Over the course of NCCC’s 50+ years of being the only single-purpose organization dedicated to North Cascades conservation, our archives have accumulated some fascinating history. We’ll be posting more here as time allows, so please check back!
A guide to the Skagit River watershed by Saul Weisberg and Jon Riedel with illustrations by Libby Mills (c) 1991 North Cascades Institute. Read this excellent Natural History guide to the 2nd largest watershed on the west coast of the lower 48 states.
The Manning family has released scanned PDFs of Harvey Manning‘s final unpublished manuscripts
Dr. Patrick Goldsworthy created this display to draw attention to the threat to Big Beaver Valley’s ancient forest from the then-proposed High Ross Dam.
A statement of the situation in the North Cascades at the time, the goals of NCCC, and how they could be best realized, the Prospectus truly is the culminating document of NCCC’s greatest initiative
Records from the campaign to stop Seattle City of Light from raising Ross Dam (“High Ross”) which would have flooded Big Beaver valley like the Upper Skagit Valley
In the final year of the long effort to establish a North Cascades National Park, it must have seemed like an “impossible dream!” NCCC’s leadership put together this slide show to promote the idea of a National Park
NCCC’s Polly Dyer was also active in saving the Pacific coastal strip of Olympic Nat. Park. Here a documentary shows a 3-day protest backpacking trip on the beach she organized with Supreme Court Justice Douglas in 1958 to get media attention
In 1957, David Brower (a founder of NCCC) filmed Wilderness Alps of Stehekin with his two sons in the North Cascades of Washington.
North Cascades National Park was established 11 years later.
The Kerosene Kid and The Kaopectate Kid were noms de plume used by Joe Miller in The Wild Cascades from 1969-1979, mostly to stop High Ross Dam and the flooding of Big Beaver Valley. This is a compendium of his writings
Drawn at the time of the first or second stage of Ross Dam construction and its then-smaller reservoir (ca. 1937-49), this sketch map shows existing structures at that time. NCCC successfully opposed the 4th and final stage of Ross Dam, known as “High Ross.”
Artist unknown, signed only as “Eire.”
This timeline was created by Dr. Patrick Goldsworthy in 1993.
It identifies the efforts for which NCCC made the original proposal, was the leading advocate, and collaborated with other organizations during that time.
NCCC partnered in an effort in the 1980 and 90s to create an US-Canada International Park, similar to Glacier-Waterton. Harvey Manning and Tom Perry appear here explaining the history of those efforts, representing US and Canadian activists, respectively.
The National Park Service surveyed the Cascades in Washington for a potential National Park way back in 1937 during FDRs administration.
The University of Washington has an extensive archive of our records.