page_title: King Range Wilderness
section_title: Area history
hierarchical_section_title: King Range Wilderness / Area history
caption_attribution_description: The en:Lost Coast is a section of California's north coast in Humboldt County.
context_page_description: The King Range Wilderness is a 42,585-acre federally designated wilderness area within the King Range National Conservation Area in northern California, United States. The area was set aside with the passage of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act of 2006. The Bureau of Land Management is the responsible agency and is currently working on a Management Plan for the King Range Wilderness. This section of California's coastline is known as the "Lost Coast", a landscape too rugged for highway building, which forced the construction of State Highway 1 and U.S. 101 inland. The King Range Wilderness is the longest undeveloped coast, outside of Alaska, in the United States.
  The Act of 2006 also set aside an area three geographical miles offshore as the Rocks and Islands Wilderness. It is the smallest wilderness area in the National Wilderness Preservation System, with a total size of five acres.
  The King Range is part of the Coast Ranges mountains and has the greatest relief in the shortest distance of all coast ranges in the state. In the lateral distance of three miles, the King Range rises from sea level to over 4,000 feet.
context_section_description: The earliest prehistoric sites in the coastal area are no older than 2,800 years, possibly because of geological uplifting and soil erosion. Early Native American artifacts found in the King Range suggest settlement by the Wiyot, then the Yurok by AD 1100. More recently, the Mattole, Sinkyone and Bear River peoples have lived in the area.
  From the 1570s through the 1800s, Spanish, American and Russian explorers and fur-trappers came to the area. By the 1880s, ranches and farms were supplying the demands of the mining communities and the growing settlements. Remains of old homestead ruins and their orchards can still be found throughout the King Range.
  With the advent of mechanized equipment, the area became more accessible, and the Douglas fir forests supplied lumber and an economic boom was underway by the 1940s with Humboldt County being the largest supplier in the state.
  Fishing also became a large economic industry, especially for salmon.
  On December 10, 1929, President Herbert Hoover issued Executive Order 5237 at the request of the state that withdrew several parcels from settlement as public land. California's State Division of Beaches and Parks saw recreational potential in the King Range, but the land remained unclassified until the 1950s. Congressman Clem Miller introduced a bill in 1961 to establish the national conservation area, and had support from organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Mattole Action Committee. Although Congressman Miller died in a plane crash in 1962, another member of Congress, Don Clausen, continued Miller's work and the bill was signed into law by 1970.
caption: Sunset on the Lost Coast, California.
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