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A View From The Ridge
by Jack Pichotta, Wolf Ridge Founder and past Executive Director

In 1971 the idea that became Wolf Ridge began at a former Job Corps Camp located near the small northern Lake County logging community of Isabella. The Federal Title III demonstration grant that funded the first three years of “Camp Isabella” provided $280,000 and was intended to test “new and innovative ideas” in education. The first Earth Day in 1970 had stimulated interest in environmental education and our proposal for an “environmental learning center” captured that interest.

I’ve only recently admitted that our program was called “camp” Isabella. While it didn’t seem to concern many others, I knew that our learning center was destined to be a new kind of school, and during our 17 years at Isabella, the word “camp” was seldom intentionally used in my presence. In 1981, when our program became the first of its type in the nation to be accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, I rested my case.
In 1988 the program that began at Isabella was renamed Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center and moved to a magnificent new campus located on 1400 acres overlooking Lake Superior. The $280,000 grant which funded the first three years would not have been quite enough money to support three months of program expenses in 1988 and would have made only a small dent in the $6,000,000 that was required to buy land and build Wolf Ridge. The six million came from progra- generated income, public and private grants and one large loan that will be paid off in 2008. Raising the $6 million took about 15 years.
I’m regularly asked if I really envisioned Wolf Ridge becoming one of the nation’s finest environmental learning centers. My answer is that I knew the possibility of that outcome existed but, sometimes for years on end, I wasn’t sure that everything was ready for that to occur.

Without vision Wolf Ridge would not have happened and often I’m given most of the credit for that vision. I know different. The visionaries that made Wolf Ridge were, and still are, the school teachers and parents willing and able to sell the idea to their schools and communities and then do all of the work needed to arrange the trips. Prior to becoming the director of Isabella, I was a school teacher and I know just how much effort good teachers put into their jobs. All of the teachers that bring groups of school children to Wolf Ridge are really good teachers who are supported by really good parents.

In the early 70’s there was just one full-service environmental learning center in Minnesota. Today there are more than six centers with the single purpose of residential environmental education, and there are an even larger number of programs with another primary objective that offer their facilities to schools during selected times each year.

During the just-completed school year more than 40,000 school children from more than five hundred Minnesota schools and communities attended an environmental learning center. It’s nice to recall that we, those of us that contributed to the growth and development of Wolf Ridge, were at least partially responsible for the growth of the new centers and for the growth of environmental education in Minnesota.

In September, 1988, when Isabella experienced both a new name and a new campus, the result was more often than not, “sorry, we don’t have any more room.” During the following ten years, and due primarily to enrollment increases, many schools that used Wolf Ridge had to rent nearby motels and resorts to house teachers and parent chaperones. For more than half of each of the past 10 school years Wolf Ridge scheduled more school children and adults than were able to be accommodated in our dormitory.

The visionaries that made Wolf Ridge were, and still are, the school teachers and parents who are willing and able to sell the idea to their schools and communities and then do all of the work needed to arrange the trips.

In 1990, in response to the increased demand of new schools and the increased enrollments of our participating schools, Wolf Ridge began efforts to increase capacity. Those efforts led to the formation of a coalition of learning centers and to the eventual investment of more than $20,000,000 in five environmental learning centers. The result is that in 1998, for the first time in nearly a decade, Wolf Ridge had room for a few new schools.

The Wolf Ridge campus is currently valued at more than $12 million and is located on what could very well be the most magnificent 2000 acres in Minnesota. Imagine: two beautiful undeveloped lakes, both with rocky cliffs that are nesting sites for peregrine falcons, more than a mile of frontage on the Baptism River and a similar length of Sawmill Creek. Wolf Ridge really is a ridge from which one can view from horizon to horizon the pristine beauty of Lake Superior.

Wolf Ridge employs more than 50 dedicated people, with 27 of that number teachers. The environmental education activities conducted at Wolf Ridge were all developed for Wolf Ridge. They are copyrighted and include graduation standards and assessments. The facilities and other educational support requirements are all of the highest quality and in quantities which enable classes that never exceed 20 persons - usually 14-18 children and 2-6 adults.

For some schools Wolf Ridge may require an additional hour or two of bus time. We hope that this issue of the Almanac will show that an hour or two is a very small price to pay for what many believe to be the nation's finest environmental education experience available for school children.