The Monthly Special
Each month you'll find something new herean unpublished speech of Olson's for example, or some correspondence. I'll keep each new piece on this page for three months, then remove it or move it to a different portion of this web site. This Month In Olson History. Click here or scroll down toward the bottom of this page to see what Sigurd was doing during this month 35 and/or 50 years ago. Published in Sports Afield, September 1945, this article marks the beginning of Sigurd's ascendancy to the front ranks of the national conservation movement. Published in Conservation Volunteer, May-June 1945.
Published in Sports Afield, May 1945. |
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This Month in Olson HistoryFifty Years Ago: May 1962 (age 63) On May 2, Sigurd was appointed as a special advisor to Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and to National Park Service Director Conrad "Connie" Wirth. On learning of the appointment, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote to Sigurd on May 4, "I hope you will be on hand soon, because the wilderness is fast disappearing and needs some powerful advocates around this town." On May 9, Sigurd testified in favor of the Wilderness Act before Congress. Republican Rep. John Saylor of Pennsylvania, publicly congratulating Sigurd on his appointment, says: Mr. Olson, it is a pleasure to welcome you before the Also this month, his essay "Silence" from The Singing Wilderness was published in Canadian Audubon, and National Geographic Magazine asked him to write an article on the search for voyageur artifacts in the Quetico-Superior canoe country. That article would be published in September 1963 as "Relics from the Rapids."
Thirty-fiveYears Ago: May 1977 (age 78) Sigurd traveled to Chicago to testify on May 7 in support of the Alaska National Interest Lands Act. The act, which would pass both houses and be signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on Dec. 2, 1980, was the largest parks and wilderness law in U.S. history, protecting more than a hundred million acres of Alaskan wildlands. Sigurd had been involved in Park Service studies of these lands since 1963 (see, for example, this, this and this), and so this law was close to his heart.
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