Wilderness Alps - Conservation and Conflict in Washington’s North Cascades

Harvey Manning was a founder of Mountaineers Books in Seattle with the original publication of “Freedom of the Hills” (1960), the Northwest “bible” of mountaineering. He was a long-time board member of the North Cascades Conservation Council (NCCC) and with wife Betty produced hundreds of issues of NCCC’s journal The Wild Cascades.
Ken Wilcox is an environmental and outdoor writer and trail planner living in Bellingham. He has served on the board of the NCCC since 1984.

Edited by Ken Wilcox

Part 2

In February 1959, 20 years after the near-victory of Marshall and Silcox in establishing a protected area around Glacier Peak, the Region Six office of the Forest Service released its proposal for Glacier Peak. The agency put forward a new wilderness area encompassing just 422,925 acres — 11,400 acres smaller than the preliminary proposal two years before. An obvious disappointment.

Roads were still projected far up Agnes Creek, up the Suiattle to Miners Ridge and Suiattle Pass, along the Chiwawa nearly to Red Mountain, up Railroad Creek to Big Creek, along the White Chuck to Kennedy Hot Springs, and up the White River to Indian Creek. The roads, said the Forest Service, would at once “enhance travel to the wilderness,” permit more people to “enjoy roadside recreation close to scenic features,” and “give access to patented mineral properties” — not to mention the big old trees.

But there was soothing syrup too: “Commercial timber harvesting in the Suiattle, Chiwawa, White Chuck, White, Railroad and Agnes will be done in such a way as to protect scenic and recreational values.” (The term “harvest” — as if an old-growth forest is tantamount to a cornfield — has always been troubling for conservationists.)

Public hearings were scheduled. However, in keeping with the strategy of shunning large cities and their “unfriendly” audiences in favor of smaller population centers dependent on exploitation of public lands, hearings were held not in Seattle (or San Francisco or Boston) but in Bellingham on October 13 and Wenatchee on October 16.

The box score kept by the NCCC (North Cascades Conservation Council) tallied 43 speakers in Bellingham and 63 at Wenatchee; 63 opposed the Forest Service proposal as too small, 24 thought it was too large and 19 said it was just right.

The testimony of the opposition was interesting. Virlis Fischer, incorrectly representing himself as speaking for the Mazamas, lectured that “With all due respect for the thought and hard work that was put into [the studies] by various individuals, we have found the Forest Service study to be the only one which meets our definition of scientific methodology.”

George Wall complained, “We are growing tired of the folks from the East and the South who continue to view the state of Washington as a colony.” The map of his own proposal showed logging up the Stehekin to timberline, similarly up Devore and Company Creeks, and more up the South Fork Agnes Creek and even into the West Fork Agnes.

The Rev. Riley took another tack, reflecting the persistent hysteria of McCarthyism at the time: “I should remind you,” he said, “that it was pointed out by the Communist leaders that the way they could destroy our free republican system would not be by war but by the slow economic destruction of our society.”

Also speaking were John Osseward and Olaus Murie, George Marshall (brother of Bob and now editor of The Living Wilderness), Dave Brower, Patrick Goldsworthy (who since April 1958 was the new president of the NCCC), and a galaxy of local, regional and national stars.

The Forest Service proposal was characterized as a “starfish wilderness,” tentacles of snow-and-meadow ridges extending out from Glacier Peak, leaving unprotected the ancient forests of the intervening valleys. Speaking in Bellingham for the NCCC, President Goldsworthy said the group intended to “bitterly oppose” the exclusion of the White Chuck, Agnes and Suiattle valleys from the Forest Service’s proposal.

In broader terms, he argued that “The untimely death of Silcox and Marshall in 1940 marked the start of accelerated progress backward in wilderness preservation.” The current proposal, he said, was clearly another step backward and it set up “a conflict that we do not mean to lose.” Strong words, but indicative of the sentiments of the time.

Echoing the concern, the Autumn 1959 issue of The Living Wilderness declared that the 1959 proposal by the Forest Service was “a mockery of the idea of wilderness as, history tells us, the Forest Service so conceived it during a past of wilderness leadership.”

This is not to say that a proposal by The Mountaineers in May 1959, prior to the hearings, earned high marks either. The inadequacies are, and were, embarrassing. The Mountaineers proposal was self-described as “Logical Boundaries of a Minimum Glacier Peak Wilderness Area.”

The Sierra Club in 1957 had published a map by Dave Simons indicating a need for protection over a far larger area — for example, down Lake Chelan as far as Safety Harbor. The Mountaineers’ defense was that politics is the “art of the possible.”

Edith Wolten of Blaine also testified at Bellingham, and she countered the argument that wilderness can be enjoyed only by an elite group of hardy backpackers and the well-to-do:

“My husband and I are not wealthy, and this summer we took our six children to Image Lake [near Glacier Peak]. It is 13 miles. The youngest girl is four and a half. The little boy is five and a half, and he carried a pack all the way in and all the way out, and they enjoyed it and he was very proud of having carried a pack.”

Dolly Connelly from Bellingham carried the idea a bit farther:

“I don’t know anything more irritating than the argument that few people use the wilderness areas … . There is nothing but just simple laziness and indifference that prevents people from enjoying wilderness areas.

“We have run across people in there who didn’t even have hiking boots, who wouldn’t have known an ice axe if they had seen one, who had army surplus packs on their backs that they bought for 50 cents, and they were having as good a time as a mountaineer with all his elegant gear. It doesn’t take anything but the urge to put one foot in front of the other and the esthetic capacity to enjoy it.”

Gerry Worthen of the Bellingham Sportsmen’s Club was poignant. “It is time to get away from television and chase our children outdoors where they can grow up and become useful citizens of God.” He added that wilderness is there for everyone and that abolishing it would be analogous to abolishing church just because “more people stay away than attend.”

Henry Kral, an Everett plywood millworker and NCCC member, acknowledged that “We, like any other lumber industry, are dependent on timber for our livelihood and success of our mill. At the same time many of us also depend on our forests for our recreation and relaxation. Since the volume of timber and other commercial resources involved is a very small part of the resources available in our great state, we feel it would be a tragic loss if the Suiattle, White Chuck and Agnes Creek valleys were excluded from the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area.”

Virginia Simmons of Seattle was also not pleased with the Forest Service’s proposed boundaries. “For those of us who dream of virgin forest with clear streams cascading at the foot of snowclad mountains, this proposal is a nightmare.”

John McLeod of Chelan countered, “As far as this Mountaineer group going up and yodeling on a mountain and whatnot, I don’t think that is the big portion of our population … why not open this lower area so that the majority can enjoy it.”

J.D. Bronson of Yakima, president of the Western Pine Association warned, “Disease, insects and overmaturity are breaking up old-growth stands. … Miles of hiking would face wilderness enthusiasts before the rugged backcountry could be reached. … Including commercial timber stands as proposed would serve no useful purpose in the wilderness area scheme.”

Dave Brower called the wilderness proposal “pitiful … shrunken and withered to a remnant resembling a badly eroded snowbank,” then added, “There is no more important challenge in scenic-resource conservation before the nation today than the challenge posed in the Northern Cascades … [to ensure it] is not gouged for its stumpage and low-grade ores for short-term benefits and long-term deprivation. …

Our government agencies should choose to cooperate and allow this area to be the center of a golden triangle of national parks benefiting all the state. … Washington is one of the few places, in all the world, where [wilderness] is magnificently displayed, and where by accident or design there still remains to us the opportunity to save enough of it.”

The Forest Service received close to a thousand letters — an unprecedented number for any issue in the history of the agency. The NCCC membership, having doubled in a year to more than 600, turned up the heat considerably (the Sierra Club’s membership, based in California, was also on a tear — adding 200 new members each month).

On January 3, 1960, The New York Times carried a column by John Oakes, editorial page editor, in support of the conservationist proposal. “Only intense public pressure,” he wrote, “will induce the Forest Service to give the proposed Glacier Peak area the boundaries it must have if it is to be kept as one of the last and greatest examples of primeval American wilderness.” Nevertheless, the agency remained committed to its tentacled plan.

Conservationists still had a final card to play — a direct appeal to the Secretary of Agriculture, bypassing the Forest Service. The Forest Service was to claim later that the original proposal had been amended in Portland by Region Six before being transmitted east, but this appears doubtful.

On September 10, 1960, Ervin L. Peterson, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, announced that Secretary Ezra Taft Benson had overruled the Region Six Forester and the Chief of the Forest Service. Peterson added 35,580 acres to the 1959 Forest Service proposal, designating a 458,505-acre Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. The thousand yelping letters had apparently gained protection of the Agnes, Suiattle and Chiwawa valleys. That was the good news.

The bad news, other than the pitiably small size of the preserve (the Marshall–Silcox proposal, which many considered woefully inadequate, was 795,000 acres), was the total exclusion of the entire northern sector, including Stehekin, and the omission of the White Chuck River.

In addition, a car campground was planned for Kennedy Hot Springs. A logging spur on Kennedy Ridge would take cars to picnic tables an easy stroll from the glaciers. The road might have gone higher, except for the agency’s one firm rule, “No logging above timberline.”

A wilderness was won, but by 1960 conservationists’ teetering faith in the U.S. Forest Service had tumbled to an historic low. A fraction of the wild North Cascades was now more or less secured (permanent designation by Congress of the Glacier Peak Wilderness would come later), but what of the rest? In retrospect, it is clear that 1958 was the turning point at which the fight against the Barbecuers of the North Cascades became a burgeoning stampede for a national park. [“The Great Barbecue” was a term used by Harper’s columnist and historian of American expansion, Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955), to denote the massive giveaway of federal lands to private interests in the late 1800s.]It would take another 10 years to pull it off.

Happily, the wagons were now circled, the horses shod and rested, as the cavalry prepared for the next long ride ahead. §