In 1922, forester Aldo Leopold proposed protecting roadless country in New Mexico; in 1924, the Gila became America’s first designated wilderness area

In 2024, one of America’s wildest corners quietly turned 100. The Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico is still recognised as the world’s first officially designated wilderness area, a distinction it has held since 1924, according to the U.S. Forest Service's centennial feature on the Gila. Behind that designation was a young Forest Service employee, Aldo Leopold, who fought to keep some 755,000 acres of roadless backcountry intact.

A forester with a big idea

In the early 1900s, the U.S. Forest Service focused mostly on logging, grazing, and road building. Undisturbed wilderness areas were seen as land waiting to be developed. It was a forester, Aldo Leopold, who examined the rugged, roadless landscape surrounding the Gila River and came to the conclusion that it should be preserved as it is.


The Aldo Leopold Foundation explains that in 1922, Leopold wrote a formal proposal, saying this land was more valuable to Americans as pristine wilderness than as farmland or grazing pasture. The land was too rugged for agriculture, the area was isolated, and it was one of the last remaining wildlands in a rapidly growing country.

The day the Gila became officially wild

Leopold's vision came to life on June 3, 1924, when District Forester Frank Pooler gave approval, and the United States Forest Service reserved roughly 755,000 acres of the Gila National Forest to be used as a protected wilderness area, thus marking it as the world's first wilderness area.

It did not have an opening ceremony but was rather a simple administrative decision. Yet, this decision would change the way of thinking about lands forever. For the very first time, some agency decided to leave a landscape free of roads and permanent development rather than open it up for logging, grazing, or construction, wild, but not off-limits to the people who wanted to experience it on foot or horseback.

Over the decades, the borders changed. In 1980, Congress designated roughly 202,000 acres of the initial reserve as Aldo Leopold Wilderness in memory of the man who started it all. Today's Gila Wilderness covers about 558,000 acres, still New Mexico's largest, per Forest Service records, and sits directly alongside the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, forming one continuous roadless expanse of more than 750,000 acres.

The meaning of 'wilderness'

Leopold's definition still holds true: an area of land large enough to disappear into for a two-week pack trip, kept free of roads, cottages or other 'works of man.' Basically, a place with no cell service and no traffic.

The Gila continues to meet that definition. There are hiking trails through the Middle and West forks of the Gila River, backcountry camping, horseback riding, and fly fishing for the native Gila trout. More than 300 bird species have been seen in the Gila by birders, ranging from the bald eagle to the painted redstart. It is a place where people can really get away from it all.

Forty years later, the idea became law

Leopold’s Gila experiment was not an isolated case. It sowed the seed for something bigger. Forty years after Pooler signed off on the Gila, Congress passed the Wilderness Act of 1964, which legally defined wilderness nationwide as land “untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor." Today, the National Wilderness Preservation System protects over 100 million acres nationwide, all originating from that quiet 1924 decision in New Mexico.

Why it still matters for us

Leopold died in 1948, sixteen years before the Wilderness Act that he inspired became law. But his story seems oddly relevant now. We are arguably the most digitally connected generation in history, and one of the most stressed-out. The 2019 study, ‘Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing,’ in Scientific Reports found that people who spend at least 120 minutes a week in nature report significantly better health and well-being than those who don’t, according to researchers at the University of Exeter. The scientists said their results suggest nature "guidelines" like the exercise advice doctors already give, but most of us are far from that weekly dose.

It’s not about quitting your phone or moving to a cabin. The same research found that the weekly two-hour “dose” didn’t have to be an extended trip; a couple of shorter visits worked equally well. You do not need a vast roadless area to benefit from time in nature. A local park is good too. But the existence of a place like the Gila helps, simply because one forester refused to let it get paved over.

So next time you have a long weekend, think of a hike, not a scroll. The Gila Wilderness has waited, roadless and mostly quiet, for about a century, for exactly this kind of visit.