When the late Bill Mounsey walked the perimeter of what would become the Eagles Nest Wilderness in the ’60s, the mapped legacy he would go on to create trailed right behind him. Half a century later, his leadership in the fight for establishing wilderness was celebrated on Sunday. 

The Eagles Nest Wilderness area, high in the Gore Range between Summit and Eagle counties, was designated in 1976 and has protected nearly 135,000 acres of critical landscape at a much higher level than surrounding forest lands. On Sunday, July 12, a celebration of 50 years since the Eagles Nest Wilderness area was signed into law was held in EagleVail by a local volunteer group, the Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance. 

Started by John Currie Craven in 1994, the Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance has about 250 volunteers assisting the U.S. Forest Service in stewarding the four wilderness areas in Eagle and Summit counties — Holy Cross Wilderness, the Flat Tops, Eagles Nest and Ptarmigan Peak.

The event, which was held on the exact designation day, hosted civic groups such as the Vail Valley Mountain Trail Association and the Mounsey-founded Wilderness Workshop, local volunteers and U.S. Forest Service officers — all gathered to celebrate and learn local history. Guest speakers included nature-based minister Susie Kincaid, author and historian Mark Pearson, and via video, former Colorado state senator and granddaughter of Mounsey, Kerry Donovan. 

State Sen. Dylan Roberts also attended the event and brought with him a tribute from the Colorado Senate that acknowledged the golden jubilee. 

“I hope we can use this 50th anniversary as a way to celebrate a great accomplishment and everything that we preserve and everything you do every day to protect the Eagles Nest Wilderness, but also renew and double down our efforts to keep thinking about big things even when they seem impossible,” Roberts said in his speech.

While the day was a celebration of accomplishment, it also sent out an urgent message on the need to advocate for U.S. public lands as they face federal policy hits that threaten their land protection. 

This isn’t the first time that the Eagles Nest Wilderness area has faced risk. Author Pearson shared that it took 12 years for the area to be signed into law. During the 1960s, advocates faced pushback from both the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Denver Water Board, which had separate plans to block the designation. 

“Twelve years is a really long time to keep fighting, but I think in these really challenging times right now, it’s really motivating and really inspirational to remember,” said Anju Sidhu, an Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance volunteer on the board of directors. “Our public lands are at really high risk, and our wilderness is at risk, and if we want to save this for future generations, we have to bring attention to it, so that’s why 50 years is so important.” 

The Trump administration has been chipping away at federal environmental policy, causing worry for many — it’s working to rescind the roadless rule, has changed procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act and this past Friday, rolled back on habitat protection in the Endangered Species Act.

At the event, Wilderness Workshop shared news of a leaked memo that would allow off-road vehicles on national forest land including on areas that the Forest Service has recommended should be protected, and are treated as such, until now. This includes Eagle County’s Red Table Mountain. 

“Anyone that pays attention to public lands and natural resource management and conservation, we are experiencing the most critical and maybe significant changes, mostly for the worse than maybe ever,” said Scott Fitzwilliams, a guest speaker and the former U.S. Forest Service supervisor for the White River National Forest. 

Fitzwilliams said that help from wilderness groups and volunteer groups used to be add-ons. Now, he said, they’re foundational to wilderness management as public lands are dismantled and defunded. 

“We need to honor the Eagles Nest Wilderness, we need to honor the people who were instrumental in creating it, and we need to help people, especially now that it feels like our public lands are under an existential threat,” said the 2026 Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance chairperson, Frances Hartogh. 

“If a small group of concerned, dedicated citizens can be instrumental in creating something as amazing as the Eagles Nest Wilderness, we can all be wilderness and public land stewards going forward,” she said. 

Diana Donovan, daughter of Bill Mounsey, reflected on her family’s legacy following the event. “I got tears in my eyes because … I really did do something. We never intended to do a big something,” she said. “We were of the mindset that you fought for what was good and you didn’t just wait for it to happen.” 

This story is from VailDaily.com.