Making Wilderness Work: Frank Church and the American Wilderness Movement

Idaho Senator Frank Church (served 1957–1981) is one of the most important and underappreciated participants in the politics of the American wilderness movement. Church neither originated the wilderness idea nor crafted the language of the original Wilderness Act, but he made wilderness work. Although his legislative compromises and pragmatic politics sometimes infuriated wilderness purists, they were essential to the passage of all three wilderness bills: the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act of 1974, and the Endangered American Wilderness Act of 1978. As his legislative record demonstrates, Church was not only at the vanguard of the evolving definition of wilderness in America but also established a viable process for designating wilderness areas. Church's coalition-building vision of wilderness as a communally defined natural space, not necessarily “untrammeled by man,” became the standard for wilderness designation, and his enduring legacy is a model of citizen cooperation.