But in Utah, that optimism soon turned to dismay as BLM bureaucrats consistently ignored or deliberately downplayed the wilderness qualities of millions of acres of deserving land in Utah.

Citizens throughout Utah determined then and there that the wild deserts and canyonlands of Utah would some day gain the best protection afforded by law. So people gathered around kitchen tables, pored over maps, shared photographs and organized trips to the field.

With mostly volunteers and few paid staff, they put together a wilderness proposal for just over 5 million acres of wildlands in Utah's West Desert, the piece of the Mojave Desert in southwestern Utah and the fabled Colorado Plateau wilderness made famous by the writings of John Wesley Powell, Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner.

These wilderness advocates understood, however, that the people and organizations they represented would be far more effective if they worked in concert than if they worked separately. Thus, in 1985, was the Utah Wilderness Coalition formed.

Utah-based groups such as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club joined with national organizations, such as The Wilderness Society and the National Parks and Conservation Association to promote and defend the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal. The founders were later joined by the venerable Wasatch Mountain Club. Today, more than 200 local, regional and national organizations belong to the UWC.

Much has happened in the intervening years. In 1989, just four years after the founding of the UWC and the unveiling of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal, Utah Congressman Wayne Owens introduced the first Utah BLM wilderness bill. (Later, Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York and Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois would carry on and expand Owens' initiative by introducing legislation to protect more than 9 million acres of our nation's deserts and canyonlands in Utah.)

In 1990, the coalition published Wilderness at the Edge, a 400-page description and summary of the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal. This magnum opus inspired wilderness advocates to research and publish wilderness proposals in other parts of the country.

In the mid-'90s, the coalition's vision became a national cause when members of Congress from across the nation defeated weak wilderness legislation proposed by Utah's governor and congressional delegation. In 1996, President Bill Clinton used the power of the Antiquities Act to establish the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, most of which had been proposed for wilderness protection by the coalition.

Shortly thereafter, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ordered a new wilderness inventory of BLM-managed lands in Utah, the results of which largely concurred with the Utah Wilderness Coalition's own findings of suitability. Always a few steps ahead, the coalition initiated its own re-inventory, one of the most ambitious citizen-led efforts of its kind in the nation.

Countless person-hours of field work and tens of thousands of documentary photographs revealed that America was blessed with more wilderness-quality land in Utah than had previously been known. More than 9 million acres of mountain ranges and intervening valleys, canyons, desert washes, wild rivers and multi-hued sandstone monuments are still as wild as when the pioneers arrived.

To be sure, challenges remain. Permanent protection still eludes most of the Citizens' Proposal. The Bush administration has made oil and gas leasing the highest priority for lands administered by the BLM. Many areas proposed for wilderness now face the threat of damaging energy development.

Off-road vehicles push ever deeper into wildlands that should be free of machines, disturbing wildlife and replacing desert quiet with motorized whine.

But today, more people than ever before have discovered and fallen in love with the wild desert country of Utah. Travelers come from all over the world to be inspired by the land that Wallace Stegner described as the “geography of hope.” All across this nation Americans share a desire to protect something they see as a precious part of their heritage.

This shared affection began as a vision nurtured by the original founders of the Utah Wilderness Coalition. They had the courage and the fortitude to resist the minimalism of the development-minded bureaucrats and anti-wilderness politicians.

Let's pause to acknowledge and celebrate that vision. Happy 20th anniversary to the Utah Wilderness Coalition.

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Lawson LeGate is the senior southwest regional representative of the Sierra Club. He lives and works in Salt Lake City.