John Tuma’s Capitol Update – Summer Edition, August 13, 2010

“You go tell your boss that I’ve got a loaded .30-.30 Winchester sitting in the corner of this cabin, and the next person in a uniform who steps on my dock is going to get blown into the lake.”

- Benny Ambrose, April 3, 1963*

In the early 1960s as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northeastern Minnesota took its next major step toward a wilderness designation, Dorothy Molter and Benny Ambrose found themselves at the center of a brewing storm.  A faction of local citizens unhappy with the federal intrusion and land use restrictions elevated Molter and Ambrose to folk hero status.  Neither of them looked for this battle with the federal government, nor were they looking for the notoriety.  They just wanted to live out their years in the wilderness they loved.

Molter arrived in the north woods as a young nurse from Chicago vacationing at a small fishing camp with her father on Knife Lake.  She fell in love with the solitude and the hard work of the wilderness life and made the resort her permanent home.  She took over the fishing camp after the original owner passed away and remained there for the whole of her life other than an occasional short stint to Chicago to work at a hospital and make money to support herself in the wilderness. 

Ambrose arrived in the north woods soon after World War I where he served with distinction.  He came for adventure and gold after hearing about this remote wilderness from an Ojibwe comrade in the Army.  He too fell in love with the solitude, developing a homestead on Ottertrack Lake as his base camp for mineral speculation and his fishing guide service.  His clients were some of our nation’s most powerful leaders from Washington, DC, including a Supreme Court Justice who would later be beneficial to him in his battle with the Forest Service to remain in his homestead.

The Forest Service officials had been trying in vain for over a decade to acquire the homesteads of both Molter and Ambrose, and the battle was coming to a serious head in 1963 when Ambrose was visited by two Forest Service rangers who reported the above quote to their supervisor.  It is safe to say that not too many Forest Service employees wanted to visit the remote homestead.  All Molter and Ambrose wanted to do was live out their last years on the property with a life estate as opposed to selling it outright.  A compromise was reached to sell the property to the federal government with the requirement that all human-made structures be removed in 1975.  With both Molter and Ambrose getting up in years, no one expected that to be a problem.  The crisis seemed to be avoided back in 1963 with no forest officials getting shot off of Ambrose’s dock.

But what seemed to be a smart solution back in 1963 only led to a reigniting of the wilderness dispute a decade later.  As further restrictions were being established on motorized boat use in the wilderness, Molter and Ambrose once again found themselves at the center of the wilderness storm.  The hope that they would both have left their homesteads by 1975 had evaporated when the two wilderness-hardened individuals still appeared to have plenty of living to do and no intention of leaving their wilderness retreats.

At this point some boneheaded bureaucrat could have ignited a wilderness war by sticking to the letter of the law and the contract signed a decade earlier by forcing the removal of Molter and Ambrose from their homes.  There was a great deal of tension in the 1970s over the wilderness designation and legislation moving through Congress to further restrict access for motorized use.  One wrong move could have tipped the scales in favor of local factions who wanted to continue to exploit the wilderness.  They could easily have found a publicity coup if the Forest Service attempted to enforce the Molter and Ambrose contracts for removal.

Thankfully, Harold Anderson, supervisor for the Superior National Forest, showed the exceptional common sense one always likes to see in our hard-working civil servants.  He carefully looked for an acceptable solution to avoid needless controversy and still accomplish his sworn duty to preserve one of our national treasures.  His simple solution was to designate Molter and Ambrose wilderness volunteers, with the duties to maintain their federally sanctioned wilderness outposts to provide information to the Forest Service about conditions in the wilderness and provide emergency assistance to campers.  Molter had already gained fame in the wilderness as the “Root Beer Lady” for providing assistance to wilderness trippers along with a cold homemade root beer from her icehouse.

Anderson’s diplomatic savvy came out in his quote in the Star Tribune where he said: “To us they are part of the culture of the area . . . They are oldtimers.  They are part of the pioneer group that went in there in the early days . . . I’ll be damned if I could be a part of throwing them out.” 

Ambrose led an active life at his homestead as a wilderness volunteer until he passed away in the fall of 1982.  Molter lived at her wilderness retreat on Knife Lake until she too passed away at her cabin in 1986.  You can still visit Molter’s wilderness retreat which has been moved to the outskirts of Ely as a historical site.

This chapter in Minnesota history could have been far more contentious had it not been for the common sense strategy developed by Harold Anderson.  Often the hard-working civil servants in our bureaucracy are forgotten and unappreciated.  What environmental and conservation advocates need to recognize is that without their hard work and dedicated behind-the-scenes common sense, all of our great ideas of saving and passing on our lakes, rivers and Great Outdoors to the next generation would be meaningless.  So in this series of recognizing some of our great conservation champions of today, it would be good to recognize some of those behind-the-scenes people who have used the same can-do common sense and diligence that Harold Anderson used to give us a wonderful wilderness.  Two of those diligent behind-the-scenes workers have been the director of the Legislative-Citizens Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), Susan Thornton, and the executive director of the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council (LSOHC), Bill Becker.

Certainly as policymakers struggle with direction of the special natural resources funds, they will come in conflict with Thornton and Becker.  That is the nature of our democratic system. But if you step back and look at the bigger vista before us and the funding challenges we have faced recently, Thornton and Becker, along with their respective teams, certainly deserve to be commended.

Thornton took the helm of the LCCMR during a critical and tumultuous time for this flagship fund of the environmental and conservation community.  This fund is supported by a portion of lottery proceeds and could have easily been raided in the recent budget crisis.  It also could have faded into obscurity and drifted without focus following the passage of the Legacy Amendment.  To the credit of the staff and the council of legislators and citizens who oversee the LCCMR, they have maintained their relevance.  They continue to play a significant role in protecting our Great Outdoors and pushing forward world-renowned research in the area of environmental protection.  Thornton and her small team have juggled over 225 current projects covering a wide variety of natural resource and environmental protection focuses.  They remain an excellent source of institutional history and professional expertise for the Legislature and the commission that oversees them.  They can easily be forgotten as they toil away in their ground-floor “cave” in the State Office Building, but their impact on our Minnesota landscape is undeniably significant.

Bill Becker had to face a much different challenge for the fund he helps oversee.  One of the most contentious aspects in the Legislature when developing the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Constitutional Amendment was how the portion of the conservation proceeds would be handled.  It would be fair to say that the advocates and the Legislature did not always see eye-to-eye on how this should be developed.  There has been much contention swirling around the LSOHC and without a good common sense civil servant leading this picture it could have failed miserably.

Becker was near retirement from the DNR and could have easily coasted into the safe harbor of retirement at some quiet lake up north.  Instead he took on the challenge of guiding the LSOHC through extremely challenging waters in what looked like a severe August squall.  His over 30 years of experience provided the fund with a steady and experienced hand on the rudder, helping guide the LSOHC like a fragile birch bark canoe through very rocky waters.  In the first couple years of the fund they have successfully organized and, above all, delivered some amazing projects for future generations.  I’m confident our children and grandchildren will marvel at the foresight of the Forest Legacy easement preserving nearly 190,000 acres of forest land near Grand Rapids along the Mississippi River, and that’s only one of the projects they have delivered.

When canoeing the big lakes of the Boundary Waters, one learns quickly to get a good compass setting and point of reference when you start off from the portage.  Fail to do this and you will be miserably lost when you reach the other side of a big lake.  It’s always helpful to have some experienced wilderness guides in your party.  I think it’s fair to say that both Thornton and Becker, like good wilderness guides and common sense civil servants, have given the funds they help administer a good compass setting and point of reference for a successful trip across the big lakes of conservation funding and state budgeting.  We all will have to work together to make this trip a success so that future generations of Minnesotans may enjoy our great water and outdoor resources, but it’s good to know that we have a couple of experienced “wilderness volunteers” who just also happen to be great civil servants to help keep us moving in the right direction.

*The details and quotes were obtained from the article “Benny Ambrose: Life in the Boundary Waters,” Minnesota History, Fall 1994 by Ralph Wright-Peterson.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 1:45 pm by Tuma, Minnesota Environmental Partnership and is filed under Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, Funding for the Environment, LCCMR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.