University of Idaho Selway-Bitteroot historical archive.

[44hunter45]

I was doing research on the thankfully never completed Penny Cliffs Dam, which would have been just below the confluence of the Selway and the Lochsa. I am trying to find out if the were any heroes of this fight we have not yet known.
Quasi Pozewitzians on our side of the mountain.

The Middle Fork of the Clearwater was designated Wild and Scenic by Congress in 1968. I want to know who was the thron in the side of the Army Corp of Engineers and Congress from the 1953 announcement of the PEnny Cliffs Dam Plan and the 1968 W&S designation.
There must be someone. I want to at least buy them a beer if they are still alive.

I'm still looking, but learned Vernon Speer and Jack O'Connor both loudly fought against the Bruce's Eddy Dam we now know as Dworshak.

My research led me here. The University of Idaho has recently digitized many materials regarding the Selway-Bitteroot's history, including the proposed dam.

I have a lot of material to absorb, but if HTers are interested, I will make periodic updates on what I find.

Sources Related to the History of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area | ArchivesSpace Public Interface

uidaho.libraryhost.com

 

[Big Fin]

I bet there was someone or some group who stood for the cause of wild places and wild things. If you find out, please share the story here with us.

 

[BuzzH]

By chance I ran into a guy fishing salmon in 1999 on the clearwater. The guy, who was in his late 70's, was struggling to catch fish so I helped him out. If I would have known his story and who he was, I would have almost been embarrassed to help him. But, he was more than happy that I was willing to help and it wasn't long until he was putting the hurt on limits of Clearwater kings. He invited me to his house to check out his property and fishing stuff. Turned out the guy I was helping was Duke Parkening. He was good friends with a guy that either owned or was high up the food chain with Fenwick...and he must have had every Fenwick rod ever made. Duke at one time was the best flycaster in the United States and had fished the middlefork extensively with Ted Trueblood. Duke had come from California and was tied in close with some Hollywood elites, a tight knit and small group of them that fly fished steelhead on the middlefork. He was also really active in the conservation and designation of the middlefork.

I can't say for sure, but from the stories he told, I would have to guess that Duke, Trueblood, and some of their Hollywood fly fishing pals had to have been heavily involved. I kept in touch with him until his passing both by email and snail mail and we fished salmon together for several years. He had some interesting things, some flies in a shadow box that belonged to Zane Gray, some others that were Ted Trueblood's, lots of photos of he and his wife with all sorts of famous Hollywood folks. If I recall correctly his brother in law was married to Ginger Rogers.

May be worth your time chasing down anything that Ted Trueblood may have written about the middlefork. According to Duke, they were all pretty tight lipped about the steelhead fishing on the middlefork back in the day.

 

[44hunter45]

Politics is certainly messy. As a "BHA Republican" this has been an eye opener regarding which party players took which side environmentally. It was no more predictable post WW II than it is today.

So far I've encountered:
A Post War US Army Corp of Engineers full of New Deal era staff, which pushed their mission to build infrastructure and employ workers.
A 500 year flood in 1948 which destroyed a DOD shantytown built behind levees in Portland to house defense workers. This triggered a flood control mandate for the Columbia River and its tributaries.
A cadre of Clearwater region "progress" politicians pushing dams and highways for economical growth.
The contemporary 1950's idea that the environment must be made to behave and serve man.
One US Senator who had actually spent time outdoors in the Selway, and loved it.
Flood control and hydro power were the driving factors. Like the Yellowstone River proposals, the fact that private power generation companies stood most to benefit was kept pretty dark in the Congressional debate with a couple of rare exceptions.

It starts to look like this after a while.



The meme above seems to be becoming my icon for the Public Land fight.

Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon effectively killed the Penny Cliffs Dam project but not the Bruce's Eddy project (Dworshak Dam). The same Senator Neuberger supported a proposal to build a 720 foot high dam in Hell's Canyon. The Senator's key argument against Penny Cliffs was that the Lewis and Clark Highway (US Highway 12) was started in 1916 and while not yet finished in 1957, it was finally fully funded after long arguments and politics. With full funding, it was scheduled to be completed in 1960. The Penny Cliffs Dam would require 40+ miles of that new highway to be relocated. He successfully argued to the House Public Works Committee that this would break their cost benefit analysis. At the time both Bruce's Eddy and Penny Cliffs were a package deal. Both died in the committee.

The Bruce's Eddy project opposition did not have the highway card to play and that project was resurrected as a standalone soon after.

The Orofino Mayor and Chamber of Commerce supported any and all dam projects in the interest of economic development. Even going so far as to pay for a seriously flawed EIS, which according to the Congressional Record, said they only found seven elk in the North Fork river basin in their counts. This ignored the obvious fact that the river basin was critical WINTER habitat, not summer range. Senator Dworshak successfully argued that Congress could not use that study and needed to wait for USFS, USFWS, and IDFG surveys to be completed.

A paper I'm reading from a WSU Pullman Environmental History Professor postulates that the Columbia River system dams undoubtedly directly hurt the fish and wildlife, but the power generated allowed the non-agriculture and non- extraction economies to develop in Portland and Seattle. She does not make any judgements, just observations.

What I have not been able to find so far is those citizen warriors that I know must be there.

Reading Ted Trueblood is something I have wanted to do but have not, so I am interested in @BuzzH suggestion to go down that road.

 

[Ben Long]

Ditto on Ted Trueblood. I bet he was in that fight.

 

[44hunter45]

This PhD dissertation is a long read but worth it. Tabitha passed and is now working for the Nez Perce National Historical Park.

She names local and national heroes and villains. I could write a hundred long posts here and not come close to this work.

Good history throughout, but her description of the the tactics used to suppress opposition input to the Dworshak Dam is amazing.
Everyone who makes NEPA or town hall comments should be watchful of some of the tricks used by the "Iron Triangle" of the local politicians, Senatoars, and the USACE.
Specifically, they filled the agenda with supporters' prepared statements, started the meeting late, and then attempted to adjourn the meeting on time before the opponents could be heard.
The public meeting notice was sent out to select list of friends and friendly press. They followed the letter of the law by making the proposal available to the public, if they were willing to drive to the Walla Walla USACE office to see it.

I learned there were other attempts to dam the Clearwater even before the one I was researching.
In the end, the wildlife lost with Dworshak Dam, but won in that the Penny Cliffs and Hell's Canyon dams were not.

There was no internet then, but proponents of Dworshak used the same playbook we see today. They used willing members of the press to marginalize local opponents, as well as label any national opposition as nefarious outside influence. (While they accepted outside money and influence that helped their cause. )They cherry picked the science. They capitalized on natural disasters to convince people it was a safety issue.

I learned that after the early 1970's the public sentiment over damming every river had cooled to the point where new dams were not sellable. But the same tricks and tactics are in play today with projects like Pebble Mine and Jason Chaffetz' Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act.

Wildly contentious: The battle for North Central Idaho's roads, rivers, and wilderness | Semantic Scholar

by Tabitha Ellen Erdey, Ph.D. Washington State University December 2013 Chair: Robert R. McCoy During the twentieth century, the rivers and mounta ins of North Central Idaho opened to resource extraction, outdoor recreation, and econom ic development. Government agencies charged with carrying...

www.semanticscholar.org

 

[FI460]

Loving the history. Keep it coming. I've spent a little time in that area chasing whitetail, but I've only made it up to the Lochsa once. Gorgeous country.