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Drop me a line at wyomingwildernessweb@gmail.com I would love to hear your stories.

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WSAs were inventoried around 1980 as mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The goal was to determine which landscapes had wilderness characteristics (largely untouched by humans, i.e. roadless and blissfully uninhabited). These lands were to be studied and either preserved as Wilderness, if merited, or folded back into the multiple use mandate of their encompassing land management agencies. Multiple use means everything from recreation to extractive industry is allowable—given proper management. This means mining or logging could be allowed—as they are on much of BLM or USFS managed land. In 1991, recommendations for all WSAs were sent up to Congress, but nothing has happened to most of them. Thus, since their inventory, WSAs have been in limbo—functionally a Wilderness but not officially designated as such.

There is much talk of moving WSAs out of this decades-long limbo. Wyoming Senators have designed legislation to do this. See S.681 (Senate) and H.R.1472 (House), both introduced in 2025 as the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative Act.

My personal opinion is that we don’t have a whole lot of roadless, undeveloped land left. WSAs are about 1% of Wyoming. Keeping 1% of our most beautiful lands set aside seems reasonable to me. These lands make for great hunting, fishing, and exploring, precisely because they are not covered in roads. That said, the recommendations in the bill were generated through an intense process involving multiple stakeholders as facilitated by eight County Commission lead committees via the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative. Ranchers, recreationists, conservationist, and the general public each had a seat at the table. They spent over a year (in Carbon County at least) finding a solution. While I prefer, personally, shifting nearly all WSAs to Wilderness, I very much admire this decision-making process. I can get behind what they decided, since compromise is needed for a healthy society. Read about it in this excellent article here.

My personal preference for Wilderness is not economically motivated, but rather motivated by a love for beauty and natural history. Economic needs change every few decades, but human’s have consistently, over history, appreciated nature. Moreover, animals and plants should have a place to themselves, in my view.

In the past, we had no need for rare earth minerals and in the future we won’t need natural gas (we will all be using fusion microreactors or some such sci-fi thing). I acknowledge the momentary need for all sorts of resources and have no problem with extractive industry, so long as it does not permanently impair the land for other uses in the future. The problem is that landscapes can be impaired pretty easily, it turns out. I have travelled all over this planet and what we have in Wyoming is damn unique. For the most part, we all live next door to wild places. Privately-owned landscapes in our state provide amazing value to flora and fauna. Indeed, most folks live in Wyoming because of the wild, open spaces. Most places in the world have nothing approaching wilderness left. Go to Europe or most of Asia and see what I mean.

But if we are talking dollar bills, I do think that, over time, Wilderness is one of Wyoming’s most valuable assets. Tourism already makes up about 4.5% of our GDP. Folks don’t visit for the wind. Keeping small wild places, like WSAs, scattered about the state will provide the value, over time, that small parks do in the city. They are magnets for outdoors folks. I typically travel about the state (and spend money) to visit the wild corners. That is why I have basically never vacationed in the eastern part of the state. They don’t have hardly any public land to recreate on, so why visit? That is why I don’t go down to Texas or visit the East Coast much either. I have spent enough time in cities in my life.

I hope you use this website to learn about these great lands and then go visit them! If you do, please contact our legislators at the Federal, State, and local level and let them know you value our public, wild lands.

A word to the wise

I give a few safety tips relevant for each area, but you are on your own. The most likely risk is getting stuck in these places because of automobile trouble. Likely not life-threatening, but it would be a pain in the ass, so plan accordingly.

I am really generous with what I think a low or medium clearance vehicle can get through. If I say you need high clearance, then you really do (unless road work happened, since I visited).

All acreages were calculated using the GeoJSON polygons on the map. I have seen different numbers on the web for various WSAs, so just went with the polygon.

Wyoming Political Leader Contact Information

Resources to learn more about Wyoming WSAs and Wilderness areas

Erik Molvar’s book Wild Wyoming includes most (maybe all) Wilderness and WSAs in the state and provides some hiking ideas for each.

The Wyoming Wilderness Association website has some good info.

The Geology of Wyoming website is quite fun (link).