LAKE ITASCA, Minn. - The millions of visitors who have come to this quiet spot for more than a century to view the birth of the Father of Waters owe Mary Gibbs a debt of gratitude.

The Mississippi River starts in this small lake deep in the pinewoods, winding its way 2,552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The 32,000-acre state park was Minnesota's first state park, and was set aside to protect the source of the river, first discovered by naturalist and explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1832.

Mary Hannah Gibbs was 24 when she faced down the big lumber companies, defying the threat of gun-wielding lumberjacks. She was park superintendent - the only woman and the youngest person in the United States to hold such a job.

Her story began in 1879 when she was born in Atwater, Minn., the second youngest of nine children. Early photographs show a striking, brown-haired young woman with dark eyes and firm chin, with an air of resolve about her.

Mr. Schoolcraft had been sent by the U.S. government to negotiate a treaty between the Dakota and Ojibway tribes and used the opportunity to explore the Mississippi headwater area.

Guided by Ozawindib, an Ojibway chief, the 30-member party left Sault Ste. Marie in early June. Using rivers and portages and fighting knee-deep mud and voracious mosquitoes, the group reached Lake Itasca. At 1,475 feet above sea level, it is the highest of the scores of lakes in the highland region linked together by the tiny stream, which first runs north and then east, linking scores of large and small lakes.

Fast forward to 1888, when the Minnesota Legislature, with one vote to spare, established Itasca State Park - the second state park in the United States. (New York's Niagara Falls State Park was the first in 1888.) Much of the push for the park was the work of Jacob Brower, a well-traveled former teacher and Union veteran of the Civil War, who became an ardent conservationist.

The state set aside only $21,000 to buy land from lumber companies. Logging was then the state's only major industry.

“The lumber companies wielded a lot of power in those days and they used it,” said Charlie Maguire, a historian, author, and musician who has extensively researched Mary Gibbs' role in Lake Itasca State Park.

In 1901, Gov. Samuel R. Van Sant appointed John P. Gibbs as Itasca's park commissioner, or superintendent. He and his family moved into quarters at the lake, and his youngest daughter, Mary, 22, soon was serving as his secretary.

In February, 1903, John Gibbs died unexpectedly. The governor, who was one of the state's biggest log shippers, appointed Mary Gibbs as his successor. It would be another 82 years before a woman occupied a similar post in state government.

The appointment surprised no one, because Mary Gibbs was qualified from her experience as John Gibbs's secretary, often writing letters to the state capital in St. Paul.

By all accounts, she took her job and her obligations to her late father very seriously. But there was an underlying feeling that Gibbs, a woman, would be unable to protect the lake from the rough and tumble loggers.

“The only way logs could be sent to the mills back then was via the lakes and rivers,” Mr. Maguire said. “There had to be a showdown.”

It didn't take long to arrive. In the spring of 1903, the water began to back up in Lake Itasca behind a log dam put in about a quarter mile from the lake's natural outlet. Water rose higher among stands of virgin cedar and pine, putting the woods in danger of dying.

John Dobie, an early historian who also wrote about the park's founding, said that the dam's presence was well known in St. Paul. Wanting to avoid direct dealings and risking the anger of the industry, he turned over the hot potato to Minnesota Attorney General W.B. Douglas.

The attorney general, Mr. Dobie wrote, could have forced the lumber companies to tear out the dam, but instead decided to bargain with the loggers for more land, since the state had no more money to buy it.

Brainerd Lumber Co. agreed to preserve the trees if it could use the dam to raise water high enough to send the logs downstream. Mr. Douglas granted their request with the stipulation that the dam would be opened if water levels became too high and flooded the park timber.

But by April 1, the Mississippi-Schoolcraft Boom Co., the logger, had nearly 9 million board feet of timber floating in the lake and needed more water to push the logs over the dam. The lake level crept higher; to three feet above the dam spillway and double the level agreed to by the park superintendent and the lumbermen. A state law, passed only three weeks earlier, also had established the lower lake level.

Reports of the lake spilling over its banks and into the pine forests reached park headquarters. On April 12, superintendent Gibbs and a neighbor, Theodore Wegmann, went to the dam. She asked that the water level be lowered, but was rebuffed.

Another visit to the dam site three days later had similar results, so superintendent Gibbs obtained a warrant for the arrest of the dam operator for violating the state law and went to the dam accompanied by a constable. Several angry lumberjacks met them at the dam, one toting a rifle.

Years later, Miss Gibbs put down her recollections of that day in a letter to historian Dobie:

“When Constable Heinzelman attempted to serve the warrant and order the gates opened, M.A. Woods [a lumber company superintendent] said, `I'll shoot anyone who puts a hand on these levers.' Constable Heinzelman then returned the warrant to me unserved. I said `I will put my hand there, and you will not shoot it off either.' And I did.'”

But she was unable to move the levers and finally, Mr. Woods, his bluff called, ordered the gates opened. It took six men to pull the levers. The constable, his confidence apparently restored by the young woman's actions, served the warrant.

Mr. Woods and Joe Belmore, another lumberman, were taken to the nearest jail at Bagley, Minn., booked, and released. Word spread of the confrontation, including rumors that Miss Gibbs had used a pistol to back up her demands.

The Minneapolis Journal newspaper picked up the story, and a Page 1 story in its April 24 edition, headlined: “She had nerve, and a big gun.”

Legal skirmishes continued. The lumber company lawyers obtained an injunction threatening Miss Gibbs with arrest if she returned to the dam. The attorney general overturned the injunction, and ordered the gates lowered to 18 inches.

Mary Gibbs won the battle, but lost the war. A week later, on April 28, the governor appointed C.E. Bullard as park commissioner. She would not accept the demotion, and resigned. Her last official act was selecting the logs for a new park lodge. Named for Attorney General Douglas, who helped her defend the park, it is still in use.

The departure of Mary Gibbs led Jacob Brower to write in his history of the park:

“The lumbermen were left in undisturbed possession of Itasca Lake, the river, and the dam.”

That September, the governor allowed two logging roads to be built through the park, but refused to allow the loggers to raise the height of the dam. The dam would remain in place for 14 years until the supply of big timber in the lake area was virtually exhausted.

Mary Gibbs' stand came at a time when both the government and the public were changing their attitudes about preservation and parks, Mr. Maguire said. A week after she resigned, President Theodore Roosevelt stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and declared: “Leave it as it is.” The canyon became a national park in 1919.

Miss Gibbs was lost to history for many years. But Mr. Maguire spent years of research and interviewed her family to trace her life after Itasca.

She left Minnesota with her mother for California soon after leaving Itasca. Her mother died less than a year later and Miss Gibbs went to Edmonton to visit her oldest sister. While there, she met and married William A. Logan. He was 34 and she was 25. In 1908, the Logans homesteaded 50 acres near Clyde, Alberta. In 1919, they moved to Vancouver.

The Logans had four children. Mr. Logan became a successful builder of homes and his wife became active in civic clubs. Many homes he built are still standing in the exclusive Shaughnessy district of Vancouver. He died in 1957 at age 87 and his widow lived with a son for 20 years and entered a private residential home, where she celebrated her 100th birthday with her family around her.

On Feb. 4, 1983, Mary Gibbs Logan, the gutsy heroine of Lake Itasca, died at the age of 104, seven years shy of the 100th anniversary of Minnesota's first park.

Hank Harvey is a retired Blade staff writer.

First Published May 6, 2001, 1:37 p.m.