Environment | Page 29

Cover of Hold That Line newsletter

This December 1977 "Special Edition" of the Hold That Line newsletter is titled "Powerline News, Elrosa, MN." Some of its articles encourage a moratorium on construction and a "science court" evaluation; others address size of power lines and encourage continued protest. Names mentioned include Randy Fischer, John Tripp, Steffen Pederson, Rudy Perpich, and Ira Emmons. Hold That Line was the newsletter of the local movement to protest the construction of a direct-current power line across rural Minnesota by the United Power Association (UPA) and the Cooperative Power Association (CPA). The newsletter is known to have been published from August 1978 to June 1983. Used with the permission of Pope County Historical Society.

Power Line Controversy

The construction of a high-voltage power line across west-central Minnesota in the 1970s created a dispute about land use and energy needs that pitted farmers against large utilities and governmental agencies. The farmers began their opposition to the line by appearing at governmental hearings and in court proceedings. When those methods proved unsuccessful, protesters employed more confrontational methods.

Building at Camp Rabideau

Exterior view of a building at Camp Rabideau, ca. 1930s. Used with the permission of the Beltrami County Historical Society.

Camp Rabideau entrance sign

US Forest Service entrance sign for Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Rabideau, Company 708, in the Chippewa National Forest. Photograph by the US Forest Service, Eastern Region, August 26, 2006. Public domain.

Civilian Conservation Corps Camp Rabideau F-50

Camp Rabideau is a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) site established as part of the “New Deal” in 1933 to help alleviate unemployment during the Depression. Located in Beltrami County, it operated until 1942. It later became a satellite campus for University of Illinois forestry and engineering students; a Native American learning center; and an educational center for Chippewa National Forest visitors.

Destruction of Bois Forte Ojibwe Homeland, 1891–1929

From 1890 to 1910, timber speculators and lumbermen patented most of the valuable pine lands in north-central Minnesota—the homeland of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. By the 1920s, dams and deforestation had so damaged the landscape that it could no longer support the tribe’s subsistence economy, and its members were forced onto their reservation at Nett Lake.

Ernest Oberholtzer canoe trip into Canada

Ca. 1910 image of Ernest Oberholtzer on a canoe trip in the Quetico–Superior region.

Destruction of shoreline timber caused by a storage dam on Namakan Lake, west of Quetico Park

In the 1920s and 1930s, Ernest Oberholtzer documented flood damage associated with existing Rainy Lake dams in an attempt to prevent Edward Backus from constructing more dams, causing additional damage. This image documents damage related to a storage dam on Namakan Lake.

Ernest Oberholtzer and Sewell Tyng

1933 image of Ernest Oberholtzer and Sewell Tyng representing the Quetico–Superior Council and defending the newly passed regulations of the Shipstead–Nolan Act and the Rainy Lake watershed in front of an international commission.

Ernest Oberholtzer

Ca. 1942 image of Ernest Oberholtzer at Mallard Island.

Gale Family Library