The Cedar Mountain Wilderness is located in northwestern

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, just south of

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one of the ori ...

. The vegetation on the upper elevations of the Cedar Mountains is dominated by

juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' ( ) of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere as far south ...

s (referred to as "cedars" by early pioneers). The foothill and valley regions include mixed desert shrubs. Cheatgrass is prevalent over large areas burned by range fires. The remains of an

aragonite Aragonite is a carbonate mineral and one of the three most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate (), the others being calcite and vaterite. It is formed by biological and physical processes, including precipitation fr ...

mining camp can also be found in the foothills. The Cedar Mountain Wilderness includes more than half of the Cedar Mountain Herd Management Area, where

feral A feral (; ) animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in som ...

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 mi ...

s have grazed since they were introduced in the late 19th century. A survey conducted in December 1991 counted 444 horses, and parts of the herd can often be seen on the wilderness. The

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

fills watering troughs for the horses when springs dry up in the summer. This artificial water supply benefits other wildlife species such as

pronghorn The pronghorn (, ) (''Antilocapra americana'') is a species of artiodactyl (even-toed, hoofed) mammal indigenous to interior western and central North America. Though not an antelope, it is known colloquially in North America as the American ante ...

antelope. The

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...

designated the Cedar Mountain Wilderness, in an effort sponsored by Utah representative

Rob Bishop Robert William Bishop (born July 13, 1951) is an American politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2003 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he became the dean of Utah's congressional delegation after the retirement of ...

and the Utah governor, to block rail access to a proposed high-level

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

storage facility on the nearby Skull Valley Indian Reservation. The project was sponsored by a consortium of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

companies known as

Private Fuel Storage Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS) was a nuclear power industry consortium organized to manage spent nuclear fuel based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The plan was to store it above-ground in Dry cask storage, dry casks on the Goshute's Skull Valley Indian Re ...

. The project was killed in 2012 amid legal obstacles and substantial local opposition.Judy Fahys
Utah N-waste site backers call it quits
''Salt Lake Tribune'' (December 21, 2012).

References

* Lynna P. Howard, ''Utah's Wilderness Areas: The Complete Guide'' (Westcliffe Publishers, 2005) * Bill Cunningham & Polly Burke, ''Wild Utah: A Guide to 45 Roadless Recreation Areas'' (Falcon Publishing, 1998) * Bureau of Land Management, ''Utah BLM Statewide Wilderness Final Environmental Impact Statement: Volume II West-Central Region'' (BLM Utah State Office, 1990)

External links

Bureau of Land Management: Cedar Mountain Wilderness

Wilderness.net: Cedar Mountain Wilderness

Google Maps satellite view
{{authority control Wilderness areas of Utah Protected areas of Tooele County, Utah IUCN Category Ib Bureau of Land Management areas in Utah

See also

References

External links