Theodor Swem and His Papers: Planning the National Parks of Alaska

Ted Swem at an Alaska Task Force meeting, May 10, 1973. NPS History Collection photo by M. Woodbridge Williams.

A planner's career

Theodor ("Ted") R. Swem was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on December 6, 1917. He went to Coe College in Iowa and earned a bachelor of science in forestry from Iowa State University in Ames, then spent a year at Harvard's Biology School. He worked three years for the Colorado Game and Fish Commission and the next ten for the Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, planning for recreation and wildlife.

In 1957 he joined the National Park Service as head of planning studies for Region II in Omaha. In 1961 he moved to the Washington Office as a planner, first in the Branch of Proposed Area Studies and then in Park and Recreation Area Planning. He became assistant director for Cooperative Activities in 1964, and in 1969 regional director of the National Capital Region. After a year there he returned to Washington as an assistant director.

Alaska

In 1973 Swem was also named chairman of the Department of the Interior's Inter-Bureau Alaska Planning Group. From 1973 to 1976 he was responsible for the Park Service's work in Alaska under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and was central to planning new national park areas there. He retired in 1976, but his work led to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, signed by President Jimmy Carter in December 1980.

In retirement he was president of the Wilderness Society's Governing Council from 1978 to 1980, served on the board of American Rivers, and consulted on management for Silvertrip Consulting and Defenders of Wildlife. He and his wife, Helen, were married for 57 years and had four children. He died in 2006.

The collection

The Theodor R. Swem Papers (collection HFCA 1645, Series XIV.H; 1.25 linear feet, 1961–1978) are part of the NPS History Collection at the Harpers Ferry Center in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Found in the collection in 2010, they were processed by contractors in 2015 and updated in November 2024. They are open for research but have not been digitized; the History Collection's archivist arranges in-person appointments.

Most of the files concern Swem's work establishing the Park Service's presence in Alaska through the Alaska Task Force, including reorganization and drawing or adjusting park boundaries. They include reports, statements, policies, clippings, correspondence, memos, project files and notes, arranged by subject and then by date across three boxes:

• Administration: a briefing book for a 1975 House oversight hearing; papers on the agency's reorganizations (1965–1966), a 1964 streamlining effort, regional directors' meetings in 1968–1969, and the Washington Office in 1967–1973.
• Cooperative Activities — Alaska: correspondence from 1964 to 1974; reports including a 1964 economic base study, environmental reports (1972–1975), resource management (1961–1978), the Russian Mission (1976) and status reports (1973–1976); and Alaska Task Force files on land withdrawals and litigation (1972), long-range objectives (1973–1974), press conferences and releases (1972) and correspondence (1975–1976).
• Other cooperative activities: boundary adjustments (1962–1963), post-MISSION 66 projects (1964), a 1965 project called "ZIP," and the Task Force on Resources and Recreation (1966) and Task Force on Quality of the Environment (1967).

Related material is in the Alaska Files of the Assembled Historic Records of the NPS. Other NPS History Collection finding aids cover further collections.

Sources

• National Park Service, NPS History Collection: "Guide to the Theodor R. Swem Papers," a public-domain finding aid.