The Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) dedicated the Clearwater wheelchair access on Saturday, July 9 to Jay Johnson, a Crookston native and great northwestern Minnesota advocate for opening the outdoors to people with disabilities.

"The call came in June that the access would be dedicated to Jay and we were all ecstatic," said Randy Sorensen, executive director of Options Interstate Resource Center for Independent Living in East Grand Forks, an advocacy organization that Johnson founded in 1986. "The dedication of this access to Jay is a real honor for Options and for Jay's family. When I told his wife and his brothers, they all remarked about how this dedication would be such a great tribute to Jay's passion and all of his hard work."

Despite his partial paralysis from a motorcycle accident in 1978, Johnson was nothing short of an outdoor adventurer--hunting, fishing and crawling across portages with canoes and packs while wilderness canoeing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. His passion for advocacy lead to the founding of Options in 1986, when Johnson decided that he wanted to help other people with disabilities enjoy the same independent life he had established for himself after his paralysis. Johnson died in an ATV accident near his home on July 4, 2001.

Johnson was a longtime member of the statewide independent living council, which advocates for initiatives that help the disabled live independently. The mission of Options is "to provide people with disabilities advocacy, information, skills training and peer mentoring relationships to help them achieve their personal goals of how and where they live their lives."

In 2005, the organization directly served about 570 people with disabilities and provided information and referrals for more than 3,000, according to Sorenson.

Another of Options' roles is to provide guidance on access development, as Johnson did on the development of the Clearwater access site in the late 1990s. He died before he could see the project completed in late 2001.

"When I got permission to proceed with an access plan here on the Clearwater River, Jay Johnson was the first person I called," said Dennis Johnson, DNR assistant area fisheries supervisor in Bemidji, who met Johnson at a DNR training session. "His advice to me was to 'keep it simple, wheelchair anglers don't need a lot of fancy railings, just a way to get to the river."

Five years of cooperation between the Headwaters Trout Unlimited chapter, the DNR, the Minnesota Conservation Corps and $53,000 later, the nearly 1,000-foot Clearwater access has been completed. It was dedicated to the man who inspired its creation so many years ago.

"Don't forget about wheelchair users when it comes to accessing lakes and streams for fishing and hunting," Dennis Johnson recalled Jay Johnson saying. "Jay used to fish this stretch of the Clearwater by lowering his wheelchair out over the water at the culvert from his converted van. Having this accessible walkway along the river to fish trout would be pure heaven for him."

Approximately 40 people attended the dedication ceremony. It included a sign installation at the access, story telling about Johnson and the five-year-long access construction and repair process. Fishing Has No Boundaries, a Bemidji-area advocacy organization, brought two wheelchairs for able-bodied participants to try out the access. Several of Johnson's colleagues from Options were at the dedication ceremony; as were Johnson's two brothers; his widow, Joy; and the couple's son, Joshua, 16.

The DNR, Minnesota Conservation Corps and Headwaters Trout Unlimited cooperated to make improvements to the access site in October 2004 to stop stream bank erosion, repair damage from ATVs and dirt bikes, and create more trout habitat in and around the fishing platforms. The DNR has also stocked some 3,900 trout in the Clearwater River at various times this spring and early summer. The most recent stocking was on June 26, when 800 hatchery-raised rainbow and brown trout of various lengths were released.

"The DNR is committed to providing fishing opportunities for all of our citizens," said Bill Evarts, a DNR Bemidji area fisheries specialist who helped coordinate the improvement project, access dedication and 2005 trout stocking. "I got a real appreciation for the needs of wheelchair anglers today," said Evarts, who tried out one of the wheelchairs provided by Fishing Has No Boundaries. "Listening to the stories about Jay and his passion for access made me feel really great about what we've done here--all of the recent upgrades, improvements to habitat and the strong partnerships we've forged. The result is a quality experience for anyone that isn't physically able to walk the stream--those in wheelchairs, the elderly and families with young children."

The DNR's "Open the Outdoors" initiative has been updating facilities and programs to meet state and federal accessibility standards since 1972, opening the outdoors to people with disabilities. The Clearwater River access site is one of very few in northern Minnesota that is specifically designed to enable stream fishing for wheelchair users.

More information about accessible outdoor opportunities is available on the DNR Web site at www.dnr.state.mn.us.