Taken and Delivered - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 127

National Park in the 1960s. But their personal experiences also connected these two sci-
entists with rivers. They spent much of their childhood playing and fishing in the eastern
Potomac River and their adult lives in Wyoming's Snake River valley. The brothers also
developed an intimate knowledge of the American West's waterways, and the Craigheads
acted as they watched the nation's rivers deteriorate after 1945. 7
At the same moment that the Craigheads spoke for wild rivers, members of Congress
linked water quality and scarcity with national economic development in the 1950s. John
Craighead spoke before the traveling Senate Select Committee on National Water Re-
sources that toured twenty-four American cities and towns to hear about water pollution
in 1959. John leaned heavily on evolving ecological systems theory when he characterized
watersheds as “both ecological and economic entities” where the whole was “equal to more
than the sum of its parts.” 8 John believed that those best equipped to identify rivers in need
of protection were people like himself and others at “the grass roots.” 9 In individual state-
ments before the Senate Select Committee, in National Geographic publications, and in
academic articles, the Craighead brothers made the case that free-flowing rivers had to be
protected for educational and recreational purposes and to maintain a clean and healthy wa-
ter supply. 10 Combined, these conditions would stimulate an outdoor recreation economy
that could tap the 44 percent of Americans who preferred “water-based recreation activit-
ies over any others.” 11 In short, congressionally designated wild and scenic rivers like the
Chattooga could help solve the nation's wide-ranging water problems.
Beginning in the late 1950s the Craigheads helped develop and write an equivalent to
the Wilderness Act (1964) for the nation's undeveloped rivers, since the legislation had
intentionally excluded rivers. John stated in an interview with river historian Tim Palmer
that he “had worked on the wilderness legislation with Olaus Murie, Howard Zahniser,
Stewart Brandborg, and others … but they were not interested in rivers” and were more
focused on wilderness areas that lacked “rivers because the lands were at high altitudes.”
The more he became involved, John continued, “the clearer it became that we needed a
national river preservation system based on the wilderness system but separate from it.”
So the Craigheads joined forces with Sigurd Olson (Wilderness Society), Joe Penfold (Iz-
aak Walton League), Bud Jordahl (a close colleague of the late senator Gaylord Nelson),
and Leonard Hall (Missouri journalist), and together they bent the bureaucratic ears of Ted
Swem (National Park Service) and Ted Schad (staff director, Senate Select Committee on
National Water Resources). 12 Collectively, these river enthusiasts, recreation professionals,
and water experts drafted the first wild and scenic rivers act, which was a component of
President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and
Restoration of Natural Beauty . In retrospect, the president's February 1965 message was a
quaint start for a Congress that would address water pollution, watch riots engulf cities, ex-
pand civil rights via the Voting Rights Act, and face public opposition to an escalating con-