Realms of nature, spheres of interest: Environmental policy in the Pacific Northwest, 1932-1952

The New Deal administration of Franklin Roosevelt viewed natural resource management initiatives as a crucial component of its effort to spur economic recovery from the Depression of the 1930's and long-term industrial growth well into the future. Drawing upon the precedents set by Progressive Era conservation leaders, Roosevelt and his administration developed a resource management program that combined wilderness preservation, widespread hydroelectric power development and distribution, and large-scale land reclamation with attempts to institute national economic planning on a region-by-region basis. At the local, state, and regional levels, however, the New Deal conservation program often encountered stubborn opposition from residents, business interests, and political leaders who viewed regional resources as the source of their economic futures. In the Pacific Northwest, the administration's support for a large national park on the Olympic Peninsula preserving huge amounts of commercial timber, and its extensive control over the generation, distribution, and sale of hydroelectric power from the federally constructed Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams, elicited hostility from local interests who saw these activities as excessive assertions of federal authority and unwarranted assaults on regional autonomy.;This local opposition, in turn, shaped, and at times hindered the implementation of New Deal conservation policies. Opposition to the administration's campaign for the Olympic National Park frustrated subsequent attempts to preserve other portions of the Northwestern landscape. Hostility toward the administration's support for public power distribution systems evoked a powerful reaction from the Northwest's private utility companies that prevented the establishment of a comprehensive public power system in the region. Most significantly, resistance to the further expansion of federal control over Northwestern resources led to the failure of federal efforts to establish a Columbia Valley Authority overseeing and coordinating all aspects of conservation activity in the region. Furthermore, New Deal era conflicts between local interests and federal agencies established a pattern of animosity in the realm of resource management that continues to shape policy discussions in the Pacific Northwest to this day.