Celebrating the bond: The 1964 Wilderness Act

Posted on by Margaret Williams

 

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

The 67th time is the charm. That was the case when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act in 1964. It may have taken eight years and 66 drafts to get it right, but when the ink had dried, the Wilderness Act had set aside 9.5 million acres of land for preservation. Since that time the act’s purview has only grown, with nearly 110 million acres protected.

Shining Rock and the Linville Gorge areas were among the first so-designated areas, making “North Carolina was one of two states in the entire Eastern U.S. to have preserved wilderness as a result of the 1964 Act,” says Brent Martin, regional director of the Southern Appalachian division of The Wilderness Society.

Today, Western North Carolina boasts six tracts of wilderness area in the Pisgah and the Nantahala National Forests.

To qualify as a wilderness area, lands must be free of motorized vehicles and commercial enterprises, and they must offer significant recreational, educational, historical or scientific value. Written by The Wilderness Society founder Howard Zahniser, the original Wilderness Act legally defined “wilderness” in the United States for the first time.

The act also created the National Wilderness Preservation System, which encompasses the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

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About Margaret Williams
Editor Margaret Williams first wrote for Xpress in 1994. An Alabama native, she has lived in Western North Carolina since 1987 and completed her Masters of Liberal Arts & Sciences from UNC-Asheville in 2016. Follow me @mvwilliams
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