Flat Tops Wilderness Area

Flat Tops Wilderness
IUCN category Ib (wilderness area)
Sunrise over the Flat Tops range
Location	Garfield / Rio Blanco / Eagle counties, Colorado, USA
Nearest city	Grand Junction, CO
Coordinates
Area	235,214 acres (951.88 km2)
Established	January 1, 1975
Governing body	U.S. Forest Service

The Flat Tops Wilderness Area is the third largest U.S. Wilderness Area in Colorado. It is 235,214 acres (951.88 km²), with 38,870 acres (157.3 km²) in Routt National Forest and 196,344 acres (794.58 km²) in White River National Forest. It was designated a wilderness area in 1975. Trappers Lake, located in the north of the area, was the lake that inspired Arthur Carhart, a U.S. Forest service official, to plead for wilderness preservation.

Colorado with Flat Tops Wilderness in red

History

The Chief of the U.S. Forest Service designated 118,230 acres of the Routt and White River National Forests as the Flat Tops Primitive Area on March 4, 1932, to be managed to protect the area’s wild values.

Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, which, among other things, required the Secretary of Agriculture to review the suitability of all primitive areas for inclusion into the national wilderness system within ten years. Following this mandate, the U.S. Forest Service evaluated the Flat Tops primitive area and surrounding forest and in 1967 recommended 142,230 acres for wilderness designation.

Conflict arose over the inclusion in the wilderness proposal of lands adjacent to the South Fork of the White River, near the southwest boundary of the proposed wilderness. Several private and public entities proposed dams and water diversions on the South Fork to facilitate development of rich oil shale deposits to the west. Timber interests also initially opposed designating wilderness outside the primitive area’s boundary.

Devils Causeway ridgeline

Conservation groups, led by the Colorado Open Space Coordination Council and including Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the National Audubon Society, supported protecting a much larger, 230,000-acre area that included lower elevation forest and lakes outside the primitive area.

On June 5, 1975, the Senate passed a bill sponsored by U.S. Senator Floyd Haskell (D-Colo.) to designate 235,230 acres as the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 369-1 on December 1, 1975, and was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on December 12, 1975. The lands protected as wilderness included the contested lands along the South Fork of the White River, effectively prohibiting the contested dam construction there.