised about policy. But on balance, it didn't work out in the way

in which the legislation describes the role of that committee. I don't think it worked quite that well. I think it favored -- again -- the interests of the people who lived there. That is the committee membership -- primarily those who lived in that area. It's a little bit top heavy.

MR: Do you think this area has seen the last of the big parks? You don't see support for any other?

FW: No, I don't think so. [chuckles] I don't think you'll see anymore. My bias is that we begin to support the state park system. There are some very marvelous properties that are already in the state park system up here, and I hope we don't lose them. Or that they're in any way damaged by lack of maintenance and some of the resources compromised by that. I think we should look at other assets that we have, particularly in state parks Projectin northeastern Minnesota and through the Superior National Forests which is very, very much more recreation minded than they used to be. I would like to see inter- governmental cooperation on the recreational resources of northeastern Minnesota and larger than that -- all across the lake states. There are several federal parks and lakeshores over inHistory and , and we're all part of the same region. We have the same kind of problems, but we do have this marvelous asset of natural scenic, recreational resources.Oral You always like to see those kind of hooked together in some way in terms of management objectives, and maybe even advertising eventually. I would be surprised if you ever see anSociety enlargement of Voyageurs National Park. Certainly not in my lifetime. You've already had one battle to try to hold it together and to keep the boundaries in complianceIssues with the legislative boundary. So no, I don't think so. I think that's over. That's why passing it in 1970 was so important. It may never have gone even in the next session. In fact, it probably would not have passed. Historical MR: That was really the critical moment then?

FW: Yes, that was it. It was either then or never. Too many things change with philosophical thought patterns in the House of Representatives, and certainly the public was coming off of that environmentalEnvironmental high that we were on in the sixties. All the things I read indicate that we reached theMinnesota peaked in 1969 -- maybe early 1970. We've seen a continued interest in environmental matters nationally, for sure. People still are willing to pay for a decent environment. But normally what they're thinking of is clean water and clean air, and the larger pollution issues. Putting together parcels of land for new parks is pretty hard to do. It takes a long time and lot a convincing. Minnesota MR: Really the Voyageurs was fifty years in the making.

FW: Yes, it was. Yes. There were some starts and stops in there. I know in my little paper I mentioned this early proposal in 1891. That's a little bit unfair, because they were not parks in the way that we think about them. The National Park Service was not created until 1916, so there was no management philosophy that had been worked out at all by the 1890's when they were talking about this area being a park. But it's interesting that they were groping for

something, that they were looking for some way to set this land aside. There's that continuity. There's always been that concern that somehow this land was special, that it was unique, and that it required a rather distinct management system separate from the state. The state is too close to the issue. It's too easy for the state to compromise it. You can't zone it because zoning laws can be changed. You've got to have something that's difficult to alter once it's there. You have to have people agreeing that it's unique enough that we want to do this. Once that agreement has been made and you invoke this management philosophy then you stay with it. So in the year 2050 maybe then you will see Voyageurs Park the way Governor Andersen and some of them thought about it. It's got a long ways to go -- the interior, the peninsula. A lot of things have to happen because it really wasn't a natural area in the way our western parks were. It has to have a timetable to return to the kinds of conditions that you read about when you think of the original voyageurs. Project

MR: You were talking about the immense amount of logging that had been done there before? History FW: Yes. See the whole interior of the peninsula was all logged off. Much of it was burned off. So I understand that what they're doing is just lettingOral it come back. They call it an ecological succession. They're just allowing it to return to its kind of climax and that takes quite a long time. I remember Governor Andersen was very honestSociety about this always. He said what we see now is one thing. It's beautiful. Most of it we can go along the shoreline, and enjoy the view. But what another generationIssues down the line will see is quite different. He spoke more eloquently than that, but when they view it in the middle of the next century -- generations beyond us -- then they will really see it the way the voyageurs may have seen it. That's really not unusual for parks. The BanffHistorical National Park in the Canadian Rockies -- much of that was logged and burned over. I think a lot of was logged over. So it's not unprecedented, but it was a matter of concern on the part of the National Park Service. The Service was divided. I don't know whether it was sixty-forty, or ninety-ten, or what, but there were some professionals in the Park Service who had their misgivings about labelingEnvironmental this a national park because of the water level fluctuations there as a result of the dams. Obviously,Minnesota these concerns were expressed in the early period, before the favorable report was released. But the final opinion was that the water level fluctuations are not really enough significant enough to alter the environment. What you see there from the water looking on is about what you would have seen many years ago. That's why the Quetico-Superior Committee was so important, because they were instrumental in the passageMinnesota of legislation which shut off this logging down to the water's edge. The Kabetogama Peninsula was saved for that reason.

It's interesting how that legislation made all of our original proposals of park possible. After all, who should care whether they log right down to the shoreline? But because they logged the peninsula in the same way they logged areas in what is now the Boundary Waters, it survived with that facade of beautiful shoreline. And now the interior will have its chance to come back.

MR: You mentioned the dams. Is there much controversy about maintaining those dams and water levels?

FW: I think they want to get it settled. I don't know that they can change that, however. The International Joint Commission regulates the water levels, and I don't think you're going to see much change. There may be some ways to regulate it in a more judicious fashion so you don't go up and down too much. The fluctuations have impact on marine life and plants, and it is a matter of concern and the subject of many studies. It was not of sufficient concern, however, on the part of the Park Service to write it off as a national park. There were people who said, "Well, this is not a natural area. You're not talking about the Grand Canyon." That is absolutely true. How are you going to argue with that? But there are precedentsProject in the Park Service where they've taken over land -- I guess we couldn't call it derelict land -- but some parts of our national parks might have been in that sort of poor condition, and the Service allowed them to return to their natural state. That's a good lesson. It's a good lesson in management and philosophy. That's the way they run it. The ForestHistory Service manages it a little more. We've learned from both methods. One leaves it alone. Another one does a little management. Parks are educational places. We never evenOral talk about that. Some of us do, but not enough. Initially, people heard so much about the economic virtues of the national park that they did not hear about some of its other assets. EducationSociety is so important. In fact, the former director of the Minnesota Historical Society, Russell Fridley, served on a committee which did a marvelous job evaluatingIssues the educational values of national parks. Emphasizing education is something I hope we can do with Voyageurs, and I would like to see UMD, along with some of the other colleges, become involved. We need to include in our agenda tying that park into our educationalHistorical system somehow. That's one of the best ways to override opposition -- to bring people into an environment like that, especially for the people of northeastern Minnesota. It's a learning experience. And we need to use the personnel of the National Park Service -- these professional people -- in that way. To the credit of the National Park Service at Voyageurs they're doing that with the local people. They bring kids out inEnvironmental the park. They have special nature study programs. They try to get local college kids and others.Minnesota As one generation grows and becomes accustomed to that, gradually the resistance toward the park will disappear and become non-existent.

MR: You create your own constituency?

FW:Minnesota That's right, and this is what they're doing there now. But I think we can do that in a broader sense, and I'd like to see us down the line be able to do that more effectively.

MR: There's some concern that the Boundary Waters is becoming overcrowded and overused. Do you think that the Voyageurs could be used to take some of the pressure off the Boundary Waters? The experience, of course, is a little different.

FW: Yes, I always did think that the Voyageurs National Park was an alternative to the

Boundary Waters Canoe Area. An alternative for people who love nature in the same way, but who may not be willing or able to carry a canoe. This is something that you have right next door. People can go there, and they can enjoy it right away. I don't know whether you would want to call it just an overflow, where someone is saying, "Well, I can't get into the BWCA, so I'll go to Voyageurs." But there will be some of that, yes. And often it appeals to other types of people besides those who traditionally use the BWCA.

MR: Thank you, Professor Witzig.

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