Bald Knob Wilderness is a 5,973-acre roadless area in the Shawnee National Forest near Alto Pass in far southern Illinois. The state’s second-largest wilderness covers the steep western slope of Bald Knob in the Shawnee Hills and is now largely second-growth forest. Before federal land purchases in the 1930s, nearby land was used for farming, orchards, and fuelwood cutting, though the mountain’s western side was poorly suited to agriculture. Traces of that earlier settlement remain in homesteads, fruit trees, cemeteries, and abandoned roads. Shawnee National Forest was established in 1939, and the area was protected under the Illinois Wilderness Act of 1990.