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the farewell address that Eisenhower delivered on January 17, 1961—the most memorable since George Washington’s in 1796. Clearing his throat and shuffling his pages behind a pair of old paper clip–shaped radio microphones on his desk in the Oval Office, Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”30

The journalist Carl Rowan, who carefully studied the president’s second term, thought that Eisenhower had a deeply ingrained skepticism about technology and its effects on the environment. Rowan—who interviewed members of the administration associated with Team Seaton—believed that Eisenhower’s protection of Antarctica and the Arctic NWR was part and parcel of this speech. “Second-term Eisenhower was a surprise,” Rowan says. “Just like he helped boost civil rights—sending federal protection to Little Rock, appointing anti–Jim Crow federal judges throughout the South—he became a conservationist, too. Not enough of one to want to push through wilderness bills and the like. Not enough of one to stop nuclear testing. But he thought the Arctic and Antarctica shouldn’t be destroyed. They were sanctuaries for all people.”31

Rowan had a point. Eisenhower did help save Antarctica and Arctic Alaska from potential industrial ruin. On the other hand, a truly ecologically-minded president would never have dreamed of allowing the Atomic Energy Commission to detonate nuclear devices around Point Hope. Perhaps the best way to understand the Arctic NWR, then, is through Eisenhower’s initial skepticism about Alaska’s statehood. Eisenhower saw Alaska, in a sense, as a possession of the federal government: a site where the Pentagon could conduct defense exercises, the USDA could experiment with harvesting seafood, and the Department of the Interior could create national parks and wildlife refuges. Eisenhower was, it seems, skeptical about big oil, coal, timber, and the antitax movement. As Eisenhower intimated in his farewell address, huge corporations like Standard Oil, Boeing, and McDonnell-Douglas served their shareholders’ interests. The U.S. government shouldn’t ever be bought off with corporate dollars. Also, science, as Douglas used to say, had its drawbacks. “Science has produced instruments that make man lazier and less inclined to explore woods, valleys, ridges,” Douglas would complain, in a sense echoing Eisenhower’s Farewell Address. “The machine is almost a leash that keeps man from adventure.”32

Regardless of his motivation, Eisenhower’s creation of the Arctic NWR for “the purpose of preserving unique wildlife, wilderness and recreational values” was a peak moment for conservationists in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold. In Alaskan history this was the first time a federal unit was preserved as a national heirloom by the application of ecological principles. The founding purpose of the Arctic NWR was to preserve a wilderness, so this was a legislative harbinger for the Wilderness Act of 1964 that the Muries, Zahniser, and Douglas had been diligently working on throughout the 1950s.33 “Wilderness,” Leopold had written, “is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.”34

Ginny Wood and Celia Hunter were giddy with joy. Lois Crisler said that the wolves had also won, giving “heart and hope” to lovers of wildlife. Walt Disney wondered if there was a movie in all this. Mardy Murie, remembering that Fairfield Osborn had really started the Arctic NWR movement in 1956 by sponsoring the Sheenjek Expedition, wrote him a letter of thanks: “Sometimes it’s good to have a little victory, isn’t it? Even though we know also that there still has to be watchfulness,