Lee Metcalf Wilderness: Surrounded by Protected Land
Near Big Sky, Montana
Big Sky is surrounded by wilderness in a specific legal sense. The resort and the town sit between two units of the Lee Metcalf Wilderness, a federally protected roadless area established by Congress in nineteen eighty three. The Metcalf Wilderness covers more than two hundred fifty thousand acres in several units across southwestern Montana.
The wilderness designation means the mountains and forests around Big Sky are protected from road-building, motorized vehicles, and commercial development of any kind. A hiker who walks out of Big Sky's base area in almost any direction that is not highway or ski run will quickly enter wilderness. Lee Metcalf himself served in the United States Senate from nineteen sixty one until his death in nineteen seventy eight.
He was an early advocate for the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and worked consistently to protect Montana's public lands from extraction and large-scale development. The Lee Metcalf Wilderness was designated five years after his death as a tribute to that work. The irony that a large ski resort sits at its center, and indeed predates the formal wilderness designation by ten years, is not lost on people who think carefully about land management in the West.
The resort was there first, and the wilderness was drawn around it. Big Sky is one of the few places in the country where a world-class ski resort and federally designated wilderness exist essentially side by side, separated by a trail and a property line.
