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The cradle of wilderness

Colorado’s Western Slope inspired protection of wild lands in the U.S.

Here on Colorado’s Western Slope, I like to visit some of the most protected places on the planet – federally designated wilderness areas such as the Flat Tops Wilderness east of Meeker and the Weminuche Wilderness south of Silverton.

Only God can make a tree, but only Congress can designate a wilderness, and the Wilderness Act, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, was changed because Congressman Wayne Aspinall of Palisade blocked the legislation in his committee. Another Coloradan advocated for wilderness. The idea of setting aside land to be undisturbed came from Arthur Carhart and one summer he spent at Trappers Lake in 1919.

At Fort Lewis College, I teach a popular class called “American Wilderness.” Students learn about wilderness as an idea, an ideal and a law. The Pilgrims, looking at the vast forests of New England, claimed the Atlantic Coast harbored “savage beasts and savage men.” They were terrified of wild country and sought to re-create the pastoral landscape of Europe. George F. Will writes that the American experiment with democracy began as “an errand into the wilderness.” We meant to tame the land.

Slowly a conservation ethic emerged. By 1890, the frontier had ended and astute Americans began to understand that if we developed the entire American continent we would lose something essential to our own character. Unlike any other nation, American philosophy, institutions and ideas have been shaped by our contact with wild land.

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Congress created the National Park Service in 1916, and the U.S. Forest Service, concerned about losing acreage to national parks, began to develop recreation areas. A young landscape architect named Arthur Carhart was dispatched to Trappers Lake to survey the lake shore for summer cabins that would be built on leased land. Luckily, Carhart did more fishing than surveying, and one evening after Pennsylvania fishermen admonished him to leave the lake alone, he walked back to his campsite and had an epiphany.

He wrote: “Here, as I loafed along the trail, was a place, a moment, when one could explore his thoughts. Suddenly a strange sibilance filled the basin. I halted. I listened. The soft eerie whispers came clearly through the sun drenched air. I glanced in all directions, hoping to discover their source. I failed. Silence returned quickly. Abruptly the strange sound returned, increased, dimmed, and in a moment was gone.”

I’ve studied Carhart’s papers at the Denver Public Library, and over the years, I’ve come to believe that as he walked the Trappers Lake perimeter trail he was visited by a Ute spirit. Carhart had experienced a moment of revelation and realized that the shoreline of Trappers Lake should not be marred by tourist cabins. Before that time no government official had conceived of leaving land in its natural state. The concept of protecting wilderness areas in national forests was thus born on ancient Ute lands.

Dr. Thomas Wolf, Mesa Verde National Park Service ranger and Cortez resident, has written the definitive biography of Carhart called Arthur Carhart: Wilderness Prophet. Wolf quotes Carhart about the landscape architect’s summer at Trappers Lake:

“As I roughed out the survey on which access roads would be located and cottage lots plotted, I began to feel uneasy. The place was getting a strange hold on me. I experienced a quality of peace, exhilaration at being a part of it. The spirit and values of wilderness would be ruptured and rent when the lake was girdled with little buildings, autos rambled back and forth on a shoreline road and motor boats chattered across the lake. I liked Trappers without these distractions.”

Ute elders agree that Trappers Lake had a “strange hold” on the young man and that, yes, he “experienced a quality of peace” at one of their sacred sites. They think that Indian guardian spirits spoke directly to Carhart. Because of the spirits’ soft voices, Trappers Lake is now known as the cradle of the American wilderness movement – land without roads or development where “man is a visitor who does not remain.”

Later, Carhart shared his thoughts with the regional forester in Denver. Another young forester sat in on that meeting. Aldo Leopold would take Carhart’s idea and implement it in southwestern New Mexico, creating the Gila Wilderness in 1924 – the first such wilderness in the world.

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As a 19th century conservation movement evolved into a 20th century environmental movement, groups campaigned for federal wilderness and Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society wrote a bill to create a national wilderness preservation system.

Congressman Aspinall was not amused. He was an old-style conservationist who believed in utilizing all natural resources. Aspinall never met a dam he didn’t like. He feared that the wilderness bill would “lock up” resources, so he bottled it up in Congress forcing 66 re-writes. Each time the wording got better and the legislation came to focus on two key points: grazing would be continued in wilderness and only Congress could legally designate wilderness areas.

Environmentalists bristle over cows in pristine areas, but they should admire Aspinall for what he did. By refusing to let federal agencies designate wilderness and demanding that only Congress had that right, Aspinall inadvertently gave birth to the modern environmental movement in which dispersed local groups rally their members to protect public lands and influence Congress. Without knowing it, he deepened and broadened the environmental movement because the 1964 Wilderness Act requires citizen involvement.

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I’ve hiked up the Chinese Wall at Trappers Lake. As youthful, energetic backpackers, my wife and I left our Volkswagen camper bus in the parking lot and trekked into the Flat Tops Wilderness. We had a terrifying night of rain and lightning. I forgot utensils so we ate macaroni and cheese first with sticks and then with our fingers. We got wet. We made mistakes. We were forced to become more resourceful, and we did.

I treasure those memories and that’s why I’m never as happy as when I step across a wilderness boundary. Once across that magical border, I know I will encounter only hikers or horseback riders because motorized vehicles and mountains bikes are not allowed. Behind me is a world of machines and roads and ahead a landscape as wild as any that can be found in America.

So happy 50th birthday for the Wilderness Act and thank you Arthur Carhart and Wayne Aspinall for creating that Colorado connection to saving America’s wild lands.

Andrew Gulliford is a professor of history and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu.



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