Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness

The wall of rock east of Highway 93 isn’t only scenery. It’s the first wilderness in America that an Indian nation set aside on its own land, under its own law.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes did it on June 15, 1982, when the Tribal Council passed Ordinance 79A. No act of Congress, no federal designation. The Tribes wrote their own wilderness ordinance, borrowed the language from the federal Wilderness Act where it fit, and then said something the federal law doesn’t: that preserving Tribal culture is a primary purpose of this place, and that wilderness matters to the practice of traditional religion.

It took decades to get there. The Council voted to create a Mission Mountains national park in 1936 and the idea died in Washington. A federal roadless designation arrived in 1937 without the Tribes’ consent and was withdrawn at their request in 1959. Logging proposals in the early 1970s brought the question back, and this time it stayed. The Tribes tell that history themselves, including who pushed for the wilderness and how the last proposed timber sale in the range was stopped, in the case study at the bottom of this page.

What’s up there

The Tribal Wilderness runs about 91,800 acres down the western slope of the Missions, roughly 34 miles north to south and averaging five miles wide. It climbs from around 4,000 feet at the foot of the range to over 10,000 at the peaks. Nine major streams come out of it. Roughly 113 lakes bigger than an acre sit in the cirque basins the glaciers left behind.

As of the Tribes’ 2005 case study there were nine developed trailheads and twelve maintained trails, with another eight seeing limited use. Most trailheads sit right at the wilderness boundary, some with campgrounds, some marked with nothing but a sign. Many of the trails were built by tribal members long ago. Others were cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

One part of the range has no trails at all, and that’s deliberate. The terrain is rough enough that trails were never economically sensible there, and the country is open enough that they weren’t needed. The Tribes kept it that way on purpose, so there’d be somewhere left for cross-country travel and real solitude.

The buffer zone

Below the wilderness boundary there’s a second layer. In January 1986 the Tribal Council created a buffer zone of about 22,833 acres across the foothills, to keep what happens downslope from degrading what’s above it. Rules there are looser, and the lower foothills carry grazing, timber harvest, homesites and Christmas tree cutting. Most campgrounds and trailheads are in the buffer rather than in the wilderness itself, which is why the regulations can change under your feet as you climb.

The other side of the mountains

The east slope is different country legally. That’s the federal Mission Mountains Wilderness, managed by the Forest Service and classified in 1975, covering about 74,000 acres. The two sides join with the Bob Marshall to form one continuous ecosystem, and the managers on both sides coordinate. In 1992 the Tribes and the Flathead National Forest built a joint map of the whole complex so visitors could see where they actually were.

Before you go

If you’re not a tribal member, you need a CSKT Conservation License and the right activity stamp before you set foot on tribal land, wilderness included. Camping takes a Flathead Reservation Camping License on top of it.

Inside the wilderness the rules tighten. Groups cap at eight people and eight head of stock. You can’t hold a campsite more than three consecutive days. Firearms aren’t allowed. No bikes, no motors, no mechanical transport of any kind.

The closure that catches people out is the grizzly zone. About 10,000 acres around McDonald Peak and the Ashley Lakes drainage close to all human use from July 15 to October 1 every year, and earlier or later if conditions call for it. That’s when the bears gather there to feed on insects. It’s been closed on that schedule since 1982, and it was one of the first conservation areas of its kind in the country.

Regulations change. Check the current Non-Member Regulations from CSKT Natural Resources before any trip, and the permits guide here for where to buy a license in the valley.

Read the Tribes’ own account

In 2005 the Tribes published a case study of the wilderness for the Native Lands and Wilderness Council: the history, the ordinance, how the place is managed, and why it was done. It’s the clearest account of this wilderness there is, and it’s written by the people who made it.

Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness: A Case Study (PDF, 1.4 MB). Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, 2005, with contributions from Tom McDonald, Terry Tanner, Lester BigCrane and David Rockwell. Shared here with the CSKT Wildland Recreation Program. Copyright remains with the Tribes.