Backus: The Enemy of the North

It should be hopefully obvious by now that the BWCAW is mainly here today due to the great struggles by Ober and others who cared about conserving nature's most precious treasures. What might NOT be so obvious is the fact that this struggle would never have occurred if it weren't for Mr. Edward Backus.

Edward Backus was a well known Minnesotan lumber baron and industrialist in the early 1900s. He grew up in Red Wing, MN as a farmer's son, went off to college at the U of M, worked his way up to the top through various part-time jobs and eventually managed to secure his own paper mill company. As Joe Paddock describes in his book Keeper of the Wild: "By the mid-1920s, mills operating day and night, Backus paper manufacturing operations had become second largest in total production in the entire world." Backus's paper production business was huge and its base was coincidentally located at the Rainy River dam, with the other smaller mills dispersed in a 200 mile radius around Rainy Lake. Knowing this, it's no wonder that his ambitions would have had a severe impact on what is now the Boundary Water's area since the Rainy Lake Watershed feeds into the BWCAW's many lakes and streams.

 The way I think of it, if Ober was a super hero, Backus would be the villain. Backus had the wilderness of Northern Minnesota wrapped tightly around his greedy hands and before Ober came along, whatever Backus wanted from nature; he got. Unfortunately what Backus wanted most, he couldn't have, at least not without a fight. Backus wanted to dam up the whole Rainy Lake Watershed, which fanned out into northeastern Minnesota and Ontario (where the BWCAW, Voyageurs National Park and the Quetico Provincial Park are all now located). His reason for doing this was simple: more dams equals more power for his paper mills and thus, more money in his pocket. 

Locals of Rainy Lake were already suffering from the flooding that was occurring with the few dams that Backus had already built, Ober could barely imagine what would happen if the whole watershed was dammed! As Ober explained in a series of articles that he wrote for American Forests and Forest Life: Backus's dam proposals would "strike a death blow to the distinctive appeal of the region. To say nothing of...inevitable fluctuations, the [proposed] new maximum levels would spell the ruin of all visible features of the lakes and streams controlled by dams....All these lakes are dotted with islands and have shorelines as intricate as any jig-saw puzzle. The tragedy is that on all these shores, in the margin between the old water level and the new, the vegetation will be killed; and all the natural features will be obliterated." Hence, if the dams were put in place, the Boundary Waters that we know today would have ceased to exist; a massive mosaic of earth's wilderness, silently wasting away under the lapping waves.

Backus scoffed at the initial protests made by Ober but as the years wore on, he would come to fear the Quetico-Superior Council (formed to fight against Backus's proposal; led by Ober) and the power it held over him. He was just one man; although he had many powerful connections, he did not have public support behind him as did Ober and his Council. This lack of foresight would eventually be his downfall, as well as the Great Depression and a few other personal traits, such as his extreme arrogance. 

Alas, it is thanks to Edward Backus that we now have the BWCAW. His plan for the Rainy Lake watershed (which was the most ambitious project for hydroelectric development ever launched in America) was the catalyst for the movement of preserving the natural wilderness of Northern Minnesota and Ontario, that now contains the Boundary Waters.

                                                                       picture source

Who knows what Ober would have become without the help of Backus's greed and lust for power. He very well may have ended up a hermit on an island on Rainy Lake, but instead he was flung into leading a battle of epic proportions against a giant of a man. A picture of David and Goliath would be an appropriate mental image to create in your mind at this time; Ober with his pen and his paddle and Backus with his dollar bills and croonies. We all know too well who ends up winning the battle, the underdog; Ober. After all, you can easily knock someone out with a paddle, meanwhile a dollar bill won't do much except provide a nice towel for the victor to use to wipe the sweat off his brow at the end of the battle.