The 1.6-million-acre Bitterroot is without question one of the marquee tracts in the national-forest system. It encompasses parts of the biggest, most rugged wilderness areas in the Rockies, the Frank Church - River of No Return and the Selway-Bitterroot, along with the smaller but equally spectacular Anaconda Pintler Wilderness. Two stunning, jagged-peaked mountain ranges, the Bitterroot and the Sapphire, rise within the forest; these peaks are drained by the roaring Selway, Clearwater, and Bitterroot Rivers. Nearly half the forest is designated wilderness, much more the domain of deer, elk, moose, black bears, and bighorn sheep than of humans.

The 1,600 miles of trails in this forest meander through the ancestral home of the Bitterroot Salish Native Americans; the Nez Perce frequented the area also. The Lewis and Clark expedition brought the first recorded Euro-Americans up here, but things really got rolling in the 1860s with the discovery of gold. Lumber moved in the 1880s, and soon after, of course, the nation woke up to the idea of protecting the land. Initial protection came in 1897, and the area became national forest land when the Forest Service was created in 1907.

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