The Shipstead-Nolan Act
In 1930, the Shipstead-Nolan Act passed as the "first statute in which Congress expressly orders land be protected as wilderness." This act is still in effect today and at the time, it showed the state and federal government could cooperate. This was the first act to legally give people the responsibility to protect the BWCA, and gave the BWCA rights to be true wilderness.
"The Act withdrew all federal land in the boundary waters region from homesteading or sale, prevented the alteration of natural water levels by dams, prohibited logging within 400 feet of shorelines, and preserved the wilderness nature of shorelines. The regulations applied to a 4,000-square-mile area extending from Lake Superior on the east to Rainy Lake on the west. Passage of the Act represented a defeat for Edward Wellington Backus's plan to build a series of dams in the Rainy Lake watershed to create storage basins for industrial waterpower."- Stephen Wilburs