Former superintendent reflects on 50th anniversary of Voyageurs National Park

NINA MOINI: Minnesota's only national park turns 50 years old today. Voyageurs National Park was created on this date, April 8, in 1975. The park preserves about 220,000 acres of lakes, islands, and forests along the Canadian border near International Falls. While the park is being celebrated all this year, its creation was not without controversy. Barbara West served as park superintendent from 1995 to 2005. She spoke to reporter Dan Crocker about some of the issues she dealt with and what she loves about Voyageurs.

BARBARA WEST: It's a really, really special landscape, and water has so much to do with it. I always felt like Voyageurs, the thing that made me feel connected to it was the rock. It's on the Canadian Shield, and it's special-- big skies, big trees, big rocks, big water. There's no place in the National Park Service that's quite like it.

DAN CROCKER: So is that what led to its creation as a park in the first place, was just that realization by folks back in the day that this was a really special place that needed to be protected?

BARBARA WEST: Well, Elmer Anderson was the governor in the '50s, and I think he was probably more responsible for the park being established than any other place. I met with him right after I got to Minnesota, and one of the things that he talked about was that the whole lake experience that people had had in Minnesota, living in, say, the Twin Cities and going to Brainerd or whatever, that over time, that was changing, that there weren't so many places where there was public land available for people to just go and recreate.

And I think he was really far-thinking in recognizing that there was a change that was coming to Minnesota, and that it was a good thing to try to find an area where you could have those old-time Minnesota lake experiences with your motorboat or your canoe or whatever, lakes that weren't ringed by privately owned cabins.

DAN CROCKER: Was it pretty contentious when it was created? Was there controversy? I know with the Boundary Waters, there's still some lingering resentment when you visit Ely from folks who were used to taking their motorboats into the wilderness, and that was restricted now. Was there a similar dynamic when Voyageurs was created?

BARBARA WEST: Yeah. For some people, they thought everything was just fine the way it was and didn't want change, especially those people who owned cabins there. There was also a streak of-- I don't know anti-government-ness, we don't need somebody to tell us what to do kind of attitude that I'm sure you're familiar with in northern Minnesota.

DAN CROCKER: Indeed. [LAUGHS]

BARBARA WEST: At the time that Voyageurs was established, Boise Cascade owned a good amount of land in the north that they used as their forest lands, and so people were pretty much used to recreating on land as if it was public land, but it really wasn't.

DAN CROCKER: Oh, interesting.

BARBARA WEST: And so the whole establishment of the park meant that there were changes in the way in which people were able to use land. The whole Kabetogama Peninsula in the olden days was [INAUDIBLE] forest lands, and people could hunt there for free. It was just part of their birthright. And as things changed-- and this also applies to the Boundary Waters-- as the federal government made rules that said you can do this but you can't do that, people were pretty resentful. And it was hard. It was a hard time.

DAN CROCKER: So when you arrived in 1995, that was 20 years after the park was created. But was there still some of that resentment still there?

BARBARA WEST: Oh god, yes. I arrived in June, and in August, we had congressional hearings in International Falls--

DAN CROCKER: Oh, wow.

BARBARA WEST: Having to do with the whole panoply of issues related to managing public lands. There were areas where people weren't allowed to take snowmobiles. There were issues on issues on issues. There were several lawsuits that were pending when I was there about the federal government's ability to regulate activities on the surface of water. Eventually, they got decided, but just because the federal courts decided them didn't mean that they were accepted wholeheartedly by local folks.

The most controversial thing I did the whole time I was there was a previous superintendent had said that you could have snowmobile races on the surface of the frozen lakes. They called them radar runs. And the rules that established the National Park Service say you can't do that. So I stopped it. I said, you're not going to do this anymore.

And it was one of those things where people really felt as if they had lost something important, even though probably no more than 100 people had ever participated in the radar runs the whole time. It was one of those things, the federal government telling people what they could do.

DAN CROCKER: Talk to me about the cabin owners, because there were a lot of folks who owned cabins or owned land in what became the park when it was created. And a lot of folks were able to lease their cabins for a period of time, right?

BARBARA WEST: This may have set up some of the difficulties that we had. The people who bought the property on behalf of the federal government had mostly previously worked out West, places where they were putting in dams. And so people had to be bought out. And they mostly worked before that for the Army Corps of Engineers, and they tended not to be what I would call very sympathetic.

So they just came in with the same sort of "we've got to have this for the federal government, and you're in the way" attitude to folks. There were several different ways in which you could sell outright to the federal government and leave. You could sell and retain a life interest in the property, so you and your heirs could live there until the last living heir was alive. Or you could sell and get a not-ungenerous amount of money and remain for 25 years.

One of the things that was happening when I was there is a lot of those 25-year leases were coming up, and people were finally having to leave. And they were very unhappy about it. It was really stressful for them, and it was really stressful for the park staff, because nobody wants to be the bad guy. But at the same time, in order for us to be able to build out campsites and manage activities and stuff like that, those folks had to go. Yeah, it was tough.

DAN CROCKER: I read an old NPR article that quoted you about 20 years ago that said you shared a lot of tears with folks who had to leave their cabins. It must have been a challenging time for you.

BARBARA WEST: I don't know that that was the worst of my time at Voyageurs, but it certainly was hard.

DAN CROCKER: But through this all, the park has emerged, and it's still a pretty remarkable place. When you reflect back on the fact that this park is now 50 years old, what stands out to you about that milestone?

BARBARA WEST: Well, I'm thrilled for starters. When I first got there, there was a committee that was paid for by the state of Minnesota, the Citizens' Council on Voyageurs National Park. They had meetings-- I don't know-- three or four times a year. And it was always just really, really difficult. And when I first got there, there was legislation pending that would have turned over the management of the park to a local body. It would be a national park in name only, I guess.

So a lot of those things that happened were really difficult. So the fact that we made it to 50 years is astonishing. It's such a special place, though. It's big lakes, no jet skis, great fishing, wonderful places to camp. And I can remember one time, I had a sea kayak when I was at Voyageurs, and I went out-- I think it was in August-- took three or four days to paddle in the park. And I was camped on the shore of Rainy Lake, about as far from anything that you could get.

And I woke up in the middle of the night. And this light was so bright, it was like a train light. And I got out of my tent, and the northern lights were just unbelievable. It felt like it was daylight. And experiences like that were not at all unusual at Voyageurs. It's not like anyplace else.

NINA MOINI: That's former Voyageurs National Park Superintendent Barbara West, speaking with MPR News reporter Dan Crocker. And Governor Tim Walz has declared today Voyageurs National Park Day. There's an open house today at the park's headquarters. That's in International Falls from 3:00 to 6:00. For more information on events taking place all year long to celebrate the park's 50th birthday, visit voyageurs.org/fiftieth.