Wilderness Act: A look 50 years later

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act. Nine million acres were allotted to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Often adjacent to national parks, they included exceptionally beautiful places, including mountains, deserts, forests and lake environments.

According to Congress, wilderness was 'for the use and enjoyment of the American people,” but they must be willing to walk, canoe or ride horses. Motorized vehicles, motorboats and bicycles were excluded. Since 1964 another 100 million acres have been added to the system so that over 4 percent of the United States is designated wilderness.

The Wilderness Act was a superb achievement. It assured the future of amazing recreational areas, protected endangered plant and animal habitats, and discouraged rural sprawl. Yet it has never lacked for critics and the justifications offered for its extension are not without their oddities and paradoxes.

First, Congress defined wildernesses as areas retaining their 'primeval” character, implying that no one had ever lived there and never would. Actually, many of the designated areas had been Native American lands whose inhabitants had been forced out by white soldiers, miners and ranchers in the 19th century. The Indians had lived there for centuries and modified the land by fire, hunting and farming. It became 'wilderness” because the federal government said so, not because of its intrinsic wildness.

Second, the idea of wilderness as something to celebrate was recent. In the colonial era, 'wilderness” was bad, not good. Only in the late 19th century did John Muir and others begin to voice the idea that wilderness was precious and edifying. Muir depicted humans, not wild animals, as the worst predators.

Third, the rhetoric of wilderness advocates has emphasized that setting aside these lands is democratic and that everyone benefits.

Not really. The several million people who enjoy wilderness areas each year are nearly all white and upper middle class. Only they have enough leisure and wealth. The people who live beside the wilderness areas resent the fact that these areas have been 'locked up” by self-interested elites, while excluding poorer folks.

The Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and the 'Wise Use” movement of the 1990s were protests against what they perceived as the elitism of federal land policy in general, and the Wilderness Act in particular.

Fourth, the language of the act and the language of wilderness advocates encourages the idea that wilderness is good because it is the antidote to civilization. The website wilderness.net, describes wilderness areas as 'rare wild places where one can retreat from civilization, reconnect with the Earth, and find healing, meaning, and significance.” The implication is that civilization is wounding, meaningless and insignificant.

The Wilderness Society's website claims that wildernesses are necessary, and that urban children suffer from an ailment it describes as 'nature-deficit disorder.”

Despite criticisms from left and right and activists' anxiety that not enough lands have been designated, the National Wilderness Preservation System is alive and well.

' Patrick Allitt is a professor of American history at Emory University. Contact: pallitt@emory.edu