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000685 '. omit any reference to the first two. According to a 1963 Forest Service pamphlet, for example, "nearly 40 years ago" the Forest Service pioneered in preserving America's wilderness heritage "led by Aldo Leopold," then the Assistant Forester of District 3, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This tribute is historically inaccurate. Continuing in this vein, the booklet stated: The Forest Service pioneered this concept in the 1920's. Studies of wild lands on the National Forests began, and in 1924 a large part of what is now the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico was set aside 8S 8 special area for the preservation of wilderness. The Gila, the nation's first designated wilderness, contains 500,000 acres of primitive American lands astride the Mogollon Rim and Diablo mountain ranges,6 The quotation above is vague and incorrect on several counts but among conservation- ists, the foregoing account of the origin of the wilderness concept has apparently been accepted. For example, a 1940 publication of the Wilderness Society likewise traced wilderness areas from "their formal beginning in the mind and on the pen point of Aldo Laopold to the achievement by Robert Marshall of a practical new wilderness system in the National Forests,"7 Moreover, Harvey Broome stated: "Unquestionably, Aldo Leopold was the Jeremiah of wilderness thinking.',a Broome explained that in 1925 Leopold had written an article about the value of wilderness,9 from which Robert Marshall had quoted five years later.'o "But if Leopold was the prophet of the wilderness movement," Broome asserted, "Marshall was the first to suggest organization.'"1 Broome did not, however, take into account the accomplishments, publications, and activities of Arthur Carhart between 1919 and 1924. ~ I n this connection, it is instructive to note what Aldo Leopold himself stated when he attempted to trace the "origin and ideals of wilderness areas.'" z In 1940 he wrote: ~ !I I will here attempt to cover the history of the wilderness movement in the Southwest prior to 1926. I suppose subsequent events are too well known to require comment. The earliest action I can find in my files is a letter dated September 21, 1922, notifying the District Forester that two local Game Protective Associations had endorsed the establishment of a wilderness area on the head of the Gila River, in the Gila National Forest. I suppose one may assume a prior "incubation period" of a year or two, I take it, then, that the movement in the Southwest must have started about 1920. 1\ I " " This assumption is further corroborated by the publication in 1921, of my paper, ''The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy.. . ," In 1924 the action stage was reached. I have a map dated March 31 [19241 showing the Gila area boundaries as originally proposed by me and as approved by District Forester F, C. W, Pooler, I do not know when Washington finally added Its approval. , " , I' :1 How widely had the idea spread by 19247 I offer in evidence the resolutions passed by the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation (Jour. Forestry, October, 1924) which contain no mention of wilderness.13 .\ I. 2