University of Arizona

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“Leave No Trace”: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act

“Leave No Trace”: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act

September 3rd, 2014 is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act by President Johnson. This act initially set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness areas in America for the ultimate protection—no permanent structures, no roads, no mechanized vehicles and no extraction of resources.

The public now has access to these wilderness areas as visitors with a “leave no trace” ethic. The roots of the bill go back to the work of Aldo Leopold and Arthur Carhart in 1919 when they drafted the earliest version of the bill. In the mid 1950’s various senators started introducing versions of the bill in Congress, but it wasn’t until 1964 that an acceptable draft would make it to the President’s desk.

Instrumental in the struggle to pass the Wilderness Act, and many of the subsequent bills that would add to the 9.1 million acres, were brothers Morris and Stewart Udall.  As Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, Stewart would push for increased Federal protection of public lands. This resulted in many new national parks, national monuments, national seashore and lakeshore areas and many national wildlife refuges. He also helped enact clean air and water acts as well as the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966.

Morris Udall, as Arizona state representative from 1961-1991, introduced some of the earlier versions of the Wilderness Act as well as the Arizona Wilderness Act in 1984 (passed in 1990) which set aside many of our treasured local wilderness areas like Saguaro National Monument East and Pusch Ridge north of Tucson. Morris’s work put Arizona in the top five states for acreage protected, and Arizona is the state with second most distinct wilderness units (90).

Another great local defender of wilderness areas was Edward Abbey. Through his writing, he helped raise consciousness and encouraged a generation to take a more active role in protecting wilderness from human exploitation. With his most popular novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, he popularized the idea of removing dams from the rivers and letting them flow like they did before the 20th century water reclamation projects dammed up just about every river in the American West.

Some of the professional papers of Morris K. Udall and Stewart Udall as well as Edward Abbey are currently on display at Special Collections to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. The exhibit contains early versions of the bill, letters from notable figures like Rachael Carson and Ansel Adams, newspaper articles, photographs, maps, brochures, the notebook that Abbey used to outline The Monkey Wrench Gang, the pen President Johnson used to sign the Act and many other items. The exhibit was co-curated by Special Collections Events and Exhibits Librarian, Bob Diaz and retired National Park Service professional Meg Weesner. Watch our exhibit video featuring Meg Weesner. 

The exhibit will be up from Aug. 25 until Sept. 26th.

-Jarrod Mingus

Man standing in front of Glenn Canyon Dam wearing a yellow t-shirt with a G.W. Hayduke Quote "I ain't responsible for an act of God."