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Courtesy Northland College / The Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute
Sigurd Olson Institute
Conservationist Sigurd Olson, the son of a Swedish immigrant, was born in Chicago, but his family moved in 1912 to Ashland, Wisconsin, where a young Sigurd spent much of his time fishing, hunting and enjoying nature.2 of 2
Courtesy Northland College / The Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute
Sigurd Olson Institute
Sigurd Olson loved being in the area near the U.S.-Canada border that would become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
April 4, 1899 – January 13, 1982
Sigurd Ferdinand Olson was born in the bustling city of Chicago, but became known as a defender of the wilderness after developed his lifelong love of the outdoors as a boy on the Wisconsin shores of Lake Superior.
His family moved to Ashland in 1912, where his Swedish immigrant father served as a Baptist minister. After high school, Sigurd attended Northland College for two years, both as a boy and a college student, he spent a great deal of his time fishing, hunting and enjoying nature. He finished his studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1920 with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. Later, at the University of Illinois he would earn a master’s degree in animal ecology in 1932.
A year after he graduated from UW, he married Elizabeth Dorothy Uhrenholdt and they had two sons.
He taught biology at what was then Ely Junior College in Ely, Minnesota, and ran an outfitting business serving the Boundary Waters, a region he grew to love for its unspoiled wilderness. He was named dean of that community college in 1936, a post he left in 1947 to devote himself full time to writing.
In 1956, when Olson was 57, his first book, The Singing Wilderness, was published and became a New York Times bestseller.
Over the next 30 years, he went on to write numerous magazine articles and eight more books, including Listening Point, The Hidden Forest, and Reflections of the North Country. In 1974, he was presented with the highest honor in nature writing – the John Burroughs Medal from the John Burroughs Association.
Sigurd was not a stranger to honors. He won the highest awards from the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the National Wildlife Federation and the Izaak Walton League.
He became vice president of the Wilderness Society in 1963 and was named its president in 1968, holding that post until 1971. During that time he helped draft the federal Wilderness Act and was influential in establishing Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and Point Reyes National Seashore in California. In 1978 he saw his beloved Boundary Waters become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.