History
See also: Sawtooth National Forest#Forest historySawtooth National Forest was created as the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in the U.S. Department of Agriculture by proclamation of President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. It was named after the Sawtooth Mountains in the northwestern part of the forest. On October 12, 1937, the U.S. Forest Service established the Sawtooth Primitive Area in the Sawtooth Mountains. Subsequently, Sawtooth National Forest began to extensively develop recreation opportunities, including new campgrounds, trails, and roads.
In 1960, Frank Church, a U.S. Senator from Idaho, first introduced legislation for a feasibility study to study the area for national park status. While Church allowed the 1960 feasibility study legislation to die, he introduced a bill in 1963 to create Sawtooth Wilderness National Park, which would primarily encompass the existing Sawtooth Primitive Area. While the 1963 bill also died, Church admitted that it wasn't designed to pass but rather to encourage thorough feasibility studies by both the Forest Service and National Park Service. Support for greater protection of the Sawtooths and surrounding areas grew after the discovery of a molybdenum deposit at the base of Castle Peak in the White Cloud Mountains in 1968.
In March 1971 Idaho's congressional delegation was finally united and introduced legislation to create the SNRA. On August 22, 1972 Public Law 22-400 establishing the SNRA, covering 756,019 acres (305,950 ha), and banning mining in it passed both the House of Representatives and Senate and was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. As part of this legislation, the Sawtooth Primitive Area became the Sawtooth Wilderness covering 217,088 acres (87,852 ha) and part of the National Wilderness Preservation System under the Wilderness Act of 1964. The SNRA was dedicated in a ceremony held on the shores of Redfish Lake on September 1, 1972.
Read more about this topic: Sawtooth Wilderness
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“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)