Crown Jewel Wilderness: Creating North Cascades National Park

This is a very cool history of the area. I know most of the landmarks and it is a great companion for the history minded backpacker in your life

This is an excellent history of the creation of the North Cascades National Park as well as surrounding wilderness areas like the Glacier Peak and Pasayten Wildernesses. However, it is much more as this history is set within the context of the entire conservation movement beginning with the early years of the Forest Service, Park Service and the efforts of groups like the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and others. For those who might be visiting the area, the background on how these protected areas came into being is of interest. It commemorates the unending efforts of various environmentalists whose legacy is the park and wilderness. Finally, it demonstrates how in almost all conservation efforts, it is the unending work of dedicated people who apply endless pressure on agencies and politicians to preserve the land. As a textbook of how to organize and rally people to protect any landscape, Crown Jewel Wilderness provides a wonderful playbook for future conservation efforts. One of the best conservation history's I've read in a long time.

When historian Lauren Danner calls North Cascades National Park the “crown jewel wilderness,” she taps into the nature of this isolated rugged landscape flecked with the largest number of active glaciers in the Lower 48 states. Minimal roads pierce its interior, leaving much of the park the primitive province of hikers and climbers. Due to its remoteness, this national park sees far less visitation than Olympic and Mount Rainier, its other counterparts in Washington State. But Danner elevates North Cascades National Park through its rich, intricate history. She celebrates the broad range of actors that coalesced around envisioning and enacting the formation of this wilderness park in Crown Jewel Wilderness: Creating North Cascades National Park.VoiceAs with any account of history, so much depends on the voice of the writer. Danner relates the history of North Cascades National Park by weaving the elements together into a readable story. Her storytelling presents the myriad of personalities in an engaging way as she pieces together the ebb and flow of changing attitudes toward wilderness and the recognition of the economic value of recreation.It’s a scholarly history. Copious endnotes and an extensive bibliography speak to her thoroughness and attention to accuracy. Due to Danner’s in-depth research, her voice comes through as highly knowledgeable and a trustworthy source.Kudos to Danner for digging in to such a remarkable history of North Cascades National Park without simplifying it. To create the park took decades for a complex groundswell of nonprofits, individual stakeholders, wilderness advocates, and leaders in federal agencies to hit its stride. All of this happened within a much larger wilderness movement that culminated in the Wilderness Act of 1964. It was not a linear process; thus, she follows multiple streams of action that eventually join in to a larger river of sentiment in favor of the national park. Even the final political action grinding through Congress was complex.What I LikedFor someone who grew up hiking, climbing, and backpacking in Washington State, Danner’s book was fascinating. It answered my lingering questions as to why the park boundaries included or excluded certain land features: Why spectacular Glacier Peak remained a separate wilderness? Why Mt. Baker, the highest peak in the North Cascades region, was not within the park boundary when its neighboring oft-photographed Mt. Shuksan was? Why the two national recreation areas of Ross Lake and Lake Chelan were managed as part of the park? The answers to these questions were not simple, but Danner provided the political swaps, compromises, and changing environmental attitudes that made these necessary to create the national park.As a national park fan, I honed in on the interplay and sometimes acrimonious machinations of federal land agencies. Specifically, the difference between the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in approaches to the potential park intrigued me. Danner took my understanding to a new level. She showed that these two agencies were both opposed to the wilderness concept in their core missions—the USFS to use the land for resources (logging, mining, etc.) and the NPS to build tourism. Their fundamental visions were in direct opposition to the proposed wilderness of the North Cascades. In doing so, Danner presented an interesting “villain” for the story.Her story has plenty of surprises. I was particularly enrapt with one of her descriptions of early visions for a single national park in the Cascade Mountains. The Five Ice Peaks National Park proposal included many peaks I knew intimately from climbing: Baker, Glacier, Rainier, St. Helens, and Adams. What a park that would have been! Plenty of fun tidbits like this one pop into her story along the way.Environmental ActivismFor anyone with an ounce of interest in environmental activism, Danner’s account of the park’s history serves as a positive model and inspiration for what can happen when like minds unite for a cause. Her story provides lessons for those today attempting to shape policies on the environment and public lands. She details across decades the hefty work required by grassroots activists and how coalitions were forged to push for the park. While resource extraction had not seen huge inroads in the North Cascades region due to the rugged geography, the US Forest Service who owned much of the land relied on logging and mining as one of their primary reasons for existence. Danner deftly points out many times that wilderness for its own sake or for recreation was not in the Forest Service lexicon. But she shows the gradual acknowledgement of the importance of wilderness as her heroes plod through the bureaucratic obstacles and eventually make the necessary political compromises to push the park through Congress.The role of the Mountaineers in the park’s creation nabbed my attention because at one time I was a member. My involvement was strictly for climbing, but Danner helped me see the long-time community non-profit in a new light as the organization advocated for wilderness for Glacier Peak and the North Cascades. The vocal power of the Mountaineers in pushing for action to protect wild places gave me more respect for that climbing community.Reading TipIn her afterword, Danner provides a color map denoting the public land uses in the North Cascades region today. She explains that they “embody different values applied to the land: wilderness, scenic beauty, recreation, access, and natural resources.” This visually sums up the complexity of the North Cascades, and it’s not a spoiler to look ahead at it before reading the book. If you are unfamiliar with the landscape, you might want to take a peak beforehand.Danner’s Crown Jewel Wilderness has so much appeal that I’d like to see her tackle more national parks in the same fashion. But the North Cascades National Park is a singular place that came along at such a unique time with the increased public interest in wilderness and recognizing the value in recreation.

I enjoy reading books and finding, through quotes or endnotes, new reading adventures to try!My Family gave me, “Crown Jewel Wilderness “ by Lauren Danner for my birthday. The book encompasses the struggle to create North Cascades National Park. Having spent the last two years hiking / canoeing through the heart of this wilderness...words cannot express how beautiful and special it is!This book is a gem for anyone who wants to educate themselves to how the park was created and what it faces in the future! Lauren Danner PhD, is a writer, historian, and the book has some 80+ pages of endnotes, which support all it’s facts! Impressively researched! This book is a must read for those exploring the park , as it should be, by foot in the high alpine areas. I’ve already set my sights on a few new adventures in the future!“The North Cascades are the beneficiaries of the efforts of thousands who believed them worth preserving. The jaw-dropping magnificent North Cascades endure as one of the largest, wildest tracts in the continental United States, a crown jewel wilderness to treasure forever.” Lauren Danner.