By Bob Cox, Mountain Valley News staff
I guess I was luckier than a lot of school kids are today. I had teachers from very early on who took an interest in Colorado history and seemed to enjoy passing the information on, sometimes in a formal history class and other times as an addition to some other endeavor. Of course Colorado history has always meant a lot to me because my ancestors are a very big part of that history.
So, forgive me, if once in a while, I pause to give a short history lesson. Today’s topic is Edwin Carl Johnson.
I doubt that I would agree with a lot of what Johnson represented in his day, but he deserves some credit for some things that too many people seem to take for granted. Those who do recognize the name often associate it only with the fact that a tunnel in Colorado is named after him, and many who know about the tunnel will mistakenly think it is just the Eisenhower Tunnel. It is actually the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel. The eastbound bore is officially the Johnson bore.
Edwin C. Johnson was Governor of Colorado from 1933 to 1937, and again from 1955 to 1957. He moved to Colorado at the age of 25 in search of a cure for his tuberculosis, and while he was very instrumental in getting the interstate highway system going, he was also an important figurehead for those of us who like to pursue the sport of angling.
Many of us, me included, have pictures in our collections of people from our past standing in front of some old building or car with a stringer of dozens of fish. We sometimes like to think that there were more fishing opportunities a couple of generations back than there are now. That is not necessarily true.
Bad fishing practices and even worse management all but devastated the sport fishing opportunities in the first half of the 19th century. As usual for sportsmen, they came to their own rescue and actually asked to be taxed. They quickly garnered the support of those who were selling fishing gear and equipment when they proposed that all of the equipment be taxed, with the funds being strictly used for the enhancement of sport fisheries. Hence the Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act, commonly known as the Dingell-Johnson Act. Prior to his first stint as governor, Johnson served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Then between his first and second stints as governor, he served three terms in the U.S. Senate. It was in his senatorial capacity that he co-sponsored the Dingell-Johnson Act.
The act stayed substantially unchanged from enactment in 1950 to 1960. Since then it has been amended almost every two years, but remains, along with the famous Pittman-Robertson act, the quintessential example of how sportsmen take care of themselves. The monies collected from the tax on the sale of lures, rods, reels, artificial baits, flies, hooks and everything else found in a typical tackle box is strictly assigned to the enhancement and restoration of sports fisheries. More importantly, no state can have any of these funds unless they agree to use every dime of the money collected for fishing licenses to better the sport fishing opportunities.
In conclusion, my attentive students, please remember to pass all this along – maybe next time you are driving through the Johnson Tunnel on your way to our mile-high capital city.
