ABSTRACT
The Wilderness Act of 1964 joined the Leopold and Robbins reports in offering an alternative discourse for understanding wilderness areas and the national parks. Most of this discussion did not take place within the NPS, though they also claimed the wilderness idea as their own. Rather it is during this period that conservationists, who had long seen the NPS as their advocate, now began to see it as an opponent. As with the Leopold and Robbins reports, the wilderness bill came to fruition within the context of Mission 66 and, as with the reports, had a history going back to Wright. The call for national wilderness got its first articulation in the 1920s through such Forest Service leaders as Aldo Leopold and Robert Marshall. Although there is something of a hiatus between Wright and the NPS reports three decades later, the wilderness movement was in active development during this period. Through the convergence of conservation groups—especially the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club—in developing and campaigning for this legislation not only did the Wilderness Act pass, but a wilderness religion emerged.
