Hayes, Robert B.

The Sawtooth Society was founded to protect the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA). Its website (2007) defines its mission as threefold: serving as an advocate for the SNRA, preserving open space in the SNRA, and enhancing recreation facilities and services in the SNRA, an area of 756,000 acres of public and private land in the rugged Sawtooth Mountains of Central Idaho.

Congress designated this area a national recreation area in 1972 after decades of debate over the future of the region. Many in Idaho advocated the creation of a national park in the Sawtooth Mountains, but the park proposal met opposition from numerous landowners, recreationists, and ranchers in the region. National recreation area status was viewed as a compromise. Since then the area has been managed and regulated by the U.S. Forest Service.

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