©Save the Boundary Waters

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the policy directive by U.S. Agriculture Secretary William Jardine that 640,000 acres of forests and waters in northern Minnesota be managed as a roadless wilderness area. …The U.S. Forest Service’s first landscape architect, Arthur Carhart, paddled the canoe country many times during the period from 1919 to 1921. He saw the unique value of the canoe country of the Superior National Forest as a recreational wilderness area that excluded automobiles. Carhart’s perspective on a roadless wilderness area was advanced by Paul Riis and the Izaak Walton League. They were supported by Aldo Leopold, a giant of public lands conservation. Leopold articulated his land ethic by urging that wilderness protection preserve unique and representative natural areas, wildlife and scenery. …The 1926 policy ushered in a new and fundamental change in forest administration; Jardine’s policy explicitly acknowledged that societal uses of national forests for recreation were as important as timber harvesting.