Olson's literary manuscripts and related materials include research notes, outlines, handwritten and typed drafts of published and unpublished articles, essays, poems, and books, as well as publisher's proofs and reprints. Materials included within this series date from the early 1930s up until Olson's death in January 1982. Also included within these portions are Olson's correspondence with his literary agent, Marie Rodell; his editor, Ann Langen; and his publisher, Angus Cameron of Alfred A. Knopf. Correspondence, sketches, photoprints, and proofs from the illustrators, Francis Lee Jaques, Robert Hines, Leslie Kouba, and Les Blacklock may also be included within these materials or may be found scattered throughout his correspondence and miscellaneous papers. A group of unpublished manuscripts written during the latter portion of Olson's life contain some of his most autobiographical writings. These consist of boyhood memories and other memoirs touching upon his wilderness guide experiences, his canoe outfitting business, his army service, his cabin on Listening Point at Burntside Lake, and his advocacy activities.

Compiled by a University of Minnesota student, this bio-bibliography provides a brief but informative biography and a fairly comprehensive listing of Olson's publications up to 1972. The list includes newspaper and magazine articles, book publications, and co-authored works, as well as reviews of Olson's publications, and works about Olson.

This series focuses on Olson's role as a wilderness preservation advocate and consulting ecologist by documenting his involvement with, as well as the activities of, various organizations. The papers within this series have been further divided into four sets pertaining to Olson's membership on the Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments of the U.S. National Park Service (1958-1974); his membership in the U.S. National Parks Association (1953-1960); his activities in the preservation of the Quetico-Superior wilderness region including his membership on the President's Quetico-Superior Committee (1930s-1974); and his association with the Wilderness Society (1952-1974). Particularly well documented are Olson's efforts to preserve the wilderness areas of northern Minnesota which includes the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Additionally, Olson's advocacy of the national wilderness preservation system, enacted in 1964 as the United States Wilderness Act, and his consultative service to both the U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1960-1966) and the Izaak Walton League of America (1948-1982) are well documented.

Included within the papers are correspondence, proposals, surveys, maps, photographs, petitions, legislative bills, newsletters, and printed material pertaining to land acquisitions, congressional appropriations, park and forest management, road development, mining, logging, aircraft, motorboats, wildlife management, and recreational facilities. The papers also contain the newsletters, proposals, reports, meeting minutes, conference material, press releases, and other published material of the organizations of which Olson was a member as well as many other organizations committed to wilderness issues in general and to the Quetico-Superior region in particular.

Correspondents include other preservation advocates, organization executives, Minnesota congressmen, and state and federal parks, forestry, and conservation officials. Individual correspondents especially noted within the papers include John A. Blatnik, Frank B. Hubachek, Charles S. Kelly, William H. Magie, Donald P. O'Hearn, Ernest C. Oberholtzer, Ken Reid, Frank Robertson, Edward J. Thye, J. William Trygg , Stewart L. Udall, Harold C. Walker, Ralph P. Wentworth, Chester S. Wilson, and Frederick S. Winston. Organizations and government offices represented within the collection include the American Forestry Association, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the United States Forest Service, the Friends of the Wilderness, the United States Department of Interior, the Minnesota Arrowhead Association, the Minnesota Department of Conservation, the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, the United States National Park Service, the Northern Environmental Council, the President's Quetico-Superior Committee, the Quetico-Superior Council, the Quetico Foundation, the Quetico-Superior Foundation, the Sierra Club, and the Wildlife Management Institute.

While the bulk of the documentation covering Olson's preservation activities and his relationships with the National Park Service, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the President's Quetico-Superior Committee, the Izaak Walton League of America, and the Wilderness Society will be found within this series, additional materials may be found scattered throughout the remaining correspondence and miscellaneous papers.

The correspondence and miscellaneous papers contain what amounts to Olson's research, subject, and correspondence files. Some of these materials are arranged on a chronological basis; others are arranged by the name of a topic, place, event, project, institution, organization, or correspondent. These papers include a wide variety of material covering a wide range of topics, projects, and activities. Included are correspondence, motion picture and television scripts, proposals, land use studies, park master plans, trip files, conference and meeting files, speeches, lecture notes, trip journals, maps, newsletters, brochures, and other printed materials. Information covered by these files includes Olson's speaking, lecture, and workshop engagements; his awards and honorary degrees; his interviews and relationships with other writers and illustrators, such as Sister Noemi Weygant or various staff of the National Geographic; his Burntside Lake property; his memberships; and his ecological interests. Files related to Olson's interest in the Quetico-Superior wilderness area and his work with various conservation organizations and the National Park Service are also included.

Not an exceptionally organized record keeper, many of Olson's original literary drafts were included as his own personal reference material within these files. Furthermore, information concerning a particular topic, project, institution, organization, or correspondent may overlap from one file to another. Frequent or notable correspondents whose letters may be found either within the correspondence and miscellaneous papers or within the conservation series include Robert Marshall, Ernest Oberholtzer, Frank Hubachek, Robert Matteson, William Douglas, Victor Shelford, and Aldo Leopold.

Papers originating from Olson's graduate school work are included within this series. These papers consist of Olson's University of Wisconsin college transcript, scattered correspondence with professors and other ecologists, research notes, and literary drafts. Early literary work included within the graduate school papers consists of ecological studies centered on the lower Great Lakes region and Olson's master's thesis on timber wolves and coyotes completed for the University of Illinois in 1932. Olson's interest in wolves and other predatory animals continued well after he completed his master's degree. Additional research material dating from the 1930s through the 1970s are included within the literary manuscripts and related materials (box 4), the correspondence and miscellaneous papers (boxes 69 and 73), and the printed materials (boxes 77-79.)

Materials related to a series of canoe expeditions on the wilderness waterways of northern Minnesota and lower Canada in the 1950s and 1960s are included within this series. The expeditions were led by Olson, known to his crew members as "the Bourgeois." Crew members, known as the "Voyageurs," routinely included Denis Coolican, Blair Fraser, Tony Lovink, Eric W. Morse, Elliott Rodger, and Omond Solandt. Some of the expeditions were undertaken to retrace the routes of earlier fur trapping voyageurs, such as Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la V_rendrye; others were undertaken simply to explore and experience wilderness areas.

The series includes correspondence, research notes, newspaper clippings and magazine excerpts, food lists, itineraries and other items used in planning each trip, maps, photographs, and expedition diaries. The bulk of the series consists of the correspondence exchanged between Olson and his crew members while planning these trips; however, additional letters from these correspondents relate to matters other than the canoe expeditions. Another frequent correspondent whose letters are included within these materials was Father Louis Moraud, a missionary stationed at Patuanak in Saskatchewan. Moraud met the crew on their 1955 expedition and continued to correspond with Olson and the Voyageurs until his death in 1965. The final exchange of correspondence contains the Voyageurs' letters to Elizabeth Olson following the death of Sigurd Olson in 1982.

Also included within this series are Olson's brief handwritten diaries from the Voyageurs expeditions and two earlier canoe trip diaries dating from 1922 and 1936, as well as manuscript, excerpt, and published versions of the diaries of crew members.

Additional materials regarding Olson's role as a canoe guide and boundary waters regional expert are included throughout his correspondence and miscellaneous papers. These additional materials contain the correspondence, diaries and journals, observations, sketches, drawings, and photographs of other expeditionists.

The printed materials are roughly separated into those magazines and newspapers containing articles written by Olson and those materials written by others which Olson kept because they covered topics, people, geographic areas, projects, activities, and organizations inherent to his own local, national, and international interests. Materials kept by Olson include newspapers, newsletters, magazines, research articles, reports, legislative alerts, press releases, advertising circulars, surveys, maps, booklets, pamphlets, and brochures, etc. dated from the 1930s through the early 1980s. Included within these materials are articles written by Olson's friends and fellow Voyageurs, as well as the background research for his graduate thesis on timber wolves.

A few letters addressed to Elizabeth Olson comprise the final series within the collection. These items include a letter from Mike Link, an Olson biographer, who compiled The Collected Works of Sigurd F. Olson, which was published in two volumes by Voyageur Press in 1988 and 1990. A second file concerns a park project at Grand Portage on the Pigeon River.