Rewilding the Islands: Nature, History, and Wilderness at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore by ...

453 Pages·2007·1.73 MB·English

Rewilding the Islands:
Nature, History, and Wilderness at
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

by

James W. Feldman

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
(History)

at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2004
© Copyright by James W. Feldman 2004
All Rights Reserved
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For Chris
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
iii

INTRODUCTION
Wilderness and History
1

CHAPTER ONE
Dalrymple’s Dream:
The Process of Progress in the Chequamegon Bay
20

CHAPTER TWO
Where Hemlock came before Pine:
The Local Geography of the Chequamegon Bay Logging Industry
83

CHAPTER THREE
Stability and Change in the Island Fishing Industry
155

CHAPTER FOUR
Consuming the Islands:
Tourism and the Economy of the Chequamegon Bay, 1855-1934
213

CHAPTER FIVE
Creating the Sand Island Wilderness, 1880-1945
262

CHAPTER SIX
A Tale of Two Parks:
Rewilding the Islands, 1929-1970
310

CHAPTER SEVEN
Conclusion:
The Rewilding Dilemma
371

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
412
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
***

One of the chief advantages of studying environmental history is that you can go hiking,
camping, and exploring in beautiful places and call it research. By choosing the history of the
Apostle Islands for a dissertation topic, I even added kayaking and sailing to my list of research
activities. There were many more hours spent in libraries, but those weren’t quite as memorable.
All graduate students should have topics like this one.
As I cast about for a dissertation topic, I knew that I wanted a place-based subject that
met two requirements: It needed to be about a place to which I had a personal connection, and it
needed to apply to a current, ongoing policy question or environmental issue. I found both in the
Apostles. I first went camping on Stockton Island in the early 1980s, when I attended summer
camp not far away at Camp Nebagamon for boys; I’ve returned to northern Wisconsin almost
every year since. After I spent the summer of 1999 working for Apostle Islands National
Lakeshore, learning more about the islands’ past and also about the upcoming Wilderness
Suitability Study, I knew that I had found my topic.
Of course, turning a dissertation topic into an actual dissertation has been another story
entirely, one that required an awful lot of assistance from an awful lot of people along the way. I
now understand why people often substitute laundry lists for acknowledgements sections. As I
think back on the years that it took to complete this dissertation, the list of people to whom I am
indebted keeps growing. Friends and family from near and far have provided the support that
made this project possible.
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In Bayfield, the staff at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has been open, friendly, and
helpful from the start. Bob Mackreth, the park historian, has been a vital resource. He has opened
his archives, his knowledge of the islands’ past, and even his house to me. He has responded to
countless emailed questions not just with prompt answers, but also with enthusiasm and support.
Superintendent Bob Krumenaker and Jim Nepstad, chief of planning and resource management,
have been welcoming from the first, letting me sit in on the Wilderness Study meetings
whenever I was able. Julie Van Stappen has likewise provided answers to my questions about the
park’s ecosystems and resource management programs. Nancy Mannikko, Luke Johnson, Katy
Holmer, Tam Hoffman, and Neil Howk have also helped along the way. The welcome reception
that I received at the park made me look forward to all of my many research trips to Bayfield.
Other people helped in tangible ways by sharing their knowledge, expertise, and
memories. Julian Nelson and Cliff and Harvey Hadland agreed to be interviewed so that I could
hear first-hand their stories of working in the commercial fisheries and their memories of
lifetimes spent in the islands. Mary Rice hosted me for a night on Sand Island, answered my
questions and shared with me her love of a place that has been in her family for three
generations. Senator Gaylord Nelson recounted for me his role in shepherding the national
lakeshore proposal through Congress. Todd Anderson and his family invited me to see the
islands from their catamaran—sailing might be the best of all ways to explore the Apostles. Joel
Heiman made maps that appear in Chapters One, Two, and Five.
The list from Madison is far longer. My co-advisors, Nancy Langston and Bill Cronon,
have been encouraging, challenging, and helpful with every single draft, funding proposal, and
recommendation letter request that I have put to them. Nancy has provided support in ways that I
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am sure she does not realize, perhaps most importantly in reminding me how things work outside
of the department of history. Bill has been as kind, generous, and helpful a mentor as any student
could ask for. Bill and Nan Fey let me stay in their Bayfield home whenever I needed it, making
my many fruitful trips to Bayfield possible. This goes far beyond the boundaries of what an
advisor does for a student and well into the realm of what one friend does for another. Thanks,
too, to the other three members of my committee, John Milton Cooper III, Arne Alanen, and
Tony Michels, for working within the strict time deadlines for setting up a defense. Arne also
saved me hours of squinting at microfilm by providing his mountains of newspaper clippings on
the islands, and Tony provided advice from the other side of the dissertation divide. Jim
Schlender helped me to navigate the bureaucratic intricacies of the University of Wisconsin;
many a graduate student would get lost in the system without his help, myself included. The
powers-that-be in the history department provided crucial financial support in the form of
fellowships, travel grants, and a project assistantship.
One of the best things about the history department at the University of Wisconsin is its
graduate community. Around every twisted corner of the Humanities Building lies a colleague
and potential friend. Being a part of this community has been one of the best things about
graduate school. Will Barnett has been a lecturing partner, a sounding board for dissertation
ideas, and a trustworthy friend. The other members of my dissertation group, Mike Rawson, Tom
Robertson, and Kendra Smith, provided helpful feedback and much-appreciated camaraderie.
Chris Wells has been a sometimes-member of that group, and equally helpful. I’ve found support
from Madison friends in many places: on the soccer field, at the poker table, in the TA offices,
on the Terrace. Some of those who have been particularly inspiring, helpful, and fun: Mike
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Abelson, Shelby Balik, Karen Benjamin, John Bent and family, Katie Benton, David Bernstein,
Greg Bond, Scott Breuninger, David Chang, Allison Craig Shashko, Ted Franz, Dave Fulton,
Mike Grinney, Zoltan Grossman, Lynne Heasely, Sarah Marcus, Scott Moranda, Bill Philpott,
Eric Olmanson, Jeanine Rhemtulla, Alexander Shashko, Dave Sheffler, Michelle Steen-Adams,
Kristen Walton, Marsha Weisiger, Jesse Wolfe, and Keith Woodhouse. Becca Swartz, Joey
Hoey, Todd Gray, and Amy Spratling have become fast friends and have provided an essential
place where laughter is far more common than talk of the islands and their history, or history in
general. Friends from farther away—college roommates, Logan survivors, camp family, the
Glencoe gang—helped with this, too.
The thanks that I owe to the people I met while pursing my Master’s degree in history at
Utah State University continue to mount. The folks in Logan set me on this path in the first
place. More than anyone else, Ona Siporin and Anne Butler taught me how to write, and how to
take writing seriously. David Lewis has provided a full-circle feel to my graduate career by
encouraging me as much in the final stages—as he helped me to publish an article in the Western
Historical Quarterly—as he did in the initial ones.
None of this—not just the dissertation, but also the past experiences that have made me
who I am as well as the future that I’m so excited about—would have been possible without my
family. My parents and brother, Susan, Scott, and Mark Feldman, have supported every decision
I’ve made, validated every choice. It simply is not possible to put an appropriate thank you into
words. My new family, Pat, Jack and Gail Taylor, have welcomed me with open arms. They
came into my life in the early stages of this project, and I’m glad that they are here to see the end
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of it. Corny as it might be, I also need to acknowledge Murphy the dog; the solutions to some of
my worst episodes of writers block came, with leash in hand, at the dog park or the field.
And then there is Chris. She has been there since the beginning; we met during my first
semester of graduate school, and I feel quite confident in saying that I would not have reached
the end of this long road without her at my side. She is my best supporter, my best critic, and my
best friend. She has become my partner in all things, and this dissertation is dedicated to her.
1

INTRODUCTION
***
Wilderness and History

In the summer of 2000, two park rangers sat in their shared basement office in the
headquarters of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore discussing the recent nesting of the piping
plover, a federally endangered shore bird, on Long Island. One of the employees, the park
biologist, lamented the challenges of managing for endangered species on the island’s disturbed
landscape. Long Island suffered from invasions of exotic species and the traffic of tourists
searching for the remains of a lighthouse that had once guided ships into the Chequamegon Bay.
“That’s not a disturbed landscape,” commented the other ranger, who happened to be the park
historian. “That part of Long Island is a cultural landscape!” The two rangers captured the central
dilemma of wilderness management in the Apostle Islands and many similar places: how to
manage a landscape that is at once natural and historical, valuable for both its nature and its
history but also for the ways its nature and history overlap.1
Northern Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands—twenty-two islands nestled into the southwest
corner of Lake Superior—provide a place to explore changing ideas about wilderness and
history—and the relationship between the two. (See Map 1.) The islands certainly seem like
wilderness. They boast old growth forests, empty beaches, delicate wetlands, violent Lake
Superior storms and magical Lake Superior sunsets. Natural and untouched as they sometimes

1 As relayed to he author by Robert Mackreth, historian at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore [AINL].