MPR’s Leif Enger takes a look at the BWCA twenty years after legislation to protect it, and the divide in viewpoints on the land that have existed throughout the 20th century. Segment includes various interviews and commentary.

In 1978, Congress passed the Boundary Waters Act. It formally declared wilderness status for the BWCA- prohibiting logging, mining, and most motor use. The Act lit protests among local residents who saw their livelihoods threatened; many in Ely still feel the law was shoved down their throats by an overzealous environmental movement. But the 1978 law was by no means the first fight over what to do with the Boundary Waters. Conservationists and developers have been at odds in this territory since the 1920s.

Transcript:

(00:00:01) We plan to go up north as far as I think Basswood Lake. Yeah
(00:00:05) follow up in the river. Stay there relax and come
(00:00:08) back zolt. Tomako says there's nothing like this back home in Hungary a place with lake so clean you can lean down and drink zolt is a for trip veteran one of 200,000 canoeists who will paddle into the Boundary Waters this
(00:00:22) summer. That's the place where people can really be out of time. You can hide yourself. There's no time here. When we go back to the city just surprised that the whole weekend is gone.
(00:00:41) A canoeist gliding through the BWC a might seem loose blooms bear or Beaver. What do you want see is clear Cuts mining trucks roads or Resorts all were here all are gone tourists don't see the 60 years of environmental lobbying the sometimes sneaky politics or the painful cost of preservation canoe Outfitter Bill ROM long retired remembers A wilderness fast going to
(00:01:08) ruin resorts are popping up all over. Within the Boundary Waters back in the late 20s. They had proposed a road from the gun from The Firm Berg did a Gunflint right across the middle of the Boundary Waters. And of course, they would have been side roads and everything else. It would have been ruined.
(00:01:26) In fact in 1923 developers wanted a road to every Lake in the wilderness a plan routed by the Izaak Walton League and emerging conservationists Sigrid Olsen and Aldo Leopold. It was the first idea in what would become a half Cherie of incursions and Retreats and ebb and flow of noise and silence hydroelectric dams were proposed and defeated logging and Mining to basics of the local economy were restricted by the late 40s says Bill ROM, even Wilderness tourism was threatening the Wilderness a profusion of fly-in Resorts had made Ali the busiest Inland floatplane base in the world when environmentalists fought for a ban on flights into the Boundary Waters many locals were fed up. The Wilderness Advocates like Sig Olson and ROM himself Sig after the are
(00:02:16) ban. He was hung in effigy at one time and he lie. They blocked our holes Street logging truck saved blockaded our street. So our customers couldn't get into store had signs run the bum ROM out of town there on the local are born and raised here. We don't use the word environmentalist here. Okay, because that's kind of puts flags up for people
(00:02:38) Mike Hillman's family has been a Neely for Generations. His great-grandparents were among the first miners to arrive in the late 19th century. He remembers The Boundary Waters of the 50s and early 60s as a quiet place after the are ban a place used mostly by those who lived on its
(00:02:56) edges you've got to realize said in 1967. Ely was still a mining Community, okay. There were so few regular visitors. 1968 Bill rum went on a canoe trip. Argosy magazine proclaimed in the canoe King All Over America these magazines. You could come up on a canoe trip. No rules stay as long as you want. You could get complete outfitting for something like seven or eight dollars a day. You could eat like a king you could catch as many fish as you possibly want and they came by the
(00:03:38) thousands. Suddenly Hillman says you could hardly find a campsite in The Boundary Waters. The mid-70s conservation groups were pushing for a new law one to reduce motor access to the Wilderness prohibit mineral exploration and end logging all together. Again. Ali residents bridled at the prospect of restrictions from Washington. There were more Effigy burnings and this Furious protest during a visit from Pro Wilderness politicians just before passage of the 1978 Boundary Waters
(00:04:08) Act.
(00:04:14) Frank Salerno was Ali's mayor at the time. He says The Boundary Waters act still frustrates him not simply because of its restrictions. But because local residents had no voice in its passage. He says they were simply steamrolled by an autocratic and well-funded environmental Lobby.
(00:04:31) They were beating us to death with dollar bills. I mean to go to Hollywood California to people who are living in a fantasy world until Boom, you got to help us save the Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota that have the Robert Redford's and others write checks and have fundraisers and everything else because they don't know the first thing about Northeastern Minnesota or what's going on here, but they're well is it doesn't run dry. See you in the nest sir. There's egg shells in there now. So we may see the young around if if they in fact survive
(00:05:09) retired US Forest Service Officer Paul Smith is out this afternoon checking a luminous near his home on the edge of the BWC a it was his job to help enforce the new regulations to confront those who had motored in illegally or paddled in without a permit though many locals hated the new law Smith says they were consistently treated. Fairly and media reports characterized as six-pack bumpkins anxious to wreck the Wilderness, you know, he'll he's only a hundred years
(00:05:37) old, you know people did what they wanted. It was a hard life, you know, they worked hard and the mines and logging they drank hard they lived hard it was it was a hard life and they were used to doing what they wanted to the lot of them came
(00:05:55) from the old country where they were suppressed and
(00:05:59) they'd had enough. Enough of that when we all Ravel when we get to a certain point of hey, I've had enough of your regulations or rules. Ah, there's a loon in the young one
(00:06:12) Rebellion or Not The Boundary Waters act brought change the government bought out Resorts with in the wilderness. It ended logging phased out snowmobiling and reduced motor access it through a curve at Outfitters like Gary got Nick who supplied motorboats and snow machines for a living.
(00:06:29) It was like Dropping your arms off when it happened, you know just boom you couldn't do that anymore and you've been doing it, you know for many years and my father was doing it all his life. So you have to go out and find a new customer
(00:06:44) base,
(00:06:47) but God's Nick has found his new customer base and gradually much of Ely has done the same the BWC a is now one of the most popular Wilderness areas in the country Northwest Airlines flies daily all summer between Ely in the Twin Cities so you can get on a plane in Miami in the morning and be fighting the deer flies by Sundown or shopping for mukluks or drinking cappuccino or buying up real estate. Some tourist forego the Boundary Waters completely and just stay at the new holiday in all this growth. Some say has taken the Sting from the 1978 law that set aside the BWC A wilderness though. There are still regular flare-ups about motor regulations or how many canoeists should be allowed in one group. The bigger problem locally has become how to handle the new Prosperity how to grow wisely Ali historian. Mike Hillman says, most people here have come to And they can't go back
(00:07:43) but it doesn't hurt to wish for some people. They believe that there's going to be a polka Ghost Dance profit that is coming here and that if they close the curtains on the bar and if they religiously and fervently Dance All Night Long that come the morning will open up the curtains and everybody will be gone and it'll be 1957. Again
(00:08:05) Ali historian Mike Hillman. This is Les fanger for Main Street
(00:08:09) radio.