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8.9 million-acre Arctic reserve as ANP (Arctic National Park) or Arctic NWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge/Range). Time was precious. An appropriate name could make a huge difference in the long run. This smaller meeting brought insiders together—high-profile outdoors enthusiasts whose careers had taken them into national conservation politics. Representing the NPS were Collins, Sumner, and Conrad. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had Dan Janzen and Clarence Rhode (Rhode was an advocate of protecting Alaskan wildlife but nevertheless wanted wolves shot on sight). The Bureau of Land Management was represented by its director, Edward Woozley. The Sierra Club had the husband-and-wife team of Richard and Doris Leonard (best known in San Francisco for running the Cragmont Climbing Club, which promoted modern rappelling around Berkeley). But it was The Wilderness Society—represented by the Muries and Zahniser—that delivered the facts and the firepower to the discussions. In Alaska the Sierra Club deserved a lot of credit for pushing Glacier Bay forward to eventual national park status. But the Arctic NWR was the pet cause of The Wilderness Society. When, a couple years later, Zahniser testified before Congress about establishing the Arctic NWR, he claimed that in the Lower Forty-Eight true wilderness had been displaced by development.22

Oddly, the consensus at San Francisco was that collaborating with Secretary of the Interior Seaton made the most sense, and that the 8.9 million acres should be called the Arctic National Wildlife Range. Range was a designation given to areas with big-game animals. The words sanctuary and refuge were rejected as sounding too “environmental,” in Crisler and Carson’s sense. Later, in 1980, range was replaced with refuge. Everybody present at San Francisco thought the Arctic Range (what became the Arctic NWR) would have made an ideal national park. But it was seriously doubted whether Secretary of the Interior Seaton would ever sign off on such a grand preservationist scheme. “The majority favored wildlife range designation, so we made it unanimous,” Collins explained. “The main thing was to get agreement on something.”23

Another important activist had also signed on for the effort to create the Arctic NWR; at the San Francisco meeting, Sigurd Olson entered the Arctic movement for the first time. His book The Singing Wilderness, published in April 1956, had found a cult readership for its promotion of the joy and wonder of the outdoors. There was much to recommend Olson, a Minnesotan environmentalist and canoeist who would later be credited with creating Voyageurs National Park in 1975. Never did Olson know a day of leisure when it came to protecting the American wilderness. The handsome, silver-haired Olson felt such oneness with the “boundary waters” of Minnesota that he called his state of mind a “wilderness theology.” A “great peace” engulfed Olson when he was in the outdoors. As the naturalist Roger Tory Peterson noted in the New York Herald Tribune, Olson wrote the best prose ever about the “northwoods country.”24 Unusually for a book about conservation, The Singing Wilderness appeared on the New York Times’ best-seller list (as number sixteen).

As president of the National Park Association, Olson, who also taught biology at Ely Junior College (now Vermilion Community College), made an appointment to see Seaton within weeks after Seaton’s confirmation as secretary of the interior. A fast friendship ensued. Olson, in fact, served as a consultant to the Department of the Interior and to the NPS from 1956 to 1961. If any pro-wilderness activist could be said to have Seaton’s ear, it was this deeply honest, soft-spoken Minnesotan, who epitomized generosity of spirit. Conservationists of all stripes, enthralled by The Singing Wilderness, were heartened when Olson pronounced Seaton a “fine chap” who “wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of McKay.”25

Fred Seaton was born in Washington, D.C., on December 11, 1909. His father, Fay Seaton, served as assistant to a progressive Kansas Republican, Senator