STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Fifty years ago, Idaho forest rangers and citizens embarked on an experiment like nothing that had been done before.
They created the Sawtooth National Recreation Area to protect 756,000 acres of spectacular views. That offered protection to an area of jagged granite spires—40 of which tower higher than 10,000 feet, 300-plus glacial alpine lakes surrounded by hanging valleys and cirques and the headwaters of four major rivers.
And, with Congress’s blessing, a huge influx of federal money rolled into Idaho to build facilities and enact measures protecting the wildlife and salmon that spawn in the area.
Today the SNRA is one of Idaho’s gems. And SNRA officials will mark its golden anniversary this coming weekend with a few low-key celebrations, including a panel discussion, a birthday party in Stanley’s Pioneer Park and a video show presented by Idaho Public TV’s “Outdoor Idaho” crew.
It took a hundred years for the playground north of Sun Valley to gain that protection. Visitors to the area, enamored of the beauty of Redfish Lake and the mountains that tower around it, began flouting the idea of making it a national park as early as 1875, according to Lin Gray, executive director of the Sawtooth Interpretive & Historical Association.
President Theodore Roosevelt set aside 2 million areas for a forest reserve in 1905. The Women’s Columbine Club started pushing the need to save the Sawtooths in 1911, and Idahoans created a model of the mountains for the 1915 World’s Fair in hopes of persuading the nation to create a new park.
But Idaho wool growers, fearful that their grazing rights might be jeopardized, passed a resolution objecting to a national park in 1916. And miners, ranchers and loggers joined in opposition.
The idea was again flouted in the 1920s and 1930s only to be short-circuited by World War II. The catalyzing push came in 1968 as conservationists began fighting to keep an open-pit molybdenum mine from being built at Castle Peak in the White Clouds.
A couple dozen people formed the Greater Sawtooth Preservation Council to keep miners from digging 20,000 tons a day out of the White Clouds’ highest peak. And Idaho Sen. Frank Church took up the cause, soon to be joined by his Republican colleagues Sen. Jim McClure, former Idaho Gov. Len Jordan, and Congressman Orval Hansen.
Many continued to press for national park status, but Church and Gov. Cecil Andrus claimed that would be impossible to wrangle, in part because of opposition from hunters.
Today many are grateful that the area was preserved as a national recreation area since a national park would lure more tourists. As it is, visitation has grown from 1.2 million people 10 years ago to 1.3 million today, fueled by an 87 percent increase between 2015 and 2020.
In contrast, Grand Teton National Park gets three times the number of visitors. That said it also has six times the budget compared with the SNRA.
By the 1980s and 1990s funding and staffing was declining, money had run out to buy conservation easements to protect scenic views and once robust salmon runs were declining, which forced SNRA managers to shift their focus from recreation to maintaining a threatened and endangered species, said Paul Ries, who was the SNRA area ranger from 1993 to 1999.
In desperation, Ries and the late radio newsman Gary Stivers contacted Church’s widow Bethine Church to ask her to consider starting an organization that would champion the preservation of the SNRA.
“Twenty-five years ago, we felt like we were struggling to keep the wheels on,” said Ries. “Our hope was we could use partnerships to make up for the decline in funding and staffing. That’s the future—everyone working together. We were trying to figure out who would be a person to jumpstart a movement and the only answer was Bethine Church.”
Other partnerships established then included that with the Blaine County Recreation District to create the Harriman Trail between Galena Lodge and SNRA, Ries said.
The late Sun Valley Resort Founder Averell Harriman’s wife Pamela Harriman donated $75,000, spurring $100,000 from the community and a $175,000 grant from the Idaho Trails Association.
“Before we used to drag a bedspring behind a snowmobile so skiers could go down it once a year,” Ries said.
Church, meanwhile, enlisted 37 others—many of them Wood River Valley residents—in starting the Sawtooth Society.
Since being formed in 1997, the Sawtooth Society has advocated against development that would damage the area’s natural, scenic, historic, pastoral and fish and wildlife values. The organization has raised a million dollars for trail maintenance and other projects through the sale of license plates featuring the area’s mountain goats. Members have assisted the Forest Service in buying parcels and conservation easements on a hundred properties, or 85 percent of the privately owned land in the area.
And they began providing interpretive programs when dwindling budgets forced the Forest Service to cut back on such programs and even consider closing the Redfish Lake Visitor Center.
“We see three key threats,” said Kathryn Grohusky, who is the Sawtooth Society’s executive director. “One is figuring out how we can be more prepared in the face of more frequent and larger fires. Another is how to preserve the area from being loved to death as we see more recreation pressure.
“And development is a challenge for us,” she added. “It’s not true that you can’t have huge developments, but the idea is that they should no significantly impact values.”
Today, the SNRA is a hybrid recreation area, a blend of Forest Service and National Park Service, according to area ranger Kirk Flannigan. It supports active timber sales near Grandjean, a placer mine on the Salmon River and grazing for 3,000 sheep and 1,300 cattle.
Fishermen are allowed to take fish for steelhead along the Upper Salmon, and Shoshone Bannock members helps with salmon recovery. But the largest use by far is recreation—with 900 miles of mostly non-motorized trails.
The SNRA is as much about what you don’t see as what you do see.
There are no Walmarts, strip malls or massive hotels. Most new residential construction has been tucked away out of sight so that the focus of visitors is on the herds of pronghorn antelope coursing through the sagebrush flats surrounded by log-fenced meadows north of Smiley Creek.
The Idaho Conservation League has recruited Wilderness Steward volunteers to patrol the backcountry, dismantling illegal fire rings, looking for abandoned campfires and counseling newcomers to the outdoors on sustainable ways of setting up camp and pooping in the woods.
Flannigan said the area has just 19 non-fire positions—six of which are vacant—as non-fire staff has decreased 40 percent during the past 30 years. Their emphasis is salmon over recreation. Even the new campground at Stanley Lake was built to mitigate impact to fisheries.
“Everything we do has something to do with mitigating impact to salmon and other fish,” he said.
That said, the SNRA is working on a visitor management plan for Redfish Lake: “It’s gorgeous, but try to find a parking space in July,” Flannigan said.
Flannigan also promised that a 4.5 mile trail from Stanley to Checkpoint Charlie near Redfish Lake that has been mired in legal tussles will be completed next summer.
“My approach is that of a pitbull,” he said. “We will protect the rights of the United States and build the trail.”
HERE’S HOW YOU CAN CELEBRATE THE SAWTOOTH NATIONAL RECREATION AREA’S FIRST 50 YEARS:
- Friday, Aug. 19, 6 p.m. SNRA’S 50th ANNIVERSARY FORUM. The Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association will host a Forum and Lecture Series celebrating the anniversary at the Stanley Museum. Jim Hansen, Jerry Jayne, Bert Bowler and Monica Church will offer a look at the establishment of the SNRA and discuss how the great Idaho experiment as fared.
- Saturday, Aug. 20—10 a.m. CELEBRATION at Pioneer Park in Stanley will feature coffee and sweet treat provided by the Sawtooth Mountain Mamas and Stanley Chamber of Commerce. There also will be presentations by such speakers as Congressman Mike Simpson, who championed the recent creation of the Hemingway-Boulder Wilderness and White Clouds Wilderness.
- Saturday, Aug. 20, 4 p.m. A REUNION of SNRA employees will be held in Stanley.
- Monday, Aug. 22, 6 p.m. OUTDOOR IDAHO staff will share video segments of past programs and their stories at the Redfish Lake Visitor Center.
Visit https://www.sawtoothnra50th.com/events for more information.