Volume 26 Issue 2 U.S. - Canada Transboundary Resource Issues Spring 1986 The Skagit-High Ross Controversy: Negotiation and Settlement Jackie Krolopp Kirn Marion E. Marts Recommended Citation Jackie K. Kirn & Marion E. Marts, The Skagit-High Ross Controversy: Negotiation and Settlement, 26 Nat. Resources J. 261 (1986). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol26/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resources Journal by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. JACKIE KROLOPP KIRN* and MARION E. MARTS** The Skagit-High Ross Controversy: Negotiation and Settlement SETTING AND BACKGROUND The Skagit River is a short but powerful stream which rises in the mountains of southwestern British Columbia, cuts through the northern Cascades in a spectacular and once-remote mountain gorge, and empties into Puget Sound approximately sixty miles north of Seattle. The beautiful mountain scenery of the heavily glaciated north Cascades was formally recognized in the United States by the creation of the North Cascades National Park and the Ross Lake National Recreation Area in 1968, and earlier in British Columbia by creation of the E.C. Manning Provincial Park. The Ross Lake Recreation Area covers the narrow valley of the upper Skagit River in Washington and portions of several tributary valleys. It was created as a political and, to environmentalists who wanted national park status for the entire area, controversial, compromise which accom- modated the city of Seattle's Skagit River Project and the then-planned North Cascades Highway.