Wilderness has held many meanings, from a place to be feared to one revered for wild animals, jagged mountains, vast prairies, deserts, physical challenge, solitude, and respite from a complex technological society. On September 3, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, legally defining wilderness as “..an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Just nine days later, on September 12, 1964, he signed the legislation establishing Canyonlands National Park. Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, was a prime architect of both laws. During a flight over this area in the early 1960s, Bureau of Reclamation Chief Floyd Dominy showed Udall where he wanted to build a major dam just below the confluence of the Colorado and Green rivers, but Udall instead saw a national park. Today, more than eighty percent of Canyonlands is managed to preserve its wilderness values.