How the Wilderness Act changed Oregon (and America)
It was the highways that bothered them most.
As long ago as the Great Depression, and growing with time, a select group of conservationists from Aldo Leopold to Edward Abbey began to believe that protecting nature within the National Park System was becoming a paradox.
The growth in development of gift shops, sprawling campgrounds and especially roads convinced them a new form of environmental protection might be needed.
"The craze is to build all the highways possible," reads the first edition of the Wilderness Society's newsletter in September of 1935. "The fashion is to barber and manicure wild America as smartly as the modern girl. Our duty is clear."
As park ranger at Arches National Park more than 20 years later, in 1956 and '57, Abbey was even less charitable to the incursion of a new highway into his desert paradise.
"You will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out," wrote Abby in "Desert Solitaire." "The little campgrounds where I used to putter around … have been consolidated into one master campground that looks, during the busy season, like a suburban village."
"Progress has come at last to the Arches, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived."
It was within this culture that a radical new law would arise.
The Wilderness Act, signed into law 50 years ago Wednesday by Lyndon Johnson, is a blatant attempt to roadblock the march of development into the natural world.
Written by Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society — and reworked over 60 times across eight years — the law created a new category for protection in which man was no longer master but "a visitor who does not remain," the act reads.
With the exception of wildlife refuges that bar humans altogether, the Wilderness Act provides the strictest level of environmental protection. Logging, mining and building permanent structures are forbidden. Motorized vehicles and tools are prohibited. Even mountain bikes are not welcome.
The designation of a wilderness is, in no uncertain terms, a way of erecting a wall against the human impulse to build and to make life easier.
In Oregon, the law is a major part of our landscape. While Oregon is home to just one national park, it's home to 47 wilderness areas that encompass 2.5 million acres, or four percent of the state.
On the law's 50th anniversary, it's worth looking at how wilderness developed in the Beaver State and why people love, and loathe, its very principles.
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WILDERNESS IN OREGON
The first round of wilderness designation, in 1964, protected what might be considered the crown jewels of Oregon.
Nine of the state's most iconic landscapes — the Three Sisters, Mount Hood, Mount Washington, the Strawberry, Gearhart and Wallowa mountains (as the Eagle Cap) — were all preserved. Four years later, the Mount Jefferson Wilderness was created.
"Many of the places established in 1964 already had some type of designation — these were the epic landscapes blessed by the Forest Service or other agency with 'wilderness-like' protection," said Erik Fernandez, wilderness coordinator for Oregon Wild, the Portland-based environmental group. "The great thing is that once an area becomes a wilderness, you don't have to worry about the next administration, or the politics, because it can never be unprotected."
The next major step was the Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984. Passed in a Republican Senate and Democratic House, and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the bill included 828,000 acres and 22 new wilderness areas representing every corner of the state.
Beyond that bill, though, preserving wilderness in Oregon became tougher, and it took different shapes amid the white-hot controversy of Oregon's so-called Forest Wars.
Opal Creek Wilderness, the best-known and most popular wilderness area near Salem, came close to being logged multiple times in the 1980s. It took a sophisticated campaign that gained national prominence before it was designed a wilderness in 1996.
An increasingly partisan venture, the last major wilderness bill made it through in 2009, with a Democratic Senate, House and President in power. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 added 127,000 acres of wilderness in Oregon, including seven new wilderness areas. It safeguarded places like the Copper-Salmon Wilderness that is less important for its scenic values and more about the wildlife habitat it provides.
"The initial wilderness push was less for biodiversity and more about those grand landscapes," Fernandez said. "Today we take a more holistic approach and ask, 'what provides clean drinking water, what provides wildlife habitat?"
Today, that only four percent of Oregon is protected as wilderness is something environmental groups bemoan.
California has 15 million acres of wilderness (about 15 percent of the state), Washington has 4.5 million (10 percent) and Idaho has 4.5 (8 percent).
"Despite our green reputation," Fernandez said, "Oregon is way behind its neighbors."
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THE PROBLEM WITH WILDERNESS
While the establishment of wilderness areas has saved Oregon's most unique landscapes from being developed, it has not saved them from crowds.
The Three Sisters Wilderness — home to Oregon's iconic trio of 10,000 foot volcanoes — becomes as busy as a shopping mall on sunny weekends at the most popular access points.
"I don't even consider it a wilderness experience," said Chris Sabo, trail crew supervisor for Deschutes National Forest, in reference to the area around South Sister, Broken Top and the Green Lakes Basin. "It's almost more of an urban park. The use is very high, really beyond what this area can accommodate."
Beyond the crowds, the establishment of wilderness often comes with the criticism that it's locking up the land to people who love the outdoors but are no longer young enough to hike steep trails to enjoy it. The law bars motorized access, including all-terrain vehicles.
Grants Pass attorney Jack Swift, who is active in Southern Oregon politics, said that while he loves the outdoors, and supports some wilderness, the lack of access is deeply frustrating.
"When I was a kid I hiked to the top of Mount Whitney and the High Sierra, but I'm not that age anymore, and what they're basically staying is, 'OK, you have to stay home now,'" Swift said. "I like wilderness in the sense of being able to go hunting and camping and all those wonderful things. But throwing a wall around these huge strips of real estate and saying to most people, 'keep out,' makes no sense. I find it offensive."
Further — and despite text of the Wilderness Act that defines wilderness as a landscape "untrammeled by man" — some wilderness areas are created and proposed in places previously logged or home to old roads.
Swift made that criticism of the proposed 58,000-acre addition to the Wild Rogue Wilderness, which is aimed at protecting the area surrounding the river's canyon, even though the river itself is already protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
"The timber that they would like to call wilderness is regrowth," Swift said. "The entire area was heavily clearcut and full of logging roads."
WILDERNESS IS ABOUT HARD WORK
It would be easy to extol the virtue of wilderness in Oregon by writing about a night spent in the spectacular high county of the Eagle Cap Wilderness, or a fishing trip to the cliff-walled lakes of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness, or the rich smell of old-growth forest in the Coast Range's Drift Creek Wilderness.
But perhaps no one showcases the reality of wilderness more than Siskiyou Mountain Club founder Gabe Howe.
Each summer for the past five years, the Portland native and current Ashland resident hauls tools straight out of the 19th Century into the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.
He leads groups of 18 to 24 year old college students, who spend up to 18 days doing the exhausting work required to keep this area open to hikers and backpackers.
The Kalmiopsis is one of Oregon's original wilderness areas, home to bright orange mountains, emerald green rivers and a botanical diversity matched by few places in the world. But it's also the site of one of the state's greatest calamities — the 2002 Biscuit Fire that torched almost 500,000 acres in Southern Oregon and Northern California.
The third-largest wildfire in Oregon's history left behind a few million dead trees that are forever falling across trails and, combined with rapid new growth, have turned some routes into tangled messes.
Howe has committed to the task of keeping the trails open despite being barred from using a chainsaw, ATV or any motorized tool. Yet he and his group are committed to the ideals of the Wilderness Act even when it makes life more difficult.
"The Wilderness Act requires people to meet great challenges," Howe said. "We'll take (young people) into the wilderness and, by working through the heat and long hours, by camping out for that long, teach them something they can bring back and keep for the rest of their lives.
"It's incredibly beautiful but it's also about that more primitive experience. In a world where we're so insulated from consequence, it's refreshing to go into wilderness and say, 'Wow, I'm on my own. I have to face this challenge.' That's what the Wilderness Act is all about."
Zach Urness has been an outdoors writer, photographer and videographer in Oregon for six years. He is the author of the book "Hiking Southern Oregon" and can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Facebook at Zach's Oregon Outdoors or @ZachsORoutdoors on Twitter.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
This installment is the second of a two-part series about the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, exploring both the fight to create new wilderness and its history in Oregon.Today the series looks at the history of the act and how it has impacted Oregon for good or ill, including the difficulty of balancing access and preservation.
"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
– Text of 1964 Wilderness Act