A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the Apostle Islands

5 | A Tale of Two Parks: Rewilding the Islands, 1929–1970

149 In August 1970, Kristine Jensch wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times, complaining bitterly about the prospect of losing her family’s Sand Island property to the national lakeshore proposed for the Apostle Islands. She regarded the whole project as unfair and unnecessary, a refrain that Jensch and her neighbors had sounded frequently during the ten years of discussion and planning for the park. Two weeks later, Wisconsin senators Gaylord Nelson and Robert Kastenmeier responded in their own letter to the Times. Jensch’s comments, they explained, were “typically characteristic of the attitude expressed by landowners to national park proposals when such projects propose to incorporate some private land within new park boundaries.” For the senators, the losses suffered by a few property owners were a small price to pay. “For a very modest investment,” they wrote, “the Apostle Islands bill promises to preserve in perpetuity a unique collection of 20 islands in Lake Superior unrivaled by any other island chain” in the country. Everyone would benefit. “This beautiful and unspoiled Lake Superior country will bring much needed recreational pleasures not only to the citizens of the Midwest but, indeed, to the entire nation.”1 As the senators suggested, opposition to Apostle Islands National Lakeshore followed a familiar pattern. When methods of using and valuing nature come 5 A Tale of Two Parks Rewilding the Islands, 1929–1970 150 chapter 5 into conflict, some people have their access to resources prescribed in favor of others. The different needs and perspectives of locals and outsiders often lie at the root of these disputes. Gaylord Nelson and other park supporters valued the islands as a wilderness—as a site for primitive recreation and ecological study—but they faced stiff resistance. Some opponents of the lakeshore, like Kristine Jensch, feared the loss of their property. Others worried that a wilderness park would inhibit the multifaceted economy that had supported Chequamegon Bay communities for more than a century. Members of the Red Cliff and Bad River bands opposed the park because they saw it as yet another attack on tribal sovereignty. The question of control lay at the center of the debate. Who had the authority to determine how the islands would be used? What kinds of activities and economies should the island resources support? Would activities of the past— the very activities that had created the landscapes now valued as wilderness—be allowed to continue? Gaylord Nelson’s challenge as the chief architect of the park lay in uniting a coalition in support of his vision of wilderness. The proponents of nature protection projects everywhere have faced similar challenges.2 Locals and outsiders had disagreed over the value of the Apostles as a park once before, and these two national park movements were bookends in a dispute over the proper relationship among nature, tourism, and the state. In the 1920s, local boosters and businessmen called for the creation of a national park in the islands as a means of stimulating a stagnant economy. The proposal brought National Park Service investigator Harlan Kelsey to the islands in 1930, but he refused to endorse the project because the scars left behind by decades of logging were simply too severe. When the NPS rejected their proposal, residents of the Chequamegon Bay had little choice but to resume the logging, fishing, and tourism that had supported their economy in the past. These activities continued, however, amid constantly changing environments. Forests regenerated without human interference , but in ways constantly informed by their long history of human use. Fish populations continued to change, pressured by overfishing and the arrival of exotic species. Wildlife populations shifted in response to the new environments created by logging, land clearing, and fire. The natural and cultural systems of the Chequamegon Bay shaped and responded to each other. These changes provided a new set of economic opportunities for residents of the A Tale of Two Parks 151 Chequamegon Bay, opportunities that depended on the century-old tradition of valuing the islands for the resources they contained. Even as traditional uses of island resources continued, a new way of valuing the islands emerged: as a wilderness. What had happened in the Apostle Islands in the forty years between the two park proposals? Forest regeneration gave the islands a new appeal. But far more had happened in the Apostles than just forest growth. As a wilderness, the islands were...