Structured Wilderness: Managing 19th and Early 20th Century Heritage Resources, Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming

As the first National Forest that abuts Yellowstone Park, the Shoshone National Forest, northwestern Wyoming has a rich and diverse history of changing use and management. Over the last several years several projects that highlight this history have been conducted by the Shoshone and several partners. Two projects at Anderson Lodge (constructed ~1890) and Simpson Lake Lodge (1926) represent stabilization efforts at cabins representing both administrative and private uses of the back county before the Wilderness designation. The third project, the Gallaher Survey party tree, documents the efforts of an 1893 team mapping the east and southern boundaries of the Yellowstone Forest Reserve. Efforts at these unusual Wilderness properties face numerous logistical and management difficulties, but the enthusiastic support of local, regional, and national partners clearly demonstrates the importance that the public places on these types of sites and highlights the need to a more richly nuanced perspective on evidences of human presence in our Nation’s Wildernesses.