Crab Orchard Wilderness

Crab Orchard Wilderness is a 4,050-acre roadless wilderness area within the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in southern Illinois, spanning parts of Williamson, Union, and Jackson counties along the southern shore of Devils Kitchen Lake with the adjacent Panther Den Wilderness. Rather than untouched backcountry, it is a second-growth forest that regenerated after farmland and pasture were taken through federal land condemnations in the 1930s. Managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, it is accessible from nearby highways and not especially remote. Its importance is in preserving a large block of recovering southern Illinois forest within a broader protected refuge landscape.

Illinois · United States