St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 4:
Up North: The Development of Recreation in the St. Croix Valley (continued)

The First Efforts to "Save the St. Croix"

Recreationers, however, did not have the river to themselves. In the early twentieth century the growing demand for electrical power sent power generating companies into the St. Croix Valley in search of locations for hydroelectric power. In 1903 the Minneapolis General Electric Company started to build a waterpower generating station at St. Croix Falls. This stopped the arbitrary maintenance of water levels by Nevers Dam. The plant was completed by 1906 and was the first electrical power generated from outside the Twin Cities for the two urban areas. The success of this project encouraged the Minneapolis Electric Company and its successor, the Northern States Power Company, to purchase more sites on the swift flowing river with the hope of lighting up the entire Twin Cities. In a few short years in the early 1900s, the power company became the largest owner of St. Croix river frontage. To people like George Hazzard and those who lived along the St. Croix, the new power dam was one more example of the use of the river for the benefit of outside interests. The Northern States Power Company was not quite as tyrannical as the lumbermen who controlled Nevers Dam, but the river served their needs first and the needs of residents and tourists second. [127]

However, times were changing and the Progressive Era, roughly the years from 1900 to 1920, and its conservation movement, with loose ties to Romanticism, Primitivism, and Transcendentalism, were changing how people thought about the environment, who should control it, and for whose benefit. Notable national conservationists, such as Wisconsin native John Muir, Frederick Law Olmstead, Robert Underwood Johnson, and others called for the protection of significant, monumental landscapes. Muir's conservation ideas were inspired by Thoreau and Emerson. In "A Voice for Wilderness," Muir wrote, "Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life." His efforts, and those of others, led to early designation of Yosemite, and ultimately to the formation of the National Park Service in 1916. [128]

Others in the growing conservation movement disagreed with Muir's belief that nature be preserved and untouched for future generations. The most notable leader of the "wise use" contingent was Gifford Pinchot who was appointed head of the newly created U.S. Forest Service by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. Pinchot firmly believed that the resources of the United States should be used for the benefit of the many, rather than the few, for as long as possible. His scientific management program of logging, mining, and grazing of federal lands rankled special interests groups used to having a free reign on national resources, but provided an enduring approach to both use and preservation.

In between these two philosophies towards the nation's natural resources was the growing recreation and tourism industry, which presented a third approach to conservation. In his book, Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, John F. Reiger observed of outdoorsmen that, "While their first concern was wildlife, sportsmen quickly perceived that the effort in behalf of mammals, birds, and fish was a solution to only half the problem. It would do little good to preserve wildlife if its habitat continued to shrink, for eventually both would be gone." Writing generally on the growth of tourism as a conservation industry, Alexander Wilson, in his essay, "The View from the Road: Recreation and Tourism," noted the beginnings of valuing nature as a commodity:

Nature tourism is simply the temporary migration of people to what they understand to be a different and usually more "pure" environment. It's going out to nature for its own sake, and it's all of the ways we talk about that experience. The modern history of nature tourism is a history of altered landforms and changed ideas and experiences of the non-human. Broadly speaking, it involves a shift from a pastoral approach to nature to a consumer approach. This in itself is a huge and significant transition. [129]

Artificially created parks, preserves, and resorts became valued for their "natural characteristics. When Americans took to the woods, they took along many of the comforts of home and generally expected to find modern conveniences. Throughout the country entrepreneurs began to oblige their patrons with transportation to resort areas, developed campgrounds, well-equipped housekeeping cabins, and provisions. Scenic vistas, monumental landscapes, and the experiences they evoked became commodities for sale. [130]

Mineral extraction, over-cutting of timber stores, the high incidence of wild fires ignited and spread by logging waste, and over-hunting contributed to the formation of state conservation agencies in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Strict preservationists, recreation enthusiasts, and hunters, alike, sought protection of natural and "pristine" areas through the establishment of state parks and preserves. In this regard, the people of Minnesota and Wisconsin were far ahead of residents in many others states. [131] Minnesota became a leader in the growing conservation and preservation movement when it established its first state park in Itasca in 1891 and the Pillsbury State Forest in 1899, as well as the Interstate Park. [132] "Going to the lake" became almost a secular religion. As for Wisconsin, the receding forests in the St. Croix Valley alarmed many residents. In the 1890s, J. Stannard Baker of the Baker Land and Title Company became interested in reforesting some of his own lands that had been cutover. He began to plant trees on land he owned on Deer Lake six miles east of his home in St. Croix Falls, as well as in the village. In a period of eight to ten years Baker planted thirty thousand trees. When asked why he bothered to do this when he would probably not live to see them mature, Baker said, "Some people in this world want big white monuments. I will take a green one." By 1950 many of the seedlings had grown thirty to forty feet with fourteen and sixteen inch trunks. [133]

George Hazzard, too, grew alarmed at the changes in the valley with the development of hydroelectric power on the St. Croix. His concern, however, was shaped less by the conservation movement than by the fear that power dams would obstruct navigation and curtail the economic life of the river towns. For the first two decades of the twentieth century, Hazzard tirelessly worked to promote the St. Croix River for tourism and commercial development. He willingly took support from conservationists, sportsmen, and boaters, as well as residents who wanted a greater say in how the river was used. In 1911, he helped organize the St. Croix River Improvement Association. Hazzard was, of course, its first president. Because it was composed of a variety of local interest, its goals were somewhat mixed and contradictory. Fishermen were angered by the power company's control over water levels because when the dam was closed, the water level dropped and left thousands of fish stranded in shallow pools. This action stood in the way of turning the St. Croix into "the best water for the angler that there is in the country." Small boaters feared the "deadhead" logs that were left partially submerged in the river by the lumber industry. While sportsmen got the Association to stock small mouth bass in the river, they were not interested in Hazzard's goal of improving navigation in order to revive commercial and tourist steam boating on the river. [134]

Hazzard, however, had his own ideas about the future of the river. He proposed to rebuild Nevers Dam with concrete in order to create deep, slack pools fit for excursion boats, rather than the swift flowing river favored by sportsmen. Another of his pet projects was to revive a nineteenth century proposal to dig a canal between Lake Superior and the Mississippi River via the Bois Brule River Valley and the St. Croix. Hazzard had even gone so far as to try to recruit support for the canal from the Upper Mississippi Improvement Association. However, after reviewing the facts, the Army Corp of Engineers found the canal idea "inadvisable, infeasible, impractical." Hazzard's ideas, however, had captivated the attention of Minnesota and Wisconsin governors, senators, and representatives who then created their own independent Superior and Mississippi Canal Commissions. The Army Corp, however, remained firm in their position, and Hazzard's dream died. The conservation movement had grown too strong, and by this time the power and influence of the Army Corp of Engineers had also increased. By 1917, Congress expanded the federal government's regulatory mission to include navigation management, flood control, and hydropower. Defeat and old age caused Hazzard to withdraw from public life, and the St. Croix River Improvement Association first efforts to be a force in the valley cam to a close. However, sportsmen and conservationists would continue to revive the association to deal with threats to the river. [135]

Early in the summer of 1923, Stillwater postman, Ira King, took Hazzard's stand. He and other residents formed the Stillwater Council No. 347, United Commercial Travelers (UCT). King served as chairman of its Committee on River Improvement. "We sincerely believe," King told the Stillwater Gazette, "that the St. Croix River is one of Stillwater's best bets and we are putting our best efforts forward to see what can be done to better present conditions." Their goal was to get a deeper channel dug to accommodate pleasure boaters north of the town and commercial barge traffic south of it. The organization began to flood the offices of senators and congressmen from Minnesota and Wisconsin with letters requesting $20,000 for channel improvements from Congress. [136]

The UCT's efforts bore fruit when the Army Corp of Engineers ordered surveys of the river. By 1925, the Stillwater Gazette optimistically reported that the "St. Croix Project" of the Corps of Engineers would be a great economic boon to the "entire Northwest." Citizens from Marine, Osceola, St. Croix Falls, and Taylors Falls also put in a request that wartime regulations that restricted flow of water over the NSP dam be lifted. Low water levels below the dam made navigation between Taylors Falls and Stillwater nearly impossible. The Northern States Power company proposed a solution of building another dam near Prescott to improve water levels south of Stillwater. However, no dam was built on the St. Croix River. Instead, in 1938, the Army Corps built one on the Mississippi River near Red Wing, Minnesota as part of the Nine-Foot Channel Navigation Project. Water levels only improved near the mouth of the St. Croix. [137]

Frustrated by their lack of influence on the Army Corps of Engineers, the UCT decided to revive Hazzard's old organization, and in the late 1920s renamed it the St. Croix River Improvement Association. Their goal changed from requesting a three-foot channel to a six-foot one. Their chief target of animosity remained the Northern States Power company. "Why a corporation is allowed to prostitute for its private gain a beautiful river like the St. Croix," reported John Dunn to the association in 1929, "I cannot conceive. I am positive from my long observation that if we had the natural flow of the river it would within two years make and keep a channel suitable for medium size boats. This opinion has been confirmed time and again by talks with men who have lived close to and on the river during and since steam boat times." [138]

While a three- or six-foot channel was not forthcoming, the St. Croix River Improvement Association did obtain funds from the Corps in the early 1930s for a snag boat and spring clean ups of the river to remove dead heads, overhanging trees on the river banks, and other debris that obstructed navigation. Another victory for the association came in the mid 1930s when commercial net fishing was ended and the line and hook method preferred by sport fishermen was introduced. By 1935, the St. Croix River Improvement Association also got the Minnesota Conservation Commissioner to stock small-mouth bass in the river. However, the association was caught completely off-guard when in 1931, the Minnesota Highway Department built a highway along the bluffs of the river south of Taylors Falls. In the process, the construction firm, A. Guthrie & Co., blasted tons of rock and dirt into the St. Croix River creating a large island that obstructed more than three-quarters of its channel. Despite protests and hearings with the Army Corps, the firm was never forced to clean up the debris. [139]

Tourism and recreation had set permanent roots in the Lower St. Croix Valley by the early twentieth century. It was dotted by hotels and restaurants, railroads and inter-urban cars brought in a host of visitors, whether day trippers or seasonal resort residences, from the Twin Cities, as well as southern Wisconsin and the Chicago area, steamboat excursions plied the river, and fish hatcheries and hunting preserves welcomed the new outdoorsmen. Just as occurred in other parts of the United States, industry, community development, and the growth of the recreation and tourism advanced uneasily together in the St. Croix Valley. [140]