The World’s First Wilderness Area Established (1924)

We remember Aldo Leopold as the “father of wildlife conservation,” but we could just as easily recognize him as the father of wilderness. Leopold’s foresight and vision led him to propose that a new concept—wilderness—be carved out of America’s national lands.

Aldo Leopold was a forester by training, and his first professional job was on the national forests of New Mexico. From 1909 to 1924, he worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming the Chief of Operations for the Albuquerque District of the US Forest Service. The biggest part of his job was to perform long field observations of the district’s forests, assessing their conditions and making recommendations for improvements (learn more about Leopold here).

On his field inspections, he observed a troubling trend, “the domestication of the landscape.” In order to provide for the many uses of national forests, roads were being extended deep into the forests, along with the accompanying power and phone lines, buildings and people. Even from a recreational perspective, Leopold objected: “It is just as unwise to devote 100 percent of the recreational resources of our public parks and forests to motorists as it would be to devote 100 percent of our city parks to merry-go-rounds.”

Instead, he believed a portion of the landscape should be left without human development. Undeveloped land was a storehouse for natural diversity, providing knowledge about ecological processes and habitat for wild species that didn’t fare well around humans. Wilderness, he argued, was also a “product” of the forest, just as were trees and hunted game. Leopold had written the first professional article about wilderness areas in 1921, and three years later he proposed to his supervisors that the Forest Service act on that idea.

And he knew the perfect place—the Gila National Forest. The sprawling forest in western New Mexico had been impacted less than other forests because of its imposing terrain. In the Gila, the Rocky and Sierra Madre Mountains meet, forming a complex mix of forested mountains, mesas and canyons linked by broad grasslands and deserts. The district forester agreed, and on June 3, 1924, he signed the Gila Wilderness Area into existence—the first such designation in the world.