The National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964

An Act to establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the permanent good of the whole people, and for other purposes.

In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservations and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose, there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as “wilderness areas,” and these shall be administered in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness …

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of live are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.

An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land remaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which…

(1) Generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable;

(2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation;

(3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and …

(4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

Pastoral Harmony

Jefferson’s Pastoral Republic of Yeoman Farmers

John Wesley Powell

Chief of the U.S. Geological Survey

George Perkins Marsh, 1801 - 1882

Naturalizing the Nation;

Nationalizing Nature

The Sublime Spectacle

The Picturesque Scene

John Muir, 1838 - 1914

Frederick Remington & Adirondack GuidesNew York City Dudes

Tourist Landscapes

Adirondack Park Tourist Hotel, circa 1885

The Rise of the Scenic Tourist Industry, 1870 -1914

Improvements in transportation and railway/hotel tourist connections.

Emergence of an affluent, upper class and upper middle class

Emergence of a middle class Romantic aesthetic based on feeling, imagination, authenticity, and nostalgia.

Emergence of a “tourist sensibility” in which picturesque or sublime landscapes and waterscapes become objects of mass cultural consumption.

Importance of landscape scenery as an element of taste and its conversion into a saleable commodity through marketing.

Developing links between the landscape, nation, nationalism, and national history, especially the myth of the frontier.

Deepening fascination with aboriginal peoples and “the primitive,” both as standards against which to measure the progress of Western Civilization, and as ideals of freedom, authenticity, and masculinity.

The Urban Industrial Landscape

Crowding

Crime

Squalor and Poverty

Federick Law Olmsted, 1822-1903

Central Park, 1948

Central Park, 1890

F. L. Olmsted, circa 1890

A Landscape Reclaimed

The Progressive Conservation Vision

And the Birth of Scientific Forestry

George W. Vanderbilt

Biltmore

Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.

Gifford PinchotThe First Forester of the Biltmore Estate

1892 -1895

“Here was my chance. Biltmore could be made to prove what America did not yet understand, that trees could be cut and the forest preserved at one and the same time”

Gifford Pinchot

Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck

The Biltmore Forestry School

Scientific Movement

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATION

Elite Professionalism

Gospel of Efficiency

Favored Large-Scale Business Corporations

Advocated for a Large-scale Administrative State

Government Ownership & Management

of Public Lands

Opposed Preservation of Wildlands

•Delbert: A miracle, a miracle!

•Clooney: Don’t be ignorant, Delbert. I told you they was flooding this valley.

•Pete: No! That ain’t it. We prayed to God, and he pitied us.

•Clooney: Well, it never fails. Once again you two hayseeds are showing how much you want for intellect. There is a perfectly scientific explanation for what just happened.

•Pete: I hate to tell you that’s not the thing you said back at the gallows.

•Clooney: Well, human beings cast about in a moment of stress, … no … the fact is that they’re flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn state. Yes Sir, South’s going to change. Everything’s goin’ to be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions, and the backwoods ways. We’re going to see a BRAVE NEW WORLD where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes sir, a veritable AGE OF REASON, like the one they had in France. Not a moment too soon … not a moment too soon …

Norris Dam, Clinch River

Flood Control and Navigation

Modern Agricultural Practices

IndustrializationReforestation

Rural Electrification Road-building & Automobile Tourism

Multipurpose River Development

Curtis Stiner, an example of the mountain farmer of East Tennessee whose farm was impacted by the TVA dams and hydro projects.

"I love my mountains, and I want to stay right here the rest of my life if I can."

Curtis Stiner, 1933

The flooding of the reservoir area will take his home in 1935.

Benton MacKaye

Ernest C. Oberholtzer

Bob Marshall

Aldo Leopold

Robert Sterling Yard

Frederick H. Newell, Chief Engineer,1902-1907,

andDirector of the Reclamation Service,

1907-1914.

Gifford PinchotChief of the U.S. Forest Service

1901- 1910

Assassination of President McKinley, 1901

The T.R./Pinchot Partnership

National Forests Today

THE GREATEST GOOD

A Forest Service Centennial Film

The Hetch-Hetchy Valley, 1900

John Muir

Gifford Pinchot

A Working Man’s Fire

• A.E. Sullivan: totally blind, right arm broken and may lose right hand.

• Tony Varish: totally blind, body badly burned.

• John Blitten: right arm burned, will have to be amputated.

• T. Gayers: face terribly burned.

• Wm. Christianson: mass of burns around the face and neck, will probably die.

• J. Rickey: hands, face and feet badly burned.

• Jack Flinn: blind.

• George Carrigan: feet burned; will be crippled for life.

• Edmond Hickman: face terribly burned and nose completely burned off.

• Mike Darrick: totally blind, burned about face and neck, will probably die.

• Ed Murphy. $21.50. Address unknown. Buried on Setzer Creek. No clue as to his identity.

• Henry Jackson. $5.50. Tacoma, Wash. Buried on Setzer Creek. Wrote the mayor of Tacoma to look up this man. Identified by Ed Bassett by heel plate worn on shoe.

• G.A. Blodgett. $50.75. Supposed to have lived at Hotel Reilley, Butte, Mont. Had card of Butte Workingman's Union No. 5. Wrote to father and mother.

• Oscar Weigert. $15. Missoula, Mont. Supposed to have committed suicide, thinking that he would be burned to death. Had hat, clothes, cartridges, gun, tobacco, cigarette papers. Effects sent to Missoula.

• L. Ustlo. $41.75. Address unknown. Effects: pocket knife, gold watch. Buried on Setzer Creek. This man was a tall and well-dressed Finlander. Wore lace belt. Scar on right knee. Unable so far to get a clue to this man's identity.

Lick Creek, 1909

Lick Creek, 1915

Lick Creek, 1925

Lick Creek, 1948

Lick Creek, 1968

Lick Creek, 1989

Stephen Mather, Horace Albright, NPS Car #1

Mather’s Proposed Park to Park Highway, 1920.

Wilderness in relative rather than absolute terms; not concerned with the ideal of “ecological purity.”

Sons of Gifford Pinchot: scientific and technical experts who were critical of the single-minded commodity focus of scientific forestry and water projects, but also believed in wise and scientific management of wildlands for the public good..

Believed that wilderness designations could be compatible with local subsistence and resource use.

Pragmatists who were discomforted by the effects of automobile tourism, road-building, mass consumerism on wildlands.