Visit Wilderness

Search for a wilderness as the destination for your next outdoor adventure.

Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, Minnesota

Why Visit Wilderness?

Although you can certainly appreciate wilderness from afar—online, on television, or in books—first-hand experiences in nature such as campng or hunting enable you to enjoy the recreational, ecological, spiritual, and health benefits that wilderness areas provide. Wilderness areas provide “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation,” opportunities to see wildlife, a chance to renew and refresh, and the health benefits of exercising outside. You can even bring your well-behaved dog to many wilderness areas.

Learn more about the diverse ways in which we benefit from wilderness and threats wilderness areas face today.

Arrow Canyon Wilderness is an intriguing landscape with distinct and eye-catching landforms, including Arrow Canyon Range, one of the most scenic ranges in southern Nevada. The western face of the range is a spectacular cliff marked with dramatic bands of quartzite and limestone arching across its length. The central portion of this area contains a wide valley cut by numerous washes, providing endless panoramas. The northeast section showcases spectacular Arrow Canyon, which is several miles long and confined by sheer canyon walls that are so tall and close together that sunlight rarely reaches the bottom in winter. Pahranagat Wash runs along the northern edge of this wilderness and flows through Arrow Canyon. The wilderness also includes Table Mountain, a small mesa top on the east side of Pahranagat Wash, which is adjacent to, but separate from, the rest of the wilderness.

Silence along the rugged ridges and peaks of this intriguing backcountry destination will become more and more apparent the deeper into the wilderness you venture. Infrequent visitor use and the need for route finding skills provide great opportunities for solitude and recreation including hiking, horseback riding, rock climbing, hunting, exploring, and camping under the night sky.

Elevations in the Arrow Canyon Wilderness range from 2,000 – 5,200 feet. The Arrow Canyon Range is comprised of a fault scarp that rises approximately 2,800 feet off the valley floor. Composed of limestone, the mountain range showcases a striking dark carbon layer that runs along the western cliff face. Fossils such as crinoids, brachiopods, corals, and other sea life, are found in the gray limestone.

Arrow Canyon Wilderness is a Mojave Desert scrub environment that includes creosote bush, white bursage, Mojave yucca, and barrel cactus dispersed across the landscape. Blackbrush and Joshua Trees can be found at higher elevations. Honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and desert willow are scattered through the washes.

With a watchful eye you may spot desert bighorn sheep, coyotes, kit foxes, ring tail cats, bobcats, kangaroo rats, deer mice, side-blotched lizards, banded geckos, and the slow moving desert tortoise. Golden eagles, great-horned owls, black-tailed gnatcatchers, loggerhead shrike, and Say's phoebes can be found throughout the washes, mountain sides and ridges or in the sky. Beware of rattlesnakes among the rocks and in shaded areas.

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Public Law 107-282

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