ABSTRACT
In 1931, Harlan Kelsey, a representative of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), traveled to the far northern tip of Wisconsin to evaluate the Apostle Islands as a potential addition to the national park system. Kelsey was not impressed with what he saw. “What must have been once a far more striking and characteristic landscape of dark coniferous original forest growth has been obliterated by the axe followed by fi re. . . . The ecological conditions have been so violently disturbed that probably never could they be more than remotely reproduced.” Kelsey reported that destructive logging practices of the previous half-century had robbed the area of its value as a park. But Kelsey was wrong, at least in his assessment of the islands’ future. By the 1960s, the island forests had regenerated and the nation was enjoying an environmental awakening. Congress created Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in 1970. When NPS administrators published the park’s fi rst management plan in 1977, they determined that 97 percent of the park should be managed as a wilderness area. In November 2004, Congress formally designated a majority of the park as wilderness.1
