Who was Judge C.R. Magney?
Phil Anderson will give a lecture on October 26 at 7 p.m. at Cook County Higher Education about the life of Clarence Magney. The son of Swedish immigrants, Clarence Magney was a Duluth mayor, district court judge, and justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Anderson is professor emeritus of church history at North Park University in Chicago, where he taught for 34 years.
“My research and writing have focused on aspects of British, Scandinavian, and American history. I have served as president of the Swedish-American Historical Society since 1979, which through programs, preservation, and publications interprets the immigrant experience in North America,” said Anderson.
Magney was the leading advocate for Minnesota’s state parks, and is remembered for the phrase, “Our state parks are everyone’s country estate.” The Minnesota Legislature renamed his favorite park on the North Shore in his honor in 1963, the year following his death.
This presentation will focus on the controversy between 1930 and 1943 of extending a new section of the highway from the Reservation River to the Pigeon River, closer to Grand Portage and through Mount Josephine. Ranging from local and state politics to the halls of Congress in Washington, it involved issues of wilderness conservation, tourism, safety, relations with Canada, and the expressed needs and desires of the residents of Grand Portage.
Judge Magney was a strong advocate of the new road, and was at the center of the complex web of issues that finally led to its completion shortly after his death.
“My wife, Karna, and I have made Hovland home for almost 40 years, and I have written about the settlement patterns of Norwegians, Swedes, and Swedish-speaking Finns in Hovland (1888-1930) in a book I co-edited with Dag Blanck, Norwegians and Swedes in the United States: Friends and Neighbors,” said Anderson.
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