Viewpoint - Instant Wilderness: When A Road Is Not A Road
A strange thing is happening in Washington, D.C. these days. Roads are disappearing.on paper! Old wagon roads, now dirt roads, considered by back country travelers for centuries to be the main thoroughfare from point to point anywhere in the Western states, are being redefined as a Enon-roadsE or Eways,E apparently to reclassify the surrounding land as EroadlessE and therefore, eligible for Wilderness Study consideration. The Clinton-Gore administration is proposing closure of 400,000 miles of back country roads on 60,000,000 acres of national forest lands. Are these roadways EroadsE or not? The US Geological Survey (USGS) published official maps for more than 80 years before the 1964 Wilderness Act. In 1964, five classes of roads were defined by the Survey. Their definition of a road in 1964 was what Congress intended when the Act used the terms EroadE and Eroadless.E
The five classes are:
Class 1: primary highway, federal and state;
Class 2: secondary highway, state and county;
Class 3: light duty, paved or improved;
Class 4: unimproved, unsurfaced, including track roads in back country,
designated on maps by two parallel dashed lines; and
Class 5: trails (single dashed line), roads passable only with a 4-wheel drive
vehicle, also called jeep trails.