Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, placing more than 9 million acres of federal land under protection. That protected area has grown to more than a 100 million acres over the decade and it includes The Goat Rocks in Washington's Cascade Mountains.

"Fifty years later, wilderness has proven to be an attractive destination for countless people – so attractive that one of the challenges of the law is to maintain wilderness areas as both destinations for people and as fragile ecosystems that should be left untrammeled by those two-legged visitors," reports David Steves, of Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Read the full story: The Golden Anniversary For Wilderness In America