Wilderness News Spring 2008 Issue
The Spring 2008 Issue of Wilderness News is online and in the mail, download a PDF HERE > Highlights include: Sunnier Days on …
History
Bill Rom the “Canoe King of Ely”
Ely, Minnesota boasts over twenty outfitters that send visitors into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Campers rent the latest gear, groan under the weight of a canoe without realizing it …
Stories From the Ham Lake Fire
Three stories from the recent fire offer perspective: in a healthy forest, fire nourishes and revitalizes the soil and the landscape, and that in life, adversity can create new opportunities and …
Wilderness Between the Cracks
By Kevin Proescholdt Many people would think that once Congress designates an area as wilderness, the area finally is safe and protected. At such a point, wilderness advocates could turn to …
Spring 2007 Issue of Wilderness News
The Spring issue of Wilderness News is online and in the mail. Download a PDF here. Highlights: Wolf Island Protected Wolf Island is a …
The Quetico Superior Region—100 Years of Stewardship Beyond Boundaries
1909 was a significant year for the Quetico Superior region of Minnesota and Ontario. Before the well-known legislation of the 1930s that officially designated the roadless areas and parks that we …
Building History
By Laura Puckett, Wilderness News Contributor As iconic as the tall pines or the swaths of exposed granite in Quetico-Superior is the image of a canoe cutting a delicate wake across …
Wildfires Strike the BWCAW and Quetico Provincial Parks
Over 31,800 acres have burned in the largest fire to hit the Boundary Waters Canoe Area region since 1894. A lightning strike near Cavity Lake on July 13th, started a wildfire …
White Pine: Can What Once Was–Ever Be Again?
Bold against the sky, the feathery branches of an old white pine have a distinctive silhouette. Although not the most abundant species in the Quetico-Superior forest today, generations have strongly identified …
Racing Across the Wilderness
These days, the pace in the Boundary Waters and Quetico is fairly slow. It’s a place of leisure, by and large, for today’s visitors. But for Ely’s Don Beland and Atikokan’s …
In the Image of Man
Inukshuk (ee-nook-shook) is an Inuit word meaning “in the image of man”. For those who travelled across the vastness of the Arctic, inukshuks acted as directional markers to guide those …
John S. Pillsbury, Jr. Remembers NWNL’s Ile de Bord
John S. Pillsbury, Jr. died on March 28th at the age of 92. We’ll remember John as the former chief executive of a life insurance company, a Minnesota gubernatorial candidate, a …
Isle Royale; 65 Years Later
By Charlie Mahler, Wilderness News Contributor In a brewing controversy reminiscent of those surrounding the removal of cabins and resorts in the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park, holders …
Evidence Suggests Humans Inhabited the Superior Quetico Region 10,000 Years Ago
By David Woodward, Archaeologist, Superior National Forest, USDA Interdisciplinary Archaeological Studies, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota Northeastern Minnesota today is a cultural landscape, a rich land that has been owned, …
Don Fraser – Still Standing Up for Wilderness
by Diane Rose, Wilderness News Contributor After 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Minneapolis native Don Fraser was poised in 1978 to move on to the Senate. Politics were …
Mallard Island Ernest Oberholtzer’s Dream
The battle to spare the living wilderness is now living history and the men who fought that battle are among our quiet legends. Ober’s little island awaited it’s new mission and …
The Historic Lodges of the Boundary Waters Part II
[Part I of this story appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Wilderness News] The Big Resorts – Basswood Lake, Crooked Lake Throughout the 1930s, tourism spread rapidly into the roadless …
The Historic Lodges of the Boundary Waters
If you’ve paddled Basswood Lake to Crooked Lake, you’ve travelled an ancient route— favored by indigenous tribes and the Voyageurs, through a wild and peaceful chain of lakes, leading you to …
Hegman Lake Pictographs
These historic native illustrations are thought to be some of the clearest examples of pictographs in the BWCA/Quetico wilderness. The figures include a bull moose, another four legged animal, several canoes …
Q&A with the Forest Service
Results of the prescribed burn that took place on Three Mile Island last September. With the completion last September of the Magnetic Lake and Three Mile Island prescribed burns, the Forest …