Help Us Share Ober's Wilderness Legacy!

We know that protecting pristine wilderness from big industry has been an ongoing issue throughout Minnesota's history. Preserving wild places is critical to human health. Ernest Oberholzter understood this first hand. In 1901, after suffering from Rheumatic Fever, a doctor told him he had one year to live.

In 1906, Ober came north from Iowa and found Minnesota's northern waters. He began paddling and exploring them. In 1912, with the help of an Indigenous guide Billy Magee, they paddled an epic 2,000 mile trek in the barrenlands of Canada including hundreds of miles of unmapped territory. Ober was hooked, and he not only survived, he thrived from his time in the wilderness. And, Ober developed lasting relationships with many Rainy Lake Anishinaabe. 

In 1925, Ober and other conservationists learned about a plan by lumber baron and industrialist Edward Wellington Backus, whose paper mills are, at this time, the second largest in the world in terms of total production. Backus’s plan is to build a series of seven dams to create four main water storage areas in the Rainy Lake watershed. The affected areas would include parts of the Superior National Forest and what are now Voyageurs National Park, Quetico Provincial Park, and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It would have changed the area forever.

Affronted by what he considered an assault on the ecology and beauty of a wilderness he knew so intimately and loved so deeply, an area he thought was “one of the rarest of all regions of the continent, if not the world,” Ober assumed a leading role in organizing a national campaign to oppose the plan.

In July of 1930, as the result of the dedicated and hard work of Ober, Fred Winston and other conservationists, the Shipstead-Newton-Nolan Act is signed into law by President Herbert Hoover. The first statute in U.S. history in which Congress expressly orders land be protected as “wilderness,” it withdraws all federal land in the boundary waters region from homesteading or sale, prevents the alteration of natural water levels by dams, prohibits logging within 400 feet of shorelines, and preserves the wilderness nature of shorelines.

Today, we continue to have these conversations and debates about industry and protecting wild places from pollution and destruction. People's health and our planets future depends on protecting our wild places. At the Ober Foundation, we share Ober's legacy of wilderness advocacy to teach the next generation about how it is done. We do this by preserving and sharing Ober's Mallard Island home and collections during program weeks over the summer for study and inspiration. Our guests include authors, researchers, poets, painters, musicians, academics, and others to inspire and inform their work.  We are also opening a Mallard Island Annex Library and a storage/research/work room at the Backus Community Center to share part of Ober's book collection and other parts of his collection for the public to access. 

We at the Ober Foundation know that when we understand history, we can be better informed to act today. Wilderness needs to be protected, enjoyed, and studied to ensure a healthy future for all.

Won't you consider making a donation of $50 today to support our work? Can you make a monthly donation of $20/month? Monthly donations help us with monthly income to cover our expenses. Want to make a planned gift? Please contact us! 

Thank you!