Credit: Courtesy of Wilderness.net image library.
After lobbying for decades for passage of federal legislation to protect American wilderness areas, Howard Zahniser died, at the age of 58, on May 5, 1964, just a few months before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Ac into law. The act initiatially designated 9.1 million acres of wilderness in a new National Wilderness Preservation System, most of which were drawn from the national forests.
