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A Bipartisan Effort
At the time of his campaign, Thompson’s staff believed the Middle Fork project was a good issue to support to show his outlook of fiscal conservatism.
That same year, State Representative Tim Johnson was elected to serve as a representative at the state level in Springfield.
Johnson declined an interview for the project. His press secretary, Phil Bloomer, said that the subject carried many unhappy sentiments for Johnson.
In 1983, Sen. Dick Durbin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Shortly thereafter in 1984, Terry Bruce of Olney, Ill., was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on the Democratic ticket.
Sen. Durbin could not be reached for an interview for the project, despite 6 months of phone calls and scheduling with his press secretary, Bill Houlihan.
All four of these men worked together to see the resolution on the Middle Fork culminate into its designation as a National Wild and Scenic River.
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The 1970s was an era of change not just for the Middle Fork River, but for personal values and political elections.
The era of the Army Corps of Engineers damming rivers for the sake of reservoirs was coming to an end. The scales began to tip in favor of a preserved river corridor.
However, the designation could not have been achieved without the legal language to support it.
In 1976, James R. Thompson became governor of Illinois, ousting Gov. Dan Walker from his post and changing the long-standing school of thought dramatically.