Backpacking in the National Forest Wilderness...a family adventure PA-585

The Forest Service, under U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, set aside wildernesses about 40 years before the National Wilderness Preservation System was established by Congress in 1964.

Within the National Forest wildernesses and primitive areas, which cover 14-1/4 million acres, there are no roads, no mass recreation developments, and no timber cutting. Areas range from the 5,000-acre Great Gulf in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, which sprawls across 988,655 acres within four National Forests in Idaho and Montana.

They include many types of country, such as the desolate and almost waterless Superstition Mountains in Arizona, replete with colorful legends of the Southwest; the living glaciers of Glacier Peak in Washington; the Salmon River in Idaho; and the jagged Minarets in California.

About 9 million acres of this wilderness resource became the nucleus of the National Wilderness Preservation System, upon passage of the Wilderness Act. The remaining acreage is protected in Primitive Areas until reviewed for possible inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

WILDERNESSES AND PRIMITIVE AREAS IN THE NATIONAL FORESTS