Highlighting the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness (even if the National Park Service won’t)

The park also contains 29,920 acres of Wilderness, designated by Congress in 1978. In the North Unit of the park, two Wilderness units total 19,410 acres, separated only by the paved road that runs 14 miles from the east entrance to a dead-end overlook in the west. In the South Unit of the park, there is one 10,510-acre Wilderness unit in the western end. All three units are known collectively as the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness. The Little Missouri River runs adjacent to the Wilderness in the South Unit and through the more southwesterly Wilderness in the North Unit.

One day, Jean and I hiked the Caprock Coulee Trail in the North Unit of the park, a 4.1-mile loop that took us in and out of both Wildernesses in that unit. We started at the road, climbed steeply up into the southwesterly Wilderness, and came out at a high elevation with stunning views down into the wild Little Missouri Valley. The trail then took us out of the Wilderness, past the River Bend Overlook just off the road, and then back across the road into the more northeasterly Wilderness unit. We hiked high up on a ridge, with fabulous views down both sides of the badlands landscape. On our north side, we looked deep down into a valley with one lone bull bison. Little did we know then that we would encounter that same bison after the trail dropped us down to that valley floor. All in all, we enjoyed wonderful glimpses into the wild Wildernesses of the North Unit.

The next day, we hiked in the South Unit of the park beginning at the far western edge of the park. Here again we hiked in Wilderness, including grasslands atop a plateau past wild horses, before we dropped down into an eroded valley full of the petrified stumps of an ancient forest. This petrified forest is believed to be the third largest petrified wood area in the United States after Petrified Forest National Park and Yellowstone National Park. The 60-million-year-old petrified stumps provided a vivid example of what Wilderness Act author Howard Zahniser may have meant when he once wrote about Wilderness projecting the ‘eternity of the past into the eternity of the future.’ An amazing place, to be sure.

There are certainly some wilderness stewardship challenges at Theodore Roosevelt. About 200 feral horses, descendants of escaped ranch horses in the area, live in the South Unit of the park, including that Unit’s Wilderness. They are classified as non-native livestock and can negatively impact the park’s natural resources, but are popular with many park visitors. The NPS is now trying to decide what to do with these horses. In the North Unit, the NPS maintains a small “demonstration herd” of about nine Longhorn steers as a reminder of the badlands ranching history. Should this non-native species also remain in the designated Wilderness, with all the negative impacts that cows inflict on Wilderness? These are just two wilderness stewardship issues that should receive more public attention at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Despite these amazing designated Wildernesses, the NPS has virtually no information available about them. I asked at all three visitor centers for information about the Wildernesses, but no brochures were available. No wilderness management plan. Nothing in the park’s tabloid newsletter. No text in the park’s brochure, though the maps in that brochure do show the Wilderness boundaries. Nothing in the Superintendent’s Compendium of rules and regulations. The Wilderness was mentioned in the separate brochure for the petrified forest, and there was a wilderness sign at the park boundary leading to the petrified forest, but many park visitors would never know that the park contains nearly 30,000 acres of special, Congressionally-designated Wilderness.

This lackadaisical attitude toward Wilderness by the NPS goes way back. As long ago as 1957, NPS Director Conrad Wirth testified against passage of what became the 1964 Wilderness Act in its very first Congressional hearing. Wirth, in essence, didn’t want any new law that impinged on the NPS’s prerogatives; the NPS felt it could manage National Park backcountry just fine without the restrictions that the Wilderness Act imposed, thank you very much.

Though the NPS eventually supported passage of the Wilderness Act in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the agency’s begrudging attitude toward Wilderness continues to this day. The NPS often appears to feel that the meaning of Wilderness is quite malleable, and should be open to wide NPS discretion to do whatever the agency wants to do. And there is often a subtle arrogance in the NPS about the agency itself and hubris toward Wilderness on the part of the agency—other federal agencies may cut down trees or drill for oil and gas, but the NPS is better than that and knows how to protect national park lands, without the interference of the Wilderness Act. Hence, we see the NPS today often illegally authorizing helicopter use in Wildernesses for routine work or allowing permanent monitoring stations for research projects because the NPS wants it and, besides, which other federal agency protects its lands any better?

And some of that attitude seems to have manifested itself even in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with the agency’s lack of almost any information to highlight the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness. That Wilderness is indeed quite special, as this essay hopefully may have begun to show. Here’s wishing that with this essay and future involvement, Wilderness Watch can help highlight the Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness, even if the National Park Service won’t.

Kevin Proescholdt is the conservation director for Wilderness Watch.

Photos from top: 

1. Looking down into the Little Missouri Valley from the Caprock Coulee trail in the southwesterly Wilderness in the North Unit of the Park.
2. Jean and a massive petrified tree stump in the Petrified Forest, located in the Wilderness in the South Unit of the Park.
3. Looking north into the northeasterly Wilderness of the Park's North Unit from the Caprock Coulee Trail, with the lone bison bull in the lower center.