Nationally-known conservation advocate, outdoorsman, and writer Sigurd Ferdinand Olson (1899-1982) was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Ashland, Wisconsin. He graduated from the local high school in 1916 and studied at Northland College in Ashland until 1918 when he enlisted in the Army. After World War I Olson enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, where he received a B.A. in 1923. In August 1921, he married Elizabeth Dorothy Uhrenholdt; they subsequently had two children: Sigurd Thorne (1923-2008) and Robert Keith, born in 1925.
Shortly after his marriage, Olson began his career as a teacher of biology at Ely Junior College in Ely, Minnesota. In 1931 he earned an M.S. from the University of Illinois, and in 1936 Ely Junior College appointed him dean. During the 1920s and 1930s, Olson spent his summers leading canoe expeditions into the Quetico-Superior wilderness near Ely on the Minnesota-Ontario border. There he witnessed the threat posed by logging to the wild character of the area, and he began to form his philosophy about the importance of wilderness. During this period he was also a frequent contributor to Sports Afield and other outdoor magazines.
From 1945 to 1946, Olson was on special assignment for the Army and the State Department in England and Germany, primarily to teach at Army University Centers. Following his return from the war, Olson devoted himself to wilderness advocacy and writing. His leadership of the effort to ban airplanes and fly-in resorts in the Boundary Waters propelled him to the front ranks of the national wilderness movement. Olson served as an advisor to the National Park Service, including a stint as president of NPS advisory board from 1953 to 1958. During his long association with the Park Service he helped to establish the Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and Point Reyes National Seashore in California, and he assisted in the preservation of the dunes of Indiana and Cape Cod. Olson also served as advisor to the Secretary of the Interior from 1959 to the early 1970s. Olson served as president of the Izaak Walton League, the Wilderness Society, and the National Parks Association. Olson aided in the drafting of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which created the legal definition of wilderness and offered protection of nine million acres. The culmination of a lifetime of work came with the passage of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act in 1978 which guaranteed the protection of a million acres of lakes and wilderness in northern Minnesota.
Olson's reputation as a nature writer began with the publication of his first book, The Singing Wilderness, in 1956. His other works include Listening Point (1958); The Lonely Land (1961); Runes of the North (1963); Open Horizons (1969); The Hidden Forest (1969); Wilderness Days (1972); Reflections from the North Country (1976); and an autobiography, Of Time and Place (1982). In 1974 Olson received the John Burroughs Medal, the nation's highest honor for nature writing. Over time, Sigurd Olson became nationally recognized for his conservation philosophy, and he was awarded the Horace Marden Albright Medal for scenic preservation, as well as the John Muir Award and the Wilderness Society's Robert Marshall Award. He was named to halls of fame established by the Izaak Walton League and the National Wildlife Federation. Beloit College, Carleton College, Macalester College, Northland College, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota all awarded him honorary degrees. In 1972, Northland College created the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in his honor to pursue the study of wilderness preservation.
Sigurd Olson died of a heart attack while snowshoeing near his home in Ely, Minnesota on January 13, 1982. Elizabeth Olson died in Hayward, Wisconsin on August 23, 1994.
