​Wilderness-Making & Recreation on Postwar Public Lands

Through the prism of the one of the last private inholdings in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Hagen looks at how public land management was transformed in the postwar period by two related but sometimes conflicting developments, wilderness-making and a boom in outdoor recreation. First homesteaded in the Clearwater National Forest in 1908, the private property that became the Seminole Ranch dated to a period when USFS policy viewed forest homesteading as beneficial to public lands. But in the postwar period that changed. As Americans flocked to public lands, and the booming economy translated into more disposable income for some, privately owned parcels in the backcountry attracted a new kind of interest. In Idaho, such places had previously been the purview mainly of local folk of modest means whose remote mountain properties promised little beyond ceaseless hard work and solitude. New owners were more likely to be affluent—and often from distant locales—seeking sites for leisure activities. Their use of inholdings intensified. But the midcentury recreation and development boom in the backcountry coincided with a deepening agency commitment—also related to increased outdoor recreation and associated cultural shifts—to re-making the Selway-Bitterroot into what we now think of as wilderness. Hagen documents how conflict between wilderness management and private backcountry properties escalated after the 1940s, when the Seminole Ranch area became an important battleground in the inholdings struggle. After years of trying, the USFS managed to acquire numerous nearby properties in the 1960s, and others followed suit. Until 2001, Seminole Ranch endured as one of the last—and most significant—private properties in the Selway-Bitterroot, one of nation’s the largest wilderness areas.

Portions of this research serve as the basis of an article-length report used by the Forest Service to guide planning and resource management.