Well beyond the cities and their surrounding farmlands lay regions of almost no settlement, which remained wild. Earlier these lands had been used primarily for their raw materials such as wood and minerals. Often after these had been extracted the lands were abandoned. But new values transformed them into environmental assets that interested an increasing portion of the American public. They came to be prized both for the experience of their environmental values and because they symbolized what America was and ought to be.

Here in their nation's wildlands Americans found it possible to express their environmental values more fully than they could in cities. Organized efforts to ensure that forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and the western public domain did not fall prey to pressures for development were the most consistently successful of environmental activities.

Americans often took their wildlands for granted. They were public lands, not the private preserves of an aristocracy, as in Europe, where the public had been excluded from using them. During the nineteenth century these lands were disposed of to individuals and corporations to promote economic development. In the late nineteenth century this practice began to give way to permanent public management as the lands were looked on as clothed with a public interest and no longer subject to private alienation. By the 1950s public ownership had become a firmly rooted American political tradition.