Needles Field Office - Wilderness Areas
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Wilderness
is a natural preserve with outstanding opportunities for solitude
and unconfined primitive experience. Wilderness is a place to enjoy
where ecological, geological and other features of scientific, scenic,
educational and historical value are protected and their character
retained.
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The
Wilderness Act was passed by Congress in 1964 to ensure that population
growth and development did not alter all of the Nation's lands. The Wilderness
Act established the National Wilderness Preservation System, which is
composed of federally-owned areas designated by Congress as wilderness.
The California Desert Protection Act of 1994 is one of the largest pieces
of wilderness legislation ever passed by Congress. Signed into law by
President Clinton, the Act preserves the unrivaled values which portray
the Old West and remain essentially unaltered by human activity.
The Bureau of Land Management has responsibility for 9.5 million acres
of public lands in the southern California Desert. The California Desert
Protection Act gives special wilderness designation to 69 individual BLM
areas covering 3.6 million acres. Eighteen of those areas are partly or
completely within the boundary of BLM's Needles Resource Area. Wilderness
within the Resource Area totals more than 1.3 million acres. Below is
a list of those areas.
Wilderness
Areas
Wilderness Area Name |
Size in Acres (Federal only) |
Public Law Number |
Designation Date |
Bigelow Cholla Garden
|
13,548 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Bristol Mountains
|
70,026 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Cadiz Dunes
|
19,308 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Chemehuevi Mountains
|
85,801 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Clipper Mountain
|
33,905 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Dead Mountains
|
47,151 |
103-433 |
10/31/1991 |
Kelso Dunes
|
144,288 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Kingston Range
|
199,525 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Mesquite
|
44,877 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
North Mesquite Mountains
|
28,943 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Old Woman Mountains
|
163,120 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Piute Mountains
|
48,044 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Sheephole Valley
|
186,673 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Stateline
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7,012 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Stepladder Mountains
|
83,527 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Trilobite
|
29,626 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Turtle Mountains
|
177,254 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
Whipple Mountains
|
76,063 |
103-433 |
10/31/1994 |
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