First & Wildest

First & Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100        Edited by Elizabeth Hightower Allen

In the summer of 1922, Aldo Leopold traveled on horseback up into the headwaters of New Mexico’s Gila River and proposed to his bosses at the Forest Service that 500,000 acres of that rough country be set aside as roadless wilderness. Thus was born America’s first – the world’s first – designated wilderness. A century later, writer-activists come together to celebrate this, rugged landscape, the Yellowstone of the Southwest.