PA Environment Digest Blog: Guest Essay: Allegheny National Forest’s Tracy Ridge Is A Prime Example Of Wilderness Here In The East

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Guest Essay: Allegheny National Forest’s Tracy Ridge Is A Prime Example Of Wilderness Here In The East

By Kirk Johnson, Friends Of Allegheny Wilderness

September 3 is the 59th anniversary of the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 championed by Pennsylvania's own Howard Zahniser.

In last year’s April 28th edition of the Harrisburg Patriot News, an article about the Allegheny National Forest — Pennsylvania’s only national forest — furnished the subjective claim that the proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area “is not a potential wilderness area.”

I checked, and this claim was indeed included in the original Allegheny National Forest press release.

I thank the agency for providing an opportunity to remind readers of the manifest applicability of the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 to federal public lands throughout the east, including right here in Penn’s Woods.

All national forests in the east have of course been Wilderness Act-eligible since the moment President Lyndon Johnson put pen to paper on September 3rd, 1964 and signed the landmark bill into law.

Today more than 111 million acres all across the country are forever protected from all forms of development for future generations to enjoy in their natural state, “where man is a visitor who does not remain,” thanks to the Wilderness Act.

However, in the early 1970s, some in the agency sought to redefine the Wilderness Act as being somehow inapplicable to less “pristine” eastern national forest lands with their “Wild Areas East” campaign.

This legislation would have established a separate, significantly less protective, version of the Wilderness Act for eastern national forests.

The U.S. Congress’s resounding response to the agency’s obfuscation was to pass the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act of 1975 (EWAA), doubling down on the fact that “in the more populous eastern half of the United States there is an urgent need to identify, study, designate, and preserve areas for addition to the National Wilderness Preservation System.”

Once signed by President Gerald Ford, the EWAA established 16 new wilderness areas in 12 eastern states, totaling 206,988 acres.

Then-U.S. Senators Richard Schweiker and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania were enthusiastic cosponsors of the EWAA, and had included eminently qualifying untrammeled Allegheny acreage at Allegheny Front, Hickory Creek, and Tracy Ridge in the Senate version of the bill — nearly 30,000 acres in all.

U.S. Congressman John P. Saylor of Johnstown (who had first introduced the Wilderness Act in the House of Representatives in 1956) stated on the House floor on January 11th, 1973 in opposition to the Forest Service’s Wild Areas East canard, and in support of the EWAA, that:

“I know very well what the Wilderness Act says and what it intended…I have fought too long and too hard, and too many good people in this House and across this land fought with me, to see the Wilderness Act denied application…by this kind of obtuse or hostile misrepresentation or misconstruction of the public law and the intent of the Congress.”

Today there are nearly 200 wilderness areas encompassing almost 4.5 million acres ratified by the actions of multiple Congresses and Presidents on federal lands east of the 100th meridian, including some — but not nearly enough — here in the Allegheny.

The spirit and intent of the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 (which provides for the “establishment and maintenance of areas of wilderness”), the Wilderness Act, the EWAA, and others, must be enthusiastically respected, embraced, and indeed celebrated by everyone.

All Allegheny staff are charged with supporting and implementing the Wilderness Act for all lands that conceivably qualify for its protection.

A prime example of such an expanse here is the wildly popular 9,705-acre proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area — which Senators Schweiker and Scott had initially included in the EWAA, though it was removed from the final version.

It boasts 30 miles of quiet, remote footpaths, including nine miles of the spectacular North Country National Scenic Trail, located along the eastern shoreline of the Allegheny Reservoir.

Tracy Ridge is the largest federal Inventoried Roadless Area in Pennsylvania.

As everyone at the Allegheny knows, all Inventoried Roadless Areas across America’s national forest lands are, axiomatically, “potential wilderness areas.”

President Ronald Reagan, for example, holds the record for signing the most wilderness bills into law at 43, largely because his administration was responding to the then recently completed nationwide RARE II roadless inventory.

Some at the Allegheny have really changed their tune on Tracy Ridge.

In recommending this rare and important Keystone State wildland for wilderness designation in their 2006 Draft Forest Plan, Allegheny staff resolved that “the majority of the area appears natural and untrammeled” with “a mix of opportunity for solitude and serenity, self-reliance, adventure, challenging experiences, and primitive recreation,” supplying “high potential to provide the wilderness attributes and values appropriate for wilderness designation.”

They concluded that “there are few places on the Forest that offer as high quality scenery, natural integrity and wide scale ecosystem function as Tracy Ridge.”

Readers can review this agency summary here.

(Photos: top- Tracy Run within proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area; Keystone Trails Association hikers standing on a narrow ridgeline at more than 1,800 feet in elevation — 500 feet above the surface of the Allegheny Reservoir; bottom- Claire Schweiker, FAW executive director Kirk Johnson, and Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker at the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act celebration at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., September of 2004; A map of the 9,705-acre proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area containing a nine-mile portion of the North Country National Scenic Trail from the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal for Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest by Friends of Allegheny Wilderness.)