In this 2013 photo, a couple of backpackers stop to take in the view on their way to Alpine Lake in Redfish Lake Canyon in the Sawtooth National Forest. (Nate Lowe/U.S. Forest Service)
This column first appeared on Rocky Barker’s Northwest Experience blog on Sept. 5, 2024.
This month, 60 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, designating parts of federal land as places to be left undeveloped, where nature was left to its own devices and, as the act said, where the land was “untrammeled by man.”
In 1964, 54 wilderness areas across 13 states were included . Today, the Wilderness system has expanded to 806 areas in 44 states and Puerto Rico.
Idaho’s Sen. Frank Church was the floor sponsor. Former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus helped President Jimmy Carter add 57 million acres as a part of the 104 million-acre Alaska Lands Act in 1980.
Here we have the Selway Bitterroot, the Sawtooths, the Owyhee Canyonlands , the Hells Canyon, the Gospel Hump and the Craters of the Moon. We also have the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness , the Cecil Andrus Wilderness in the White Clouds, the Ernest Hemingway Wilderness in the Boulders and the James McClure/ Jerry Peak Wilderness.