The National Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964, often known simply as the Wilderness Act, sought to “secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.”
The act had its origins years before in the efforts of the U. S. Forest Service to set aside federally owned lands that could not then be developed. Facing pressure from developers who wanted to transform wilderness areas into mass recreation sites, people who wanted to keep the wilderness unchanged recognized the need to act. In 1924, the Forest Service began to set aside remote areas of national forests that would remain in their natural state. Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee in the 1920s and a staunch environmentalist, was one of those who wanted to promote an awareness of undeveloped areas as part of an effort to protect them.
In those early years, roads were permitted in the national parks, but logging, grazing, and mining were prohibited. Administrative regulations rather than laws served as the framework for managing these areas.
There was continuing competition between wilderness enthusiasts and mining, lumbering, and livestock entrepreneurs, and, over the next several decades, members of the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club began to argue that legislation, rather than administrative discretion, which could shift under pressure, was necessary to manage and maintain wilderness areas.
The legislative history of the Wilderness Act began in 1955. A draft bill soon faced serious criticism from commercial interests, who feared they would be excluded from wilderness areas or restricted from developing them as they chose. The opponents included the American Mining Congress, the American Pulpwood Association, and the American National Cattlemen’s Association. Initially, the Forest Service, too, was opposed to the bill, arguing, as one official noted, that “It hurt our pride, to suggest we had to have our hands tied by law.” New versions of the bill appeared in 1958 and 1959, though President DwiGHT D. Eisenhower appeared uninterested in the legislation.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy’s support for wilderness legislation made a difference. The Agriculture and Interior Departments now became enthusiastic supporters of such a measure. Eventually, legislators in both houses of Congress proved sympathetic, and agreement on a compromise was reached just before Kennedy’s assassination.
The Wilderness Act, signed into law on September 3, 1964, by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of his Great Society, defined wilderness as an area where the earth and its community of life were untrammeled by man, where man himself was a visitor who did not remain, and as an area of undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation. To be so designated, a wilderness area required at least 5,000 acres that contained features of scientific, educational, ecological, scenic, or historical value. Lands also had to possess opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation, and to appear to be affected primarily by nature with man’s influence unnoticeable. All four of these requirements had to be met for an area to receive federal protection. The National Wilderness Preservation system initially included 54 national forests containing 9.1 million acres.
The act mandated the secretary of agriculture and the secretary of the interior to submit joint recommendations to the president about the suitability of any area for preservation as a wilderness. After reviewing roadless areas within the National Park System and the National Wildlife Refuge System, the secretaries were to report on the state of the wilderness system, offering new regulations and recommendations.
This was “a great forward step,” said Senator Hubert
H. Humphrey, one of the early supporters of the legislation. “The wilderness bill preserves for our posterity, for all time to come, 9 million acres of this vast continent in their original and unchanging beauty and wonder,” President Johnson declared. Another 50 million acres were earmarked for consideration of possible inclusion in the next ten years.
Further reading: Dennis M. Roth, The Wilderness Movement and the National Forests (College Station, Tex.: Intaglio Press, 1990); Douglas Strong, Dreamers and Defenders: American Conservationists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988).
—Katherine R. Yarosh
World History
