page_title: Sawtooth National Forest
section_title: Forest history
hierarchical_section_title: Sawtooth National Forest / Forest history
caption_attribution_description: English: Sawtooth Range from the Sawtooth Valley, Idaho, USA Français&#160;: Chaîne Sawtooth de la vallée Sawtooth, Idaho, États-Unis
context_page_description: Sawtooth National Forest is a National Forest that covers 2,110,408 acres in the U.S. states of Idaho and Utah. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it was originally named the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in a proclamation issued by President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. On August 22, 1972 a portion of the forest was designated as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, which includes the Sawtooth, Cecil D. Andrus–White Clouds, and Hemingway–Boulders wilderness areas. The forest is managed as four units: the SNRA and the Fairfield, Ketchum, and Minidoka Ranger Districts.
  Sawtooth National Forest is named for the Sawtooth Mountains, which traverse part of the SNRA. The forest also contains the Albion, Black Pine, Boise, Boulder, Pioneer, Raft River, Smoky, Soldier, Sublett, and White Cloud mountain ranges, as well as Hyndman Peak, the ninth-highest point in Idaho at 12,009 feet above sea level. Sawtooth National Forest contains land cover types which include sagebrush steppe, spruce-fir forests, alpine tundra, and over 1,100 lakes and 3,500 miles of rivers and streams.
context_section_description: The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 gave the President the authority to establish forest reserves in the U.S. Department of the Interior. After passage of the Transfer Act of 1905, forest reserves became part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the newly created U.S. Forest Service. Sawtooth National Forest was created as the Sawtooth Forest Reserve in the Department of Agriculture by proclamation of President Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, 1905. The forest's initial area was 1,947,520 acres (3,043 sq mi; 7,881 km²), and it was named after the Sawtooth Mountains in the northwestern part of the forest.
  On November 6, 1906, President Roosevelt announced the addition of 1,392,640 acres (2,176 sq mi; 5,636 km²) to the Sawtooth Forest Reserve, which then also constituted much of the present-day Salmon-Challis and Boise National Forests. These lands were split into separate National Forests by executive order on June 26 and July 1, 1908. The forest's area underwent a number of smaller changes in the early 20th century. The Fairfield Ranger District was established in 1906 and merged with the Shake Creek Ranger District in 1972 to form the present-day Fairfield District. The Cassia Forest Reserve was established on June 12, 1905 and the Raft River Forest Reserve on November 5, 1906. The names of the forest reserves were changed to national forests on March 4, 1907. Formed from the consolidation of Cassia and Raft River National Forests, the Minidoka National Forest was created on July 1, 1908, and then added to Sawtooth National Forest on July 1, 1953.
  In 1936, Senator James Pope, a one-term Democrat from Idaho, introduced the first legislation to establish a national park in the Sawtooths. Under his proposal, the park would have been approximately thirty miles (50 km) in length and 8 to 15 mi (13 to 24 km) wide. The rest of Idaho's congressional delegation did not support the proposal, which occurred at a time when the National Park Service was taking a more preservation-oriented stance, and the bill died. On October 12, 1937, the Forest Service established the Sawtooth Primitive Area in the Sawtooth Mountains. Subsequently, Sawtooth National Forest began to extensively develop recreation opportunities, including new campgrounds, trails, and roads.
  In 1960, Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho introduced legislation for a feasibility study to survey the area for national park status. While Church allowed the 1960 feasibility study legislation to die, he introduced a bill in 1963 to create Sawtooth Wilderness National Park, which would primarily encompass the existing Sawtooth Primitive Area. Although the 1963 bill also was not voted on, Church admitted that it was not designed to pass but rather to encourage thorough feasibility studies by both the Forest Service and National Park Service. A 1965 joint report by the two agencies recommended either a national park administered by the National Park Service or a national recreation area managed by the Forest Service. In April 1966, Church introduced two bills, one to establish Sawtooth National Park and another to establish the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA). The SNRA bill was cosponsored by Republican Senator Len Jordan, a former governor and sheep rancher, because it preserved the area while also permitting traditional uses such as logging, hunting, and grazing. The legislation was not supported by Idaho's two members of the House; Republican congressman George Hansen of the second district introduced a separate bill in the House in April 1967.
  In 1968, the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) discovered a molybdenum deposit at the base of Castle Peak, the highest peak in the White Cloud Mountains. ASARCO filed paperwork with the Forest Service to construct roads and to allow for an open pit mine below Castle Peak to extract the ore. The proposed mine would have been 350 ft (110 m) deep, 700 ft (210 m) wide, and 7,000 ft (2,100 m) long. About 20,000 short tons (18,000 t) of  material would be processed daily with 99.5 percent being deposited in waste pil
caption: The Sawtooth Mountains from the southern Sawtooth Valley
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