The primitive area reviews and the Parker Case involved land already protected by the Forest Service or contiguous to such land. But there were millions of other undeveloped acres of Forest Service land that were either contiguous to established wilderness areas or detached. Neither was covered by the primitive area reviews or the Parker Decision. Environmentalist called these "de facto" wildernesses; a term that the Forest Service usually avoided because of the implication that de jure status was just around the corner. In fact until World War II perhaps as much as two-thirds of the National Forest System was essentially undeveloped.

For forty years, from 1900 until 1940, the administration of the national forests in the west was pretty much a job of custodianship. These were the days of the pack-string, the lookout towers, and the isolated fireguard stations. He national forests were de facto wilderness, largely unaltered from their primeval conditions, seldom visited by man, and the "hard-rock" forest rangers came to hold a deep affection for this wild uninhabited country. But as World War II approached and arrived, a demand for timber products made a lasting impact on the national forests. The Custodial Era began to fade as the Management Era dawned: logging trucks and power saws thundered in the woods, timber production climbed gradually during the war and skyrocketed after it. The long pent-up civilian demand for houses (among other things) produced a building boom of heroic proportions.

The first wilderness bills had been put forward primarily to prevent the development forces of the Management Era" from encroaching on the Forest Service's primitive areas. Some environmentalists anticipated that other undeveloped parts of the National Forest System would need legislative protection. The Wilderness Act of 1964 said nothing about de facto wildernesses in the National Forests, although it required two Interior Department agencies to study their roadless areas for possible wilderness designation. The statutory authority for studying de facto national forest areas was contained in the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, a piece of legislation that the environmentalists had, for the most part, resisted. The law stated that the "establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness are consistent with the purposes and provision of this Act."

The Forest Service 1964 Wilderness Task Force recognized that de facto areas eventually would have to be considered but the agency's leadership hoped to wait until at least 1974, the year the primitive reviews were to be completed, before it began a formal study of these areas.

"Precedent" is often a cliché word when used outside its technical meaning in the law. In the early years after the passage of the Wilderness Act is was frequently uttered by agency personnel charged with interpreting the act and anticipating congressional intentions. It was applied to the Lincoln-Scapegoat controversy, which was not an exaggeration given the impact this controversy would have on wilderness politics.

The Lincoln Back Country was originally an area of 75,000 acres of undeveloped forestland in the northern half of the Lincoln Ranger District of the Helena National Forest, 12 miles north of the town of Lincoln in the northwestern part of Montana. To its north, separated by the Scapegoat Mountains, lay the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the "jewel" of the Forest Services' wilderness system. Scenically undistinguished from "literally million of similar acres in western Montana," the Lincoln Back Country was nevertheless an important hunting, fishing, and hiking area for people converging on it from Missoula, Butte, Helena, and Great Falls. Called the "Poor Man's Wilderness" because it was easily accessible to day hikers and did not require the services of an outfitter, it had been a favorite camping area of Clif Merritt, who became The Wilderness Society's western regional representative in 1965. The Lincoln Back Country, which had been named by its longtime booster, Cecil Garland, was not formally protected by the Forest Service. However, a sign at an entrance to the area prohibited the use of motorized vehicles, which according to Merritt, led many people to believe that it was a wilderness.

Forestry professor R.W. Behan of the University of Montana stated in 1965 that the Back Country's timber resources were meager: "isolated patches of larch-fir type and a scattering of sawtimber of spruce are found in the vicinity of Heart Lake and in the Meadow Creek watershed respectively, but the negligible values involved could not, under foreseeable cost-price conditions justify the investment in access-roads necessary to reach them." But what it lacked in timber and scenery was compensated for by an abundance of game and fish. Fore instance, more than 10 percent of the grizzly bears killed each year in Montana came from the Back Country. It was an ideal undeveloped recreation area because, as Forest Service personnel eventually would conclude, its fragile soils and shallow lakes would deteriorate under the impact of heavy recreational use. Moreover, its unspectacular scenery (by western Montana standards) did not make it the best place to locate scenic overlooks.

Professor Behan attributed the origin of the controversy to the "telescoping" of events in the Lincoln area. In other parts of western Montana pressures to develop the National Forests had been growing for nearly two decades, but in the Lincoln area they were compressed into a period of 3 short years. Before 1957 Lincoln was the epitome of the sleepy, isolated western town.

A one-lane dirt road was the only means of access to Lincoln form Ovando, 24 miles west, and the route was not better from the east side of the Divide. Traffic between Missoula and Great Falls, the nearest population centers to the west and east, respectively, flowed in a devious routing through Helena, a detour of some 80 to 100 miles; the point is that no one ever drove through Lincoln. The road, when passable, was treacherous. But people could go to Lincoln, and just as the road provided ingress, so would it have provided egress for those who wished to leave. Most of the people in Lincoln, though, did not leave; they seemed to tolerate if not actually to prefer their isolated, quiet, idyllic winters, the superb hunting and fishing, and life the way it had been more or less since Lincoln began. In short, "progress" had effectively bypassed Lincoln and no one there seemed to mind too much, for it is a safe guess, provided the marginal roads out of town, which were nevertheless roads, that the people in Lincoln were there because they chose to be, and they like it.

Over the years, Lincoln became known as a base of operations for commercial guides and packers. It was a jumping-off point for entry into the Bob Marshall Wilderness by a low pass into the Danahar Valley. And not infrequently did the local outfitters take their "dudes"-mostly out-of-state people-into the Lincoln Back Country. By word and deed the regional and national reputations of the Lincoln outfitters grew, and so did that of the Back Country.

Forest Service personnel were compatible parts of this setting. The Lincoln District Ranger and the Supervisor of the Helena National Forest had been on the job for nearly 20 years. They were representatives of the "custodial" era and were enthusiastic users of the Back Country (the Supervisor had formed a Back Country trail-riders group in Helena), and "both had shared the burden of long hours, low pay, relative obscurity, and no thanks that had been the accepted (and frequently the preferred) lot of Forest Service people for many years.

As these two people prepared to retire in the late 1950's, plans were being laid in the Forest Service Regional Office in Missoula to develop the Back Country with a system of roads that would open it to timber harvesting and campground construction. The timber harvests were to pay for the roads and recreational developments that were the primary goals of the plan.

In 1957 Montana Route had been completed linking Ovando. Lincoln, and Great Falls with a paved highway. In addition to truck traffic, the highway brought many automobile recreationists and potential mining development to the Lincoln area. A sawmill soon followed, adding 115 jobs to the local economy. Under these conditions of rapid change the situation was ripe for conflict between the Forest Service's desirer to develop the Back Country and some local inhabitants who resented any disruption of their way of life. In fact, in later years the Forest Service occasionally would portray the struggle as one between progress and conservative resistance to change.


According to Professor Behan:

On the one hand there was a poised, vigorous and growing agency with a heritage of crusading hard work and the administrative toughness to resist local controversies . . .

On the other hand was anachronistic Lincoln, still a frontier town, and an island in the riptide of postwar America. Here was represented the "rugged individual," and a pioneering, roughing-it attitude that the people directed toward their wilderness of mountains, lakes and forests.

By 1960 Lincoln residents had gotten wind of the Forest Service's development plans for the Back Country. In response to these rumors, three individuals, including a retired petroleum executive, William Meyger (who died in 1962), and a Forest Service campground foreman, Cecil Garland, formed the Lincoln Backcountry Protection Association. Although it was equipped with stationary and a letterhead, it had added only two new members by 1962 and was relatively inactive. The association's original goal was to delay development in the Back Country for about 10 years. They did not begin to lobby for wilderness designation until February 1964.

Cecil Garland, a self-educated, "colorful character" from the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, became the Association's president in 1962. He operated a hardware and sporting goods store in Lincoln and had worked four summers as a campground foremen for the Forest Service. He resigned when he realized that he could not pursue his goals from within the agency. Later he bitterly charged that the Lincoln Ranger District was over-staffed, that he had often been an unwilling "gold-brick" and that the Back Country was being developed to give idle Forest Service hands some useful work. While not accepting Garland's analysis of its motives, the Regional Office placed enough credence in his charges to direct the Helena Forest Supervisor to monitor more closely the district's administration.

In 1962, Wallace Dresskill, Assistant Regional Forester, gave his boss, Boyd Rasmussen, a portrait of the man who would be primarily responsible for the Scapegoat Wilderness Act of 1972.

Mr. Garland is an intelligent, energetic individual of 27. His formal education consists of elementary grades and four years at an agricultural vocational school in North Carolina. He quotes a variety of authors and recites statistics from memory. He had memorized his letter to you of the "wrongs" on the Lincoln District and practically repeated it verbatim. He started his discourse by describing the circumstances that led to the Declaration of Independence and compared it with the situation on the Lincoln District. He questioned the accuracy of the timber inventory, the economies of selling timber; the method of performing sale area betterment; the method of slash disposal; the practice of scaling private timber; the need for campgrounds' the judgment of the ranger in fire suppression' and the efficiency of the Ranger District administration . . . We will probably hear further from Mr. Garland

Tom Edwards, a former schoolteacher who had been an outfitter in Ovando for many years and was an early member of the association, was also an important figure in the effort to preserve the Lincoln-Scapegoat area. He traveled twice to Washington, DC, to testify before congressional committees and in 1969 gave an eloquent personal testimony on behalf of the Lincoln-Scapegoat.

Into this land of spiritual strength I have been privileged to guide on horseback literally thousands of people-the old, many past 70, the young, the poor, the rich, the great and little people like myself. I have harvested a self-sustaining natural resource of the forest of vast importance. No on word will suffice to explain this resource, but let us call it the "hush" of the land. This hush is infinitely more valuable to me than money or my business . . .

The Forest Service proposed roads in this fragile land may satisfy the clamor of the masses but the hush of the land that the masses really seek will be crushed forever . . .

In consideration of these bills, from my point of view, it is unwise in the long run to be overly concerned about the outfitter for he is only a vehicle in the scheme of harvesting this wilderness resource. The group who really uses this resource and pays the bill is the public, the people the outfitter takes into the area. And what are these people buying? Is it fishing and hunting? Not for the most part. I would have gone broke years ago if this had been the case. As I said before, most come to this country to buy the "hush of the land" . . .

I know well the plan of the Forest Service. I've read it and discussed it with its authors and proponents. They sincerely feel that small islands of wilderness can be kept unsullied and undamaged. But how can we stand on that great Scapegoat Mountain looking down at its foot at bulldozers, trucks and cars at the heads of the Dry Fork, cabin Creek, and Tobacco Valley, listening to the hideous noises of modern devices and trying to kid ourselves that we are enjoying the wilderness and partaking of its goodness . . .

This is the second time I've traveled across the nation from Montana to represent a vast unseen audience who know this wilderness because they have been there . . . I must keep faith with them. Around countless campfires year after year they have urged me to speak for them when and if the time ever came to save this Lincoln Scapegoat Back Country . . . With all my being I urge you-don't let this majestic land down-don't let beer cans and the human filth that inevitably comes with a road lay waste to so priceless a heritage of our great nation.

In March 1963 the Forest Service distributed its long-range plan for building roads into the Back Country. It also called for the exclusion of roads from 15,000 acres, which were to be placed in a Forest Service designated Scenic Area. The plan had been approved by a majority vote of the Helena National Forest Advisory Council, an organization made up of a representative sample of users of the forest. Later some members claimed that they had approved the plan under the assumption that it would be put into effect over a 99-year period.

Cecil Garland remembers his reaction to the possible implementation of the plan.

At that time a young Forest Service engineer quietly came into our store in Lincoln . . . and told me that the USFS had abandoned a full survey of the road to the Lincoln Back Country and was now running only a "flag line" in their haste to build the road and then to quell the opposition. This young engineer in despair also told me that a bulldozer was sitting at the end of the road ready to drive into that country I had come to lover above all else.

It was then that I knew that time was exceedingly short and in great desperation I went to the phone . . .

Finally I called Congressman Jim Battin and he answered the phone and I began to pour my heart to him in a most pleading and earnest manner. Well, somehow he must have understood for he said he would help me and that he would send his aide up to visit us.

Congressman Battin then called Regional Forester Boyd Rasmussen on the phone and asked if he could have 10 days to see what was going on up at Lincoln. Mr. Rasmussen replied that Mr. Battin did not have ten days, that the bulldozer was ready to go.

Whereupon Congressman Battin told the regional Forester "By God, we had better have ten days." This incident is a classic example of democracy at work. Citizen goes to Representative; Representative goes to Bureaucrat. And at this time I believe the tide turned in our favor.

At the end of the month the Helena Forest Supervisor held a meeting at the Lincoln Lion's Club to discuss the plan. Some opposition was expressed, and the Forest Service decided to hold a full public meeting on the matter. On the evening of April 19, "some 300 people jammed in to the small Community Hall in Lincoln." The Forest Service set the ground rules for the meeting-supporters and opponents were to alternate and there was to be no voice vote at the end of the meeting. Opponents of the development plan felt they had been "gagged," and a "near riot" took place. The level of bitterness over the plan began to increase dramatically. The association's membership rose to 50 and it soon received the backing of the Montana Wilderness Association; an organization Clif Merritt had helped form in 1956, and the Montana Fish and Game Department. Senator Lee Metcalf wrote the Forest Service asking it to delay development of the Back Country. During the next several months the Forest Service received no letters supporting its plan. The timber industry had expressed initial approval of the plans for timber harvesting but was heard from less and less as the controversy grew. According to Professor Behan: "Clearly, it seemed, the 'opposing interests' were the consensus [to delay development] on one hand and the Forest Service itself on the other."

In June 1963 the Forest Service made a slight modification in the plan by eliminating part of a road, and in October the Regional Forester, Boyd Rasmussen, visited the area and came out strongly in support of the plan. Rasmussen's use of planning terminology to justify development of the Back Country illustrates why wilderness advocates were suspicious of, or at least ambivalent toward, the first modern forest planning legislation, the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960.

In addition to these classified areas [wilderness and primitive areas], the l Forests of Montana include many thousands of acres of land that are primitive in character simply because planned development has not reached the. The Lincoln area is an example. These areas contain the bulk of future recreation development sites . . . Their timber is included in long-range timber management plans and the present allowable timber cut from the National Forests is based upon the eventual harvest of both the merchantable stands and the young growing stock which they contain.

These still undeveloped areas are composed of topographical units which are separable for discussion purposes but which must be tied into and treated as parts of larger integrated management units for intelligent development planning and the eventual use of their resources to serve the basic economy of Montana. Indiscriminate or patchwork "setting aside" of undeveloped land limits recreation potentials, decreases allowable timber harvests, and even more important may block or adversely affect the future management of adjoining areas.

In late 1963 Robert Morgan became the new Forest Supervisor of the Helena National Forest. After looking over the situation, he decided to delay development until "absolutely necessary." (He was not personally for wilderness designation until several years later.) In a tactfully written memo in January 1964, Morgan told his superiors that although there was some passive support for the Forest Services' plan, "we will get no active support from the man on the street." He said the plan was "basically very sound" but that it was open to question on several points. He pointed out that the agency did not have a complete timber inventory of the area, that some timber of marginal quality had been sold, leaving an occasional "mess" behind, that neighboring national Forests were not fully coordinating their plans with the Helena, and that the developed campgrounds around Lincoln were not being fully used. Morgan counseled the Regional Office that the Forest Service could probably win the Back Country battle if it were willing to go all out but that in the process it would pay a severe public relations price which might jeopardize some of its other programs in Montana. He concluded:

The above approach appears as somewhat a compromise attitude. This is not good, and I realize the total effect may be a "drawing out" of the battle. On the other hand, we should maintain faith in managing according to actual resource needs and priorities. A stab at development before we are in a position with plans and finances to do a first class job could in the long run be worse than no development. I believe the need for developed recreation will assert itself undeniably, so that this argument will for the most part resolve itself in the interim. The on-the-ground job we do in management in the interim must also be sound enough to dispel apprehension.

Morgan's "compromise attitude" was not well received in the Regional Office, which wanted to begin road construction as soon as possible. Morgan and a succession of Lincoln District Rangers resisted that pressure. Over the next few years Morgan heard some rough words from his superiors, who undoubtedly questioned his loyalty and felt that he had cave in to local demands. On the other hand, Clif Merritt felt that Morgan's temporary moratorium "was the wisest thing to do because the Forest Service began to look at the area more objectively and to talk to local citizens. (Several years after the passage of the Scapegoat Wilderness bill, Morgan, with the congratulations of the Regional Office, received an award from an environmental group for his part in preserving the Lincoln-Scapegoat area.)

When the Lincoln Back Country Protection Association met in February 1964, Cecil Garland convinced its members to support wilderness designation for the area because Bob Morgan could not commit the Forest Service to a 10-year moratorium. Garland also advocated that the wilderness be expanded to 200,000 acres to take in the Scapegoat Mountain region, which adjoined the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Morgan reported "it is clear that the group is determined to see that the area is preserved through whatever means possible. The group pretty well represents Western Montana conservation organizations."

By this time The Wilderness Society in Washington was beginning to take note of the Back Country. In August 1964, just 3 weeks before the passage of the wilderness Act, Harvey Broome, the president of the society, his wife, and Clif Merritt visited the area. According to Morgan, who escorted the trio into the Back Country: "Mr. Broome was obviously impressed with the area in question. I gathered that the society is definitely committed to support the request for the wilderness addition.

Clif Merritt had camped in the Back Country as a boy and when he saw a road stake in his family's camping area he came to the sudden "violent" conclusion they "would build a road there over my dead body." A few months later Merritt became The Wilderness Society's western regional representative in Denver and was a principal figure in the effort to get statutory protection for the area.

In April 1965 Democratic Senators Lee Metcalf and Mike Mansfield introduced a bill to protect 75,000 acres of the Back Country under the Wilderness Act. Montana conservationists approached Republican Congressman Jim Battin and told him about the Metcalf-Mansfield bill and that there were more acres that could be included. Merritt remembers that "Big Jim had his big feet on a desk and when he heard this, they came down fast . . . Jim saw this as an opportunity to leapfrog members of the other party." Battin introduced a bill calling for a 240,5000-acre Lincoln-Scapegoat Wilderness. Metcalf and Mansfield, who, Merritt concedes had not been fully informed about the situation, soon switched their support to the Battin bill.

Some local citizens suggested that the Lincoln-=Scapegoat be added to the Bob Marshall Wilderness but Clif Merritt successfully argued against that strategy. He contended that it would be bad "psychologically" because opponents could have replied that the 1-million-acre Bob Marshall was already big enough. The Bob Marshall rather than the Lincoln-Scapegoat then might have become the issue. Merritt, like Brock Evans, knew from experience that the environmentalists were strongest when they concentrated on individual areas.

The Lincoln-Scapegoat bill was the first strictly citizen wilderness proposal made after the passage of the Wilderness Act. Since it did not involve the expansion of a primitive area, it was not explicitly covered by the study and review procedures of the Wilderness Act. The unique, potentially precedent-setting nature of the bill was one of the main reasons why its passage was delayed until 1972. The Forest Service leadership in Washington was concerned that its passage would unleash similar proposals at a time when its work force was committed to finishing on schedule the primitive area reviews mandated by the Wilderness Act.

In 1968 the Senate Interior Committee held hearings in Montana on the bill. Montana citizens and their four congressional representatives strongly supported it and little opposition was expressed. A retired forest entomologist and disgruntled Wilderness Society member expressed a minority view on the need for some developed recreational facilities in the Back Country.

Specifically, I am concerned that I shall no longer be able to enjoy the wonders of wilderness areas the creation of which I strongly supported. Why? Because I am getting too old to backpack into them and I cannot afford the prices asked by most outfitters. Furthermore, as an occasional hiker on short wilderness jaunts, I am increasingly infuriated by having to shuffle mile after mile along trails churned to powder by pack animals and liberally dotted with the manure of these animals used by the more affluent members of the wilderness set.

As Bob Morgan later recalled, the 1968 hearings were "disastrous" for the Forest Service. Pointing to severe erosion caused by road construction in an area near the Lincoln-Scapegoat, Senator Metcalf testily asked Morgan how the Forest Service "could justify that." Morgan could only reply "I can't."

Soon after the hearings the Forest Service published a new plan for a 500,000-acrea area, which included the Lincoln-Scapegoat. The plan called for some land to be administratively protected as "backcountry" and for the construction of a 75-mile scenic Continental Divide Highway through the Lincoln-Scapegoat. Local environmentalists were not placated. They argued that the Forest Service should have studied only the 240,000 acres of the Battin bill and that a Continental Divide highway, which would be open only a few months of the year was not necessary.

The Forest Service was becoming frustrated over an issue that refused to go away. In early 1969 this frustration moved Regional Forester Neal Rahm to tell a meeting of the agency's leaders that a "backcountry" land category, intermediate between complete wilderness and developed campgrounds, was needed. His remarks were also the first indication that the Regional Office was bowing to the inevitability of wilderness designation for the Lincoln-Scapegoat.

We have lost control and leadership in the sphere of Wilderness philosophy. Why? The Forest Service originated the concept in 1920, and practically, has been standing still since about 1937 . . .Why should a sporting goods and hardware deal [Cecil Garland] in Lincoln, Montana, designate the boundaries for the 240,000-acre Lincoln Back Country addition to the Bob Marshall? . . . If lines are to be drawn, we should be drawing the.

All of this is slight tribute to Forest Service leadership and control. We seem to be trapped in our preoccupation with re-classification of Primitive Areas.

In March 1969, 1 month after Rahm's remarks, Chief Ed Cliff told the Senate Interior Committee that the Forest Service would take another look at the Lincoln-scapegoat. Plans for development were now permanently on hold. Two years later the Forest Supervisors of the Helena, Lolo, and Lewis and Clark National Forests drafted a wilderness proposal that the Regional Office accepted.

The Senate passed the Scapegoat wilderness bill in 1969 and sent it to the House, where it was accidentally referred to the Agriculture Committee rather than the Interior Committee, thus arousing the ire of Chairman Aspinall who may have suspected an attempt to circumvent him. When he finally receive the bill, Aspinall delayed reporting out the bill because the US Geological Survey had not conducted a mineral survey of the area as called for by the legislative history for the Wilderness Act. The Montana congressional delegation requested the USGS to make a special study of the area. Its study was completed in 1971 and showed no significant sign of mineralization.

Cecil Garland recalls how Aspinall was persuaded to support the bill.

I had just left the House Office Building and Congressman Wayne Aspinall, the all-powerful chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. Congressman Aspinall had just told me that he would "kill" my bill . . .

Senator Mike [Mansfield] listened quietly leaning back in his chair, his fingertips touching gently as he moved his hands together again and again. And then he said, "Ceace, you go back to Montana and tell the folks back there that we'll get the bill passed, that there'll be a wilderness there some day." And he went on to say, "Some day there will be something that Mr. Aspinall will want, and we'll be there."

We shook hands and I walked with him to the Senate floor where a great fight was being waged over Vietnam. But I knew Mike would not forget.

Later when Congressman Aspinall became fully committed to the passing of the bill, I asked him why he had decided to help us. His reply was, "Son, you've got one powerful Senator," and I knew who he meant. I knew Mike had not forgotten.

In 1972 the Scapegoat Wilderness became the first de facto wilderness to enter the National Wilderness Preservation System.

As mentioned earlier, the Forest Service opposed the Lincoln-Scapegoat proposal because it did not want to disrupt its timetable for primitive area reviews. The Regional Office was also concerned that if the Backcountry Association was successful there would be petitions for numerous other de facto wildernesses surrounding the Bob Marshall Wilderness. This controversy illustrates a political science generalization. Agency behavior that is adapted to certain situations may become inappropriate when applied automatically to a circumstance that appears similar but is actually quite different. For decades the Forest Service had tried to insulate itself from local demands on the national forests in order to carry out its mandate to protect them in the national interest. These pressures usually came from groups that wanted to use them in ways that could have been detrimental to their long-term well being. Environmental organizations and many in the general public supported the Forest Service when it resisted these demands. In the case of the Lincoln-Scapegoat, local pressure was also applied-not to use the forest but to protect it completely (or "lock it up" in the vernacular of the anti-wilderness opposition). The Forest Service fought this demand in the same way that it would have fought demands to overcut or overgraze the area. The difference was that here the Forest Service was operating without public support.

This conclusion, however, must be qualified. A strongly professional organization, such as the Forest Service, is open to internal debate. Without the dissenting voices of Bob Morgan and the Lincoln District rangers who served under him, roads would have been built in the Lincoln-Scapegoat long before the Scapegoat Wilderness Act of 1972.