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Guest column: Grand County Wilderness Group celebrates 60th anniversary of Wilderness Act

The group will also celebrate its 30th anniversary at its annual picnic

Dan Nolan
Grand County Wilderness Group
In 2024, the Grand County Wilderness Group will celebrate its 30th anniversary. It is also the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, a landmark conservation bill that protected America's wild lands for future generations.
Grand County Wilderness Group/Courtesy Photo

“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology,” President Lyndon Johnson said. “We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”

With these remarks, President Johnson signed the Wilderness Act into law Sept. 3, 1964. This event was the culmination, over decades, of the evolving concept of wilderness in America. Early advocates for preserving natural places include George Perkins Marsh, author of “Man and Nature” in 1864 and John Muir, a founder of the Sierra Club in 1892.

With the creation of national forests and national parks in the early 1900s, federal lands became a focus of attention for preservation. Efforts to preserve natural areas gained momentum with the desire to counter increased commercial exploitation of public land through logging and mining, and the impacts of increased recreationists arriving by automobile.



In 1919, U.S. Forest Service landscape architect Arthur Carhart, in a memorandum to his Forest Service colleague Aldo Leopold, advanced the idea of setting aside areas of wildlands for protection from commercial exploitation. Aldo Leopold was also a promoter of the concept of wilderness protection. In 1924, on Leopold’s urging, forest service chief William Greely designated 500,000 acres of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico to be the nation’s first wilderness area.

Andy Borek, wilderness manager of the U.S. Forest Service, captured this photo of the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The Grand County Wilderness Group works alongside Borek and other rangers.
Andy Borek/Courtesy Photo

Another early leader in the movement for preservation and wilderness was Bob Marshall. Marshall was the first head of the Forest Service’s Division of Recreation and Lands. He, along with Aldo Leopold and others, formed the Wilderness Society in 1935.



While a number of wilderness areas, primitive areas and research reserves were eventually designated by the Forest Service, it was noted that they could just as easily be undesignated administratively. More permanent protection was needed to safeguard these areas from political policy shifts.

In 1956, Howard Zahniser, the executive secretary of the wilderness society, drafted the first legislative proposal for congressionally designated wilderness. After 65 revisions and nine years, Congress, with overwhelming bipartisan support, passed the Wilderness Act of 1964. The vote in the House of Representatives was 373 to 1. The vote in the Senate was 73 to 12.

Sept. 3, 2024, marks the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The act defined wilderness 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.”

The act established congressional authority for designating wilderness areas and created the National Wilderness Preservation System on lands under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

Wilderness AreaYear establishedAcresAgency jurisdiction
Byers Peak19938,801 Forest Service
Vasquez Peak199312,300 Forest Service
Never Summer198021,090Forest Service
Indian Peaks197876,7111Forest Service
Sarvis Creek199347,1402Forest Service
Rocky Mountain National Park2009249,3393National Park Service
Some of these wilderness areas include land in Boulder, Routt and Larimer counties.

With passage of the act in 1964, 9.1 million acres were immediately designated as wilderness. Today, congressionally designated wilderness areas encompass nearly 112 million acres. There are six wilderness areas that recreators can enjoy in Grand County — Byers Peak, Vasquez Peak, Never Summer, Indian Peaks, Sarvis Creek and Rocky Mountain National Park.

2024 not only marks the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, but also marks the 30th anniversary of the Grand County Wilderness Group – an organization of approximately 118 members whose mission is: “to assist the U.S. Forest Service in the preservation, protection, improvement and public understanding of the wilderness areas in Grand County.”

A volunteer with the Grand County Wilderness Group staffs the Monarch Lake Cabin at one entry point of the Indian Peaks Wilderness.
Grand County Wilderness Group/Courtesy Photo

In 2023, Grand County Wilderness Group contributed more than 2,900 volunteer hours in support of wilderness in Grand County. Volunteers complete work such as trail maintenance, wilderness trailhead cabin hosting, serving as information ambassadors in cooperation with Headwaters Trails Alliance, maintaining trail register boxes and leading hikes.

Aug. 11 will mark the 60th anniversary of the Wilderness Act and 30th anniversary of the Grand County Wilderness Group that will be celebrated at the annual picnic. New members are always welcome. You can learn more about the Grand County Wilderness Group GCWG.org.

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